Liontamer

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/friday13.zip - Tracks 5 & 1 NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Why are you letting me down like this? This could have been AWESOME. Well, the source material is awesome, so this really carries it appeal from that. This was at least cool to listen to. The intro sounded too distant. The piano sample has no attention to velocities done in the effort to sound more realistic. Same with the light string work occasionally used. Damn, this theme is cool as hell. Still an enjoyable listen. Some SLIGHT work with dynamics, but the sample usage killed most of the effect on that. And the track, after transitioning to Track 1 of the NSF, abruptly cuts out at 3:03. Who knows, maybe it was stolen from someone else. In any case, this let me down. [sniff sniff] Gonna cry over this. Wing might too. Stop making black men cry. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "The Brink of Time" (ct-2-13.spc) & "Guardia Millenial Fair" (ct-1-06.spc) Still sounds basically MIDI-grade to me. Nothing sounds realistic given how I assume you'd want for this to sound; instruments carry no sonic depth or realism. No attention to velocities or dynamics whatsoever. Composition doesn't develop or evolve. Vig called it well saying it was monotonous. Your ideas were promising and tried to arrange the Brink of Time in a slightly different direction, but 2:37 would have been a good point to take this in another new direction. Adding some pizzicato strings for a sec wasn't really enough. And Izz's observation of the track sounding "emotionally constrained" was very insightful and on-point. This was devoid of nearly any and all feeling. Indeed, your execution doesn't do a thing for your ideas, which have genuine creativity and potential. My copy just cut out at 4:25 (surely hope that's not the real finish) but that's alright. Better camp out at the ReMixing & WIP forums, bro, and significantly improve the craft. NO

You're right Mike, it's not terrible. "Lame as hell" was geared on more of a guidelines point of view, as it was just the original (albeit a MIDI) with a bit of tooling around. Very disappointing on those lines.

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/ffl1.zip - Track 1 I remember the source tune from way back when I got into the scene and started doing radio, since it was the source tune choice for IMC5, which featured some really good tracks from guys like analoq & aluminum. The sax work didn't sound terribly fake, but it also didn't come across as exceptionally authentic-sounding either. The performance was supposed to sound chill and laid-back but instead ended up sounding very sluggish. I heard light pops/audio deformations at points. Gotta eliminate those, but nothing was a big bother there. The arrangement showed some significant reinterpretation more in the second half, which was good. I certainly liked the ideas there. Interesting light jazz kind of vibe, though I don't believe all of the elements combined well. The various brass support work sounded really improvised yet meandering at times. The whole track seemed to lack any focused direction as a result. The lead needed to be punched up to provide something for the listener to latch onto. As it stands, everything layered together at basically the same volume/intensity and just mudded together. The ending had a resolution, but it came across as too sudden and undeveloped. Promising ideas, Brad, but there's loads of stuff to work on in you wanna achieve a cohesive, spirited, and focused end-result. NO

http://www.vgmusic.com/music/computer/atari/atari/3D-Galax.mid - Title theme Poor/flat sounds, no sound balance/poor mixing, some arrangement ideas were present, but nothing too involved. Give your remix an actual title as well. Sorry to sound glib and/or harsh, but get better at everything. Look up more information at the ReMixing forum & Work-in-Progress forum for advice on how to improve. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/dkc.rsn- "Fear Factory" (dkc-20.spc) I think what Binnie was trying to say was that this would have made a hot B-side to Kong in Concert. Yep, sounds like you just mucked around with a MIDI. Lame as hell. And, yes, that's not harsh enough. Maybe send it to VGMusic or something, though I wouldn't really recommend that either. Should drop a NO Override on this guy, but he tried to do a little something beyond the ripping. Wow, 6:17 for THIS? Nah, bro. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ki.rsn - "Main Theme" (ki-01.spc) The opening pad was so distant and muddy, the production on it was horrible. The electrosynth beats were on cruise control and provided next-to-no variation. Malc pretty much broke it down, so all his comments might as well be my own. The arrangement was very uninspired. Well, everything was very uninspired. Not much else to say. It's not terrible, but it just needs a lot more work to get to any genuine level of quality & creativity. NO

Wait a minute I remember the WIP thread on this getting shut down too. Bahahahaha! GTFO. I mean...don't do that again.

Confirmed with Pretz that a tiebreaker will end up in favor of passing, so we'll lock it up.

http://www.zophar.net/gym/SK+SONIC3.RAR - 09 Marble Garden Zone 2 Love the original to death. In any case, like you said, this is just a cover done in Reason. The sounds here are too close in style to the original and pretty much a downgrade in those respects. We don't take tracks like this. NO OVERRIDE

Lemme clarify here that this isn't a second-time direct-to-panel resubmission. The first two times this was submitted, it went through the queue and came to us from Dave's inbox. This is the first time it's been placed directly on the panel. Anyway, our policy as clarified by djp is that, for the very infrequent case of people that had a first resubmission posted directly to the panel and want to resub again, those people are required to do second resubmissions through the regular queue system (the Submissions inbox). Nonetheless, that isn't even the case here, so this argument is over. Onto the mix, I completely disagree with Binnie's take on it. Played it on VGF50 and enjoyed it. I thought there were substantial all-around improvements made to this version as compared with Paul's first version of "Black Ice", which possessed a good vibe but an empty sound. Appreciating the source tune was actually a direct result of listening to the various versions of this remix first, and the mix does a great job of playing up some of the subtle melodies of the source tune. I don't hear any wrong notes in the belltones or the flute lead. The way the track intro put me off initially, but that was actually a unique way to move right into the mix. Takes a while to warm up to. I liked how the strings were beefed up here compared to the previous version, as well as how the melody was brought out a bit more. Some of the glassy sounds clashed a bit until the :40 mark, but it was a minor issue to me. They should have been even quieter, but they were actually scaled down from the VGMix version. I remember the first time that I heard this new version, I wasn't hot on the new synth flute & synth sax work added. If you wanna throw out "off-key and generally bad notes" because of that, I think it's a mistake from another listener's standpoint. My initial problem actually was that they come across as very meandering and lacking focus. At times, I certainly felt like that was the case, but overall they both provided eerily laid-back arrangements of the source material and do in fact possess a measure of focus along with purposeful structure. Whereas the flute & sax could come across as too synthetic and tepid to others, the syntheticness of the sounds was a non-factor in this type of mix, and I got a lonely, echoing, eerie vibe from them. If you give it more than a few listens, and don't flippantly dismiss them, you might come around to how well they work. I thought the drumkit didn't sit well in the mix at times and should have possessed more stereo activity. Otherwise other aspects of the instrumentation and sounds were strong and came together well. The strings were very well-handled, the beeps, belltones, finger snaps & in-game vox and SFX were all used effectively, and the bassline filled things out nicely. The track exhibited lots of changes & development over the course of the 4 1/2 minutes while retaining a cohesive style. I feel as it there weren't are any blatant offenders in the makeup of this mix, that the arrangement was a very creative take on the original, the texture of the instrumentation worked well together for the most part, the production was fairly solid, and the sum total success of the execution cannot be denied. I'm not saying it's a superlative YES, but I am saying that it does everything the site's mission statement wants in a rearrangement and does it fairly well. It'll be a shame if this is rejected, since I feel this could only be rejected on subjective grounds, relatively minor issues and/or a lack of listening to the track enough times. YES

Yeah, I subconsciously knew based on the caller ID #, but you still sound way too much like him. I'll kill you for holding up the djp call. I'll kill you.

Fixed.

http://www.ocremix.org/detailmix.php?mixid=OCR01317 Look. Lower.

Modified from my WIP board comment. I purposefully waited for others to vote first. http://www.zophar.net/gym/SK+SONIC3.RAR - 24 Sky Sanctuary Kinda funny how you were saying at VGMix (paraphrase) "What the hell is Vigilante talking about 'bring it down a third', what does that meeeeeean?!?!?" It was just a music theory term, not something meant to confuse you or sound forceful. Like I said in the first vote, since you played the track live, I think if you had played through the piece a few more times to get more comfortable with playing it, it would haved flowed better, which is still the case to me for parts of the track. Nonetheless, I think you did a beautiful job working on this revision. Transposing it downward and creating a slightly fuller atmosphere brought about a great result. Much more emotive and memorable, and the track still manages to give off an intimate setting. You really did some nice work eliminating some of the more jarring & awkward intensity changes that plauged the track, creating dynamics that were more natural-sounding. Absolutely excellent. For someone like Bev, who takes negative criticism pretty harshly (VERY harshly), a borderline NO can somehow seem just as harsh as a straight 4N. For all the people that get pissed at us for rejections, especially close ones, I disagree with vilifying the judging process or being greatly discouraged. We're simply going by the strengths of your arrangement, production & performance. If you get NOed but desperately want a piece to be accepted, then you've gotta take a step back at the decision and subsequently step up your effort. The important thing I hope you gained from the process, Bev, is that you yourself like this version of the track more and feel that the criticisms given out have helped you to create something that you are personally more satisfied with than before. I'm not saying our word is gospel, but I think you'll be able to look back on the first version of the track in the long-run and see how it had the potential for improvement. If the criticisms received on this piece as well as your other disputed NO from Crash Bandicoot 3 have helped you assess your pieces and have lead to self-improvement that genuinely makes you feel you're a better artist, then we've accomplished our purpose in giving your our concerns and asking you to come back. So, yeah, I realize the rejections suck, but why grumble in the Chatterbox about how collectively bad/confusing/mean we are if you get one? If you have a track rejected in the future, you can vent, but just place your focus on whatever valid advice you obtain in order to benefit your material. YES

ROFL!

It's the last sub of this. Second resubs have been done before, and in a worst-case scenario 2 is a fine absolute limit since this never happens much anyway. Paul himself said that it's final and that's it for trying to get it accepted. Less bitching, more voting.

Previous decision: http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=49178 Contact Info Your ReMixer name : metaphist Your real name : Paul Ford Your email address : peford@cfl.rr.com Your userid (number, not name) on our forums : the hell? ReMix Info Name of game(s) ReMixed : Ikaruga Name of individual song(s) ReMixed : Metempsychosis (ch.5 theme) Additional information about game if it has not yet been added to the site, including composer, system, etc. composer: Hiroshi Iuchi copyright Treasure, Infogrames Dreamcast and Gamecube, 2003 Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. Made in FL Studio 5 -- The flute, sax, strings and bass are all soundfonts I found while scouring the net. The vox samples are from the game itself, as are a few other sound FX you might find familiar. Everything else if from FL Studio.

The new version's organ opening was poorer and with the strings replacing the electronic sounds until :11, the string sample sounded poorly used as well. The drumwork in some spots was thicker, but the track's a lot quieter and slightly muffled the whole way through for some reason. Just compare the two versions. Keep the old/first version and vote on that, I say. The old version ended up sounding a lot better by contrast. Like Jesse said, I've got no big problem with it passing. Someone put down a closing vote on it already.

See? I told you, man. Very nice 16-bit style vibe going on. I couldn't quite remember what game some of the sounds reminded me of when Ari was on the air for VGF talking about this, but if you people check out some of the stuff from The Follin Brothers Spider-Man & The X-Men: Arcade's Revenge soundtrack, you might see how something like the synth electric guitar in particular gave off that old-school SNES vibe. Of course the NES-style sounds were solid as well, so this was a good hybrid of game music sound styles. The expansive work done in the arrangement was hot as well. Some stuff to bitch about in the judging decision on it, like dat slap bass goddammit, but I was just glad to see that someone else noticed that SNES/SPC similarities that I thought the mix had. Now, I must go back to having some sort of "personal agenda" against Ari, which basically consists of me shrugging my shoulders while Ari insists I have a "personal agenda" against him.

Contacted Damon looking to get a fixed version where the ending doesn't just cut out. Hope to hear back fairly quickly.

Yep, new version is all set. Much hotter. Cool having AP do the new voice work cameo this time around. Very nice touch. The stereo-panned drums livened up the soundfield and I liked the train track SFX during the intro as well as the new bassline activity. All the additions made enhanced the atmosphere and beefed up the piece. Thanks very much to Lee for being open to tweaking the track. Because his computer was an iffy bastard, it was harder than it looked for him to put together the new version, so I have to thank him for gutting through it to make the revisions and pushing the quality way up. My YES is solidly reaffirmed.

Original decision: http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=50559 ReMixer name: Rexy Real name: Bev Wooff Email: bev.wooff@gmail.com (Thankyou Mr Oji!) OCRemix user ID: 7528 REMIX INFO: Remix title: "Tomorrow's Wake" Game covered: Sonic & Knuckles Individual song covered: Sky Sanctuary Zone Song link: --- First of all, I thank you gentlemen for your (eventual) analysis concerning my previous submission "Tomorrow's Wake" (version 1). I've managed to learn a lot of things within the week leading towards the decision's posting, and to see the final results also come along they have also worked on to sort out the eventual decision. So in the course of the day following the posting I spent time tidying up the piece and re-mastering the source. (See? I can work pretty fast in a piano roll, huh?) They included the re-shaping of some of the timing/dynamics, a hint of transposing, the changing of the sample (the only way to get rid of the bleedin' plunkiness you stated ) and some more cautious reverb work. Thanks for your time when going through the re-vision. I hope this goes down well, but if not, let me know. Less hesitance, more judge-appreciation. Peace out, -Rexy-

Can't decipher what this is from based on his website that I found. I've contacted the artist. Hope to get a reply...in English. EDIT - 2/28: Contacted the artist a week ago by e-mail and got nothing in reply. You have to be able to adequately provide the artist, game and track information in your e-mail. The track wouldn't have passed regardless, just in case anyone was wondering.

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/sd3.rsn - "Few Paths Forbidden" (sd3-2-04.spc) Played it on VGF44.99; pretty chill stuff. Like Darke mentioned, the violin sounded very, very nice. I thought the drums were a bit loud and didn't sit quite right in the track. Nothing glaringly wrong, but for some reason they didn't mesh quite as well with the other sounds as I feel they should have. Overall though, the production was excellent. Everything sounded nice, and the flute-like lead at 1:35 didn't bother me much. I heard a bassline pattern come in at :47 that seemed derived from voice 4 of the SPC, though I'm probably looking too deeply into things. I'm not sure how significantly the source tune was incorporated into the mix from 1:12-2:59. I listened to :52-1:29 of "Few Paths Forbidden" trying to see if that section was used here, but I couldn't make any connection there. Scott's composition of the mix was nice, but the violin work was basically the only notable part taken from the source material and only lasted for a combined 1:38 of your 4:34 mix. The source tune arrangement returned from 2:59-3:48. From 2:59-4:34/end, the track repeated :23-1:38 of itself verbatim. I initially thought that some of the pad work this late in the track was new in order to provide some subdued dynamic contrast. But nah, it was all just another iteration of what came by the first time around. I'm loving the chill atmosphere here. Aside from the minor issue with the drums, I thought the sounds were great. The flowing electrosynths, pads & violin created a relaxing track, and the original & arranged elements pieced together nicely. Nonetheless, I need more overt use of the source tune besides the violin work and the last long section needs something that distinguishes it from the first section. Doesn't have to be anything that would upset the ambient/chillout nature of the track, but something should be done there so you're not literally recycling the track. A very cool mix regardless of the guidelines here, this was some of Scott's finest work. It would need more usage of the source material and a small measure of development/contrast in order to objectively gain my vote though. NO (revise/resubmit)