Emunator

Agreed with Brad here - the mixdown is not doing your strong arrangement any favors. Everything feels squashed and lacking in clarity - the high end is totally scooped out and there's also weirdly a huge dip around 500Hz in the master track. I think this needs to go back to the mixing stage to achieve a more even frequency balance (and see if you can knock out those crackles that Rexy mentioned - good ear!) and then look at your mastering chain to see if you can give this a bit more room to breathe. The performances, arrangement, and sequencing are excellent, I have no major issues with any of that, but the mixing here just feels flat and lifeless. If this doesn't make it, I do sincerely hope to hear this back again! NO (please resubmit!)

This gets an emphatic hell yes from me! I've heard this at various stages of development and, although it doesn't feel fundamentally different from your original concept, it's amazing how much all the little tweaks and additions have made this track shine. It's easily one of Justin's strongest-produced tracks, and the fusion of rock, orchestral, and synths captures everything I love about his music in a single package. Let's get this posted! YES

I liked this! There's not a dramatic level of expansion going on, but the heavier focus on wind and string instruments gives it a unique character compared to the original. All of the instrument articulations are solid, and the live wind performance from Greg is compelling as always! I don't have much to say here, but it's just over my bar. Good luck! YES (borderline)

The groove here is so GOOD. I loved this one in its WIP stages and the final product is even stronger There's really so much going on here, you never hang on one idea for too long and never seem to run out of new directions to take the arrangement, either! Rock solid stuff, Bev!

I have such a deep appreciation for what you did here Julien. Our community is, of course, full of artists who are passionate about their craft, it's rare that we see a submission where the concept behind the arrangement is so deliberate. I mean, I can't think of any other submission in my time as an evaluator that has come with multiple pages of PDF documentation! Everything else aside, I commend you for your effort and creative vision. I initially had a hard time wrapping my mind around this, but I think Brad used the perfect word to describe what's going on here and it helped me understand what you were going for: asymmetrical. There's a level of beauty that can be evoked by mashing together such disparate styles that couldn't have been conveyed if any of these individual musical ideas were fleshed out into their own track. It's imbalanced at times, but by design. The ambient synth sound design, skull-crushing metal riffs, and old-school dark techno synths all contribute to something that feels much greater than the sum of its parts! Very happy to welcome you aboard to OCRemix! Congratulations. YES

This track met my (admittedly high, given the artists involved) expectations on all fronts. This is a balls-to-the-wall arrangement that seamlessly fuses three thematically-related sources into a totally cohesive end result! The guitar performances - obviously the focal point of the arrangement - were quite strong across the board. By now, I can spot a Sixto guitar solo from a mile away and it will NEVER get old for me. Overall, I'm loving what you guys did here! I will admit, I was a little bit scared by the waveform but was pleasantly surprised to find that everything was cleanly mixed, none of the leads were buried, and the overall master was pristine and punchy without hurting my ears. Ending was pretty abrupt, and the synth patches did feel somewhat lifeless compared to the really strong guitar tones, but nothing that's a dealbreaker by any stretch. Nice work gents! YES

I LOVE THIS. The original source tune was intriguing to me, but always felt more or less neutral from an emotional standpoint. With your remix you managed to bring out some absolutely beautiful harmonies and create this rich chord progression that feels familiar and comfortable, and yet entirely recontextualized. When the un-processed piano comes through at 1:43, it's absolutely sublime; like a ray of sunshine hitting just the right angle during golden hour. Despite being built from essentially just a piano and various noise samples, you've managed to paint such a vivid, lush picture full of so much color and emotion. I strongly agree that this is one of your best works, and one that I will be coming back to a lot in the future! YES

This is insane!! One of Leandro & co.'s best tracks to date as far as I'm concerned. Great work everyone!

Right on Michael, this resubmission does a great job addressing my writing and mixing concerns with the original submission while also expanding on it in a few unexpected ways! I've always appreciated your pallet of different throwback sounds that transport you directly to a specific moment in time. It's not mindblowingly technical, but this fusion of different SEGA tunes was always strong on a conceptual level, and is now even more solid from an execution standpoint as well! The Emerald Hill sections get a little on the busy side, but overall this is clicking much better than before. Really happy to see this one back on the panel, thanks for sticking with it! YES

Good stuff, everything in here is clicking nicely! Production is tight, there's certainly an appropriate, if subtle, level of interpretation over the original, and the live performances add some extra flair to push it comfortably over the bar. You never sit too long on a single lead instrument either, which keeps this fresh at every turn. YES

There's some really creative ideas going on in here, and is a lot more unique than we typically see from first-time submissions. This shows a clear level of ambition that I think is absolutely commendable! There are definitely a few areas of concern that need to be ironed out on the production and performance side. First off, the mastering on this track is painfully loud at times. For example, the synth SFX that is used continually throughout the intro has a high resonant frequency at around 8kHz that spikes WAY louder than the rest of your track and is painful on the ears. That absolutely needs to come down in volume and have some EQ cuts applied to minimize the harshness of that sample. Overall, I think Rexy and Jivemaster both did a great job of breaking down the issues with the overall master - you need to bring the levels of your instruments down across the board to leave a bit of breathing room in the mix - right now it's just too loud and overcompressed. The drum sounds and the guitars don't mesh together from a mixing standpoint. Your guitar tone is more on the ethereal side, but the kick and snare drum are fairly dry, and the cymbals sound like they were recorded in an entirely different space. Overall, it sounds like you're routing through a completely different mixing chain for all of your instruments and even the different components of your drum kit. While this isn't inherently a bad thing, one approach you might consider is creating send tracks for effects like reverb or delay, and routing each of your instruments through that bus at different levels to give it a greater level of cohesiveness, then you can go back and add creative effects as needed. Compressing your drums together could also help glue them together. Across the board, there seem to be issues with note timing on this arrangement, which I'm not going to retread but I will fully support what Jivemaster wrote. If you're not already playing with a metronome or backing track, I highly recommend doing so, since right now the performance is way too loose to fit properly. Please don't be discouraged - I genuinely appreciate your approach to this remix, and it's clear that you are both talented and creative, but the technical side of things definitely needs some refinement. Best of luck with your future submissions! NO

I'm grateful for this submission and the talent that it represents, both in Rebecca's arrangement and the quality performances put forth by every artist involved. This must have been a monumental undertaking, but the effort was undoubtedly well worth it. It's hard to pick highlights, but if I had to name a few, the harp duet and the choir of voices are some of the standouts to me. Truly though, there are no weak links in terms of performances. The trove of live instruments featured here mitigates any of the sample quality issues that may have been present in Rebecca's past submissions, and even the production and mastering quality feels like a step up from previous submissions as well! The transitions between each source are solidly executed, which keeps this from ever feeling like a patchwork of different musical ideas that were stuck together at random. Overall, a stellar effort from everyone involved. Bravo!! I am hearing a number of rendering pops throughout this export however, and it marks a singular nitpick in an otherwise solid track (such as 0:05, :15, :22, :25, etc.) It would be fantastic to get these ironed out if we can. I don't hear as many of them as the track progresses, but it was noticeable enough in the intro to call attention to it. YES (conditional on fixing pops) EDIT: Changing based on LT's feedback, which I agree with - it would be lovely to get those ironed out but this track is way too good to not pass if those can't be resolved!

Simple, but effective! (I wrote this without reading Rexy's vote but realized afterward that she used the exact same verbiage to describe this track, so I'm leaving it! ) This arrangement, although it doesn't blow me away with its technicality, serves up a very pleasant multi-instrumental jam that takes the chiptune source and adds a ton of layers of color and tone to really highlight the laid back vibe that was always present in the original. It does a fabulous job of setting the scene! The assists from Gamer of the Winds and Chromatic Apparatus are very expressive and add a level of emotional depth to the arrangement. There were some times when the instruments got in each others' way, and I also didn't feel like the drum tone or writing was particularly effective for this style. The marching band rhythms on the snare around 1:50 felt particularly out of place for me. The acoustic guitar rhythm to start the track was fairly basic and didn't capture my attention at first, but it sits very nicely with the rest of the instrumentation once it comes in. I just would have liked to hear something a bit more organic and adventurous to start the track off. Not perfect, but the strength of the adaptation, choice of instruments, and competent mixing puts this comfortably over the bar for me! YES

Michael, I'm awestruck by your approach to remixing, in the very best way. I have no clue how you hear a source like this one and end up with this result. It's a testament to your one-of-a-kind approach to remixing and your fearlessness as an artist. This track is challenging to grasp, but equally rewarding for those who give it a chance, especially on repeat listens. One aspect that particularly stood out to me was the contrast created during moments where you briefly let up on the glitching, such as from :56-1:28 or during the excellent spoken word section at 2:42, where you simply let the notes decay naturally. It gives context to the sonic madness that surrounds it, and also helps craft a more structured, dynamic arrangement. This stylistic choice makes the track all that much stronger as a complete musical statement to me. One of your strongest efforts yet, Michael! YES

This is a lovely, dynamic take, just as I've come to expect! Your piano tone is lush and full-bodied - the contrast between the deep rhythmic notes and the twinkly right-hand arpeggios plays well to the strengths of your piano sample. I appreciate how you were able to work different elements of the source into something cohesive and entirely your own. I'm going to be honest - I wouldn't have called out anything about overcompression on this track had it not been pointed out by other judges. I can hear what others are talking about, but I don't think it warrants a conditional vote by any stretch either. This sounds perfectly passable in its current form to my ears. Great work! YES

Remixers: Chimpazilla, Emunator Name: Torchlight Game: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (primary), Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Sources: Lost Woods, Shrine, Zelda's Lullaby, Final Hours Artist Comments: Chimpazilla: Torchlight marks Wes's and my third collab together, and I believe it is our best so far. I sent Wes a wip of BotW Lost Woods combined with the Shrine theme that I had started two years earlier and he loved it enough to begin expanding on it right away. We both added elements, motifs and percussions along the way. Wes and I work so well together and we often seem to share a brain while working. Wes commented to me that the mix is so cohesive that listeners would not be able to tell who did what. I replied that, honestly, even I can't remember exactly which of certain elements were mine and which were his! I believe we came up with a mix full of feels and magic and I hope listeners and BotW fans will enjoy it! Emunator: Kris did a great job covering the backstory behind this mix, but I have to stress just how seamlessly this track came together, despite the fact that our collaboration was handled 100% remotely. From the moment I heard her original WIP, which flawlessly married the Shrine theme and Lost Woods piano riff, I knew this was destined for greatness! Using a mixture of ingame sound effects and a myriad of other ambient sound design techniques, I aimed to develop that concept into a narrative arc inspired by Breath of the Wild's gameplay. Along the way, we bounced stems back and forth to gradually flesh out the soundscape, and I used some new string libraries recently acquired from Spitfire Audio to write a dramatic final climax that incorporates elements of the Final Hours chord progression from Majora's Mask. I'm particularly proud of the final build from 4:05-4:35, which should be recognizable to anyone who's played BotW. I've had the concept of using the Stasis rune sfx as a sound design technique floating around since I started working on this track, and finally found the samples I needed to execute it in the 11th hour! To say this has been a fun and rewarding collaborative experience would be an understatement, and I'm confident this won't be our last time working on a remix together!! Source breakdown: Lost Woods 0:00-2:28, 3:19-5:20 Zelda's Lullaby 0:24-1:14 Shrine: 1:14-2:28, 2:28-3:19, 3:19-4:34 Zelda's Lullaby: sprinkled in from 1:41-2:26 and again from 3:47-4:07 Final Hours: String chords from 2:53-4:44

This track features some excellent synth design that does a great job of expanding on the original sound palette, although the arrangement plays it very close to the original source material as far as writing is concerned. Not necessarily a bad thing on its own, but when viewed through the lens of OCR's standards, a little more interpretation would go a long way. The bigger issue though, as the other judges pointed out, is definitely on the production side. Although your synth choices are really well executed, the production overall feels pretty flat and lacking in dynamics. Larry nailed the two biggest issues in terms of low-energy drum writing and samples as well as many of your synths stepping on each others' space in the frequency range. I would also add that you could probably draw a little more energy by adding an exciter or some addition saturation to some of your instruments - there's just a lack of bite to many of your instruments and I think this could be a lot punchier overall with a different set of master effects. I definitely enjoyed this in a bubble, but there's some things holding this back from the OCR bar in terms of production and arrangement. Keep at it! NO

For the most part, I felt like this arrangement played well to Rebecca's strengths as an arranger - as Kris mentioned, the interplay between the shorter staccato instruments like the marimba and harpsichord and the more expressive flute legatos, courtesy of Gamer of the Winds, sounds really fabulous. Overall, this is a really breathy, spacious arrangement that expands nicely on the sources. I wish there was a bit more bite to the harpsichord on the production side, and the velocity work on the marimba is less than ideal. I also found the reverb levels to be lower than I would have liked on an arrangement with this much space between the instruments. However, this definitely gets the majority of things right and I'm happy to sign off on this. Nice work! YES

Sounds absolutely lovely I recognized some of the in-game ambiance throughout which really added to the authenticity. It's very close to the original source material as a whole, but you've done such a lovely job giving it a bit more immediacy and warmth. It's always a joy listening to your music.

This remix is incredibly ambitious in its fusion of multiple different styles that definitely works on a conceptual level. Right now, the mixing and the quality of some of the samples are holding this back. In its current form, you have huge jumps in dynamics at moments like :59, where the brass stabs are so loud that it's extremely jarring when they come in. I would suggest going back and revisiting the balance between each of your instruments so there are less dramatic jumps throughout the track. Increasing your master compression would also balance that out. From a sound quality standpoint, I thought the strings, guitar, and thicker orchestral brass stabs worked really well. I thought the ensemble brass in particular sounded good, it was just mixed too loudly. The drums were a mixed bag - when they were more exposed during the first few minutes, they sounded weak, but when the electric rhythm guitar comes in at 2:47, the drums fit in much better. For the first section of the song, try playing with some light saturation, compression, or distortion to give the drums a bit more punch. The lead saxophone was definitely the weakest element here - I'm not going to say that you need to have a live performer for that part, but in its current form, it's unrealistic to the point where it's distracting. I also second Jivemaster's observation about the ending, which felt unnecessarily long. This is truly a strong effort, and I don't think anything needs to change about the arrangement itself, but the mixing is holding it back. Hope to hear this again from you! NO (resubmit!)

Meteor Herd is a really fun, underrated track from the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack, so let's see what you've done with this. Overall, this is a really cool retro club throwback - very clean production, energetic synth writing, and no shortage of source usage throughout. Although you're working with a simple sound pallet, the production is crisp and clear and all of your synths and drums evoke a very specific moment in time, so I think this works on a conceptual level and was overall a really fun listen! My biggest gripe is the integration of the Security Hall theme, which clashes in a really unpleasant way. I can't tell if it's strictly-speaking out of key (I feel like @prophetik music would have some good feedback on this and could either confirm or deny what my ear is hearing,) but it doesn't sound good to me. 1:35 and 4:25 feature some really dry synth stacks that also don't mesh with the rest of the soundscape, and end up dominating everything else that's going on during those sections. That could work with some filtering/reverb and lowering the volume, but right now they stand out in a negative way. Aside from that, I think this sounds good to go, but those two issues are definitely getting in the way of this clearing my bar. This would be a good candidate for polishing/resubmission in my opinion! NO (resubmit)

This is certainly a spirited effort, I loved the energy in the drum breakdowns and fills, and the bass writing in general. The use of ingame sound effects is really well executed as well. And in general, you can't go wrong taking your inspiration from San Holo There's some excellent stuff going on here across the board. There's a few production aspects that don't quite feel like they've fully clicked into place yet, as well as some issues with the overall mastering that definitely need to be addressed. Overall, there's a dryness to your production that I'm not quite sure suits the purpose you were going for. This lack of reverb on key elements like the snare or many of your melodic synths leaves this feeling "unglued" for lack of a better word - there's a distinct richness to the sound of your bass, but the rest of the melodic elements feel thinner and dry by comparison. Just a touch more reverb on your melody lines and your snare would probably go a long way here. It also sounds like the melodic synths end up getting buried in the mix and could benefit from some additional clarity/volume. I appreciate the fact that a bass-driven arrangement would want to highlight the bass primarily, but the level of the melodies sound a touch too quiet. I also wanted to call out the transition at 2:17 - all of the elements of the sweep are solid, but the final climax left me feeling underwhelmed due to a lack of impact. There's a single cymbal crash, but it's such a thin sample that it doesn't have the effect you probably intended. It's a shame because everything else about that transition was really well done. Lastly, when I monitor this using true peak metering, it shows that you're clipping all over the place. By standard metering, your track is still loud but it peaks right at 0.0dB, but if you bring down your limiter ceiling by just .1 or .2dB, it will ensure that this sounds good on all systems and doesn't distort on analog playback systems. I was on the fence about this as I was writing this whole vote due to the strength of your bass production and the dynamic arrangement, but there's a few things that, if ironed out, would make this a much stronger package. If this ends up not passing the panel, I sincerely hope you revisit this and send it back to us! NO (please resubmit!)

As with your other submission that I recently judged, you have all the bones of a great arrangement but the quality of the guitar samples is bringing this down. With as guitar-driven as this track is, I think you would have to get a live guitarist for at LEAST the lead, but the entire track would benefit. Right now, there's a rigidness to the timing of everything that just doesn't pass as realistic. I hate to sound like such a downer, because I can clearly tell that you did put a lot of work into attempting to sequence your lead guitar with expression, but there's only so much you can do with sampled instruments at the end of the day and I don't think this is convincing enough to meet OCR's standards of instrument realism. Arrangement is just fine as-is, but I can't pass this in its current form. Sorry! NO

Just a quick cosign from me - this is a lovely dynamic arrangement, beautiful piano tone and some unexpected rhythmic shakeups to keep things interesting. I also felt that the section starting at 1:27 was ambitious but didn't quite land right, and I think Rexy's observation that it would have functioned better within the context of a fully-orchestrated arrangement is very astute, and not something I would have identified myself, though I totally agree with it. Either way, this is a solid performance that feels just as weird as I'd expect from a Motoi Sakuraba arrangement. Let's get this posted! YES

Oh man, what a lush selection of instruments! The interplay between the rhodes and the organ are doing some wonderful things to my ears. When the brass and vocal layers build up, it's sheer bliss. And that organ solo rips. Damn. This admittedly sticks very close to the structure of the original tune, but there's a substantial level of expansion simply through the organ solo and the increase in instrumental fidelity, additional vocal harmonies and countermelodies. I thought the delay effect on the bass during sections like 1:00-1:17 felt more awkward in your version than the original, but I see how you got there and it's not a dealbreaker for me by any means. Love this so much, excellent work! YES