Liontamer

Sorry I don't have the original on me, but I'm familiar with the original (GGX version). These electro-support chords are different, but the melody is verbatim, so I'm not really feeling this. Certainly hearing some slight rearrangement ideas on the lead (:47, 1:45-1:50). Some bad notes at 1:06-1:07. The lead synths are either really high-pitched or bubbly; it really puts me off. By 2:11 & especially 2:27 this is just retreading the same territory with some very minor additions. Honestly gets boring after a while like this. Some harmonization joins in at 3:06, but it didn't mesh well at all to me. There's not much development/progression with the support elements here, which isn't gonna work when that's where the majority of the rearrangement changes you've made are at (beyond the genre change). Go for more, please. NO

Yeah, the lead is way too soft and it's so high on the scale that it contrasts extremely poorly with these thick beats. Fixer'up. The groove's decent, but the delivery is pretty bleh and plodding overall. Like Vig was saying, punch things up and so forth. The energy level just isn't there. Also felt this didn't have much going on the development side either. 3:24 has some really basic panning effects going on, but was otherwise a very repetitive and flat way to finish it up. Just needs more creativity thrown its way. NO

I don't recognize the first part, and I'm pissed I don't have my own MP3s on hand to absolutely confirm the NO Override, but once it "transitioned" into 2:05, whoever's theme that is, it's just an MP3 of the original with a crappier bitrate. Hell the fuck NO. Nice lack of a transition at 4:21 too. What the fuck??? 5:51-5:56 has a vox rip from another Guilty Gear theme I recognize cheaply stapled in. Gimme a fucking break. If it isn't an outright rip the whole way, then it's not even a substantial style upgrade. Actually, forget it, I don't recognize the first or the third theme used here as they may be GGXX-only, but this is flat out ripped from 2:05 to 4:21 and you can be sure the rest is. You can't just patch together MP3s of the original material and call it a ReMix. "hope this makes the cut =)", my ass. NO OVERRIDE

Yeah, I remember NoWave throwing this my way a little while ago, and I told him I wasn't feeling this one at all. Ironically enough, Big Giant Circles came out with his own mix of the same source material, so I'm more familiar with it now. The opening synth (:03-:16) is so shrill, the lead synth for the melody is absolutely grating (starting at :16), and the reverbed support strings (also :16) don't particularly work well either. The Stephen Hawking voice sample at 2:29 is so obscured that you're not able to understand it at all. Transposing the melody up a few steps at 2:56 wasn't particularly dynamic in terms of development. You could hear some brief new ideas going on with the synth work (3:30-3:44), but there's such a distinct lack of clarity with the lead that you can't really tell what was going on anyway. Too much reliance on addition and subtraction of elements to create development. The note pattern of the support strings was always the same, the breatbeaks were always the same. Then we retread the beginning at 4:25 moving towards the end. The structural formula here is just all wrong for an aspiring ReMix, and the sounds don't function well separately or in tandem. Back to the drawing board, bro. NO

Production-wise, I think there wasn't nearly enough separation in the sounds. Couldn't hear the bass guitar much (unfortunate, given that I liked the activity I could hear) and the metal geetars created a sort of wall of sound that I liked on some levels but obscured some other elements. The key change into the strumming around 1:36 was pretty awkward and needs a more natural transition. For this section, the lack of sharpness in the production was all the more evident. Really have to pick it up here in the mixdown when possible and not leave it so rough. Nonetheless, this was some good-sounding arrangement during this less intense area. The little drum break at 2:33 didn't work at all as a transition. Really awkward/bleh. Good stuff afterwards though, with some groovable work into and beyond the 3-minute mark, though them crazy hats from 3:11 until 3:24 really detracted from things. Fairly cool feel throughout, relying on the arrangement strength of the support elements most of the way, though there were some great original ideas present as well. The ending cut out abruptly at 4:09. The arrangement is above my bar, the production is not so hot. Unless the VGMix link is just messed up, is there any way to get a copy where the ending doesn't cut out like that, James? Otherwise, it's a very borderline NO, I'm afraid. Any track that's posted like that is there permanently, and an abrupt cutoff just sounds bad in that kind of situation. Someone else can choose to YES in spite of that, but I certainly won't. In any case, just take a look at the mixdown to try and sharpen things up and create some more separation/clarity of sounds. If a copy turns up that doesn't have the cutoff ending though, that's honestly all I need to be willing to YES, because this was overall good work.

Yeah, tone down the sharpness of the banjo notes if possible. It sounds cool at first but becomes too harsh over time, like from 1:11-1:48. No, it doesn't sound authentic, but it also doesn't sound too bad. The strings plucks at 2:02 indeed have too much delay on 'em and it manages to throw off the timing for me. The horns at 2:17 sound pretty bad/unrealistic. Take a look at refining the sound on those. Cool change of sounds at 2:37. The mix really does a good job of providing variation in those respects. Production becomes more of an issue at 3:10 when the horns comes back in and sound buried and muffled. Same with the drums and piano. What happened there????? Continuing into 3:40 everything continues to sound very muffled & rough. I had to check earlier in the track just to make sure it was the same one given how the sharpness/sound quality dropped off so dramatically. Nonetheless, still very interesting instrument changes and development moving into 4:37. Arrangement is still commendable. Not my cup of tea personally and I feel a lot of people will be put off by this, but that doesn't matter. The warbly synth you focus on for this next section at 4:37, yeah definitely scale it down and bring up the piano notes/other sounds instead. The synth really works much more effectively in a supporting role like you had earlier (4:14-4:36) and like you use from 5:17 until 5:41. Cool stuff the whole way through, but the production starting off decent and then noticeably crudding up halfway through really hurt this. Refine some of the sample work for the instruments that have been pointed out, and really get this production back up to par for the second half in particular. This was too dynamic & too interesting of an arrangement for me not to make it if you can just get these fixes going. NO (resubmit soon)

Couldn't be more in agreement. Heard this back when it was released on VGMix in late August and thought the exactly same thing. Was going borderline, because, if anything, the generic techno percussion was holding this down. For a fair amount of time, the electronic and orchestral mixture felt either conflicting or stapled together; that's really something that becomes less of a problem upon repeated listening which is one reason why it wasn't enough to dip this down into NO territory, but it was a problem for me nonetheless. The rearrangement of the source material saved this though. 3:42 felt like a much, much better marriage of sorts of the two styles and the big finish at 4:30-5:00 was exactly the complementary fusion I was looking for. Looking at the delivery overall, the strength of the arrangement was up there and whatever problems I had with the electro-percussion could only hold this back so much. YES

The choice of sounds really didn't bother me much; I actually thought everything sounded pretty cool regardless. The little break at 2:25 seemed like it was going somewhere, but then by 2:37 it wasn't anything dramatically different from what we had before. Though I certainly heard a measure of development and progression, DarkeSword's vouched for it needing to do more with the structure of the original, and that's more than enough for me to NO. Keep working on this by trying to bring a little bit more variety/depth to the sound choices, and go for further rearrangement ideas to expand upon the source tune more. I'd love to see this back here, and I genuinely like the groove so far, Mike. ravon, Ayako & half the users over at Ormgas.com would love to see an RO mix make it, and the foundations here were strong. NO (refine & resubmit)

O snap, birdcussion get da YES! Holy shit is this mastered loudly. Nah, this is way too loud, so scale everything down please. 2:04 & 2:10 had some serious sour notes. Fix 'em or die. I thought the sounds/atmosphere were awesome, but this was indeed repetitive as anything. No excuse for not presenting some additional ideas to provide some development. I heard a couple of subtractions done, like getting rid of the ambiance at 1:58, but that's not enough. Also think about some more variation on the tambourine in particular since that was fairly prominent-sounding as a support instrument. Don't get lazy with this one and really flesh out some more ideas for rearrangement. Provided this isn't a rip/cover, this is a cool start certainly. Keep at it, Li. NO

Yeah, the instruments are pretty flat the whole way through unfortunately, which I suppose would work as something melancholy if the flatness didn't come across as so unemotive. Drier than school cafeteria turkey. Everything from :54 to 1:37 sounds incredibly aimless. No apparent direction, I'm afraid. Do anything you can to bring the sound auntheticity up and give this some tangible direction/development. NO

Vastly underveloped. Not much here besides minimal-sounding reinstrumentation and some effects done in 2 iterations. Might even be overrideable. NO

Thanks to DarkeSword for helping me reconsider my vote; my mistake. The mastering could certainly be sharper and I would have liked some more panning activity to play around with the stereo field, but that's about all I need to say on production. Wasn't the best, but it was good enough. I originally thought this felt like a mere upgrade of "Still More Fighting", but the lion's share of the work is done rearranging the support sections. I'm really thankful we got to the area at 1:34-2:12 featuring some lighter guitar arrangement, which was a breath of fresh air, and I would have appreciated some more being done with those kind of sounds in a support capacity. I agree with DS in that this is a good mix for something that doesn't drastically overhaul the style. It's somewhat like humming a theme in your head while thinking of several slight variations for the support patterns, fairly along the lines of what my remixing approach would be if I actually started doing it myself. YES

I pimped this one back in early August for VG Frequency: Critically speaking, I thought some of the trancier synths zirc busted out were generic-sounding, and that makes me "meh" on a lot of stuff I've heard in the trance genre. Looking beyond that though, there was nothing else here I felt was holding this back overall. I'd have a lot more to say, especially since I went through about 30-minutes giving Andy a detailed pre-judging critique on the mix that I saved on my comp for when it would reach the panel, but since the comp is broke...blah. Though fairly up there, this isn't necessarily DP-worthy, so don't take my enthusiasm the wrong way, but this is pretty much a formality to me. YES

Hate to just quote, but that's a pretty straightforward breakdown of the faults of this one. Beef up the sounds (especially the drums, which function as tango's prominent beatkeeper) to take advantage of the sexiness that a tango motif typically engenders. I actually thought the guitar solo was serviceable (though it indeed didn't add much), but it ended up drowning out your other instruments. Very cool ideas though, Phil, so please come back after reworking the weak areas here. All of Vigilante's criticisms were good. I liked the arrangement ideas here though, and as far as I'm aware of, we don't have a tango mix anywhere on OCR. I'd love to hear this one come back our way. NO (refine & resubmit)

Yeah, seriously, why iN the hell do people still submit songs with low encodings? So so annoying. Does anyone really think 56kbps/22khz stuff is gonna be posted here? Ever? Indeed, the arrangement was prOmising. Come back when the sound quality compliments this. Though aggravating, I suppose that would be adequate grounds for a resubmission.

Gotta agree with the accordian. Some people wouldn't mind it, but it sounds very flat/cheap. Pretty flat with the percussion stuff (shaker/tambourine) all the way until 1:24. Helen's cameo vocals are good per her usual. They almost sound too good for this overall package, honestly. The switch up at 1:51 was a bit too abrupt. I really don't feel Mike's vocals were good at all. They don't sound emotive at all, especially contrasted with the lyrics/message and came across very flatly. Reverb 'em, bro. They need a measure of reverb bad. Yeah the lyrics are basic & cheesy, folks, but hey whatever Mike wants to do there, I'm not gonna let that influence my vote. If anything though, the lack of strength with their delivery distracted me from the lyrics themselves. Fairly cool guitar at 3:21. Little flat on the delivery as well, but give everyone some more of dat funk, maybe as support work during the last verse. What's that little creaking noise at 4:17? The layout is good, but ALL the delivery needs to be spiced up, much like the chef guy in Burgertime running around and hitting enemies with salt & pepper. Most of the instruments and Mike's vocals are noticeably flat. Punch it up drastically. "Flat" is the word of the day here, it seems. With the arrangement ideas being solid here, I'd rather see this posted in some form. NO (resubmit)

Samples are used pretty poorly. The wind lead at :13 sounds very unnatural, drums at :40 are pretty flat. Find out how to articulate your sounds better for a more natural feel. I felt there were sound balance/separation issues at 1:36 once a lot of elements came in. The strings and winds sounded very shrill and overbearing at this point. More of the cluttering happens around 3:42 for the big finish. Basically felt like 2 lengthy iterations of the material with no real dynamic contrast happening throughout the mix which comes across as minimal development (even if you factor in the drums returning at 3:42). 4+ minutes of this isn't particularly interesting. NO

I've usually enjoyed remixes of "At the Bottom of the Night." Beej's "Sines" & Dale North's "Spacecat" are two favorites of mine. This one starts off fairly slow, and I was wondering when it would pick up and get interesting. After going for some admittedly decent straight coverage, things worked up at 1:24. Nice freestyle section at 2:04 that stylistically fit well with the source tune stuff for the beginning; certainly a good atmosphere throughout. Any flubs on the guitar didn't particularly hurt this in my listening. Not gonna be an overly enthusiastic YES, because the beginning is somewhat low on the energy/creativity scale (until 1:24), and the abrupt ending was a big negative for me, but I felt the good outweighed the bad, and I think that's what most votes on this are gonna come down to. Good job, Chris.

I pimped this one back in late July for VG Frequency: http://remix.kwed.org/sid.php/2730/Xout%20(subtune%207).sid - Subtune 7 As long as the SID source tune checks out, I'm all for this one; In all honesty, I vaguely recall confirming it since this actually got released only a few hours before I joined the panel and I had given comments while this was a WIP. No differences I'm hearing in this version compared to the VGMix release, BTW. Kinda lo-fi near the end (definitely wanted more distinct sound separation throughout the track, especially from 3:17-3:46 going towards the finish), but like I said the groove is good, the sounds works well together, and the ideas develop well throughout. Been waiting for this one to come along since I got accepted for the panel; very cool work per the usual, Martin. Looking forward to you submitting Gauntlet 3 "Blue Wizard Is About to Die" if you haven't done so already. Always good stuff. YES

Too bad you never heard of/submitted to OCR 3 or 4 years ago. This would have been gold then, but as is now, it's indeed too short and underdeveloped. Don't have the original to compare with (never played DT, I always had Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers; someone go mix that), so this may be just a straight cover, but the feel here is pretty hot, so it's not really worth a NO Override if it's note-for-note. A real keeper just in terms of the style, definitely a great funky vibe here that could use more ideas to pimp it out there. Don't stop with just 90 seconds / 2 iterations of this stuff, rather expand the ideas with some further rearrangement and some freestyle sections. Nice work so far, Henrik. NO

Not really any need to, BTW.

Danny Nowshky might be down for voting tonight as well, and we still need Binnie, Shariq & Steve to solidify the vote on Final Summoning, since that one was so questionable.

Pretty good groove going along for the first 43 seconds, so the buildup towards the source tune wasn't bad. Good stuff until :54-1:04 when those drums came in, since they didn't have much realistic-sounding power behind them. Really disliked the sound of the drums coming in at 1:18-2:00 and later on at 3:05-3:25. Instrumentally, that was probably the weakest link for me as those drums lacked any real punch or realism to them. The rest of the percussion work sounds good, and all of the percussion sequencing/variation was quality, even when I didn't like the sounds chosen during those two areas I mentioned. Those are minor details of the big picture though. More importantly, the Robotnik boss theme melody's all but buried underneath the drumwork at times, and the synth used for the lead is fairly flat, so those things in tandem worked towards the lead (AND the high-pitched countermelody you had) getting buried by beats for quite a while. 1:38-2:00 was particularly lacking with the sound balance as a result, so anything you can do to create some more separation of sounds would help this out. Like Prot & Malc have also suggested above, better-sounding/livelier synth choices for your melody & countermelody, a sharper-sounding mixdown, and working in one or two more ideas beyond the 2:32 mark so the mix doesn't retread its steps so much are all things that can be done to bring this up and over the bar. Promising stuff is certainly in place so far, Kevin. NO

I pretty much agree with Prot's vote. The vibe here is pretty sweet. If this were a 4 minute mix, I might even YES it, though I'd have to compare with the source. Some REALLY bad notes from both 2:43-2:45 & 2:50-2:51. Dunno what happened there, but fix 'em please. While I really do hear the subtle developments here, there needs to be something extra going on to get away from the repetition here. By 4:05, even though there were obvious additions compared to earlier in the tracks, things were still a bit too repetitive with regards to the melody. The repetitveness doesn't bother me so much, except this is a lengthy track and one or two fresh ideas would hook this up. Adding some original note progressions anywhere within this track while not moving away from the great sound you have would serve this well. This is actually pretty sweet work so far, Tuomas. Though the drumwork is actually fairly weak compared to the power of the lead synth, your sounds are really cool and work very well together, including the shakuhachi. I don't agree with Vig saying that it sounded ridiculous; I felt the combination of sounds was a unique approach. Despite my first comment up top, I'd prefer to hear just a couple of brief additional ideas in here to replace some of the repetitive stuff rather than cut the length of the track. To be honest, it's tough to make a vote like this when I'm a big fan of a very repetitive track in SkyHigh's "Snow Motion", because a vote like this is similarly subjective with whether I enjoyed the repetitiveness or not, but I feel that that remix worked in its simple construction, whereas this only partially/nearly works. Nonetheless, this is a really cool genre piece that I could see people enjoying. Just a little more substance while retaining this atmosphere would create a sense of more development occuring over the 5+ minutes of the piece, and that's all I need for the YES. NO (please resubmit)

Cool. I read his e-mail but just wanted to be clear how much of the source was used overall. When Alex said it turned into Tetris near the end of its development, I wasn't sure if that meant he weaved source material throughout whatever he was working on earlier, or if Tetris was just the latter half of the track. http://www.zophar.net/gbs/tetris.zip - GBS Track 2 Pretty slow build for the first two minutes, but the development was pretty engaging so it wasn't a detriment to the mix. Around 2:30 though, I was waiting for the actual Tetris to come in, which it finally did at 2:45. The arrangement of the theme works well; fairly simple/straightforward, but the countermelodic elements are very nice and Alex got into some genuine rearrangement ideas as things picked up. The horn samples could/should have been more realistic moving from note-to-note, particularly during their very prominent section from 4:04-4:30, but were servicable overall and also outshadowed by other stronger instruments/elements that were present throughout the entire track, i.e. the piano, strings, and drums. Although I didn't pay too much attention to the war motif when I was judging this, it was certainly pretty cool when I casually listened to it. Like Protricity mentioned, the sound effects worked well without functioning as a crutch just to make things interesting. For example, the marching sound effects worked well as a beatkeeper yet also contributed to the militaristic feel of the mix. Fairly solid work. YES EDIT: As much as my Russian heritage enjoys the folk music from Tetris, I also agree with Binnie that technically Tetris's use of Russian folk songs is in violation of our policy that any music arranged here should come from a game first. Tetris might be one exeception, but I don't believe it should be. I'll retain my YES if we won't change our standards to disallow the Russian folk songs from Tetris to be remixed here, as I didn't have as serious problems with the brass or the use of Tetris in only the second half, but for the record if we push this issue on Tetris's music further, I'll be switching my vote to NO on policy grounds.