Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

I appreciated the concept here. Slowing down the original a bit and giving it an orchestral sound was a great idea. The drumwork that came in around 1:41 was a mistake, kind of like putting a hat on a hat; it wasn't necessary and didn't make sense with the initial arrangement concept. More subdued percussion could have achieved something more intriguing and complimentary with the orchestration.

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Some quick source usage timestamping for myself showed me the source tune was in play for well over half the duration of the arrangement, so we're in business there. 2:44-3:39 & 3:53-4:07 was just a bunch of noise; the machine gun drums steamrolled all of the other parts, and nearly everything sounded distant and lossy. Even from 4:07-4:27 without the busy drums, the guitar chugs just created white noise until 4:34. 5:22-6:23 was crowded as well, but tolerable. The soundscape at 6:23 for a brief time was a nice exception, and most of the final few minutes was a lot less difficult to distinguish the various parts. Maybe the wall of noise is supposed to make the semi-wall of noise stuff sound better by comparison. 2:44-3:39 & 3:53-4:07 were dealbreakers for me; it's just too much when it comes to mixing that hampers the track, intentional or not. I appreciate the track otherwise, even if the mixing hinders the listening experience for too long. If it could be adjusted, great. NO (resubmit)

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The track was 3:03-long, so I needed to make out the source tune being invoked for at least 91.5 seconds in the arrangement for the source material to be dominant. Mostly voice references (:00-37 of source) - :18.5-:24, :25.5-:35.5, :36.5-:42.5, :43.75-:55.75, 1:29.75-1:57.5, 1:58.5-2:02, 2:06.5-2:15 = 75.25 seconds 4-note harp pattern (:18-:22 of source), .75 sec per instance - :07 6-note harp pattern (:01-:08 of source), .75 sec per instance - :09, :13, :15, :17 = 3.75 seconds 6-note pattern (:36-:44 of source), but different rhythm - 1:14.75-1:18.5, 1:22.5-1:24, 1:25.25-1:26, 2:29.5-2:33.5, 2:37.5-2:39, 2:44.75-2:48.5, 2:52.5-2:54, 2:55.25-2:56 = 17.5 seconds Total: 96.5 seconds or 53.72% overt source usage This was more liberal that I liked, at least in terms of me being able to readily ID the connections, but I broke the summamabitch down enough to where adding up all these tiny bits and pieces of recognizable source tune added up to more than 50% overt source usage, so I stoppppppped. Love all the sound design here. Creative stuff, but liberal AF. YES

Heavy kicks at :40; interesting combination there along with the arranged melody. Boom-tss arrived at 1:06, and in my opinion, it was mixed too loud over the arranged melody. To some extent, I can live it with a personal issue, but then more original techno writing was added over the to at 2:01, and the balance wasn't making sense. I also felt the textures were too basic, so when elements finally started dropping out at 2:41, 2:47, and 2:53, it was a very welcome change in terms of the dynamics. More overly loud kicks at 3:08; I'm put off by how simplistic and empty these textures are, for example from 3:07-3:34, where it just feels like whole parts of the "real" track have mysteriously been muted out, if anyone gets what I mean there. Texturally, this didn't feel sophisticated enough. From 2:55-on, the next 3 minutes were iterations of a liberal treatment of :57's section of the source, varying up the leads every so often. Then good dynamic contrast in changing the mood, as 5:53-on was inspired by the drum writing from the very start of the source, partially employing the same rhythms, then changing others. I'm not enjoying all of the choices here, because, while this piece was loud and attempting to fill out the soundscape, I felt the sections with thinner textures still sounded too empty (especially 3:07-3:34), and I was never of a fan of the kicks and trance groove being louder than the arranged melody. I would love this being given another mixing/producton pass, but I'll not make the perfect the enemy of the good. The arrangement's interpretive, and production's decent enough. Though this did drag out sometimes, in the big picture there's enough variation in the writing that it wasn't a huge problem. Nice to have you back, WhoAmI? WhoAreYou though? YES (borderline)

Bizarre in a good way. Rather than just going in a linear fashion, I really enjoyed how different segments of the source tune would drop in and out with different instrumentation styles. Very creative approach! YES

Maybe it's just me failing to wrap my head around this theme, so I was coming up source-light. :11-:35, :43-1:03, 1:54.5-2:26, 2:41.75-3:01, 3:05.5-3:11 = 100.25 seconds Can someone point out other areas of the source usage I'm overlooking? ? EDIT (8/16): MW changed his vote on account of my initial timestamps, but I went "?" rather than "NO"; I wasn't saying my counts were definitive, just that I had questions. This is a very long source tune, so I really needed more time to get familiar with it or hear other perspectives on what I could have missed. I was overlooking some connective tissue segments of the source that Peter was clearly using; for example, 2:34-2:41.75 was from 3:37-3:44 of the source and 3:01-3:05.5 was from :27-:30 of the source. I've got a better handle on it now, so I'm sorry that my inability to make all of the connections held this up. The track was 4:01-long, so I needed to make out the source tune being invoked for at least 120.5 seconds of the arrangement for the source tune to be considered dominant. :07.5-:08.5, :10.5-:35, :39-1:03, 1:54.5-3:13.5 = 128.5 seconds or 53.31% overt source usage Good to go! Loved the arrangement. Strong instrumentation with loads of dynamics. A very spirited fleshing out of this theme, Peter, welcome aboard! YES

My fault for not realizing this was on the panel or I would have voted as soon as I'd first heard the unmastered version of the album. Wonderful instrumental & vocal performances to vibrantly bring Guillaume's arrangement to life, encouraged by the helpful nudging of the album directors! YES

After this reconsideration, we've clearly concluded that we're not accepting this submission. In the thread thus far, prophetik said he agreed with MindWanderer that this didn't meet 4.3 of the Submissions Standards. DarkeSword was saying 4.3 didn't apply here, but DarkeSword & Gario said it failed 4.1. We then talked extensively in #judges about how to address this and came to a consensus. I'll do my best to summarize the conversation here with key excerpts (edited for clarity). Regarding section 4.1, we concluded that the format of story narration or audio book isn't accepted as a "genre of music" due to the focus of the experience not being its music: Regarding Section 4.3, and its purpose, “dominant” refers to the expectation that the arranged VGM is the “most important, powerful, or influential” component of the presentation; this would apply whether it's contrasting 1) the amount of arranged VGM vs. non-VGM composition or, in this case, 2) the arranged VGM vs. the non-musical story narration as the primary focus of the audio. With this piece, djp felt the approach did conflict with both mentioned parts of the existing arrangement standards -- primarily 4.1, and then 4.3 to a lesser extent -- then suggested added clarification to the Standards to address this: DarkeSword emphasized that the Standards issue here had nothing to do with acceptable source material (Section 3) but rather whether this arrangement format was permitted (Section 4): DarkeSword proposed an added clarification point excluding narration/voiceover-focused content by name as part of section 4.1, which djp and I edited. As this submission conflicted with two aspects of the current arrangement standards, this added point isn't a new exclusion, but now codifies the reasoning behind not accepting this type of presentation. I also added "rap" into 4.1's examples list of acceptable genres to make very clear that it remains an accepted music style. Usage of lyrics with rhythms and/or musicality (e.g. beat poetry) that integrate with the music is (and has always been) allowed. We then had the panel weigh in on the final wording, which was accepted by the entire group: The revision of section 4.1 is now live in the Submission Standards: 4. Arrangement 1. Arrangements in any genre of music (e.g. techno, jazz, rap, rock, classical) are acceptable, so long as the genre itself does not conflict with any other arrangement criteria. Submissions must have a primary focus on musical elements; this excludes extensive focus on narration/voiceover (e.g. audio drama, audio books).

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MindWanderer invoked this aspect in both of his votes (my underline added) - "The source material must be identifiable and dominant." So I'm going off of that. No one's saying the SMG music isn't used throughout. MW was saying the SMG arrangement was identifiable but was not the dominant component of the overall piece, i.e. met the first part of that clause but not the second. Afterward, no one challenged that line of reasoning, and, from what I can tell, it seems like other NOs are effectively hitching their POV to the same type of reasoning. If that's not true, you need to clarify it, because I had specifically asked if we needed to update the Submissions Standards language to reflect that we wouldn't accept submissions in this vein. With whatever discussion took place for that, no one advocated for changing our Standards, including djp, and this was referencing the line I quoted. If folks are saying they just don't want narration, but it otherwise doesn't violate our Submission Standards, then we need to address that in the actual Standards.

RESUB Decison Original Decision Provided I'm not misstating anything, the consensus was that, with non-musical narration/spoken word at the forefront, this is a Standards violation for "The source material must be identifiable and dominant." I gave additional thoughts to Joe at the end of the RESUB decision; after he read what i said, he's essentially looking for reconsideration, so I'm sharing his thoughts from the DoD Discord with all of you. My Qs: 1) Am I wrong in saying this is being treated as not fitting that sentence from the Arrangement section of the Standards, and thus a violation? *** In other words, is this style/genre inapplicable to begin with, or just the specific execution of this style/genre? 2) Does anything in Newmajoe's follow-up thoughts change your perspective and merit reconsideration? 3) Does your vote remain the same?

I'm responding to feedback newmajoe and others gave in the DoD Discord following this decision, so any quotes are from there: newmajoe was upset that his second panel decision took too long to be made and that he got conflicting feedback between the first and second decisions. In Joe's case, this second decision actually took only 4 days. It'll seem like I'm trying to take arrows for the judges and direct the issues to me. I'm just saying that they actually weighed in very quickly. I saw at several points that Joe was upset about not hearing back sooner, and being encouraged to resubmit the track, but I'M the one who made that process take longer, and I'm the one who encouraged him to resubmit. That's all on me alone for delaying releasing his specific decision because I wanted to fully explore: 1) whether the track should be examined as potentially outside of our Submissions Standards [which didn't get analyzed/criticized as an issue in the first vote]; 2) whether it meant we had to revise the wording in our Standards [we decided no changes in the wording needed to be made]; and 3) how to summarize letting Joe down, especially because any rejection can feel on some unavoidable level like a value judgement on the musician's skills and abilities. Couldn't have said that better. For that last part, I'll see what I can do to add a point in our Judges Panel FAQ (to do our best) to short-circuit that negative interpretation of a NO vote; not a "solution" but making clear we recognize that artists can take rejections personally when they shouldn't. We actually didn't need to clarify the wording of the Submission Standards, because the current wording we had explained why the judges didn't pass it the second time: ("The source material must be identifiable and dominant.") Re: Joe's points above, the spoken word/narration using in-game text (vs. completely original narration) wouldn't be a factor for or against the track. It was mainly about: 1) the spoken word feeling like the "dominant" element of the track; and 2) the VGM arrangement feeling like "subordinate" accompaniment. It's very rare that a submission viewed as falling outside of the submissions standards by the judges panel even makes it to the panel in the first place; we'd never encountered this kind of piece. I paneled this due to me assuming the narration style wasn't a problem for OCR's standards. Yep, I'm sorry that we collectively messed up here with poor communication within the two decisions; we should have recognized and hashed out the Standards concern the first time, not the second time, and Joe was justifiably mad. Again, part of it was due to me being in favor of the track yet being out of step with the other Js, which is also pretty rare. Had I known it would have been a Standards issue on this level, other Js and I would have never encouraged Joe to tweak it or resubmit it in the first place, so he should blame me for that too. I never intended to "waste his time" or stress Joe out, and ended up doing both. I could have let Joe know that it wouldn't be posted right after seeing how the resub's votes landed, but, as jmr correctly noted, this actually was an unprecedented situation for us, so I also wanted to: 1) have most of the panel fully consider our Submissions Standards wording vs. this type of track, since it wasn't thoroughly considered by the group the first time; and 2) exhaust every chance to make my case, again something where I'm to blame. We did speak with djp on it, and with the vote so lopsided, he stood by the panel's consensus from their reasoning. Several people chimed in to praise my demeanor or perspective. I do appreciate being called "rad" and being vouched for by several people. Unfortunately, I'm far from perfect - the time it took to handle all of this and the process of summarizing & delivering the bad news, that was 100% my direction and my responsibility, and something I have to learn from to improve our process. (BTW, holding up the voting on PuD's "The Hot Pink of Blues", that was me too, which I stood by; I wasn't counting what I perceived as implied chord progressions as direct source tune usage. So I get plenty of bad guy points. :-D)

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Just an FYI, from our Submissions Standards: We mention that games/music eligibility is at our discretion. Currently, OCR won't accept any arrangements of original music created for unlicensed fan-games. As far as the Workshop goes, we're of course always happy to give arrangement/production feedback regardless, as that's what this forum is for. But sending in stuff from unlicensed fan-games, we're never gonna post that stuff. I could only see that happening if a company retroactively published a fan game and thus made it official. For example, if Sega published the fan-game Streets of Rage Remake, THEN any original tracks from it would be eligible to be arranged for OCR. Just making that clear so that you don't set yourself up for any disappoint on that level.

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I'm liking the instrumentation to start. The steel-string guitar's not mixed properly to be the true foreground lead. The sampled brass at 1:04 was super fake & exposed, but brief. Really awkward transition of the instrumentation at 1:08 and again at 3:01; it then thinned out into more of a combination of the flamenco-style instrumentation along with orchestration at 1:26 and again at 3:19. I'd argue those latter moments should have appeared somewhere BEFORE 1:08 and 3:01 to serve as a transition into the full-on orchestration. Melody redux at 2:13, annnnnd it's a full-on cut-and-paste repeating verbatim, which was disappointing. Writing a new ending section instead of doing cut-and-paste stuff from 3:49 until the end would have been good also, even if you varied things up before then. Yeah, the mixing/balance could use touching up, and the transitions where the flamenco instrumentation drops out don't work, IMO. The level of interpretation/personalization is good, but then you rested on your laurels and didn't develop or vary the arrangement any further. You've gotta NOT just recycle the theme past the 2-minute point. C'mon, Paul, finish the story! NO (resubmit)

Sorry to Joe, Michelle, Sam for the holdup in this decision. Since the discussion on this piece's overall eligibility didn't get talked through the first time around, I asked to extend this voting, then double-checked that we didn't need to update our Submissions Standards to be more explicit that audio dramas or narrations would have a more difficult time passing due to this aspect of the Submission Standards and, lastly, wanted to take the proper time to cap this decision. Especially because Joe submitted this to support our Mario Month event, I'm afraid of making the artists upset as to what amounts to a belabored decision involving technicalities, and these delays were entirely on me: No one here would want or expect Joe and crew to compromise the vision of this piece just to have it accepted in some form for OCR; the criticisms about this being a storytelling format are strictly made with those specific standards in mind. Based on this outcome, I'm not sure audio dramas or story narration have a place here, though I'm always game for anyone else continuing to test this out. Doing my best interpretation of a dissenting Supreme Court justice, I'm very disappointed that this didn't fare better strictly from the up-or-down voting. "Dominant" was the most relevant word quoted above. I obviously disagreed that having spoken word delivery over the top of an arrangement is a case where the source material isn't "dominant" -- similar to how prominent original vocals/lyrics on top of arranged VGM has never disqualified anything -- but I'm hugely outvoted; we as a group discussed this specific aspect of the Standards when it comes to this piece internally and in this vote, so the consensus is clear, which I think is summarized best by DarkeSword's vote. No matter what, this was a very fun track concept, one I also would have loved to have had on our childrens' album (Esther's Dreams) way back when. Would love to hear all involved again, and hope we do get to hear more great arrangements come our way from Newmajoe.

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Go for it!

It's not unpleasant, but it's also not pleasant; the opening minute's just there, so we'll see if it goes anywhere interesting. 1:19 shifted more toward the opening moments of Act 2's version (and you hear more of Act 2's backing writing invoked from 2:10-2:45). I know there's a method to Michael's madness. I've also heard tracks of his that I enjoyed that I know others wouldn't, and I think this is more in that vein, except that others may enjoy it and I didn't. I don't actively dislike it (and I wouldn't soft-pedal it), but it doesn't hook me. It's certainly a valid sound design exercise where I like some of the moments, and I hear and recognize the source material being in there. Do I wish it were more melodious in the treatment though? YES

Usually when we have a posted mixer get straight NOs across the board, I like to sanity check things just to be sure. As soon as the melody kicked in at :30, I thought this was too muddy and overcrowded; I definitey couldn't get behind a track mixed like this all the way; the parts are just too indistinct. Yeah, I heard the main verse at 1:25, and it's a little clearer, but basically mixed like this the whole way through; the melody doesn't cut through, the drums take up all of the space. By 4 minutes in, I also agree that the arrangement was just recycling the Terra theme over and over and I would have loved to have heard other arrangement/interpretation ideas. At 5:27, there was finally a dropoff and new writing; though I still felt the balance of parts was misguided/off, mixing like this would have worked better. But at 6:57, the same machine gun drumming and crowded soundscape came back for the finish, essentially sounding like a rehash of what came before. It'll seem like I just don't get the genre, and I know, for example, Emunator has stuck up for tracks/genres with unorthdox mixing in the past. I just don't believe this approach works as properly balanced mixing, even accounting for stylistic authenticity; the overall musicianship is clearly there, but the production on this is too messy. It's completely unclear what the listener should (or even can) focus on. NO