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Everything posted by Liontamer
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*NO* Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow & Super Metroid "Pure Zebes"
Liontamer replied to Emunator's topic in Judges Decisions
"Bloody Tears" - 1:18-1:36, 2:34-2:55, 3:33-4:25 "Maridia" - 3:04-3:30 = 117 seconds or 40.20% overt source usage Yep, whatever you did with the Maridia Rocky theme, congrats, it's unfortunately not recognizable in the first half. :-D I did hear the CV2's "Bloody Tears" melody from 1:18-1:36 & 2:34-2:55, even though it wasn't listed as a source tune, but "Purification" only arranges the intro of that song, not the verses, so this should have been DQed from the compo if "Purification" was the CV source, no? Maybe there's another Aria of Sorrow track also arranging "Bloody Tears"? There's Maridia finally from 3:04-3:30. Back to "Bloody Tears" from 3:33-4:25. Really dunno where this source breakdown even comes from, because the times and instruments don't match what's been given. I'm just confused, which doesn't mean I'm not being obtuse here, but just chiming in to say this didn't immediately make sense to me. To me, the instrumentation quality's solid enough, but the dynamics can feel pretty flat here despite the obvious gradual build when you skip around from section to section and better notice the changes in textural density. I'm willing to say that I also thought it was too dynamically flat on my first listen, but on repeated listens, I was fine with how it subtlely builds, and I'm OK being outvoted. There was a change at 3:04, albeit with no real transtion, so the switch felt awkward; see what you can do to smooth that out. To me, I'd just need a more accurate source breakdown, but if this source usage was explained better to me, and it was all in place re: sufficient & recognizable source usage, then I could pass this as is. For now though... NO (resubmit) -
"Forbidden Area" is a great source tune choice to work alongside Metroid music and definitely feels like Super Metroid music from another mother. :-D Very cool opening sound; that chirping-style lead was interesting, albeit the high-end felt a bit hot. Metroid Prime theme on belltones sounded off until it resolved at :59 and I understood where it went. Good bass writing (and presence) during the CV melody from 1:17-1:41. Nice breakbeat writing. Very effective dropoff at 2:39, though it felt like the track meandered until the MP melody came in at 3:14. Pretty cool how full the texture got when the bass beefed up at 3:44; cool contrast for a stronger finish! Count it! YES
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Artist Name: Mel Decision This piece was inspired by Emi Meyer's cover of Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls that appears in Blue Eye Samurai. I loved the tolling of the bells followed by the heavy intro. I had the idea of starting off with a choir that trails off into bells, before pivoting to a metal mix of The Cathedral. The loop for that theme is exceptionally short, however, so I dug into parts of Light of Silence, which appears inside the cathedral's dungeon, and then bits from World Revolution, which plays during one of the final boss battles of the game and slotted nicely into place with the rest of the mix. I wanted to keep the instrumentation fairly minimal for this mix, so I stuck with drums, guitars, an organ synth for timbral contrast, and occasional choir to really dig into the cathedral feeling. Outside of EQ and compression, the processing was fairly minimal—mostly reverb, a little chorus, and some short delay. This piece probably ended up being 20% arrangement and 80% fiddling with guitar VSTs to make them sound more natural. Props to the Sages & other remixers during office hours for all their feedback and advice around guitar tones, amps, and humanizing guitar midi. The tips I learned were both immediately applicable in this piece and also helpful for some other WIPs I'm tinkering with. I would have loved to get some live instruments playing on this track, but going all-in on VSTs did allow me to learn a lot more about programming guitars, which I'm grateful for. Hopefully I was able to bring some semblance of realism into the parts.t Games & Sources Chrono Trigger: The Cathedral by Yasunori Mitsuda: entire source, 0:00–1:10, 1:34–2:10, 3:22–3:46, 4:28–end remix Light of Silence by Nobuo Uematsu: 0:06–1:05 source, 2:16–3:10 remix World Revolution by Yasunori Mitsuda: 0:25–1:18 source, 3:10–3:22, 3:47–4:28, 4:40–4:52 remix
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Artist Name: Aaron Lehnen Created unique sections, extrapolation of melodies and chord changes. Juxtaposing various themes and extending harmonic structures. Heavy usage of double bass metal drums and 8 string djenty guitars. Multiple harmonies re-imagined through various instruments and ranges. Harmonized guitar sections/solos. Synthwave portions mixed with Prog/metal Games & Sources Metroid is an adventure platformer released for the Famicom Disk System in 1986 and the NES in 1987. In this game, you play as bounty hunter Samus Aran on her first mission to defeat Mother Brain on planet Zebes. Platforms: FDS, NES Year: 1986 Developed by: Nintendo Published by: Nintendo
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Oooooh, for this Shinobi 3 source, I get why it's breaking Chimpazilla's ears in our #judges chat; that line brought in at 1:29 of the source. I 100% hear the dissonance; there's something about it though where's it not THAT bad for me; my mind's playing it to me like the way you'd THINK it would sound if that line were melodious, which might make 0 sense to say; I'm unsure of if there's a musical term for this dynamic. :-) The beats at :25 are mixed in an odd way; a nice, booming presence, but sounding on the lossy/no-high-end side, so it's not benefiting the texture. Then some light claps or layered finger snaps, whatever they were, came in and also sounded very lossy and also very flimsy and dry. I liked the transition sound at :57, but then the mixing of the next section also felt off. The light clacking percussion part added at :59 was too flimsy, then some beats added in at 1:10 sounded beefier, but again very lossy-sounding. The buzzing synth line brought in at :59 is practically buried once other elements are added at 1:13. The string line at 1:13 initially sounds decent, but gets way more exposed from 1:33-1:55. The overall sound & flow of the track is serviceable, but even by 1:33, it's pretty repetitive; 1:10-1:55 could be cut in half. MindWanderer's correct that the melody, as presented now, drags out over the course of the track; there may be other ways to present it to better maintain the interest. 2:07 changes up the textures more, but, from 2:11-2:52, lines begin to step over one another and competing to be heard, it's too messy, cluttered, and indistinct, due to that part added at 2:11. From 2:29-2:40, there's some clashing writing from whatever line was handling the lead before the part shifted back to the source melody at 2:41. Lots of quiet indistinctness from the bass writing as well from 2:30-2:50, where it's filling in the space some, but you're not making out any individual notes. Back to the source melody at 3:03. Key change at 3:25 that sounded really clunky. I dunno any theory, so while I can't articulate it, the transposition of the part-writing taken from the source isn't clicking. I've said this to HoboKa and think it's the same for you; when you play it straight with your source tune transcriptions, it's fine, but often when you try to deviate in big ways, it opens up the potential for non-melodious writing. Dunno what that instrumentation is with kind of a light phasing effect on it, but it's just creating clutter, and when it briefly drops out during transition phrases like from 3:46-3:48, it makes it more apparent how awkwardly it sits in the texture just adding noise. Much better texture at 4:11; less was more there, both in terms of having a direction and the textures sounding clear enough, so it was an effective finish. I didn't catch any of the Rise of the Robots writing; I'll check it later, but it didn't affect anything from a source usage standpoint. To me, when the textures are fuller, you're inadvertently adding a ton of clutter and making it difficult to follow along, even though the core melody is repeating so much (and could use other variations), and the off-key sections (2:29, 3:25) dragged this down as well. Hemo made a good point that everything right now seems to pull emphasis away from the live parts, which come off extremely subdued. Like MW, I agree there's good potential here, but it'll need a mixing reboot, undoing the off-key writing, and maybe some further melodic variations (not necessarily changing the notes, it could be the instrumentation), in that order. The first two are necessarily, the third may not be but is worth exploring. Unpolished is an apt word for it that MW used; we don't need perfect polish, but it'll need more than this. Lots of good potential here. :-) NO (resubmit)
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OCR04703 - *YES* Undertale "You Can Always Come Back Here"
Liontamer replied to Emunator's topic in Judges Decisions
Man, I hate this slow shit... when's it gonna GO somewhere? (Kidding. :-P) I definitely hear the Skrypnyk influence, not just in the music, but in the effects and audio sampling of the kiddos playing and yelling at one another. A classy, mellow mood that breathes, clicks, ebbs, and flows. :-) YES -
OCR04733 - *YES* EarthBound "Ashes in the Snow Man"
Liontamer replied to Liontamer's topic in Judges Decisions
Carl Sagan is an agnostic demon, so we shouldn't use his quote. (Kidding!) Yeah, no problem here, if jmr would want to use it. -
DarkeSword told me I should submit this through here as the site upload is not working for me for whatever reason. Games: Metroid Prime + Castlevania Aria of Sorrow Track Name: Going Deeper Artist Name: VARIA Sources: Metroid Prime - Menu Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLLE_PvJ5mY&ab_channel=SeryogA Castlevania Aria of Sorrow - Forbidden Area https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65ID04f6OuE&ab_channel=TheVGMClassics Notes: This track was created for OCR's Game, Set, Mash 2 back in March. I was given the task of mashing up the Metroid Prime menu theme, and a hidden area theme from Castlevania Aria of Sorrow as part of a group. After submitting for the competition I was super happy with my arrangement, as it is super fun and adventurous, and I think it stacked up well against our opponents. I was on Team Whip (Castlevania) against Team Gun (Metroid). I was heading the arrangement for this round, and I set up something a little different than our other tracks. I asked my team members to give me samples; any kind of sample would do. Some gave me clips of sounds from around their houses, clips of singing and humming, samples they found online or recorded of instruments, or things they produced. From these, I created synth instruments, sample instruments, and fx which I used to then write an arrangement of both tracks into one jungle/drum and bass track. This is a method I've found really activates my creativity, and you may have seen its like in online beat-making competitions, where producers are given a sample pack and a time limit and have to make the best thing they can. The mashup of it all turned out quite fun. I elected to alternate between the source tracks, and kind of use the Metroid Prime melodies as a hype 'chorus' that plays interspersed between longer, meandering sections from Aria of Sorrow. The two play off each other very well and all the key changes really make the song feel like a journey; we are 'Going Deeper!' (literally, as the song ends one or two keys down from where it starts haha). Since submitting for the competition, I have added extra instruments and effects, and done a lot of work in the mix to make it sound better and fully realize the vision I couldn't in just the week and a half we had in the competition. I am super happy with how its come out, and it'll be featured on my upcoming Metroid EP alongside 'Flooded Caverns' (my last OCR remix) and 3 (possibly 4??) other Metroid remixes this July! I'm so so excited to start rolling out tracks for this project that has been in the works for years now, and been a dream of mine for over a decade. I hope you enjoy the track! Artists who helped with production: paradiddlesjosh, pixelseph, meldecision, and Moebius. Thank you! VARIA
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OCR04720 - *YES* Earthworm Jim 2 "Tangerines for Moose"
Liontamer posted a topic in Judges Decisions
OC ReMix team, Hello again! Mazedude's back with another release, and yes, another tracker homage. -- Remix Title: "Tangerines for Moose" Game: Earthworm Jim 2 System: Sega Genesis (although it also came out on SNES) Year: 1995 Composer: Tommy Tallarico Original Composition: Anything but Tangerines (also known sometime as just Tangerine) WAV file: -- Description: Fun fact, in early 2024 I was looking at my list of tracker homages, checking out which trackers I had mimicked a lot over the years, and contrarily who I hadn't yet paid homage to, even though they had been a big source of inspiration as I was learning the art form. As part of a fun exercise I even started to map out what game themes I would choose to arrange as part of a stylistic tribute, keeping in theme with the game remix by way of tracker homage motif. Interestingly enough I landed on Anything but Tangerines from Earthworm Jim, as potential for a tracker homage to Tito, per his 1995 tune "Mooserun." (Note that Mooserun was darn impressive due to the insane amount of brass/sax/jazz samples used in the track, not a simple style to mimic by any means.) I loved the idea, but I put a pin in it... who knew when I would have time to explore such an idea. Fast forward a couple months, and out of nowhere I get an email asking me to contribute to Earworm Jam, a remix album commemorating the 30th anniversary of Earthworm Jim, and would I like to make something for it. What timing! Enthusiastically I said yes, and could I claim the Tangerine theme from EWJ2 while I was at it. Sweet. Claimed. Then... I had to make it. Good gravy that was difficult. Tapping into the sampleset that Tito established... that was hard! Making it work for Anything but Tangerines and also nailing the original theme, the notes of the guitar solo, hitting the flow while keeping the funk style intact... yeah, that was difficult. But I did it. And I'm very proud of the final result. Behold, "Tangerines for Moose." -- Let me know if you need anything else! All the best, Christopher "Mazedude" Getman -
RebeccaETripp Rebecca Tripp https://www.youtube.com/@RebeccaETripp/videos ID: 48262 Game(s): ALBW, TP, OoT, SS, BotW Song Title: Love Thaws the Heart Songs Remixed: Ice Ruins (ALBW), Swamp Palace (ALBW), Lake Hylia (TP), Zora’s Domain (OoT), Lanayru Sandsea (SS), Mipha’s Theme (BotW) Here’s a link: Again, the oboe and english horn were performed by Medlix, the flute and piccolo by Gamer of the Winds, and the ocarina by Steven Higbee! I had a lot of fun with this section, graduating the lonely chill of OoT’s Ice Cavern (where I had left off in the first third of the whole medley), through increasingly warmer and kinder aquatic themes, until finally thawing out with Mipha’s love. The first movement is a descent into water’s mystery. The second movement represents the trials, joys, and transformations within its embrace. The third movement will represent the water’s transcendent release! PS: if this middle section cuts off too abruptly, I could combine it with the third section instead, but it would be quite long!
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OCR04667 - Final Fantasy IV & VIII "Time Flies"
Liontamer posted a topic in ReMix Reviews & Comments
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.