Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

I checked with Zach again, but he's tapped out of ideas to fix it, so this one might just set off dogs and MindWanderer in perpetuity.

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I brought up the conditional comments to Jeff to see about possible changes, but he's got some ear issues that'll prevent him from working on stuff for a while, but he explained how the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze there, so this is just an FYI:

I always enjoy sampled soprano vocals that sound like Parasite Eve. Hell of a sound upgrade, chief. YES

The sounds aren't dry at all, but there's a core clap groove introduced at :27 that's noticeably lacking body & energy (which also weakens the finish at 6:28). There's something ultimately very vanilla and tepid with how this instrumentation currently sounds, and the textures feel muddier and more indistinct than intended. Not a sophisticated sound palette yet. I liked the altered rhythms for that melodic line first done at :58; sweet idea here, and gradually adding more part-writing around it and varying the textures helped not let it drag out. The line that came in at 1:36 and gradually rose in volume was a fairly generic sound as well, but the more crystalline part at 2:04 was a much more unique sound, and the accompanying strings brought in at the same time were also a nice touch. IMO, the synth handling the melody at 2:31 came in too strongly (and kind of piercing, but I'll live); consider pulling it back for the first few bars and letting a gradual volume raise of it finish at 2:45. Nice drop idea at 3:29, though the stuttered parts at 3:42 felt too locked to grid and mechanical-sounding; there may be some creative effects that could be used from 3:42-4:10 to give that a more creative and fluid sound that draws less attention to that. The buildup from 4:10 into the stop at 4:37 was odd as well, and I got clashing writing from 4:31-4:37 (then an abrupt key change at 4:38). Yeah, that whole transition definitely didn't click as intended, yet it was employed again from 6:14-6:21 with clashing writing again before the dropoff. At 5:53, the bassline did register for me, but it's basically steamrolled and has no presense. I'll await further votes in the hopes that the musician Js can better identify and isolate specific problems here, as well as suggest ways to achieve some richer, fuller sounds that are nonetheless well seperated. This isn't a cohesive enough presentation just yet; it still feels like the instrumentation is more at a work-in-progress phase where the core writing's in place and the arrangement's direction is set, but more effects & polish are waiting to be added. If you can figure out how to add that sheen to the instrumentation and not have that pair of akwardly written transitions, Tobias, this could be a contender. NO (resumbit)

Link to Remix: Contact Information ReMixer name: Tab Newflax Real name: Tobias Nylin Email address: Website: https://www.tobiasnylin.com/ Userid: 2108 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Donkey Kong Country Name of arrangement: DK Island Trance '94 Name of individual song(s) arranged: “DK Island Swing” Comments about the mix: Hello! Donkey Kong Country is one of my favorite games ever! I got it as a Christmas gift in 1994. I still often think of the nice memories of me and my brother playing it while celebrating Christmas at my grandmother's. This is a remix of “DK Island Swing”. When I heard this song the first time I thought it a bit weird, but it has really grown on me over time. Especially the second half of the song, the more relaxed part. For me it is a bit mysterious but also soothing. I like trance music and got an idea on how this part could fit well as a trance remix. In the timestamps below I will refer to it as “Part 2” (1:30-2:47 in the original). There are also some parts where I’ve used elements from the first part “Part 1”, for example the characteristic chords from the intro (0:38-1:30 in the original). I hope you like it! Timestamps: ("Part 1" = elements from 0:38-1:30 in the original) ("Part 2" = elements from 1:30-2:47 in the original) 0:00-2:05 - Intro, elements from “Part 2”. 2:05-3:29 - Break and build-up, elements from “Part 2”. 3:29-3:43 - Transition into “Part 1”. 3:43-4:39 - “Chorus”, elements from “Part 1”. 4:39-4:45 - Mini-break, using elements from 1:25-1:30 in the original. 4:45-5:13 - Transition back into “Part 2”. 5:13-5:54 - Break and build-up, elements from "Part 2". 5:54-6:22 - “Chorus”, elements from “Part 1”. 6:22-6:28 - Mini-break, using elements from 1:25-1:30 in the original. 6:28-6:42 - Transition back into “Part 2”. 6:42-7:03 - Outro.

Sounds solid enough, and opens up sounding pretty clean on the mixing side, but then as soon as you had the track fill out more at :21, this was a mixing mess until :57 for a few moments until the beefed up textures returned at 1:05. The chorused brass samples are too exposed when they lead, and I wish the brass, drums, and (to a much lesser extent) guitar weren't stumbling over each other in the same frequency range. We'll see what the musician Js think. If the source files were gone, Grayson, I could still barely pass this, but it would be a YES (borderline) due to the iffy production holding this back, not the conservative but spirited arrangement. Would love to hear an improved mixing job on this, as I could see NOs and conditional YESs based on the current samples and mixing.

Contact Information Your ReMixer name: minusworld, killaGraham Your real name: Grayson Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Paper Mario Name of arrangement: Sing Sing Sing Your Heart Out Name of individual song(s) arranged: Ghost Gulping (Tubba Blubba's Theme) Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. This track was made for the Dwelling of Duels competition in August of 2022, where it placed 3rd out of 25. Submitting to DoD enables lots of experimentation for me, so for the August submission I (minusworld) wanted to try a swing metal arrangement. Tubba Blubba's theme from Paper Mario really fit the bill, though it was a bit of a challenge to turn the 45-second loop with only 2 distinct sections to speak of into a solid listening experience. I ended up with a simple ABACA structure, where the A and B sections come from the game and the C section is an original section with solos. I played the guitars and killaGraham played bass. The rest of the instruments are VSTs. Speaking of experimentation, I wanted to see how far I could push a virtual brass section with this track. It's certainly no substitute for real instruments, but I think it makes for a fun track regardless. The Brass VSTs used were Hollywood Pop Brass and Vir2 Mojo. The title of the arrangement is a reference to "Sing Sing Sing" popularized by Benny Goodman and to Tubba Blubba, who separates his heart from his body in order to become "invincible" in the game.

I had only one significant issue with this piece, which was shrillness from 1:08-1:42 and 2:39-3:31 due to the glitching/beeping effects. I can live with it, but would prefer it pulled back some. Otherwise, fun arrangement, and it's also a nice treat to hear Grant Kirkhope's telltale N64 composition style from Banjo-Kazooie and DK64 carried over into the arrangement here. Strong use of some classic/dated sounds to achieve varied warping and warbling textures throughout the track. Aside from the beefy beats, this sounds like something Mazedude (another Chris) could have had a hand in creating, meant with lots of praise. Nice job, Chris! YES

Hi folks, Many thanks for posting my first submission. It's a great honour! Remixer Contact Information Your ReMixer name: shieldeater Your real name: Chris McGee Your email address: Your website(s): https://shieldeater.bandcamp.com/ Your userid: 7727 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Donkey Kong 64 Name of arrangement: DK's Mushroom Trip Name of individual song(s) arranged: Fungi Forest (Daytime) Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.: My new offering is an energetic take on Grant Kirkhope's "Fungi Forest" from DK64 featuring glitchy drums and a variety of synth leads. This piece imagines a scenario in which Donkey Kong, having (perhaps unwisely) eaten a mushroom in the forest, finds his consciousness expanding to the point that it clips through the walls of his reality. Cheers! –Chris

I feel you re: the effect of waiting too long to hear back re: a submission and having moved on to the point where you just hear flaws; I know it's not intended as a complaint, but that's definitely a negative part of the length of this process that we're always needing to improve. For this track, this scenario hits me a lot like a different track that Bowlerhat merely performed on but was also very liberal, "Hey Saria, There's a Fiesta Down in Kokiri Forest". Jorik essentially said "the source tune usage is apparent from 1:42-2:40, but not elsewhere", and I'd say she's accurate there. Though trying to couch the rest of the track as being influenced by the source tune, I'm not able to make many more connections. I appreciate the track in a vacuum, and love the performances and video, but AFAIK the treatment's too liberal. There's nothing inherently wrong with being very indulgent with a jazz or big band arrangement, but the OC Jazz Collective, for example, tends to stay grounded enough in overt references to the source material to not run into these problems when submitting music to be featured as standalone submissions to be considered with OCR's Submission Standards in mind. The track was 6:13-long, so I needed to hear "Dire, Dire Docks" referenced for at least need 186.5 seconds for the source material to be dominant in the arrangement. We'll see what the others say, but here was my source usage timestamping: 1:06-1:11, 1:42.5-1:53, 1:54.75-2:06, 2:11-2:37, 5:17.5-5:22.5, 5:38.5-5:42, 5:47.5-5:49, 6:02.5-6:10 = 70.25 seconds or 18.83% overt source usage Great piece of music, but the arrangement has to stay grounded in the VGM source material, otherwise I'll never vote for it. I don't care whether the source material's referenced during close to 50.01% of the duration of the track or nearly 100%, but it needs to unmistakably be the case that VGM arrangement dominates the presentation by being present for a majority of the track's duration, otherwise you lose sight of what's intended to be tributed vis-a-vis our Submissions Standards for arrangement. I also appreciate the offer to potentially trim this to ensure the source material dominates the arrangement. If your vision aligns with OCR's standards, that's great, but it's never required or expected that you compromise your vision for your work just to get something posted here. If you want to make a stronger case, Jorik, you'd need to explicitly point out the A-to-B connections of how this piece references the source tune at most times. Happy to be shown connections I'm massively overlooking, and if we needed to pull this back to revise our votes, I'd be happy to. But as far as I can tell (and without some comparative timestamping to explictly illustrate otherwise), the additional direct source tune connections are not there. NO

Contact Information Your ReMixer name: Bowlerhat Your real name: Jorik Bergman (she/her) Your email address: Your website(s): https://jorikbergman.com Your userid: 30366 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Super Mario 64 Name of arrangement: The Maintaining of Absolute Buoyancy Name of individual song(s) arranged: Dire Dire Rocks Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. Hi, hello! Long time no see! Here’s a remix of mine called “The Maintaining Of Absolute Buoyancy”, remixing Dire Dire Rocks from super mario 64. It’s a big band arrangement, mixing both jazz and pop, featuring an open drum improv by Arno Grootaers and a tenor sax improv by Jens Böckamp. So, there’s this phenomenon which I personally experience a lot and endearingly call the “OCRemix effect”. Basically, every time I send a remix to ya’ll I’m really happy and proud of it, and then 1-2 years passes as it goes through the judging process and by the time it gets posted I absolutely hate it. I’m not saying this is the fault of OCRemix, because I know ya’ll work hard as heck, but it’s just something that always tends to happen haha. And the worst thing about it, is that my remixes always get such an amazing and positive reception, which then culminates in this weird mixed feeling of being happy that people are enjoying it and not being able to actually listen to it anymore myself. But the feedback is always super encouraging, so every time this happens I immediately start planning my next remix. Anyway, going back in time to 2020, my Zelda’s lullaby remix “To See Like Me” got posted and people loved it. So obviously I really really can’t stand it anymore, I hate the mixing, I hate many of my arrangement choices, and while I do think the band mostly played really well, it unfortunately doesn’t help enough with fixing these other issues I have. So, after this fresh “OCRemix effect” I passionately started working on an arrangement of Dire Dire Docks. Then, the pandemic hit, and I didn’t really feel motivated to finish it. Jump forward a bit further to the beginning of 2021, and I got a bit of motivation back and finished the arrangement. However, I didn’t really have any options available at that time to perform or record the arrangement. So, we jump forward another year to the beginning of 2022. I got funding to record some big band music in September, and decided to use it for my super mario 64 arrangement. However, at this point, some parts of the arrangement were 2 years old, and I hated everything again haha. So, I rewrote the whole thing. I deleted over 2 minutes of music, completely rewrote the ending, made many many changes to the rest of the arrangement as well and basically only a few bars ended up staying the same as it was originally. Then, last September we recorded everything, and now, at the beginning of 2023, 3 years after the release of “To See like Me” was posted and I started with the arrangement, we released the music. Which means I finally get to submit it here to OCRemix (yaaay!). I’m a bit worried about the source material percentage here. I would personally argue that everything in the arrangement is source material except for the open drum intro and the beginning of the sax solo. The introduction is all melodies which are derived from Dire Dire Docks, until at 1:42 the full original melody comes in. After that, kind of like in a symphony or sonata, I start doing my own thing with the melody, twisting and turning it in as many interesting directions as I can. Basically, my concept was to develop every single musical idea I used in the intro, and morph it into this 5/4 + 4/4 groove thingy starting at 5:00, which then climaxes at 5:35 and the piece ends. So all of the melodic material is related to the original super mario 64 tune. However, you could also argue that the only source material present in here is from 1:42 to 2:40 which is like, 15% lol. So, if the jury has this viewpoint, which I would totally respect and understand, I could potentially, with a lot of pain in my heart, cut out the open drum intro. I guess that would still not make it to 50%, but it would at least help a little. It would be very unfortunate of course, but for sure an option. To help with the judging as well, I made sure that all the other parts of the remix are as impossible to object to as possible. First of all, there’s a fancy video to go along with the arrangement. I’ve attached it to this email, and you can also check it here (https://youtu.be/Gm0VHXPkeP8) on Youtube. Then, the arrangement was recorded in studio, so the sound quality is very clean, and Stefan and I spent a lot of time on the mixing as well, ensuring that all of the little details in orchestration and such came out. Plus, obviously, the musicians playing are freaking fantastic. It was truly a pleasure working with them. I’d like to point out just how amazing they all are by listing our project planning: We had a rehearsal on a Friday, in total 3 hours, to rehearse 2 pieces. “The Maintaining of Absolute Buoyancy” and an original composition of mine called “The Road With A Thousand Giraffes”. This other piece was a lot longer and more difficult than the super mario remix, so we spent most of the rehearsal on that piece. And that was it, that was all of the rehearsing haha, on Saturday we met up in the studio and recorded. We had 3 takes in total, and this is the 3rd one. All of the other time was spent recording the giraffe music. And we didn’t really fix any tuning or many mistakes post edit as well, 90% of the time mixing was spent on balancing and eq-ing and such. The band simply nailed it in the studio. The biggest issue I had was that I also really liked the 2nd take, especially Jens’ solo in there, so it was mostly just difficult to choose which take to use haha. So yeah, the band really delivered spectacularly in focus and talent and preparation and such. It was a huge honor to work together with them on this music. Of course, there was a lot of preparation on my end, getting the funding, booking the studio, collecting the band, writing the music, lay-outing the sheets, mixing the music together with Stefan, working with Gesa on the video, preparing the release… The list goes on and on haha. But I had a lot of fun, and now I have this hip Dire Dire Docks arrangement for big band and some music about giraffes, so I can’t complain. Also: If you’re interested in checking out the other composition about giraffes, you can check out my bandcamp (https://jorikbergman.bandcamp.com/album/the-road-with-a-thousand-giraffes) or spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/3N2nb7gRsmqLtqE849ejjS?si=0NdwujhaT8CzuSXkrPRfEg). The line up: Alto (+flute) 1: Julius van Rhee Alto 2 (+clarinet) : Evgeny Ring Tenor 1: Jens Böckamp (solo) Tenor (+clarinet) 2: Joachim Lenhardt Bari (+bass clarinet): Heiko Bidmon Trumpet 1: Florian Raepke Trumpet 2: János Löber Trumpet 3: Stephan Geiger Trumpet 4: Marie Tjong-Ayong Trombone 1: Philipp Schittek Trombone 2: Matthias Schuller Trombone 3: Max Steffan Bass Trombone (+tuba): Els Verbruggen Piano (+plus rhodes): Moritz Preisler Guitar: Johannes Sour Drums: Arno Grootaers (solo) E-Bass: Louise van den Heuvel Recording, mixing: Stefan Deistler Recorded at Loft Köln Video by Geza Gadow The true OCRemix jazz fans will recognize 2 names in this list. Arno and Louise also played in “To See Like Me” and drove all the way from Belgium to Germany for this project. Another shoutout goes to Jens, who plays the tenor solo. I don’t think it has to be mentioned as it’s very obvious, but he absolutely killed it. Like, seriously, his solo goes so hard haha. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him a few times before, and constantly when I was writing the arrangement I had his sound and improvisation style in mind. And then it all came together in the studio and I just couldn’t be happier. I had a blast working with all of these fantastic musicians, who’re also all very nice and gentle people. I will be satisfied if at least 10% of these feelings come through in the recording. I love arranging video game music, as so many melodies are just so simple and beautiful. With this remix I tried to really treat the melody seriously, not focusing on showing off fancy chords and being complicated, but on melodic development, supported by the orchestration and groove, and resulting in a satisfying overall musical form. I hope it gets a pass on source material, and that y’all enjoy it! And, most importantly I hope that when (if??) it gets posted in 1-2 years I will still enjoy listening to it myself as well :). Lots of love Jorik

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Maybe groove bias?? YES Kidding, but people'll say it, so I'LL say it!

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Contact Information Your ReMixer name = Doffu Your real name = Shea Kennedy Your email address = Your website(s) = https://www.youtube.com/c/Doffu Your userid = 38479 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged = Tetris Attack Name of arrangement = Getting Froggy Name of individual song(s) arranged = Getting Froggy Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. = After a friend got me into this game's soundtrack, I realized the endless potential for remixing. I decided to do a tibral remix of the song Foggy's Stage, crafting poignant sounds on both hardware and software synthesizers. I introduce a sort of electro-dance beat partway through the arrangement and cut a lot of the original song material resulting in a sparser structure with more room for subtle forms of modulation.

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jmr sent a tweaked version (link in OP) with the following comments: I saw one of the main complaints was the intonation on the theremin style NES triangle parts. Quirk of the hardware - the pitch gets kinda squirrely on that channel in the upper registers. I hit the triangle parts with some pitch tweaks in melodyne. For context, I knew that part was a bit flat but accepted it because it was a limitation of the hardware I chose, and that's a good chunk of the band's aesthetic. The album was intended to be a pseudo-live recording with no major edits or things we couldn't achieve on stage, so it was left as is. Outside of the context of the album, I'm completely fine with faking it. :-)

I hit up Weston just to be sure there wasn't something huge being overlooked. Here's his breakdown and comments: So yeah, that would basically put this is "enjoyable listen, but not enough source tune usage". Moar source plz. No worries, you didn't know, but now you know. Needs to be arranging the VGM source tune for at least 50% of the track's runtime. NO

I wanted to weigh in on some Standards-based issues just to clarify things. Any arrangement of a previous arrangement needs to stand apart from both the source tune and the initial version of the arrangement. This definitely does on account of this sound palette and much more dynamic contrast. I didn't hear any dissonance and didn't mind the lead at :22. The thumps first heard at :27 are too loud. The lead at :42 could have been louder, but I still followed and focused on the melody just fine until a different lead stood out more at 1:09. 1:44 cleared up the textures and had a more open sound; I really dug the guitar tone at 2:11 a lot and wish it would have stayed longer, but with the raising of intensity at 2:24, I'll live with it. There was a buzziness tied to the chip sounds that was adding a kind of white noise that was soft enough to not be invasive, but was also adding some unnecessary clutter. From 2:38-3:07, this shouldn't have been so cluttered, and that was definitely a ding against this, but I'm also not put off by only nearly 20 seconds being iffy. I'm more permissive than these guys on "dissonance" and having rougher edges to tracks. I didn't hear anything dealbreaking here and though this was a very well-personalized performance with some purposeful grungier sounds that still clicks just fine even if some mixing wasn't ideal. I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good here, and this approach is cool with me. I don't think our production bar is so high for this hobbyist community that an arrangement this interpretive should be turned down; I'm disappointed at how close-minded the NOs seem and sincerely think the bar's being placed too high here. YES

I suggested Ronald submit this, so I'm glad he considered it. The arrangement is conservative but personalized enough for the rock approach (and the bookend intro and outro helped). I'll agree with the mixing critiques here, because the leads should be louder than the supporting chugs, and the bassline basically did disappear once the track filled out at :34. Right at :44, one of the guitar lines seems to have a lot of quiet but persistant buzziness; not sure what happened there. The drum writing's OK, but the main snare tone in particular obviously lacks body; if it had a denser sound, it would fill this out nicely. Not sure what was AVGN's stuff vs. EGM's, but they do work well together. The textures are decent, but there's definitely a lot of parts that seem to have overlapping frequencies, which is causing more clutter than I think was intended. To me, if this couldn't be revised, I'd still pass it, so that helps crystallize my decision, as the energy's solid, but it would only be a YES (borderline) on account of the mixing, and I also can't fault the others for wanting this to be cleaned up further. If this doesn't make it as is, I'd say consider beefing up that snare and mitigating that latent buzziness as nice bonuses, but if there's no appetite for that, just revisit the mixing (and/or message one of us for feedback on a revised mixdown), then send it through once again.

Now with 50% more Mario theme cameos, I see. We start with a 1Y handicap. YES

=== link to submission: --> <-- this track was made by me in Renoise, using: * Samples From Mars * Rave Generator * Mario Maker 2 samples === contact information * remixer name: jneen-collective * real name: Jeanine Adkisson * email address: * website: https://jneen-collective.bandcamp.com/ * forum user id: 38527 === submission information * game: Super Mario Maker for Wii U, Super Mario Maker 2 for Nintendo Switch * arrangement name: Mario Maker - Banned Wagon Mix * track remixed: Main Theme === additional game information: So for my first submission I said this was from Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch), but apparently the version there is an arrangement of the original theme from Super Mario Maker (Wii U). Truth is, this theme is all over both games, in the title screens, credits, and in Story Mode. Super Mario Maker (Wii U) version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn60nAbieF4 Super Mario Maker 2 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy0nNf4zfsU SMM2 also has 8-bit versions and a Night Mode version. The mashup bit was inspired by the credits version in SMM2, where the B section of the SMB1 Ground theme is played over the main theme: https://youtu.be/3CUL1QJz91U?t=117 Mario Maker music was composed by: Koji Kondo Naoto Kubo Asuka Hayazaki Mario Maker 2 Music was composed by: Atsuko Asahi Toru Minegishi Sayako Doi === mix comments Original comments: this mix was originally made as a theme for the Banned Wagon Team, but we eventually decided to use a different track. it came out really well though, so i wanted to polish it up and send it in. bass parts are all original, the breakbeat is custom sliced, and i added a lot of space to the harmonic rhythm to let the d&b elements and a couple melodic flairs shine through. mastered to approximately -14 lufs, peaking momentarily around -11, but i can render the unmastered version on request. hope you enjoy! On new version: * Added some mix variations on the breakbeat in the first loop * Broke apart the drum pattern in the second loop and added ride cymbals and claps * Added an entire new section with a resampled and re-sliced breakbeat and Big Horns and quotes inspired by the credits version of the track * Tamed the bass quite a lot * Differentiated the ear-candy bits in the mix a little more, hopefully now they sound distinct enough to not slip into the uncanny-valley they were in before. * Slightly more aggressive mastering, still targeting the youtube guidelines - can provide unmastered as well. Thanks to Hemophiliac and all the other judges for your suggestions, they were quite helpful! And thanks a ton for listening ❤️ - jneen