Liontamer

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Sanctuary Dungeon" (loz3-15.spc) Yeah, I remember talking to Matt a few months ago about this one in #ormgas, so I'm not gonna spend too much time going over this one. The samples were pretty generic and relatively unprocessed; if the situation is anything like your previous Gunsmoke submission, zircon will be able to point out specific presets you used this time around, and you don't want judges to be able to do that so readily. Aside from having some interesting ideas for the background music and some occasional rhythmic ateration of the source tune, this was a pretty conservative affair. The structure basically went "verbatim melody, original section, original section, verbatim melody", and that's just not gonna fly. You've gotta integrate your original composition ideas with significant rearrangement. There were some cool areas, like 1:50-2:31, that I really enjoyed. Some interesting percussion sounds and decent textures there. However, the section after that had some background material that didn't sound in the same key with the melody (2:35-2:48). You've really gotta branch out and try new sounds along with more comprehensive exploration into processing and effects work to fashion sounds with more creativity and flair, and take more care to rearrange the actual melodic content of whatever source material you use. You need to camp out at the ReMixing forum and field more criticism at the Work-in-Progress forum. Really put some effort into stepping up your game in order to see some better results. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gym/rshinobi.rar - "My Lover" Decent ideas, but the woodwind & string sample usage sounded unrealistic. Everything was soft yet indistinct. Your background/supporting elements were so quiet and flimsy that they didn't properly accentuate the track, and your leads also had a problem being too quiet, so the texture was really weak. The dynamics were also somewhat nonexistant; same percussion pattern and plodding groove going on for most of the 3 1/2 minutes. Should have gotten some feedback from the Work-in-Progress & ReMixing forums first. You need to achieve better realism with your sample usage, create more dynamic background work that evolves along with the more important instrumentation, and achieve better balance amongst your sounds. Keep at it though, Mansoor. You show creativity in your arrangement work and genuine potential. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gsf/mmzero2_gsf.rar - 10 "Ice Brain" Initially, the mix tied somewhat liberally to the source tune. Melodically, both the opening and closing sections were a bit difficult to tie right back to the source. Assuming those were more original than remix, other sections of the mix were nonetheless a lot easier to associate with the "Ice Brain", like the ones among :45-2:15, so on the arrangement side I had no problems there. The sounds came off as somewhat basic (not amateur/n00bish, but basic), but the texture was caliente and funky fresh. The percussion, while stylish, could have been a little more varied (the snare was the main culprit), and some may call the lead synths grating though I didn't mind them. Nice lil' quasi-organ synths going on in there as well. Chill lil' number this one was. It caught me by surprise, because I had let it loop for a while before I had even bothered to check who had made it. Good shit from my bro, Doragon, who I'm glad to be hearing from again, since it was about 8 months ago that he told me he'd be out of the game for a while. Definitely a pleasant surprise. Keep up the good work, bro. YES

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/dkq.rsn - "Flight of the Zinger" (dkq-12.spc) Nice wind FX going on to intro the track, then some clangy crud arrived at :09 and hung on for way too long. Some stuff finally started out at :41. Pretty crappy to be honest. Some synths fadeed in at 1:00. Wasted practically a third of the track, until a cool pad-style synth came in at 1:15, but it's basically just a cover of the original. Hahaha; then the a terrible generic electrosynth started up at 1:39. Sounded really bad and was just the original, only reinstrumented. That pad was probably the only cool part of the mix. 2:45 went back to the pad followed by some new percussion and keyboard synths with poorly synched usage of the melody. Nice fade style cut-out at 3:35, but this didn't do enough on the rearrangement side. Better luck next crime. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/sd2.rsn - "Give Love its Rightful Time" (sd2-34.spc) Intro sounded chill; pretty nice. Some SuperGreenX-ish effects showed up at :18. Ah man; as soon as the melody kicked in at :33, the support percussion got really flat and plain. The piano sounded like it has no velocity work done on it. The percussion picked up in activity a bit at :49, but it still lacked depth. We hit the chorus on piano at 1:06 and you just gotta humanize the piano work. 1:23-1:30 hit some seriously F-ed up notes. We get to some effects 'n crud on the support synths at 1:44 and the arrangement was literally breaking down until 2:16. Really poorly structured original section there. I had no idea what was going on with it; sounded completely random. The we hit another "just hit some the same key a lot and it'll be aight" break from 2:33-2:48. Then the tempo increased...barely (and I mean barely; what was the point?)...at 2:53 and we retread the source tune melody against with some string work on top. Then we hit some brand new stuff at 3:24 and we get another new instrument/sound in there with only 24 seconds left. Um...what the hell, bro? Why did you even bother bringing it in that late? Anyway, either bring in some new sounds earlier or don't bother. In this case, whatever that was was very shrill and piercing, so scrap it. The resolution at the ending was poor also. Make a meaningful ending; build towards something there and make it satisfying for the listener. Anyway, the arrangement of the actual source tune was decent. Mostly relied on altering the rhythms of the original with some minor additions. The track was also somewhat cluttered & muffly sounding. Sharpen it up. Loads of potential for this one, but rework those messier sections (1:44-2:16 & 2:33-2:48), humanize the instruments (the piano in particular), and fill out the percussion. There were just too many pointless aspects of the arrangement that you've gotta get rid of. Hopefully you'll get some other good tips from the remaning votes. Decent work, Ross. I see improvement, so keep at it. NO (rework/resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/gym/sonic2.rar - Boss (Robotnik Theme.gym) Nah, the theme was there right at the introduction via arrangement. Then the main melody arrived at :35. Melody started again at 1:04. Indeed, Adhesive Boy & I talked a little bit about the track as we ran down the tracklist during VGF47. Some of the samples definitely hurt the mix. They're actually pretty decent overall, but the texture sounded pretty thin. For some reason, the whole track sounded slightly distant and a bit muffly. The horn that first appeared at 1:35 sounded really fake; some of the rougher note movements really exposed the sample. At times your quantizing made the timing a bit too mechanical (1:52-2:06), and that brass sample at 2:06 sounded very fake once again. At 1:55 & 2:27, I heard more obvious flubs in the timing, but most of the track had this problem. Anyway, some good original composition ideas from 1:35-3:19 that actually sounded like very liberal spins on different parts of the source material. Nice way to make your original work fit the motifs of your arranged source tune. Compositionally, it flowed very nicely there. 2:53 started the buildup to a more suspenseful, emotional section, but led by the horn there was no way this was gonna work. Again the timing sounded too mechanical, and the production made the track sound flat in performance and distant in the soundfield. Bring in some high-end action to provide more sharpness & clarity. Whatever energy was built into the composition/arrangement definitely did not translate over into the final product on account of the samples being so thin, the performance lacking the human element, the distant sound creating a muffly atmosphere, and the relative lack of dynamics. The arrangement was creative, but this needs a boatload of fine tuning, Bev. With your stuff, the arrangements tend to be hot, but the devil, as they say, is in the details. NO

Boom-shaka-laka.

http://www.zophar.net/gym/SK+SONIC3.RAR - 12 "Icecap Zone 1" Pretty generic boom-tss IceCap Zone dance remix. Something new was added at :46 (very minor), but otherwise, the same uncreative cover attempt as several where the source tune is kept 99% intact and the arrangement takes 0 creative liberties with the material. Keeps a decent minimalist groove going all the way to 1:57, which felt like too long. Sounds were very loud and clippy, and the texture wasn't hot. The familiar IceCap melody came in at 1:57, and it was verbatim. Look, I know the theme is sweet, but this was really conservative and uncreative relatively speaking. Arrangement was needlessly drawn out for the first two minutes, then conservative and repetitive for the other three minutes. You gotta be more, homeboy. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Hyrule Castle" (loz3-14.spc) Decent thick bassline and some perc opened it up. The cymbals were too trebly and mechanical. The synth at :27 was definitely all over the place. Very meandering sounding. The percussion was too thin and needs to be severely toned down; the cymbals were ridiculously loud at :55, and the synth electric guitar coming in at :53 sounds very unrealisitc and distant. The strings had no realism to them either. Very sloppy production. Beyond stuff like adjusting the sounds balance among your various instruments, you've really gotta get into the fundamentals of fine tuning. It honestly sounded like 0 attention was paid to the mastering here. The strings at 1:49 sounded completely wrong; the notes did not work well with your other instruments in place. The arrangement came across as utterly random. Ideas just came and went, but there was no progression or flow. Nothing sounded cohesive or melodic whatsoever, especially since your lack of sound balance caused the arranged melody to be very obscured. Already 3:00 in and it's just not working at all. Unstructured. Unwieldy. Unfocused. The electosynth notes on support in this section were clashing really badly with the rest. I think at 4:40, you were just retreading arrangement ideas. There's no reason this deserved 6:13. None at all. You'll hate me on some level for this, but I mean no disrespect. In any case, I'll be harsh and bluntly honest. You can do a lot better than this, Alex. I know you can. The GoldenEye rejection you had was sweet. But definitely not this. NO

No problem. He didn't actually put the "2" in the game name, but I added it in. http://www.zophar.net/gsf/mmbn2_gsf.rar - 21 "Airman's Stage" The sounds were fairly generic fading in, but they were decent. The distorted synths, including the lead were a bit too loud and all-up-in-my-face during :26-:53, and some of the mid-range frequencies got a bit piercing. Nonetheless, I really liked the arrangement, and the panning sweeps you employed there as things slowly shifted back and forth, left and right were a nice touch. 1:20 featured a generic electrosynth along with beats, but it had some good energy. 1:33-2:00's section was a bit too flat. Hard to articulate being a non-theorist, but the note sequence from from 1:35-1:40 that ends each measure was very flat & lifeless. It sounded a lot better from 2:21-2:26 when the sampled piano played it, so your low electrosynth earlier might be limiting how those notes come off. From 2:00-2:13, when you started altering the rhythms and layering some other stuff, everything got really muddy and cluttered. Some oogly mixing right there that you gotta get under control. Nice bassline type break at 2:13 joined with the piano at 2:20. You gotta do a better job at masking the abrupt cutoff of the cymbal fade at 2:21 when the sample is so exposed like that. A little detail, and one that's not found in the rest of the track, but very potentially indicative of lazy work. Anyway, the arrangement provided some variation, going all the way up into the end, including a cool synth piano break from 2:40-2:52 that was later used in the background to fill things out and move towards the finish. The mix cut out abruptly at 3:34 instead of having a proper fade. Definitely cool work, but it needs some reworking during the more sloppily mixed sections as well as some of the more monotone-sounding bits that were minor but still dragged the piece down. There was a lot of variation and creativity in the arrangement, and you did a fairly good job of filling up the space. Nonetheless, the piece didn't come off as quite as dynamic and engaging as it possibly could have, the reason being the foundation of the track was basically a dance kick & clap pattern that never changed up too often. Definitely didn't retain the interest for the full 3:35. The generic nature of a lot of the sounds chosen may be a bigger issue for some of the other judges. For me it was not as much of a dealbreaker, but creating some unique/personalized sounds & textures wouldn't hurt, I can say that. Keep working on this, as it has tons of potential. Malcos and the other Js should be able to further isolate and discuss the issues and provide further insight. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/blaste~1.zip - Tracks 13 & 6 Yikes. Some oogly ass production here. REALLY high on the treble. Cymbals! LET IT RIDE! Well, tone 'em down actually. Can't hear too much in the way of melody through some of the first half. Bring it up more, please. In any case, 2:19 typically isn't gonna cut it. Gotta expand the arrangement futher as well, otherwise it's just a paint-by-numbers metal cover, which can be cool, but otherwise isn't gonna deliver on the creativity front. The fact that everything sounds so rough and cluttered didn't help at all for the listening experience. Anyway, keep honing your skills and check out the Dwelling of Duels. As long as you commit yourself to improvement, you'll get some good support and advice to help develop your potential from fellow rock & metal remixers. Certainly check out the ReMixing & Work-in-Progress forums for additional arrangement, performance & production feedback & advice to step up that game. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Battle 1" (ct-1-12.spc) Yep, the intro sounds promising. About :30 in and it was still sounding strong...ah, now I see what's up. The sounds at :41 were really plain-jane & tame once you transitioned into them. The melody was really subdued versus your others sounds. Beef the melody up more, but watch the level of reverb. As is, your sounds mudded together really badly. The bassline could use some more meat on it, and the percussion was a bit flat and a bit too high in volume, though I like how it was meant to sound laid back. The string sample sounded really fake, but it was covered up reasonably well. By 2:30 the arrangement was already getting repetitive and stale. The more active strings & piano dropped out at 2:55 to focus on the groove, but this groove has been on autopilot for quite a while. Boring. Like Vig said, expand the mix with further compositional ideas and realize it's potential. The ending at 4:03 was very I-give-up-ish and lame, and you should have cut out about 2 minutes of fat from the track anyway. In terms of arranging the "Battle 1" theme though, this ain't even cuttin' it. You barely touched the theme at all. Basically took a couple of merely similar backing chords for the bassline and occasionally played out the chorus with the piano. Very mininal use of the source tune in the big picture. This would need an overhaul in both production AND arrangement to have a shot. Don't make the arrangement so liberal that you barely use the source tune. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Morning Sunlight" (ct-1-03.spc) Decent flow. You basically built some new stuff on top of the backing chord progression of the source until :39. The sounds were pretty basic. Finally at 1:35, some permutation of the brief melody of the source tune was used, though it was pretty liberal. Piano struggled to be heard amongst all of the other sounds, so watch the sound balance. Cool little modulation/effect thingermabobber at 2:20. You indeed have a lot of ideas, but the arrangement/composition felt very unstructured and lacks any melodic direction. There's absolutely no flow here because of that; definitely a hard track to get into. Cool stuff so far, bro, but it needs more effort put into it. Good start though. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/tetris.zip - Track 2 Heh. Yeah, some of the samples were decent, like the strings and piano (thought that was too loud). Others were tacky (finger snaps, shakers, horns, vox samples). Wow, 3:38-3:55 really dipped the mix down in quality, as you had some extremely generic and exposed electronic sounds attempting to go for the salsa style. Some of the weaker sounds wouldn't be so bad, except that your sound balance is way off. The volume on most of the instruments and sounds needs to drastically be toned down. I actually thought you had a great deal of variation in the arrangement on the whole. But the sounds needs improvement, and your volume and sound balance sorely needs to be examined. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/ninja_ga.zip - Track 9 [NES version] http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ngt.rsn - Mine (ngt-120.spc) [sNES version] Immediately opening up, the electrosythns were very default-y and generic. The sound texture was absolutely terrible, due to crappy sounds and no concept of adequate sound balance. Everything was simply loud and cluttered. Place your melody in the foreground and work the supporting elements more in the background. The melody was absolutely overshadowed by the electronic groove. The melody came up a little more at 1:08, but it was still terrible. Synth guitar at 1:21 was really poor. Percussion was basic, boring and too loud relative to the rest of the track. The hat activity also had the same problem. Some decent work in changing up the rhythms of the source tune, and working in some level of (conservative) arrangement, but any arrangement qualities were overshadowed by the poor sounds and production. Camp out in ReMixing & the Work-in-Progress forums and learn the ropes. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/smb1.zip - Track 1 ("Overworld BGM"), Track 12 ("Ending"), Track 2 ("Underground BGM") & Track 9 ("Game Over") I'm not saying freeform-ish jazz can't have it's place here. I've certainly heard interesting material from guys like Koelsch1/The Anti-Jazz that has a lot of potential. (I'm not trying to classify the song. Vig, analoq, or DarkeSword would be better able to actually categorize what type of jazz it is.) After a brief shot from the SMB Overworld theme intro, things went with an arrangement of the "Ending" theme from :05-:17 & freestyle original work from :17-:30 before bringing in the main theme from :30-1:03. The "Underworld BGM" arrived at 1:09 and hung around until about 1:27. More freestyle stuffs, then the "Overworld BGM" chorus was back in from 1:49-2:12 before the tired (but true) "Game Over" jingle finish. The arrangement ideas were interesting, but your samples are awful. Though that's holding you back, it's not simply the quality of the samples. The primary problem is that nothing sounds humanized at all. This MIDI-grade material, with such poor sample articulation and not enough textural cohesion, is just way below par. A little cheesy, but the arrangement ideas were certainly up there for such a brief mix. Even for a medley remix, it didn't succumb to the verbatim cover trappings of medley-itis. But you'd have to work a miracle on the production side to get these samples working with some believeable velocity variation and so forth. You have no chance to humanize make your time. NO (revise/resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/smb1.zip - Track 2 ("Underground BGM") Yeah, beyond everything Vig the Boner Kebab said, the instrumentation (before things filled out at :48) was really weak and generic, which was unfortunate, because I thought the texture sounded decent despite that. I also heard some odd (though interesting) note patterns with your brass. At 1:28, the use of the source tune dropped out. Normally that's not bad, but that's not a good idea if the previous usage of the source in the mix is so underdeveloped and underexplored. When dealing with such a minimalist source tune that requires rearrangement and/or expansion, you've gotta play around with it for a good deal of the mix. This needs more substance in the arrangement and more direction, alongside better sounds (though they weren't used badly). Decent effort for a more tongue-in-cheek style remix. Half a decade ago, it coulda been a contenda. [/brando] NO

Yep. Don't submit in batches. Submit once every 3 weeks. ---------------------------- http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF8_minipsf.rar - 212 "FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC" Well, I heard FLWV in the track in the vox and well as the piano chords here. Those source tune names are all wrong, so I went with what I could recognize. The opening percussion was really plain and the synth guitar work doesn't sound very beefy at all. The track picks up a bit with some added percussion work and then some cool female vox at :36. Some male vox leads arrived at :44 singing FLWV and the flow was decent, though it'd be cooler if you provided your own FLWV lyrics instead of sampling them directly. Nothing really spectacular though; pretty average production that really didn't carry much energy. You could really beef up the snapping percussion in particular and give the synth electric guitar a thicker sound, this could really be awesome. Ok, that segue into the chimpmunk vox at 2:27 was really unexpected. Wow. Um...you might be the only guy alive that likes that. Well, I'm just exaggerating of course, but that killed the track right there. I don't eve mean in terms of the judging votes. I just mean that most people would say "Ok, what the hell was that?" The texture for that final section was very thin. Throughout the whole track, the sounds were very soft for a dance track and really didn't work that well to me. I say keep the style of the first 2:25, but extend the track further with additional arrangement ideas and thicken up the sounds so the texture is a lot more impactful. I liked the arrangement a lot actually, and it sounded very viable to me, Neon. Interesting stuff that needs more meat on the bones and more time to develop in order to realize its potential. NO (rework/resubmit)

Thank you for being meaninglessly pretentious while claiming that the "gimmick" lyrics were needlessly pretentious.

Um...yeaaaah...

B-Unit!

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/metroid.zip - "Kraid" Copied with some minor additions from my VGMix buzz comment. Cool mix. Thought this wouldn't make it as is, I don't see what you shat on OCR in the midst of your comments ("I made a specific OCRemix version for all those stupid tags; but that was before I learned the OCRemix sucked.") Anyway, this was a decent mix. Cool atmosphere, though many of the sounds were generic. Heard some odd notes in your use of the melody. Not much creativity on the arrangement front until things got additive at 1:34 with the oboe, which was cool. The sounds were rather sedate overall. The beats that came in at 2:39 were also quiet enough to not really add too much to the piece, though they helped change up the flow a bit. Not bad, Tim. Certainly keep at it, bro. You've got a good deal of potential. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/sd2.rsn - "Into the Thick of It" (sd2-06-1.spc) [:00-1:37, then backing chords until 2:11], "The Holy Intruder" (sd2-13.spc) [2:22-3:50], "Danger" (sd2-19.spc) [4:19-4:33], "Meridian Dance" (sd2-41.spc) [4:33-5:08], "Angel's Fear" (sd2-01.spc) [5:35-7:02] (Bah, I don't even know how the times really matched up beyond "The Holy Intruder"; arrangement's obviously fine though) For the bad: Light, crackly audio deformations at 2:05, 2:15-2:50 & 4:32. Probably some other places. Watch out for 'em. For the good: Not really gonna "waste" too much time on a analysis of the track, because this was awesome shit. My only significant exposure to progressive rock is from Dream Theater thanks to Jared Hudson as well as Mitch Owings, the first tech director at WMRE, but I'm a big fan of their material and this mix really does offer something unique to the community. Christian's always got some good material on this front, and bringing back Marc-André was definitely a strong move. Collabbing with ktriton was a great call. All of the live & synth instrumentation meshed together nicely, and I was really impressed with the entire package. Played the mix on VGF50 and had been looking forward to it hitting the panel. This definitely compared favorably to Dream Theater's material on the structure, performance and energy level. The transitions were SO good; definitely genuine to the genre and very stylish. At a hefty 7:17 with never a dull moment, I could loop this for hours at a time. While this obviously doesn't sound as crisp and clear as a professionally-produced track, I just have to also point out that the production was really strong and showed through very favorably despite such a relatively low bitrate (114kbps VBR). As long as artists can encode their material and keep it under 6MB without sacrificing sound quality, definitely feel free to go for lengthy pieces such as this one. Kunal & Christian are definitely two reasons why OneUp Studios' recent album, Xenogears Light, was a creative success, as they were an integral part of the performance process for most of the CD. The conception here was lofty, but the execution was up for the challenge. Do your videogame music-hating friends a favor and pimp this their way. Excellent job, Kunal, Christian & Marc-André; keep 'em coming! YES

http://www.zophar.net/gym/SK+SONIC3.RAR - "Chrome Gadget" The intro felt pretty weak, IMO, until some more substance came in at :38 in the form of some strings. The e-piano was alright. There were some odd note clashes around 1:23 & 1:33, for example. The minimalist section of 1:16-1:54 really sapped the life out of the piece, though I liked the strings. Decent stuff afterwards, with some tambourine work coming in at 1:53, but the textures here weren't very cohesive. The changeup at 2:14 featured some very pasted-on (and defaulty) synth drums, and the e-piano having no velocity variation was a bit too much of a negative, although I realize it's not meant to sound particularly realistic for this genre. Nonetheless, for breakdowns like the one beginning at 3:27, where the piano is the focus, the piano performance shouldn't sound that artificial and inhuman moving from note-to-note. The ending was fairly sudden & undeveloped, all things considered. Ideas were good, but the execution was lacking. The sound combinations never quite meshed at any point during the mix, which is where I felt the piece needed the most work. Feel free to work on it further and resubmit it. It's certainly got a lot of potential. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gym/sor1.rar - Round 7 ("Up & Up") The sounds were very default-ish. The texture was very sparse, yet there seemed to be a general level of reverb rather than individual parts being handled separately. Everything was pretty much at a loud volume level and fuller sections sounded crowded. The source didn't intro until :58, but of course the mix had a long time to develop. Decent cover-style mix with altered rhythms. It's already pretty cool on account of being derived from such a sweet original track. Get a switchup at 3:40, but the presentation was very flat and plain. About 5:30 in and things were retreading arrangement-wise. Decent ideas, but the sounds & productions are way below the bar, plus the arrangement would need to be more dynamic. NO