The Legendary Zoltan

Oh yeah, sorry. FFXIII. OCR said they had a podcast once, I thought. Is that right? If it DOES exist, do you know where that would be found? I'm gonna listen to your podcast later.

Well, first I'll say congratulations to Another Soundscape. He's a beautiful, beautiful Swedish man and I love him. Hahaha!! Second, what exactly is a podcast? Is it an internet radio thing? What kind of thing was the FF8 podcast?

I just wanted to remind all you great remixers, Legion, Fray, Sixto, and Suzumebachi (Fishy said he was "up for some metal" so perhaps he's making something too) that the original deadline we decided on (well, I decided on) of November 18th will be here in about 10 days. If you'd like and extension, then I need to hear it directly from your lips/keyboard. If everybody's just fine, then I'll be looking forward to hearing your final versions on November 18th. Thanks a lot guys.

. . . ? Sounds dramatic. Hahaha.

I've never heard Painkiller's music, but you said that you wanted something that constantly has heavy riffs and is not too melodic. Does that kind of music exist in games? Hahaha. Ambient or cinematic sounding music in games doesn't usually (ever?) consist of heavy guitars.

OH! Since I think I did some compression before-hand on those drums, you might need to make a new one from the drum MIDI, if it doesn't go as well as you planned.

And that's EXACTLY what I'm going for. Vikingish. The song is about Ragnarok coming and it's sung partly from the point of view of a viking who was there and that what I want it to reflect.

Yeah, it's the exact same chord progression and the string parts GREATLY resemble the ones from Chrono Trigger. HOWEVER, since the progression is only TWO CHORDS LONG, and the number of possible two-chord prgressions that can exist in our current music theory is EXTREMELY finite, I don't think it can really be copyrighted. But yeah, it's totally possible that the writer of the music got the idea from Chrono Trigger. And that makes it cool.

I leave it in your capable hands. I'm thinking it's all my distortion's fault. I hope not though. Yeah, even aside from the echo aspect of the reverb, I think the vocals sound a bit distant, even on my speakers. Thanks.

This is freaking sweet. The only thing that stands out to me as something I don't think I'd want is the amount of reverb that's on the vocals. Definitely want it to be that much is a few key places, but the entire thing being echoy seems kinda strange to me. If I remember correctly, I think Sixto put about that much reverb on the vocals in his last version too. Does metal usually have that much on it? As for the ear fatigue, I TOTALLY know what you mean, and I think it all started over here from my side. I think it might be the kind of distortion I used. I'm not entirely sure, but my ears feel like they're lacking mid when listening to this. So I guess you could try giving the guitars more mid. I too would REALLY love to get rid of that ear fatigue. I'm sure that would be a pretty big deal to the judges too. The guys that did Cursed Bloodline had a sound that pretty heavy and your ears never got tired. I wonder how they did it.

WHAT?! NO WAY! ARE YOU JUST JOKING?! I'D LOVE TO GET AMON AMARTH'S SIGNATURE! they're style, while kind of overly simplistic (and definitely repetitive), is just so interesting to me, and they've become one of my all-time favorite bands. I REALLY want them to play out here sometime. They're song about Ragnarok, called Burning Creation, was a BIG influence in the arrangement of these Valkyrie Profile tunes. That song has a ton of vocal parts with no chorus all one after the other for like two minutes, and then there's this really nice slow solo and then there's one more verse at the end where the vocalist says that Surtur burned entire world and then there's this slow dramatic solo that fades out. I recommend it. http://youtube.com/watch?v=AJ70ouO5uj4 It's the ultimate viking death metal song in my opinion. Now to check out Fray's update. Can't wait for this.

Hmmmmm. Waaaaa. やっぱり。　The fact that this thread has been on my mind the entire time I was taking the dog for a walk means that I have, indeed made a mistake. So I guess it's time to apologize. There was no reason for me to say what I disagreed with in the way that I did. Instead of making that big long explanation, I should have just done one of those quick, one-liners that JJT and Vig often do. Then, maybe I wouldn't have been referred to as "busting someone's chops." And perhaps I wouldn't FEEL like I've been "busting someone's chops." That feels crappy for everyone probably. And actually, after Tensei's idea of "repetition of certain sections, which gives the listener a chance to 'grasp' the song." I'm starting to see a good thing in the way it comes back. So, to Dennis Mott... I'm sorry for tearing your remix up to shreds over just one negative aspect, especially when I love ALL the other aspects of it. What kind of review is that?! And to Zircon and the judges... I'm sorry for getting on your cases about giving praise where you did, just cause I thought it wasn't deserved. I think I'll go and edit the previous posts later to reflect the "one-liner" philosophy because I think if Dennis Mott saw that, it'd only bum him out, which is not what I really want.

Well, I think Tensei san and Zircon said it the best. Yes, Zircon, I do harshly criticize the amount of repetitions (in general, not compared with OCR standards) that is apparently a standard in popular music. . . Simply because I think it's too much and this is something about popular music that has always bothered me. Hahaha. And yes, Tensei, you are right that this song is NOT more repetitive than most of the other metal I listen to, but that doesn't mean that I like it. I constantly listen to new metal albums and then when something comes back for the third time, I'm like, "Why did they have to bring that back again?!" Hahaha. But you definitely said it the best when you said that I shouldn't be expecting everyone else to make all their songs have a million parts, just because that's how I like to make music. It's still more repetitive than I'D like but I'm gonna stop knit-picking now. By the way, I don't think that it shouldn't have been passed. I just don't agree with all the praise thrown at the structure of the piece. Here comes another big fat smiley! ^__________________________________________________________^

Edited I like this remix a lot. Especially, the opening riff. Although, I think they bring it back too often, it's definitely a shining example of a good thrash metal riff and it's a fun alternate picking exercise. Actually, this is one of the very first remixes I ever heard from this site, and hopes that there would be more like it is one of the main reasons I stuck around so much. I've been playing this song on my guitar since that time and it's a pretty tough challenge to play it perfectly without letting any noise ring out. Going to a riff that's in 7/4 time made me freaking happy. I love unusual time signatures. In fact, if ANYTHING should become a staple of the metal genre, it ought to be unusual time signatures. That would make metal as a whole more interesting and maybe even attract more of the "big perky music head" types. METAL! ^________________________^

Nawww. You're just exaggerating because there is a huge pant-load of techno on this site. Which, as annoying as that may be, makes a huge pant-load of sense because the arguably easiest way to make amateur music that requires as much production sense as OCR requires is to do it electronically. I mean, hey, I didn't have an orchestra of people on stand-by in a recording studio to help me make Destroy Movements.

Holy crap. You're right! I gotta go edit that. Thanks. hahaha. I tell you man, I make ALL the cool topics. Remember the judge love thread? I didn't think it would fail as badly as it did, but while failing it also succeeded at the same time because it was like this thing called UNMOD which everyone seemed to like and nobody seemed to have. . . ?!?!?

WHOA! NO WAY! Are we really allowed to do that?! Cause I REALLY wanna do that. Hey wait a second, guys. Check this out. NO OVERRIDE(Don't ever resubmit this because it sucks! Yes, that's right. It sucks! And don't bother going to get help from the Remixing forums, working hard towards becoming a great remixer, OR being all that you can be, because you suck!) Hahahaaaaaaa! Just a little joke. Don't think too hard about it.

Harmony, Another Soundscape, I gotta turn around and disagree AGAIN. Hahaha. Of course lyrics make us like the music and the human voice IS definitely an instrument used for producing sound and music, but my statement about "lyrics" not being music is all about being able to separate the "lyrics" from the "vocals." Most people don't think about it that way because they do go extremely hand in hand. So yeah, the vocal melody, the timbre of the voice, and even the sound that results from the different mouth shapes that happen to form words all definitely count as lyrics. HOWEVER! (LOL) the fact that those vocals create words which have meaning isn't music. He could have sung completely different lyrics in the same way and aside from the difference in the sound resulting from different mouth shapes, we could say that it's otherwise exactly the same thing. Of course if he WERE saying something about pink bunnies and cotton candy, we'd all think it was stupid and unrelated to the music because it would be. Hahaha. But that's just verbal communication which is a completely different thing from music. I doubt I'm ever gonna get anyone who's not linguistics teacher to agree with me on this, ESPECIALLY musicians, but there's my argument anyway. As for Shadowwolf and anyone else who says that repetition is a staple of the Metal genre, I'm gonna say that just because 1000 people jump off a building, it doesn't mean they're all correct. Yeah lots of famous and popular bands have tons of repetition in their songs, but that doesn't mean they're doing something that's good. If it really has become considered a staple of the genre, then I don't think it's a very good one, and it should be replaced. I've written a ton of metal songs and I don't think even the VERY first one that I wrote was A B C A B C Solo C. I can't get into that kind of thing. I'm in an Arch Enemy cover band and we're playing Ravenous this Saturday and the same riff keeps coming back over and over, and while it's freaking fun to PLAY it's so boring to listen to, for me. I recommend Blind Guardian's newer stuff if you want to hear songs with good structure. I think that has just the right amount of repetition. There is a lack of smiley faces in this post which might lead some to believe that I'm an angry person. To dispel that, here's a big fat smiley just to say, "I ain't mad at ya." ^____________________________________________________________^

It's good to see that despite popular opinion, the judges actually DO listen to the remixes before passing judgment. Hahaha!

Ok. You're right. I didn't notice the chord progression from the original (It might've helped if I HAD the original. Hahaha.) nor did I mention the variations within, but I still think this thing is WAY too repetitive to be considered such a great arrangement I am still withholding my props on the structure. Anyway, thanks for that. No no. I gotta disagree with that, Kanthos. I mean, think about it. Lyrics, ESPECIALLY lyrics sung with death vocals, while might seem to have relevance to the game or the source tune itself, really can't logically have any at all because music is music and words are words and those are two completely different things. You gotta remember that the melody that some lyrics are sung in can be considered music, but the fact that they are words and that those words have meaning just makes it poetry or "good writing" or something like that, not music. Of course in this case, you can say that they can sort of be attributed to the music by adding to the texture. Can't see any other logical aspect than that. But they do kick ass, none the less!

Did you grow up in America or Japan? I'm from America and I was always into Darkwing Duck and The Tick (for the short while it lasted). Now I live in Japan so all I think about is Pokemon and Sazaesan and Doraemon. Oh yeah, and Conan! That's a great one!

There have been people who've said that they disagree with the standards and all that jazz, but I'd like to talk about the judgment of a specific remix not because I disagree with the standards, but because I truly feel that this judgment call was completely flawed. It COULD be that I missed something, and if so, I hope a judge will point that out to me so that my heart can rest. Because to be honest, I get kind of restless when I think about this. Hahaha. So here it comes... I'm talking Cursed Bloodline. Please don't get me wrong. I totally love this song. The judges always battle with the balance of production and arrangement in remixes. If one is lacking but the other makes up for it, then it seems like they'll pass it. Well, ALL of the judges who participated in the vote on Cursed Bloodline said that this remix had high quality arrangement AND production. I think anyone who listens to it will agree with the production call, but what about the arrangement. I get the feeling that everyone was too blown away by the artist's energy or genre or production that they just assumed that since they can hear the source in the mix, it must be a good arrangement. So here's where I'd like to be told, "I think you missed [insert whatever I missed here]." Because I'm about to go out on a limb and say that there is hardly any arrangement of the source in this remix." Hopefully I'm missing it, but if I'm not mistaken the ONLY TWO occurrences of the source material, if you don't count all the repeats, and those are the intro riff and the guitar solo at 2:14. The intro riff plays the intro of the original and the guitar solo plays the main part of the original and EVERYTHING ELSE, if I'm not mistaken, is original material. I'd really like to have one of those play-by-play analyses by LionTamer that proves me wrong, cause right now all I hear is: Intro-Verse-Chorus-Intro-Verse-Chorus-Intro- 7/4riff-solo-7/4riff-solo-7/4riff-Chorus-Intro With the exception of the solos, EVERYTHING in this remix is played 2, 3, or even 4 times which makes it extremely repetitive in my opinion. And the main occurrence of the source is the intro riff which, on top of being played 4 times, consists of the same riff being repeated FOUR times. Yeah, they put a cool harmony part on top of the third time, but in essence we're talking about the biggest connection to the source being just a 4 second riff that gets repeated a total of 16 times. It must be the whole "pop factor" thing which I've never really understood, but all the voters praised this remix for having great structure for some reason. I just don't get it. I'm not trying to say the judges don't do their job well, OR say that this is an inferior mix, because I actually love this song. But what about that crazy OCR bar that we've all heard so much about? So I end this initial post by restating the purpose of this thread: Someone please, either set me straight, or tell me that I'm right. I look forward to the response.

Sorry to be such a boring mofo, but I like it too. I don't seem to know the themes too well, so I can't comment on the arrangement.

Relax, Pezman. I think Zircon is just picky about style when it comes to Fantasy writers. Besides, he said himself that he counts out a lot of popular writers. Anyway, don't worry so much about the endorsement, thing. The remixers are willing to let you use their music as BGM, and that's all you want right? GO FOR IT!

So how many artists are there and how many requests are there still to be processed. Actually, I've never really thought about having a picture for a sig. Hmmmmm.