Liontamer

I can see why this got some borderline YESs, but I'm in agreement with the NOs on this lacking enough dynamic contrast, even in light of the narrower dynamic curve here. One thing that doesn't help is the beatwork being so repetitive and also relatively empty and basic. Arrangement-wise, this does personalize the sound nicely, and I felt like I was hearing something in a similar vein to Super Mario Galaxy music; this has a lot of personality and the mixing's solid, but the beats need some fleshing out and/or additional subtle variation, and the melody could also use the same, even though changing up the instrumentation went in the right direction for helping this stand apart from the original. This is a really good base, and doesn't need wild changes, but it does need some additional variation. Definitely don't drop this one, PC, this is really promising. NO (resubmit)

Agreed that this was excellent. The time sig change was brief, and actually could have gone in some other directions as well to extend the change-up, but it was very smoothly handled. Good expansive genre adaptation of the source, along with clean, precise mixing that packs a nice punch. Great work, guys! YES

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The track's more lo-fi-sounding now than where I feel would be optimal, but I can get past it; IMO, the beats don't pack much punch anymore, and I think the soundscape sounds too distant. Lots of new original writing sprinkled in here and there to accent the track and develop the interpretation more substantively than last time, even though I was fine with the first version. IMO, it would be better to get another pass to make the overall sound more clear, but the arrangement substance is still there and I'm fine with the overall production as is. Even if it's not the strongest pass, I'm still on board. YES

Original Decision Thank you for allowing me to have a jury in the first place, and thank you for letting me resubmit my track, I hope it'll be on OCremix standards this time I did the required amendments that were pointed out but also made a few changes that I felt necessary. MP3 320 - ReMixer name: ANTOX - Real name: Anthony Nemer - Email address: - Website: https://soundcloud.com/anthonynemer/tracks - User id: 18006 - Name of game arranged: Final Fantasy VII - Name of arrangement: JENOVA's Witness - Name of individual song(s) arranged: J-E-N-O-V-A - Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. Final Fantasy VII by Nobuo Uematsu for PlayStation I was inspired by New Age music from the 90s, (mainly Enigma for the beats) with a blend of Synthwave. Cheers! Anthony Nemer

Original Decision ReMixer name: Michael Hudak Website: https://soundcloud.com/user-513303599 Name of game arranged: TLoZ - Skyward Sword Name of my arrangement: Takeyabu Resort Promo Package, 1991 Name of song arranged: Bamboo Island Link to my arrangement: Link to original song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shibvkpyb8E Hello there! I'm submitting a second version of this because the first was probably a little too weird for the judges' (very reasonable) standards, and not quite traditional vaporwave-y enough to qualify as vaporwave, which I touted it to be. Hopefully this new version is. I degraded it even more, but added some more groove and vocal samples, as well as a second verse. Just trying to get a vaporwave track on OCR, and Bamboo Island is the perfect track to use, I think. A takeyabu is an unkempt bamboo thicket in Japanese (as opposed to a chikurin, which is nice, fancy one), and this song is essentially the background music for a promotional video advertising a corporate retreat hidden out in the wilderness somewhere in late boom-period Japan. Specifically, 1991. The singing samples are of me, and the laughter is the great fairy from Ocarina of Time (wrong Zelda game, I know, but she had the best laughs!).

There's some sort of light deformation/buzzing going on very lightly in the background from :05-:16 that doesn't sound intentional. The drums are louder than the guitar stuff and the melodic lead, which doesn't make sense to me, but the balance isn't so off that it breaks the track. Props on switching up the drum patterns some as well as decreasing the overly long breakdown, moves which I felt did benefit the track. I was already on board before with the prior version, and the revisions were an improvement. Good luck with the rest of the vote, Sebastien! YES

Original Decision Contact Information Your ReMixer name: overflow Your real name: Sebastien Skaf Your userid: 23598 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: F-Zero Name of arrangement: Break City Name of individual song(s) arranged: Mute City Link to the original soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBuXfcFKAlo Here's what I did: In terms of the arrangement, I cut the breakdown at 2:34 to about half. One of the things I hear back a lot from you guys is that the drum patterns are too repetitive, and while I think this is sort of a symptom of the genre I agree that there's room for improvement. So I went ahead and wrote a few new grooves for the resub, you'll recognize them most in the last use of the main theme and in the half time sections. I also wrote in 3-4 new tom fills, particularly between sections where I feel they're most noticeable. I've addressed some of the judges concerns about the EQ & compression; a lot of the ducking here was because I wanted these big Pendulum kick & snare hits, but they definitely overpowered the mix, so I decreased the gain on these by maybe 10%. The guitar is still not doubled, but I gave it some more stereo space and a little more low end to give it some body. I'm not sure if that's sufficient, but I wanted to thank everyone for the feedback anyway. I'm still new to this type of music so it helps a lot!

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We've got other ReMixes where the source tune usage is overt, but functionally more of a background/supporting line with original writing in front of it, the most prominent example on OCR being SGX's "Kick Your A". As long as the invoked source material is, to quote the Standards, "identifiable and dominant", then that works for me; in this specific case even when the source tune is in the background, it's clear, audible, and integrally works in concert with the other original writing once that kicked in at :52. We did have a Zelda submission by RebeccaETripp that we rejected for obscuring the source tune too much in the background, even though, by a stopwatch perspective, the source tune had been invoked for more than 50% of the track's duration. In other words: the context always matters. Production-wise, this has the same issues commonly found in Pieter's pieces, i.e. the humanization of the piano sample itself isn't great, leading to an obvious uncanny valley territory for the overall performance. Pieter frequently overcomes that issue, but it's still a legitimate drawback to the finished product. Arrangement-wise, I was timestamping this for my notes, but aside from me not being quite as generous due to some brief gaps, the source usage breakdown Pavos gave was fair and accurate, and the interpretation was readily apparent and creative. When in doubt, definitely submit the work, provide as much context and breakdown of the source arrangement as you can, exactly like Pieter did, and let the judges examine things. Nice work, Pieter; count me in! YES

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Interesting piece, and it's weird, but it's still capably produced. You just need to listen to it several times to get acclimated to the structure and flow of it. When it comes to source usage, Michael's breakdown was very helpful and appreciated. Always err on the side of providing us as much information as possible with source usage, rather than needing the judges to ask. My timestamps slightly were a little less generous than Michael's, but the sources were overtly invoked where he claimed they were, and I tried (as always) to give as much credit as possible. prophetik wondered about rhythmic connections where the notes are different. The context also matters, but that has always been a valid arrangement technique, as long as it's clear where the direct A-to-B relationship from source to arrangement is. The track was 4:05 long, so I needed to be able to identify VGM being arranged for at least 122.5 seconds for the VGM references to dominate the arrangement. :38.5-:46.5 (first two notes referencing 1:46 of source), :53.75-1:05.5, 1:12.25-1:17.5 (quiet), 1:27.5-1:31, 1:33.5-1:35.5, 1:41.25-1:52.5, 1:57-2:22.75, 2:27.75-2:35, 2:39.75-2:41.25, 3:14.75-3:26.5, 3:34.75-4:01.5 = 114.75 seconds or 46.83% overt source usage The piano of the first 7 seconds of the intro also seemed loosely derived from the constant sine wave part of the source, but it wasn't something I'd count myself. You could also count the 2-note rhythm and notes of the patterns from :17-:38 (with big gaps) in a similar way to what I'm counting from :38-:46 in referencing 1:46. That didn't quite get there for me, but the case could be made by someone else. To be on the safe side, there should be more overt source usage in the opening minute somewhere. As is, this is slightly source-light to where the VGM references almost but don't quite dominate the arrangement. Otherwise, the unorthodox sound design didn't both me whatsoever. Good stuff here, Michael; please don't be discouraged, and I hope you're willing to resubmit this one with some additional tweaks. Production- and writing-wise, this may be throwing some folks off, but I greatly appreciate the approach and character here. NO (refine/resubmit)

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Back in her earlier days, @Rexy played in piano stuff via keyboard, but it would sound mechanical, so she could better speak to why something played in live would still sound super-unrealistic; I'm looping her in here, and hopefully we can get her thoughts. It's a spirited presentation, but the obviously lack of humanization of the sound needs to be mitigated somehow.