crypto_magnum

SFX towards the end of the song are working much better now; nice work there! I don't have much to add other than that I agree with the concerns mentioned by others about some sections of the song feeling a little sparse. But I would like to narrow in on the part I enjoyed the most, since I was slightly vague about it last time: 2:21 - 3:01 was the highlight for me. One thing you might try is bringing more of that level of energy, complexity and excitement into the rest of the song. Not to say that every section needs to have a crazy lead or that you shouldn't have peaks and valleys, but as a whole the remix feels a tad low-key to me, outside of 2:21-3:01 and the end. Please ignore me if I'm just being ignorant to the genre, but I do feel this advice may be somewhat universal. Thanks again for posting; great work so far!

Ah, the eternal struggle of the remix artist-- how much do you change it, and how much do you stay faithful to the original? I wasn't paying close-enough attention earlier when I made the suggestion about the improv/solo section... it looks like you had already stated you were against it, prior to my post. Though I personally think it would be a great addition, I can't and won't argue against your aesthetic preference. Now, if your goal is to get this posted to OCR, I predict you'll run into concerns from the judges about this remix being what they call "too conservative." Not to say that you haven't already added a lot to the source, creatively, but is it enough to pass OCR's bar? I'm skeptical. Hey, my hunch could be wrong, though. However, if you have a different vision for what you want to accomplish with your remix, that's totally cool too. And maybe there is a happy middle ground in here where you can change up the song just enough so that it's feels new enough for OCR, without pushing it so far that it betrays your artistic vision. Putting that discussion aside, I still think your remix sounds fantastic.

Lots of interesting ideas packed into this one! Not sure how to tackle this one other than with a shotgun (please do not assume that the violent imagery indicates a distaste for your remix-- I actually think it's a great start!) -3:58 careful with the popping sound right in the middle of the transition when you reverse the strings. See if you can smooth that over. -5:06 sounds like I'm suddenly in a completely different space. See if you can make this transition smoother too, because I was really hooked, waiting to see where you were going to go with the reversed section, but then the change right on 5:06 felt a little too abrupt. -7:23 some pretty intense dissonance here... not sure if it works or not... maybe. Chaotic dissonance really requires more spacing in the mix to be effective, imo. Everything feels a little too on top of each other here, so instead of a "wild free-fall all around me," it's more of a "jarring laser beam shooting at my forehead..." right, I hope I'm making some sense here. -In general, really good use of the free piano samples! These go a long way when you give them a little love like this. Strings are less convincing... but there's not much you can do about that without spending money. Maybe put $10 down on the FL Soundfont Player and grab a free copy of squidfont orchestra. The soundfont player also opens up a host of other free samples... worth every dollar, imo. Over all, this is an impressive start. Much better than my first project, to say the least. And don't ever worry about being too ambitious! You don't grow if you don't push yourself outside of your comfort zone. I might go for something closer to the 3- to 4-minute range on your next remix, just so you can cover more ground faster and try out more techniques on more, varied sources. But you're on the right track. Keep at it!

This is not a genre I've heard much of, but I thought I'd give it a listen since I seem to be on a Sonic kick today. I was a little worried about the simplicity of the opening at first, but by around minute 2 or 3 the remix was really growing on me. The synergy between the rhythms in the rhythm section and the rhythms in the non-rhythm sections make we want to move. It's like, infectious... you can't help but want to dance to this! The only thing I feel confident in nitpicking are the gulping-for-air sfx from 3:51 - 4:05. They lag behind the beat a little bit until they really get up to speed at 4:05. I'd mess around with these... see if you can chop them up in way such that the slower, lower-pitched version of the sound has the same exact time between the bending-down hit and the bending-up hit as the sped-up version which locks in with your tempo more precisely. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but this was a fun listen. =)

Ah ha ha, I love little details like this. I agree with Garpocalypse that the effect will be lost on most people in the sense that most-- if not all-- of your listeners are not going to overtly notice this and deduce your motivation for including it. But I also think that these kinds of details can have a subconscious effect on the listener. Similar to how a TV or movie underscore evokes emotion often without being noticed, a subtle mixing choice in a song otherwise meant for focused listening can also evoke a shift in feeling or mood from the listener without alerting the listener as to the "how" or "why." All of that having been said, let's get to the meat of the evaluation: First of all, production is great-- comfortably OCR-quality in my opinion, but I'm neither a judge nor posted remixer, so take that with a grain of salt. The main hurdle for this remix is that the song structure is very simple, almost cover-ish. It does the standard two-loops-through-the-material thing that most video game source music posted on youtube does. Given the genre you've chosen, this is easily fixable! Just add some sections of improv, for one! Maybe get more creative with the intro and outro too, though outside of the context of the over-all structure, they work just fine on their own. Other than structure, I feel that this is most of the way there. The sound is great, plenty of nice personal touches in the little turns you do on the melody, you enhance the feel of the original... all tricky things to accomplish in a remix. Nice work!

Yeah, I'm certainly one of the believers. Here's a fun video on the subject of MJ's alleged involvement in Sonic 3 (ignore the Ice Cap comparison, which is a bit silly): Back on topic: yep, this is still just as good as the first time I listened to it. I'm afraid I simply can't wait for this to go through judging and posting... this is going to have to go straight to my playlist. Love it love it love it!

Took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, all of your work I've listened to recently is not just professional, but stacks up favorably next to other professional songs as well... which is to say, I can't help you, but thanks yet again for another fantastic piece. You've made a fan out of me. =)

Wow-- really good! I'm trying to find something, anything, to nitpick at... but I can't. Maybe mark it for mod review or take it to the irc channel to make sure we're not missing anything here, but to me this sounds like it's ready to submit right now. This source has always been a favorite of mine, but you brought something new to it and made it even better. Great work! This is keeper, for sure.

You could always aim for BadAss Volume 2 with this... or 3, depending on how fast you work. The bones are good-- what it needs most is some meaty bass. Pretty epic concept... I hope you decide to finish it!

$100 spots flying off the shelves again... good to see. Good luck everyone!

Ah, I hadn't thought of that! Now that you mention it, it does sound a bit like if you preview a recently posted OCR remix using the embedded youtube video on the side, versus downloading it; the preview always sounds slightly muffled to me, but maybe it's really just that it's lower fidelity... I'll bet you that's what I was hearing. So maybe I'd examine how you're rendering your final file... see if you've got a setting turned down. I really wouldn't know much about that. Taking a fresh listen again, I still love it! OCR doesn't have enough Gradius, imo. I'd love to hear what you could do with a less cover-ish take on this source or something else from this series, too, but that's up to you.

What an appropriate user name you have there! I really enjoyed this cover a lot. Really nice synth sounds, you nailed all of the bends, and production-wise there isn't anything much that sticks out to me as lacking. I'm generally a poor judge of production values the better they are though, so maybe someone with a more fined-tuned ear can help with that. The one thing I did notice was that the whole mix (from 0:20 on) seems sort of... slightly muffled... as if there's a somewhat harsh low pass filter on most of the instruments. I'm kind of unsure about this criticism and can't quite articulate right, but maybe give it another listen and see if you hear the same thing. Maybe it's just that the lower half of the frequency spectrum is really filled out, but the top half doesn't have as much going on and so it feels a bit unbalanced...? Or maybe I'm crazy. I'd get a second opinion on this before messing with it. Nice work on this. I love the Gradius III soundtrack, and this was like a nostalgia trip in HD. Great cover; thanks for posting!

This is quite a popular song on OCRemix (I count 6 posted remixes so far). With that kind of coverage, it becomes harder and harder to find a unique take which does something new with the source... and I feel you've pulled it off. Being unfamiliar with the rest of the series' soundtrack, I unfortunately don't have a full and complete appreciation for where you've woven in additional sources, but the writing and arrangement are complex and interesting nonetheless. There's a lot of variation going on here, a lot of different ideas to listen to, so many sweet counter-melodies, and you've connected them all beautifully in my opinion. The main worry for getting this posted would be mix/EQ. I'm awful at mix/EQ, so I'm not the one to ask for detailed advice, but I hear the mix clumping up around low to mid-low frequencies. I would analyze the frequency distribution of your song and try to fill in the gaps (and eliminate or trim back excessive overlaps). The kick drum is also lost in the mix (probably due to the traffic jam around the lower frequencies)... it needs to pop out more. I'd recommend clearing space for it, side-chaining it, whatever you need to do to get it to cut through the mix. Actually, this goes for the toms, too. There's also some weird popping issues... maybe clipping, or buffer underruns. At first I thought maybe it was attached to the kick drum (early on, they sound in-sync). But later, the popping/crackling kind of goes off on its own around 1:41-1:47. Don't want that sneaking into a final render. Over all, this is excellent.

Mmm... this is quite a pleasant, pleasing remix. I love the combination of Pachelbel's Cannon with the source-- this is a great concept and I think you should keep running with it. I have to agree with timaues' concerns about the full-on Pachebel theme towards the middle of the song though. The build-up, instrumentation, passing the melody and counter melodies between the winds, and everything is great during this section, but I would steer away from overtly quoting that melody. Also, I'm not certain that kind of thing would get past OCR's judging process, if that's your aim; the Pachelbel chord progression is totally fine, but doing a complete shift away from the video game source into a remix of something non-VG (at the climax of the song, no less) is probably pushing it. Production-wise and sample-wise, the orchestra is pleasant enough for me. The woodwinds are stronger than the strings, imo, which is good since they often carry the melody and are relatively exposed out in front of the strings. Really, it's nigh impossible to make 100% real-sounding orchestral music without recording the real deal, so there's always room for improvement here. But I think this is really good and doesn't need much tinkering, with one exception: the synthy string melody at 2:51. That one sort of ruins the illusion for me. It's a fine idea, writing-wise, but the sound needs some tweaking to reach the standard you've set with the rest of the song. Lastly, the second half of the song after 2:30 feels a bit meandering to me. I don't have an issue with any of the individual sections (on their own, they're written nicely and sound great), but in terms of overall song structure, it feels like we're on a bell curve, with the climax right in the middle. It's not necessarily "wrong" to structure your song like that (and there are some cases where it's really effective), but I think in this case it lessens the impact of the sections which follow the climax, because the song never quite matches that level of energy again, pleasing as it is to listen to. This is really good work. I spend a lot of time in this post nit-picking and talking about improvements, but it's not indicative of my over all impression of your remix. Over all, this is great and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for sharing!

Haha, I love it! Really fun remix. Glad you went with the Link scream and panting sfx over Wolf Link's "howling"... *cringe* Although I don't know, that might just crack me up too if you added a howling solo in the next section. Best use of sfx since PROTO-DOME's "Fill Me Up with Snacky Happiness," imo. You must finish this and submit it. Or we surely will whip you.

Interesting chord selection (in a good way). I like how you made this your own. Not to berate you on sound quality (which you already acknowledged as an issue), but that would be a fairly painless yet vast improvement if you cleaned that up. Also, it's a little short for an OCR-style remix, but you demonstrate strong interpretive skills in the short selection you've presented here. This is a good start, or a nice short, depending on what you want it to be. I think it would serve as a good foundation for building more, if you so choose to develop it into a full-length song. Thanks for sharing!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must say once again that this is just absolutely fantastic. The timpani rewrite was a great choice, and you nailed the signature flute bend, too. I wouldn't worry about it being too bombastic. When the brass swells up big around 0:30 and leads into the more wild, extra-heroic section, well, that's my favorite bit of the song actually. It's definitely more of an active-listening piece than an understated underscore... but that's good, that makes it interesting. I mean, the source is written as the theme song/fanfare of a time-traveling frog hero-- "bombastic" is totally appropriate! With regards to realism, if I'm being as nit-picky as possible, I'll say that the choir sounds slightly iffy to me when the tail becomes exposed at 0:17, 0:49 and 1:05. Maybe it's the vibrato that's throwing me off... it could be less an issue with realism, and more an issue with my personal distaste for vocal vibrato in any quantity other than "extremely subtle." On the other hand, when the choir is tucked away behind the orchestra, it sounds like one of the most realistic choir samples I've ever heard. And I'm dissatisfied with most choir libraries, actually, but whatever you are using, I don't recognize it and you are using it extremely well. Another awesome piece.

Right off the top, good improvements in the second version, fleshing out the soundscape a bit with the extra ping-ponging delay. The string sound, I'm not totally sold on, when it hits that prominent, high riff (Ab-Db-C-Bb). The strings sound a bit more real when they're tucked away behind everything else, but out front, exposed, they feel a little stiff. I have this same problem in all of my WIPs, and I've yet to master the art of producing a convincing orchestral sound. I'd start by playing around with different articulations if you have them available to you. Also, since this is still a work-in-progress, maybe this doesn't need saying, but I'd recommend writing a way out of the song with something other than a fade-out. One of the first (and best) bits of advice I ever got on OCR was that "a fade-out is a cop-out." Unless you're doing something really ambient where you gradually bring in and subsequently fade out multiple textural layers (see Disco Dan's "Riptide," from Donkey Kong Country), it's often best to end your song with confidence, or... a punctuation mark. Solid work so far, in my opinion. Lots of things are working well in this song.

I was wondering how you were going to pull off everything you mentioned in the description-- at 190bps no less-- without it becoming a mess, but... that was fun, original, unique as it gets... raw joy. Very nicely done. If you've got more stuff like this on the EP, then I'm ready to see just how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Ah, yes, you posted the Gremlins 2 remix a short while back... I recognized your sound immediately when the strings swelled into the mix. This is really top-quality orchestral production, way beyond my ability to lend a helpful ear. My ear isn't as trained as those of the forum moderators and judges of OCR, but I can tell you that your production sounds nearly flawless as far as I'm able to discern. In terms of song structure, it's a little conservative, but you more than make up for this with the beautiful counter-melodies you skillfully trade off between sections of the orchestra. The length is also a bit short for my liking, though even if you stretched it out to 4-5 minutes, I'm sure I'd still be left wanting more. I guess with video game source music being as short as it tends to be, you might consider revisiting the song structure after all in order to get more length out of the song without going into loops and repetition. Brilliant work, again. All I can say is, keep it up.

You've captured the mystery and wandering feeling of the source, but also infused it with a greater sense of urgency (via a tempo increase). It's a nice, subtle shift in tone. The biggest issue for me is, this feels more like a cover (especially for the first minute or-so). And that's totally cool if that's what you're going for, but if your aim is to work towards OCR's creative requirements, then this is an area to focus on. I'd recommend you try changing up the instrumentation, mess with the song's structure, etc. You do chop up and move the melody around later in the song, which adds some originality, but I think that the beginning goes on a little long without substantial differences from the source. You may also consider taking some time to beef up your sample library too. I'd start with the free stuff, because you can get a lot of mileage out of that. There are various threads covering samples and where to get them... I think in the Help and Newbies forum? A forum search should pull up the thread. There's some work to do, but you're on your way. Thank you for sharing, and keep it up! =)

Pretty rockin'. The only potential issue is a lack of dynamic range. Without a break in the action or a quieter section, the head-banging heavy metal gradually loses impact the longer it goes on. If you played more with the duality of face-melting shreddage versus simmering intensity, the contrast would make all parts of the song more effective, imo. But honestly, it still sounds really good to me. I could totally see this passing the panel. Plenty of originality, convincing production... very solid. Hard to find much to improve outside of a nitpick here and there, at least to my relatively untrained ear. Nice work.

Yeah, the previous comments really nailed it. Definitely take a listen to Day 3 Clocktown for a perfect example of major against minor working well. It's a really interesting effect, yet also technically difficult to pull off. I think that to really get these sources working well together, you'd need to get very liberal with the arrangement, particularly reharmonization... in other words, maybe a really clever chord progression would do the trick, though personally there isn't an obvious one that jumps out at me. For my taste, the dissonances aren't quite hitting the spot just yet. This is a really cool experiment though. Can't stress enough how important it is to try stuff like this. Bold is better than boring! Thanks for sharing. =)

Pretty clever how you tied these two sources to each other. One thing I would watch out for is note disagreement-- there's a fair amount of it throughout the song. What I mean is, it sounds like you have two harp parts going at the same time (or sometimes harp and piano), and they don't always agree on what key/scale they're in, so you end up with Minor 2nds where you probably don't want them... these dissonant intervals sound a little prickly in an otherwise soothing song. If your DAW allows you to lay the parts side by side, or overlay one on top of the other, that should make it easier to spot the disagreements visually, if you're having trouble hearing them. Otherwise, I like what you've got going on here. Both sources are recognizable, yet interwoven well enough so that I don't feel like I'm ping-ponging back and forth between them. Specifically, I like how you start with OoT's melodic line playing on top of Chrono Trigger's ostinato; when you're able to blend things together like that (rather than just jumping between melodies), then you wind up with an interesting pairing that's not just another medley.

Sweet jesus, that orchestral sound! I almost didn't post, because I can't find any advice to offer. But the production values are just too good not to comment. Wow.