Liontamer

I thought this was decent stuff; not overly engaging but well-handled nonetheless. The drums were always over-the-top with power, which was generally fine, though the drums got overbearing and unbalanced with the rest of the music at times (1:21-1:41). Fairly straightforward, yet solid arrangement, featuring good ideas to alter the rhythm like zirc mentioned. Cool ending at 2:30. Feels like an original bit tacked onto the end, but it's actually arranged from the source as well. Nice touch, bro. Welcome aboard. YES

Held this FT for about a week hoping to find and talk to Brendan for feedback, since this submission wouldn't make it, but he's nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, he says he's eager for feedback and criticism, so I've decided to post it for feedback purposes. I already commented in depth on an earlier version. Some problems were addressed while others were left behind or even created. I felt like the brass coming in at :05 was too muffled and distant, ultimately cluttering up the sound, along with the bassline being so thick with 'verb. The belltones were a good addition but should have been pulled back to make room for your melody. Going for periodic addition and subtraction with the instrumentation of the mix was a good idea certainly, but the note structure, pacing, and intensity of the mix remained the same throughout. This obviously lacks dynamic contrast and build, which was something I noted with the previous version. If you're gonna just keep this layout without switching up the flow somewhere, you might as well trim the fat off this and get rid of a minute or more of simply rehashing your arrangement ideas. No sense in making one minute of viable and creative rearrangement but then essentially looping it for 3+ minutes of your 4-minute track. Just like the last version, the breakdown section featuring strings at 3:17 came way too late in the game. Why not introduce ideas like that earlier on? The last hanging note at 4:04 really exposed your synths as well, and was a poor ending. Fashion a real resolution and tighten up the actual finish so it doesn't sound so fake. Personally I'd say drop this one though and simply move onto other projects, so that you can explore new areas of mixing & music creation, and just chock this one up as a learning experience. I don't mean to say that the effort put in here to revise the mix was in vain, as it was a real improvement over what you presented to me before. Thus, I hope you picked up some things from working on this one and hope to see you enhance your work in the future. Keep at it, Brendan. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff5.rsn - WTF are you even remixing? So Oinkness asked to me to listen to this back before it was submitted. If I knew that I'd end up searching the entire FF5 soundtrack and coming up empty, I would have yelled at him to tell me what fucking source tune he used, because this was ridiculous. Anyway, the guitar wasn't terrible, though it was just blaring. The other guitar synth coming in at :20 was generic and terrible. Everything was a mess until the nice break section at 1:00. Anyway forget it. Cruddy faux-metal with a decent yet underdeveloped second half. Not even YES-worthy anyway. Can't believe I had to waste my time trying to find the original. STATE THE SOURCE TUNES IN YOUR SUBMISSION EMAILS. NO

The first iteration is a sound upgrade. The second iteration feature some little modulating noise added. The third iteration features a lot more interesting effects here. I'll be encouraging and nice on this one though and forgo the NO Override, since you at did something notable for the last section. Post it to VGMix if you'd like, maybe someone will like it. Thank you for providing us with this MIDI rip upgrade. We don't accept these. Since you don't seem to understand our submissions guidelines, feel free to read them sometime. (And yes, for you intrepid regular readers, I AM just copying & pasting my now stock NO Override vote.) Like I said though, even though this is an upgrade for 2/3rds of the track, I'm being nice given the observed effort in handling the last section. If someone else feels like NO Overriding, please be my guest. I also appreciate you saying about OCR "a lot of works on that site are wack." Wouldn't wanna add to the glut of those "wack works," now would we? Of course not. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman3.zip - Track 19 This was a decent track. Navid (Mythril Nazgul) had me play it on VGF43 and it got lots of potential. The piano sample is terrible, but it's the only one Jovette uses as far as I know, so I don't really know if you're ever gonna hear him bring out anything else. This German stuff starting at 1:28, I don't like how it's inclusion was glossed over in the submission letter. "My good friend Daniel Rios is rapping in the beginning, then me and another guy take it over." That kind of implies that you know this other guy who did those, but I find it hard to believe you wouldn't even know the guy's name. You ran over his lyrics at 1:48 when the timing changed, so I'm assuming they're sampled like other foreign language lyrics you've used before. If that's the case, why not just state that? If not, what's the other guy's name? I think for just using the Protoman whistle and the first few bars from the intro theme, that the arrangement needed to offer a lot more. The instrumentation that handles the actual source usage, like the whistle and the piano in particular, are very sparse sure, but the interpretation is too straightforward. I'd certainly like to see the mix use more compositional ideas from the source or actually rearrange what's being used. Production and performance are usually shortcomings I cite with DJC's submissions and this is no exception, in contrast with zircon's vote. They weren't dealbreakers like in other past submissions though, but I will cite what I heard nonetheless. Most of the time, the lyrics obscure everything except the percussion. I liked Daniel's lyrics but felt Crono's lyrics were really dry and needed some additional depth. The layering on them was good though, but thicken the sound up on them. The performance on the lyrics from 2:11-2:31 seemed a little too fast for you to handle without mushmouthing some of the words together, but it was alright. The percussion stuff seemed fine to me but needed some pattern variation somewhere in the track. Nothing drastic mind you; I realize the genre. But the beatwork goes on pure cruise control once it starts at :24. Bring back some of the earlier percussion ideas you had there and possibly expand on them as well. The piano sounds incredibly muffled and distant. You might be able to pull that off with little complaint when someone's signing, but during music-only portions like :13-:33 and especially your close from 3:05-3:57. Get the ending to at least taper off as opposed to suddenly cutting off at 3:57. Needs more creative interpretation of the source material, and more post-production work to get things sounding fuller and cleaner is possible. Like zirc said himself though, this primarily falters on an arrangement level. NO (revise/resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/gym/sonic2.rar - Boss (Robotnik Theme.gym) Pretty lengthy intro for only a 2:47 mix. A minute in and there still hasn't been anything from the source yet. We finally get into some strings handling the Boss theme at 1:06 with some ambient support. Pretty straightforward arrangement, perhaps too much so. Moves into the piano at 1:42 putting a (little) bit more flair into it, but it's basically repeating the same couple of bars over and over again with some subtle support. It then hits some original material at 2:06 briefly mingled with the source, before heading for the close. There wasn't really that much to this in terms of arrangement. I realize the source isn't much, but this has to be more beyond an original intro & close with the theme transposed to strings and piano. This is an older piece, so I'm hoping you've stepped up your game on that level and won't harp on this too badly. Even beyond what you used here, you could also make some cool ideas just playing around with the 6-second intro of the source tunes. Underdeveloped and full of unexplored potential. Pretty empty for an orchestral mix. zirc covered the bulk of production issues very nicely, so go over that thoroughly. NO

Half-decent spareness to the sounds, but there's jack shit to this. Goes to 1:26. Repeats verbatim to 2:52. Fade out. The submission name is the exact same as the the source tune name; another strike. So I said to myself, "Let's go get the original." ... Nice rip. The original's better. Thank you for providing us with this inferior rip. We don't accept these. Since you don't seem to understand our submissions guidelines, feel free to read them sometime. (And yes, for you intrepid regular readers, I AM just copying & pasting my now stock NO Override vote.) NO OVERRIDE

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Secret of the Forest" (ct-1-11.spc) The arrangement is fine to me. It starts off original, but the changeup at :30 in the mix is perfectly fine rearrangement of 1:42 from the source tune. Cloud plays with that motif for a while, with interpretive rearrangement of the opening part of the original starting at 1:14 of the mix. Then coming in at 2:01, you get the more straightforward coverage. No problems on the arrangement front, personally. Very interpretive and creative. Need to sharpen up the sounds so you can appreciate the individual elements here. Everything's definitely too lo-fi here. I felt the samples were serviceable given the arrangement, so I don't mind them being kept the same. Everything sounds way better when you (finally) bring some high-end into the picture at 3:36 to fill out the sound field. Otherwise, like zirc pointed out, you've only got the lower half of the frequency spectrum. At least fill out the other half of the mid-range. The droning bassline hit some very rough spots at 2:44-2:48 & 2:59-3:03. For some reason, brigning it in again later on wasn't as glaring. Maybe one can get used to it, but it obviously works better when other sounds are in play as well and obscure it. Personally don't care for Chrono Trigger stuff most of the time, but this was alright, objectively speaking. Felt like the section from 3:36 to around 5:10 dragged on. Only a minute a half section there, but I felt like the constant development that was going on came to a halt. The ending, as it just hung there at 6:05, was kind of anti-climactic, but not bad. I'd keep the flow that occured from 6:01-6:04 and run with that a little bit longer, but it's a nitpick. Hope you weigh in whatever criticism you got here and come on back, Dan. I'd like to see this make it as your sophomore mix. NO (resubmit)

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/C64Music/Galway_Martin/Arkanoid_PSID.sid - Subtune 1/20 I remember talking to Chris this past summer about this mix, since I liked it so much. Pimped in back when the original version of this came out in late May, and played it on VGF30 as soon as I hit the radio again that fall. I had so in-depth critique on it back when I talked to Chris on EFNet, but lost it when the old comp died. Before I ever joined the panel, I figured this was a close shot, but not yet ready for primetime. There were basically two slight changes here compared to the first version available at VGMix & R:K:O, that being the vox was brought up more at 1:55, and the phasing notes done at 3:12 (very nice). I liked the basic construction of this; the groove was steady, but held my attention and developed in a slow but deliberate manner. I really liked how this arranged the second half of the source tune first, before moving to the first half. The one thing I told Chris about that I felt needed to be looked at was significantly punching up the more melodic bits, as they're really obscured. That never happened, as they're mostly in the back the whole time. Bringing up the vox was a cool move and filled the track more, but served to obscured the more important elements even more. onna have to place some of the more engaging, quasi-melodic compenents in the forefront in order to get a YES. Too bad; I told Chris to holler at me if and when he was going to resub this, but I didn't thear back from him. Nonetheless, go for a resub. Would love to see this make it. NO (please resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/vgm/defoasis.zip - "Long Time Ago" Loads of potential here like Wingy mentioned. I don't think the sound balance was too much of a problem. While the nature of string sequencing exposed the samples a bit, I wasn't bothered too much. Nonetheless, while I like how they sounded, they're a bit too overbearing over the melodic elements. Light audio deformations at :24 & :40; perhaps other places as well. The tracks sounds pretty good, but manages to drag on without some significant development. Just randomly seeking points in the track (e.g. 1:33, 2:30, 3:28, 4:11), everything sounds mostly the same. Aside from when you added in the strings at 1:11, the flow never really developed anywhere. I liked this a lot, and the arrangement was very nice, but it needs some more to push it over the bar. Very promising stuff, Mikhael. Sincerely hope you work on it some more and resubmit this, or at least stick around the community. NO (revise/resubmit)

The quality on the original e-mail sub was too poor, as it has some very audible hiss. Pat said he didn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned the hissing, but he e-mailed me a new version which is now hosted at the FTP, which I'll be judging from. Not to come down on the recordings, but neither one turned out that hot as it is. :30 essentially retreads what started off at :03. :57 has some more activity similar to stuff already heard. The cadance of 1:22-1:32 felt very uneven. 1:43, same melodic sequences coming back again. For only a 2:18 mix, this really could afford to go in many more places as well as display some dynamic contrast. Everything was too similar here. Hearing a lot less hissing in this one, but it's still present on headphones. Nothing impacting the judgement here though, unlike the original e-mail sub that was sent in. Pat's a guy with a lot of talent who will easily and eventually see the light of day on OC as long he considers submitting in the future. Check out his material at VGMix for one thing. But this won't be what gets him here. This needs more dynamic contrast, and more rearrangement ideas through even more compositional ideas or at least more distinct variation work when revisiting earlier sections. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/zelda.zip - Track 47 Hearing some light hissing trailing many of the notes. The woodwind sample coming in at :38 sounded too dry, along with the other wind samples and/or layering work done. Need some more liveliness to the sounds. The strings, introduced at :36 and picking up some volume later, also need some work to flow more smoothly. Not bad for a subdued supporting element, though for sections like 1:29-2:00 where the strings had to fill the sound a bit more prominently, they were a weak point. The arrangement could have used a bit more variation to it moving into the melody once again at 2:00-2:52, then repreating a portion again from 2:53-3:13. There were some additions observed, but the dry wind instrument samples handling the brunt of the work dragged the additive efforts down for this section. Even working with very unrealistic-sounding samples, more attention has to be paid to humanizing the performance aspect. That being said, I realize the piece is dated and one of Karl's earliest efforts as it relates to the community. (Fall-through next time!) If you're down Karl, I wouldn't mind seeing what else you could do for this, but otherwise feel this has a little ways to go. NO

Real Name: Bryan Henderson ReMixer Name: Sefiros e-mail: bumflekitten@hotmail.com forum id: 9598 Game remixed: Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Songs remixed: Boss Theme lycos is funny with linking to files so you have to wait until it redirects you then save the file from there i sent it in june last year. an orchestrated remix of the boss music from sonic 2. this is the first track i've done that i think is worthy of OC ReMix, and it's new version of the first song I remixed. resequenced and re-arranged completely

Dunno the original, but it doesn't matter to me. Unfortunately that means I can't comment on the level of sampling here, which may or may not be excessive. Seems excessive from the looks of it, but you get the benefit of the doubt. Let's be quick with this one. The sound quality was muddy, the separation of sounds was poor, the sample usage generally cluttered up the track (1:54 - what the hell are you doing?), the orchestral stab & cymbal shot combinations were tacky. The bassline was ok, and there was a decent groove somewhere DEEP underneath everything, but otherwise this was just poorly put together. Scrap it. NO

http://xfer07.fileplanet.com/%5E101051089/fpnew/3drealms/patches/tvmods.zip - Tame.mod (requires FilePlanet account) The original was plain. This was fairly plain as well. The little bits of string sound GM-ish. The percussion and synth patterns went pretty long each section; gets too repetitive. Not enough sound separation starting at 1:22 when a new melodic line was brought in, the sound of that synth being way too muddy and murky. Cooler ideas at 2:33, but not really enough to save it. The whole track lacks any clarity. I'm normally not one to harp on fadeouts, but this fadeout ending was obviously was a cop-out unfortunately, and wasn't a solid finish. Keep at it, bro. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/mmx.rsn - Stage Select 1 (mmx-07.spc), Stage Intro (mmx-08.spc) [4:00-4:09] Oy. Both the samples and sound quality are pretty weak. The arrangement isn't too bad. Well, the original additions anyway. Most of the time it was just playing the Stage Select theme over and over again with some other stuff underneath it. Sometimes the key was changed or some inflections were done. Anyway, I'm not gonna be much help on any suggestions for improvement. Sound balance was off at times, as the drum patterns were louder that the distorted synth guitar. Poor separation of sounds. I can hear a lot of effort put into this one, honestly, but that doesn't mean it wasn't sloppily put together. I'd much rather listen to the original looped over and over again. The distorted slowdown idea at 3:44...yeah. Sorry, man. Just read the ReMixing forum here. Religiously. NO

By the way, I checked the artist's music directory, and he's got two hosted copies of this track which are the same size. As far as I see, the length of the submission as well as the way it cuts off can't be a mistake or a coincidence. 1. Cover (nice drums though); good sounds, but just not expansive enough or interpretive enough in at least the support work 2. Ends abruptly. I realize that the source tune you provided us with (thank you) ends exactly the way in which you ended the track. That doesn't mean it SHOULD end like that. 3. 1 minute and 32 seconds Seems like a reinstrumented rip to me. Add your own ideas to the picture, please. NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF8_minipsf.rar - 409 "The Extreme" (no effects) The first section felt like a reinstrumented cover of the first 1:19 of the source, and was too conservative. The first 2:23 had the piano base just copied from the original. No deviation at all. Some of the other instruments seemed to be taken from the vox parts of the original, but I won't go as far as saying that. The note progressions on other instruments just seemed too similar to other sections of the original. Then going into the next section at 2:24, the string and brass samples were definitely weak points. From 4:45-5:52, the messy sound combinations and overall shrillness of some of the more spirited sections were low points, and didn't help close things out well. I'd scrap the first minute or so of cover material, especially since your instrumentation is practically the same as the source via the piano and strings. Stick with the rearranged material and work on the believeability of your samples as well as sound balance (in particular the last few minutes, as everything gets cluttered). NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 415 "The Birth of God" Testify, bro. I definitely like the arrangement, but the performance is very unnatural sounding. Also hearing a lot of light static-y hissing. I've heard that in a lot of tracks, and was just interested in knowing what caused it. I'll scour around the ReMixing forum to find out. I suggest you do the same. It's a minor thing, but the hissing drags down the track on headphones. But yeah, the standard for solo piano performances, both sequenced and real, are high. Not every piece is going to be lauded at the second coming of compositional creativity. But most of the sequenced ones on the site, especially as of late, sound reasonably realistic sounding. Resub it if you can get this sounding livelier, Steven. The arrangement was where it needed to be. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff6.rsn - "Tina" (ff6-201.spc) I'll sum it up in 3 parts: 1. Needlessly loud 2. Melody obscured from 1:07-1:30 & 2:16-2:39 by the rhythm guitar 3. Cover track with some additional rhythm sections This was some nicely done guitar muzak, but a cover. Good stuff, but not under the guidelines we go by. Though it's too loud, people would enjoy this. Post it to VGMix. Good rhythm section work, certainly. Your skills are easily observed, Michael. Once you add your own compositional & rearrangement ideas into the picture to more substantially personalize the work, you'll be posted. Hope to hear more from you. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff6.rsn - "The Decisive Battle" (ff6-124.spc) Hate to shit on the effort here, but I'll be perfectly frank with you. At times, this only reminded me of "Retentions of Conflict" thanks to your choice for the lead. The synth choices here were grating and awful. Also, overusing the cymbals doesn't work. Some of the percussion work had a surprising amount of power behind it. Very beginner stuff, but not bad. The harmonization at 2:03...didn't work. Anyway, there are a laundry list of problems here. The other Js can earn their salaries by elborating on some. God bless ya bro, only a n00b would think that a tacky cymbal shot ending like that was cool. You hang around both OCR & VGMix, so use all of the resources at both sites (WIP boards, ReMixing forum, Conservatory forum) in order to study the programs you use and up your game. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/battle~1.zip - Track 1 "Drum track composed in Modplug Tracker". How 'bout that cymbal. I really hate it when rock tracks don't throw any creativity into the percussion. The stark contrast always looks bad. The guitar work was plain and unexpressive and stuff like the freestyle sections were just off-key at times. The production was muddy, sloppy, and likely non-existent. Pretty cool idea for a (mostly) live track, but the performance was poor and the arrangement ideas weren't anything notable. Keep at it though. Your music needs a lot of work but I heard unfulfilled potential. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/bubbob.zip - Track 1 Unfortunately, you're right Tim. It really isn't different enough from the source tune. The original section from 1:01-1:25 is about as basic as it gets. And while it's good that you sequenced the Bubble Bobble theme by ear, you might as well have ripped it. Still basically verbatim and unexpansive. I'd say "check the other Bubble Bobble tracks on the site to get an idea of how to arrange this theme", but don't. (We'll get rid of those damn NSF rips someday, believe me.) OMG ur dayz r numb3red DjArcas!?! NO

Thanks for providing the original, Chris. Too conservative than what I'm used to, to be honest. The original though is incredibly sparse, and this does a good job of filling it out, particularly with the new percussion work. Good sounds; this mix was almost thunderous until things picked up at 1:09. Cool break section from 1:47-2:07, before moving back into the source melody. Cuts off abruptly during the fade at 3:23, bah. Conservative work, but very expansive in terms of sound quality and support additions, which is all I need from sparse source tune arrangements covering most SIDs, MODs and so forth. Though he likes Mazedude, Ari's probably groaning that it's a rip. YES

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FFX_psf2.rar - 319 "Time of Judgement" (:00-:22), 418 "Decisive Battle" (:23-1:15, 1:41-end/3:51), 318 "Song of Prayer ~ Bahamut" (:33-1:08), 417 "Aeon Battle" (1:16-1:41), 406 "Song of Prayer ~ Ronzo Tribe" (1:16-1:55), 120 "Song of Prayer" (2:02-2:36), etc, etc. Just some source tunes combined with various Song of Prayer vox along with some beats and effects. In all honestly the first minute or so was pretty hot, but that's because I like the music you used. Production was eh, but that's the sacrifice you make in order to combine the stuff. I'll be keeping it. (One of the perks of the job, folks.) Nonetheless, read our guidelines some time. Anyway, Jeff, I'll close this out by telling you something my daddy told me once... NO OVERRIDE