Liontamer

I actually was working on my vote as Dan made his, but still wanted to comment. I'm going ahead to technically give this a 5th NO, but certainly wanted to express how much I enjoyed this one. I'm not familiar with the Perfect Dark source tune and there's no USF rip out for it yet, so I have to simply go by what I heard here and hope this was a viable arrangement, that is not too liberal. Indeed this was a very promising submission, and I enjoyed it despite how relatively minimal-sounding this was. Good sounds and separation for the intro going up to :53. You gradually built things up well once additional elements like the melodic synth in the forefront (:53) and the bassline (1:01) came in. Nice sounding work. The drums starting at 1:31 really hurt this though, as the compression on them seemed to distort and clip. No dice, for me. At 2:10, the new drum choice was too loud to be so plodding and detracted from the atmosphere you set up. Scale them back and provide a little more variation in the sequencing. The bongos were already doing a good job of providing varied, well-sequenced percussion patterns though, which is why the other drum patterns only need a little work IMO. The lack of transition at 2:33 was too abrupt for me and the key change there was a bit jarring as well. The synth melody you had was too repetitive though, until 3:04 finally switched things up. Perhaps cut out a phrase within 2:33-3:04 so that section doesn't drag on like it currently does or add a bit more melodic-style content on top of it to give it more substance so that the repetitiveness isn't as much of an issue. Finally, at 3:04 though that plodding drumwork returned. Again, work on that drumwork to help it accentuate the material better, and think of a ending that provides a lot more resolution to the listener rather than what's in place now, as it's come across as fairly lazy and "I ran out of ideas"-ish. Great foundations are in place here, Doug, and I enjoyed most of the sounds. I feel bad there isn't more melodic meat/content in some places, but I didn't judge on that. Just posting to show my support for your ideas so far, and I really hope you'll consider all the suggestions here for another resubmission. I didn't have so much of a problem with the spareness of the sounds, but they're another area that should be looked at. You may or may not want to continue on with this idea, depending on how old it is and so forth, but this came along fairly nicely and wasn't too bad on the whole. Very interesting stuff that needs a bit more, bro.

I feel that so far, my vote is the only one that attempted to justify their decision enough. I feel it's ok to do whatever we will with this mix, but that the votes here deserve more substance. Makke won't take a potential rejection badly as long as the reasons have some meat to them, so I ask that at least some of these votes be revisited and given a bit more. I feel it's fair and worthwhile to the submitter to provide that and it demonstrates that we actually paid close attention when we assessed the submission. DJP agrees and will likely expand on his comments. In any case, Marcus provided me with an instrumental copy of SID No More, and I feel it'll better help everyone to clarify the reasoning of their votes & the observed level of Arkanoid arrangement.

Damn you, Trenthian! Today is VGF #26 from 2:30 AM - 6 AM EST, so head over to Ormgas to check it out and follow along with the playlist. Join #ormgas on IRC/EntertheGame (irc://irc.enterthegame.com/ormgas) to chat it up. VGF26 features old-school OC ReMixer (and now Emory alum) Electron as my guest host! Be sure to check it out for a number of tracks from him as well as plenty of other good stuff. Good way for me to recycle the previous^6 message. Bitch.

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/dkc.rsn - "Aquatic Ambiance" (dkc-08.spc) Covered this one for VGF in late July: Just like the stuff we dealt with for the OCR1250 lockdown, it's unfortunate that we have enjoyable tracks that have to be turned down. This is certainly a well made trance-style remix of Aquatic Ambiance, and I enjoyed it. But does it do much to the source tune beyond the trance genre adaptation? Unfortunately, it does not. So what we have is another case where an enjoyable remix doesn't fit the ReMix guidelines of OCR. While other judges or fans of the community will say differently, I don't feel OC's standard is the only way to make a good mix. It's a good standard mind you, and one we feel promotes more creative work overall, but it's certainly not the only standard out there and we don't claim that OC's standard is the only good one. Nonetheless, this mix does nothing particularly interpretive with the source material on a rearragement level and isn't an innovative or expansive straight arrangement piece either, and that's where the vote stands. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Peaceful Day" (ct-1-04.spc) Pretty straightforward call, done pretty well by Prot & Gray. Weave the arrangement and original ideas more cohesively as opposed to the structure you have now. Things sound good production-wise, Richard, and the transitions from section to section are very logical, but the formula here was pretty much arrangement/original/arrangement/original without being interpretive enough on the arrangement or integrating source tune elements in the original sections you created. Go for more actual rearrangement and resubmit. Cool mix per se, but outside of the OCR guidelines as is. NO

http://www.lemon64.com/music/sid/Galway_Martin/Arkanoid.sid - Subtune 1/20 I was also having some problems hearing the source for most of this, but I checked things out. Definitely deserves closer scrutiny. Most of the support bassline Marcus used started at about 2.5 seconds into the source tune as percussion, but it's really, really obscured in the source. I agree with Vig in that the bassline could have been louder during some of the fuller parts of the chorus, but during the verses it was at a good level. Cool rearrangement for that area by adding your own stuff to it. The chirping effects in the left channel are usually in the pattern of the source tune's usage (:02-:07 of the SID). For example, Makke uses that pattern from :02-:10 of the mix. Times like :13-:33, during all of the verses, feature original patterns before returning to the source's pattern during each chorus (:33-:43, :53-1:14, etc.) The SID work being placed ~99% in the left channel didn't bother me at all. From 1:47-2:28 on when the guitar, SID work & bassline are all easily recognizable from the source tune, and was definitely the arrangement level I wanted. Glassy ending entering at 2:18 is from 1:14 of the source tune with a tiny bit of embellishment that you hear at 2:27 when it's playing without the music. Rather than using the support stuff from the source, I felt there had to be a way to integrate something more overtly melodic from the Arkanoid tune amidst the Faith No More homage from the first 1:46 (more like how the last portion of the mix was actually done), but I heard what what being used from the source for this area and it was adequate. Fairly good weaving of Arkanoid & Faith No More's "Epic" though. I wanted more of the Arkanoid melody involved simply in terms of how I see the guidelines here, but in my opinion this barely passes on that level. All other things considered, the production was solid, and (independent of my judgement) I definitely enjoyed this one. YES

Considering it's my show, and I can defy convention, tonight's episode of VGF, the first real one since my hiatus will be VGF #38. I'll be doing make-up episodes over the next few weeks to make up for the 5 shows I missed. They will cover the following weeks: VGF #33 - 9/19 - 9/25 VGF #34 - 9/26 - 10/2 VGF #35 - 10/3 - 10/9 VGF #36 - 10/10 - 10/16 VGF #37 - 10/17 - 10/23 Meanwhile, I didn't find much in the way of new Halloween themed music being released, plus I'm limited to 2 hours now that someone's on after my show (criminal, I know) so we're just gonna stick with the standard formula of the new stuffz. There is some Anime Remix HRC material, and, celebrating VGMix2's 1-year anniversary, we've got a lot of good stuff from there as well. I'll be on the lookout for all the older stuff I missed, so hopefully we'll get to some of that soon. Remember to join the new VG Frequency IRC channel at irc://irc.enterthegame.com/vgf as opposed to the AIM chat we used to have.

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ki.rsn - Sabrewulf (ki-21.spc) The arrangement is fine, but like Danny alluded to (though on a not-as-significant level), there's not enough dynamic contrast here. It was a lot more of a problem for me than it was for him, as I thought the delivery was dry/one-dimensional and lacked emotion & energy the whole way through. Moving into the more recognizable source arrangement at 1:35, everything lacks presence and just plods along. While Uub infers that this is live piano, I certainly hope this wasn't. This needs much more emotive/fuller delivery to reach the perceived bar for piano material. Not bad, but incomplete in that sense. NO

http://www.chudahs-corner.com/soundtracks/sscx10040.html - "Radical Dreamers ~ Unstealable Jewel" (Disc 3, Track 15) This may be ineligible for OCR, as the source tune in question is an extra vocal track by Mitsuda & vocalist Noriko Mitose on the CC OST that (as far as I know) isn't included in the game or game's sound test & certainly isn't in the PSF set. Like Prot alluded to, the intro was pretty spacious and sounded good. But lots of issues surfaced. The percussion is fairly subdued but still somewhat overbearing compared to the melody, was pretty plodding, and didn't accentuate the melodic material well. Rethink the structure there. Minor things like exposed cymbal hits at 1:38/1:43/etc sound pretty cheesy. Though you get more used to it over time, the timing is certainly off in a lot of places. The melodic material never stands out here given how minimal the notes for it are, and later on things just become a mish-mash from 1:35-2:07 & 2:33-2:57. Nice ideas, Ravi, but the elements in these fuller sections needed more clarity/separation as well as more prominence for the lead/melody so that the listener has somewhere to focus their attention. I'm not sure if this track is even eligible for the site, though I urge you to look at it further for a public release of some sort as the ideas are promising. Everything needs work though. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/ninja_ga.zip - NSF Track 3 Very very amateur, but not a bad vibe until things start getting all WTF with the xylophone (:37/:45) and vox (:57). Terrible notes everywhere, and the ending was terrible. Prot has some good advice for ya though. Awfully nice of him too, because frankly this track wasn't worth it whatsoever. More effort into making this musically coherent would have at least merited legit commentary. Form rejection all the way. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Credits" (loz3-31.spc) Pff. Everything's the same. The timing of the notes matches up perfectly. You might as well have ripped this, if you didn't actually do so, which you did actually. Merely below average orchestral sequencing done note-for-note. No matter how much effort you put into this, we don't accept mock-ups. Frankly, that kind of stuff doesn't deserve one's name on it or a new title. NO OVERRIDE

http://www.zophar.net/usf/sm64usf.rar - "Staff Roll" & "Super Mario 64 Main Theme" I'm in agreement with Ari over this one. Certainly not a bad remix, but it's not notably interpretive on any level per the general guidelines here. I thought the integration of the SM64 Main Theme from :43-:59 would surface elsewhere in the track and provide something slightly substantial on the rearrangement front, but it never came to pass. I wasn't bothered much by the minimal variation in the drum patterns, but 2:23 retreading the chorus was not where it's at. The Mario sample at the end was tacky as well. Very tacky. Straightforward/cover-style arrangements have to be substantial upgrades compared to the source tune to make it here, and this ain't it. Throw this one at VGMix and see how the listeners react there. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/marble.zip - NSF Track 4 Pretty sparse sounds throughout. Not bad breakbeat-style stuff, but there's not much cohesiveness or observable structure here. The lead is incredibly generic-sounding and flat. Too bad too, because I liked the attention to panning heard in some portions of the mix. Interesting slowdown dealie at 1:00 only for a new section to take over at 1:38, but that also was sparse and flat just like the very beginning of the track. The delivery here is so flat that it tanked this one out of the gate. As elements dropped out at 3:12 going towards the finish, I was reminded of how incoherent the whole thing turned out. As an arrangement idea it sounds unsalvagable to me, since it deals too minimally with the source, so it's best to just wrap this up with a NO.

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ts.rsn - "Zue" (ts-25.spc) I've certainly heard better sounds used by Young in the past, but this was definitely some quality rearrangement beyond the time signature change, including plenty of instrumental variation. I also could have gone for the bassline being more prominent as well as the percussion being thicker, but the overall product is solid work. Though this doesn't stand out to me versus Ziwtra's other mixes, it's cool stuff nonetheless. YES

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/LoM_psf.rar - 123 The Darkness Nova The synth guitar strums here are really sparse, though the drums at :28 helped thicken things up. Nonetheless, the lead melody is very atonal/flat in the delivery and lacks presence over the synth guitar stuff, and that kills this one immediately. The rearrangement isn't particularly engaging either, and lacks significant development & energy throughout. Better luck next crime. NO

Yeah, I remember KyleJCrb requested for me to play this on VGF once it came out, and I turned it down due to how ridiculously overcompressed this is. Crunchy the whole way, with no high-end whatsoever. Danny B absolutely laid out the problems on this one. Production is grating/shrill/terrible and this needs more rearrangement compared to the source tune. It would be a more servicable offering if you guys just toned this down and refined the sounds. NO

Indeed, this was just a poorly done cover. The bass coming in at :08 is flat-out terrible, and doesn't anything to this. The piano could have used more meat on it. Rinse & repeat at :45. Um...1:22, what the hell? Sonically, there's no depth to this at all. Decent enough ideas at making a mix that doesn't stay in one place for too long, but jeez. The chorus of the third track being mixed here (2:45) was probably the best part of the track if I had to name one. Anyway, like Ari said, everything is poorly thrown together. Bleh all over. NO

Correction! Today is VGF #22 from 10:05 PM - 1:35 AM EST, so head over to Ormgas to check it out and follow along with the playlist. Join #ormgas on IRC/EntertheGame (irc://irc.enterthegame.com/ormgas) to chat it up. NOW NOW NOW! VGF22 is really good. And that concludes my pimping of THAT one. Good way for me to recycle the previous^5 message. Bitch.

Today is VGF #26 from 10:10 PM - 1:40 AM EST, so head over to Ormgas to check it out and follow along with the playlist. Join #ormgas on IRC/EntertheGame (irc://irc.enterthegame.com/ormgas) to chat it up. VGF26 features old-school OC ReMixer (and now Emory alum) Electron as my guest host! Be sure to check it out for a number of tracks from him as well as plenty of other good stuff. Good way for me to recycle the previous^4 message. Bitch.

Today is VGF #25 from 1:55 - 6 PM EST, so head over to Ormgas to check it out and follow along with the playlist. Join #ormgas on IRC/EntertheGame (irc://irc.enterthegame.com/ormgas) to chat it up. Good way for me to recycle the previous previous previous message. Bitch.

Bought a new laptop for myself. Next Saturday, we will back with regular VGFs all da time and so forth. During the next few weeks, I'll be working to gather up lots of stuff I lost, but will hopefully have BGM and VGM and all that crud to play. I'll be hoping to do 4 extra shows (I believe I missed 4) in order to catch up with all the material put out in October. Keep an eye out for crud. Yep. Crud.

Other people may have it, but it will be temporarily mirrored today only by fellow Ormgas staff member Cartoons: http://oc.ormgas.com/forum_viewtopic.php?18.7884. Make sure to change the filename to show it as VGF #24. Starts in 10 minutes from this post, and lasts 4hr40min on the Ormgas.com stream. Enjoy, peeps.

Today is VGF #24 from 5:40 - 10:20 AM EST, so head over to Ormgas to check it out and follow along with the playlist. Join #ormgas on IRC/EntertheGame (irc://irc.enterthegame.com/ormgas) to chat it up. It's the April Fool's 2004 episode, indeed widely considered to be the best episode of VGF ever. You need to check it out. Good way for me to recycle the previous previous message. Bitch.

Rab basically said this was just him fiddling with some ambient pads and sound effects for a couple of hours or whatever; not too much effort involved on the creation side, but I judge on the finished product not necessarily the effort it took to get there. Loved this mix ever since I first heard it and it's one of my favorites off KiC. I didn't compare this with "Misty Menace" for a while after listening to this track, so though this mix doesn't have much of a melody, it really expanded things upon actual comparison with the source a few months ago, which was a very pleasant surprise. Though simple and straightfoward, lots of subtle elements came together to form an enjoyable ambiance, and Rab's sure to pick up some fans who enjoy this relaxing, yet melancholy and ominous soundscape. Get ready to loop this one. YES

Wait, that's an AIM noise I hear at :54. This makes this submission either suspicious or stupid, honestly. Not a bad string-based with some rain ambiance, but it could use more development within it's mere 2:31, since I doubt the source tune is very minimalist. Plus, we don't need AOL discovering that AIM sound and suing Dave for billions of dollars. NO