Emunator

Truly a lovely arrangement! With such a short, repetitive source tune, I appreciate the lengths Nestor took to both keep things from being repetitive and also never let it go too long without a recognizable callback to His Theme. I've come to expect nothing less from Nestor at this point, but it's refreshing to see him branch out into adjacent genres like indie rock that still allow him to indulge in his signature lo-fi aesthetic. As a fan of both Arcade Fire and Clairo, the inspiration is evident (I'm picking up strong Suburbs vibes specifically from the guitar tone, and the lo-fi beats fall more on the Clairo's side) but at the end of the day, this sounds unmistakably like a Tune In With Chewie remix! You've got a style all your own. YES

This mix is unrelenting! This is absolutely the definition of a waveform sausage, and I can tell before I even pressed play that this is going to be loud and lacking in dynamics. That said, there are actually a lot of really cool things going for this remix. The energy level is off-the-charts and suits the source tune well, and for the most part, this is pretty well produced, even if the mastering is very heavy-handed. The guitar solos add some excellent texture and interest to break up the source usage. My biggest complaint right now is in the structure, length, and static nature of the arrangement. This goes on for nearly 4 and a half minutes at max volume with nothing even remotely resembling a breather - this is not sustainable as a listener and I found myself fatigued within the first minute or so. I am also picking up on the fact that the drums ride autopilot on the same groove for nearly all of the song - I skipped around in my DAW to random places in the song and the drums almost always sound identical no matter where I am. My suggestion to you would be to trim down the length of this arrangement by about a minute or more, and rework the structure so that there are some points in the song where the energy level drops down below 11. Right now, there's simply no dynamics present and it's hurting an otherwise-strong concept for a remix. I would be interested to see this sent back to us with more attention paid to the pacing of your arrangement, and a slightly less compressed mix. These issues are definitely dealbreakers in my eyes, but there's a lot of things that you got right here that deserve to be heard so I do hope you revisit this! NO (resubmit!)

Right off the bat, there seems to be a load of timing issues on this track. I will admit that I'm not the best at articulating issues with timing, so I hope some of my fellow judges can elaborate on this, but the rhythm on the ride cymbal feels like it's on a completely different swing timing from the rest of the instrumentation. The piano was unfortunately not a strong way to start off this track in general - the sequencing felt rigid, the sample was not particularly strong, and it felt out-of-time with the beat. It almost sounds as if you tried to add some humanization to the groove by manually shifting certain notes around, but went too far and ended up causing it to feel sloppy. Things definitely came together better once the guitar and e-piano came in. Your guitar tone and playing is excellent for this style, the rhodes piano is a much more complementary sample to the rest of the instruments, and you reigned in your timing better. This sounds really pleasant. At 1:12, the problematic ride cymbals and piano come back again and it makes it very obvious to me that this next section is just directly copied and pasted from earlier in the song. I did a side-by-side comparison and everything from 1:12 through 2:20 sounds almost identical to earlier in the song. I don't mean to be harsh here, but there's still a ways to go on this arrangement before it's ready for the OCR front page. Love the vibe you've laid down, and your guitar chops are great, but the rest of this is not clicking as well for me. It's not bad at all for a first attempt in this style though, so as you hone your skills, I do hope we hear more from you NO

Starting off, I liked the lo-fi vibe you were going for, and I thought it was cool how you created complex rhythms by way of stuttering and surgically-precise delays. There's some neat saturated/distorted tones that give this a lot of character. Unfortunately, I don't feel like this remix fully capitalized on your ideas. For starters, this is a very short arrangement that fizzles out at the end without any clear resolution. For the majority of the track, you ride a consistent rhythm that doesn't really change up until around 1:20, which was a welcome breath of fresh air, but for an arrangement this short, I feel like the ideas need to be more concise. The sound design here is hard to judge - on the one hand, all of your sound choices are consistent and, although they're not quite chiptune sounds, they are distinctly lo-fi and craft a very cohesive soundscape. I can't say that you develop your sounds over time, but I can't shake the feeling that this track feels flat overall. Production-wise, I think you could better utilize compression, EQ, and possibly push your distortion a little further so that your instruments sound more lively and the mix packs more punch overall. Nitpick time - when your square arp that enters at :57 hits the highest notes, it sounds unpleasantly harsh (see 1:05 for example.) I don't dislike any of what I've heard here by any means - there's some great rhythmic ideas and adaptations going on and some solid reinterpretation of the original Zelda melody. However, the arrangement feels overly short/unresolved and, although the sound design is cohesive and a strong upgrade from the original, the production itself feels dull. This would be a good candidate for reworking and resubmitting if you feel inclined! NO (resubmit!)

Well this was entirely unexpected! You took a number of creative liberties with the melody, but although it's radically transformed and reharmonized, the rhythm and cadence of the original is still present throughout your arrangement in a way that most people should understand how you got from point A to point B. From a production standpoint, the guitars were chunky, the orchestral flourishes got the job done, and the production is on par with what we've heard from Mak in the past. Solid concept, fairly well executed. I dig it! YES

This is a fun remake and and enjoyable listen, but I agree with my fellow judges that there's a few issues with this submission from OCR's standpoint. The biggest concern I have is the repetitiveness and closeness to the original song. Although this works great for a tribute album like the one you created it for and I'm sure there are many fans that will enjoy this, OCRemix is looking for a greater level of interpretation in terms of sound design and arrangement. For the majority of your song, you stick very closely to the original in terms of sound choices and arrangement. In fact, the first three minutes of the song consist of 3 very similar sections that all feel more or less the same to me. It's not until 3:21 that we hear anything that sounds substantially different. I will also echo the critique about the hi-hat writing, which feels like it's set to autopilot for the entire track and doesn't match the energetic performance of the rest of the drums. As others have said, I have no doubt that fans of the Jazz Jackrabbit games will enjoy what you've done here and it's a perfectly fine tribute, but for OCR specifically, we're looking for a higher level of re-imagination. I hope this doesn't discourage you from submitting in the future, but I don't think this at that level yet. NO

There is a lot to unpack here! The original Iceberg theme is all over the place, and this is appropriately diverse too. Moments like the transition at :30 came out of nowhere but really felt exciting to me. Your contrast between heavy metal and more traditional chiptune instruments is your greatest strength here. The guitar solo is badass, too. That said, I feel like this track is not fully developed. The arrangement, when you trim off the first 3 seconds of silence, is barely over 2 minutes long, and it ends in a very disappointing fadeout. It sounds like you had more ideas and room to explore at the end of the song but chose not to finish, which is unfortunate. We have passed songs that were this short before, but they need to sound like a complete idea, and the fadeout makes this feel unfinished. I can't tell if you are directly sampling the original game audio throughout this song or if it's just a very closely-recreated sound match from MIDI data, but the opening chords as well as some instrumentation around :30 sounds like it might be a direct in-game sample. Hopefully some other judges can look into this and see if they feel like this is something to be concerned about. Production-wise, this sounds about like what I'd expect from metalcore, where the mixing is intentionally heavy, abrasive, and a little bit lo-fi. I don't have any major complaints on that, although the master compression is over-the-top, especially during the metalcore sections. Ultimately, you have a really strong, creative concept, but the song needs more to it before it's ready for posting in my opinion. Regardless of whether you resubmit this, it's a very cool take and I had fun listening to what you did here. NO (resubmit)

This source tune is one of my favorite from any game in recent memory, so I can see why your gut instinct would be to hew closely to the original source material. Unfortunately, without live performers and the highest-quality instruments, this falls flat in some areas compared to the original, and the arrangement isn't substantially different enough for most of the duration to discourage those kinds of direct comparisons. The choir and flute are both very exposed in the mix and, as Larry pointed out, gets particularly muddy and dominant when they hit their loudest peaks. The piano does not feel properly humanized - although the original riff is also very staccato and played in a rather unconventional way, this piano sample simply doesn't seem as expressive and the timing is just a bit too rigid. I like this in a bubble despite my mixing and instrument quality criticisms, but at the end of the day I don't find this to be substantially transformative when compared side-by-side with the original, and the production issues make it harder to justify passing in its current form. Sorry! NO

I'm coming into this without having heard the original submission, but I really like what I'm hearing! Texturally, there is so much going, it was hard to take it in on just one listen. After a few runs through, however, I really feel like I understood what you were going for. The fusion of organic instrumentation, aggressive synths, and even some instruments that toe the line between the two make for a one-of-a-kind sound palette that fits perfectly with this less-structured, brooding arrangement. I could see being thrown off by the apparent lack of defined structure with discrete buildups and drop-offs, and I understand how other judges thought the mixing may have contributed to this effect, but it felt nuanced and ultimately made this feel far more cinematic. It felt nebulous to a certain extent, but that came across as a feature, not a bug. I'm fully on board with this! Excellent work. YES

This arrangement does have a lot going for it. There's some very satisfying sub frequencies going on in your mix, and I like the overall mixture of chill instrumentation and harder trap beats. The main issues I'm picking up on are sound design on your lead instruments, and the levels of your instruments. Starting off with the sound design, I thought things were relatively solid up until 1:15. The pulsewave lead is incredibly loud in the mix and does not fit with the rest of the soundscape in terms of reverb or overall texture. It sticks out like a sore thumb, I would strongly consider revisiting that lead in general and bringing the levels down. The piano sound, similarly, is a dry, tinny sample that doesn't fit well with the rest of the song. You might be able to get some of the way with EQ work to soften the tone of the piano, but honestly you might be better served by finding a different piano sample or using a different instrument entirely. Sir_NutS did a great job explaining the issues I have with the drums so I won't go further than co-signing his thoughts. The ending is also way too sudden and doesn't offer any proper resolution. Aside from that, I actually really enjoyed the bones of your arrangement and how you interpreted the source, so I think this is worth a second pass at! Good luck NO (resubmit)

This is really great! The groove is strong and the sound design complements the original while decisively stepping up the energy a notch. One critique I have is that the leads are getting eaten up in the overall mix - your melody lines are all there and they sound great, but the backbeat sounds like it's mixed much higher than the leads and doesn't give them enough breathing room. If you are planning on submitting this, I would recommend addressing that first. DarkSim also brought up a good point that the dynamic range between the verses and chorus could be a little more pronounced. Really enjoyable listen even in its current form - I think it has a bit of room for improvement but I do hope you submit this eventually We need more Celeste representation on OCR!

Very cool instrumentation choices here, it works perfectly for the source material. It wouldn't feel out of place in a medieval renaissance festival. The instrument performances were pretty solid across the board, so I don't have any issues there. My main qualms with this arrangement boil down to repetitiveness, both from an arrangement perspective and a rhythmic one. This arrangement frequently finds its way back to the same core patterns and rhythms on the stringed instruments, and despite some subtle variations, this grew stale for me around the 2 minute mark. It's rare that I suggest taking such a short arrangement and making it even shorter, but I felt that this arrangement either needs to be more concise, or (preferably) introduce some new original content to provide a reprieve from the same rhythms that loop almost every 4 bars. The original soloing is a step in the right direction, but I would also like to hear the backing instrumentation go in some more unique directions, as well. I found some great potential here, but the arrangement still needs some time in the oven to keep it fresh throughout its whole duration. NO (resubmit!)

This arrangement is brimming with personality! I agree with the others that the true strength here lies in how successfully you adapted the original source material to something tasteful and listenable without doing a full 180 on the peppy circus vibe of the original source. For as little material as you're working with, the arrangement never feels like it's treading water. Your sound design is no slouch either - the rich, bubbly bassline sits perfectly against the lo-fi synths that fill out the mid/high range, and the breakbeat drums keep the pace upbeat while contributing a warm, scratchy texture to the mix. I'm honestly not hearing any of the complaints about the leads not cutting through enough - I personally wouldn't have wanted the leads to be too in-your-face for this style of arrangement, so I agree with Eino's mixing decisions here. I thought this clicked on just about every level (except for the abrupt ending that unfortunately fizzles out) and ended up delivering WAY more than I expected from the source tune. Nice work! YES

I appreciate the ambition at work here, and how you aren't content to stay in one lane throughout your arrangement. The contrast that you pointed out in your submission writeup helps shake things up after you run through a more straightforward interpretation of the source for the first 2 minutes. The first few minutes, which are a very straightforward take on the original, follow the same style of sequencing and instrumentation as the original but run into problems with overcrowding. The levels of your instruments don't strike an ideal balance; often you have several sounds occupying the same frequency range at high volumes, and the end result feels quite messy. The velocity/timing of your sequencing is also very stiff - my guess is that some degree of this is intentional (the original song strikes me the same way) so I'm willing to write this off. I also strongly agree that the transition at 1:49 did not work and should be revisited. Between the very rigid timing of the instrument sequencing, clashing reverb/balance issues, and transitions that don't quite work, it all adds up to about half of the song that, although a solid improvement on the original, still feels problematic on a number of levels. The jazzy interpretation that comes in midway through the arrangement, however, is absolutely on-pointand I don't find any of these issues present. The live violin offers a great contrast to the synthetic palette of sounds that comes before it. The concept and execution are both incredibly strong here. After that, we go back into more of the same production issues that applied to the first two minutes. I know others have stated that this would be stronger if the whole arrangement was built around the jazzy breakdown, but I do feel strongly that the arrangement works on a conceptual level in its current form - I just don't believe that the more upbeat sections are as well-executed or interpretive as the middle. I would love to hear this again if you're willing to take a stab at it! NO (please resubmit!)

Name of game(s) arranged: Pokémon Diamond Name of arrangement: 'On the Shores of Canalave' Name of individual song(s) arranged: Canalave City (Day) - Comments: Given my history of endlessly dwelling on arrangements for years, I'm incredibly proud to say that my first finished remix of 2020 came together in under 15 hours over the span of just a few months while I've been in quarantine. I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing: New Horizons lately, and although this doesn't borrow any cues directly from that soundtrack, stylistically, I wanted to craft something that might fit into that universe. Additionally, with all the stress, bitterness, and uncertainty going on in the world right now, I thought it would be a good exercise to make something that just sounds happy. In essence, this remix is the soundtrack to the island I wish I could escape to at this moment in time! This track also served as a chance for me to use some of the music theory knowledge I've been actively absorbing over the last year. I have no formal musical background and am entirely self-taught through sheer trial and error, but there have always been major gaps that have prevented me from tackling more complex musical ideas. Here, however, I was able to utilize complex chord structures and harmonies, numerous key changes, syncopation, and even modulate to a 5/4 time signature for a single measure to help the melody flow the way it did in my head... all musical concepts I couldn't even put into words a year ago. I hope this mix provides a few minutes of peace and respite for those in need of that right now!

First off, major props to you for sticking with this and continuing to improve! Music production is such a daunting process, with so much to learn and digest especially in the early phases, but the only way out is to keep pushing through. Each new track that you complete will yield new breakthroughs and you will get better at your craft I am not going to spend too much time rehashing the critique from my fellow judges, because they did an excellent job covering the range of issues that are currently present with this, but to summarize my thoughts... This is a fun, bouncy arrangement that really evokes some classic OCRemix energy. You transition well through different moods and energy levels in your arrangement, which keeps this engaging throughout. However, the synth design and drum production are both very basic and sound very much like stock plugin sounds. This is the biggest issue by far, and could be remedied by automating parameters on your synths to give them more character and movement, or simply using higher-quality plugins. There are a number of freeware synths and samplers available if you look for them. There are also a frequent occurrence where your lead writing falls out-of-sync with the beat and sounds unintentionally sloppy. From a production standpoint too, the track is not mixed very well and is in need of some master compression. You can tell by looking at the waveform for your track and noticing how much the volume spikes as soon as your drums hit - it's desirable to have dynamics in your arrangement, but there needs to be a better balance so everything is at least audible at a normal volume level. I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest that you don't revisit this track right away. Although I absolutely see the potential in this arrangement and don't consider it a lost cause by any means, I feel like your effort would be better served simply producing and practicing as much as you can, instead of lingering on a singular idea. You'll see more substantial results as a producer if you hone your skills on a number of new ideas and try to absorb the widest range of knowledge and skill that you can. From my experience, by trying a number of different styles and arrangements and moving quickly from idea to idea, you'll inadvertently stumble on new skills that can be applied universally. Conversely, if you spend all of your creative energy on one idea, you're limiting the scope of what you can learn and might possibly be frustrated by diminishing returns. Within a year of focused effort and a commitment to learning, you'll look back and be blown away by how far you've come, and then you can revisit this concept with a whole new set of skills under your belt if you feel compelled to. Just some food for thought - either way, you have great potential and I hope that you find this feedback helpful and not discouraging. My direct messages are open if there's anything I can do to clarify my words here or help you along in your musical journey NO

I think there's some excellent potential for a remix of this source, and plenty of room for expansion by way of things like instrumental soloing, additional sound design, more intricate drum/bass writing, or an extended arrangement. As it stands now, however, aside from the instrumental upgrade, I don't feel like you've done enough to sufficiently personalize this to OCRemix's standards. This is interesting, because the detuned piano sounds like something out of a lo-fi arrangement, but the bass and the drums are dry and don't really contribute to any sort of overall atmosphere. There's room to take this in a lo-fi direction, a live-jazz direction, or even some combination of both, but right now it doesn't sound like you've committed to any particular direction outside of an instrument upgrade. To meet OCR's standards, this would need a good deal more creative interpretation on the arrangement and sound design front. NO

Always glad to see it when old-school OCR veterans come back into the fold I appreciate you taking a shot to submit something to us after all these years. That said, I'm not sure if you have switched to a different mixing or listening setup, but there's some pretty massive production issues present on this track that are keeping it from reaching its potential. The high-end of this track is off the charts, whereas the low-end is almost non-existent. Meanwhile, the bulk of the mid-range content is not balanced properly so you have to turn the volume up loud just to hear what's going on melodically, but at that point the high-end of the mix is painfully loud.There's a serious tonal imbalance going on that needs to be addressed. There's a fun, whimsical arrangement in here somewhere, but there's a lot of work that needs to happen first before that can shine through. Listening to some of your older remixes, I'm confident that you can reach that bar again. I would strongly recommend hitting up the Workshop forums (https://ocremix.org/community/forum/12-post-your-game-remixes/) for some in-depth critique and a forum where you can share new version of your track for feedback. Best of luck to you, I hope there's more to come! NO

This arrangement plays pretty close to each of the sources, but the way you merged them together in a fairly seamless way really helps differentiate this from the original. I also appreciated how you came back to Click Clock Woods multiple times as a sort of "chorus" in the arrangement. I think from an arrangement perspective, you've got something great going here. However, prophetik is right on the money that the sample and production quality is not up to par in its current form. I respect how difficult brass/wind instruments can be to work with in sampled form, and you did your best with the tools you had to make this sound humanized, the samples themselves are extremely thin and don't amount to a full-sounding overall mix. I'm honestly not sure what more you could do with this set of samples to make this work - the samples just lack the expressiveness to convey anything close to a realistic band sound. The instruments are all so exposed in the mix that every unrealistic articulation and sequencing choice remains front-and-center. I hate to leave it at that, but I don't feel like the sample pack you're using is doing proper justice to your arrangement. Sorry NO

Yoooo, welcome back! I absolutely loved this remix when it was posted (I still throw it on from time to time) and I'm excited to hear what you can do with 10 more years of experience under your belt. I'll be keeping an eye on this!

Wow, this is certainly ambitious and very well executed! I'm glad you stuck with this concept through the years because your arrangement is a winner. Though it never strayed far from the Gusty Garden/DK Isle themes, there are ample changes to the phrasing and harmonies that make this sound entirely your own. The segue from Mario Galaxy into DK64 was flawless and instantly evoked a nostalgia overload for me. As I've come to expect, I can't find any fault with the brass performances, but all of the additional guest instrumentalists pulled their weight too. The choice to go back into a mellower bossa nova jam at 6:10 was really slick and landed perfectly with me, especially when you immediately follow up with such a satisfying climax. Bravo! Just a few gripes - the drums felt like a weak point throughout the arrangement. The hi-hats were especially grating over time, since they were mixed very far forward compared to the rest of the drums and rarely deviated from a basic quarter-note rhythm. At 1:34, they sounded downright distracting, but fortunately this didn't last very long. Additionally, the overall master needs to be normalized in volume and there's silence to be trimmed on both ends of the mix. Fix those two things up, and this is ready for primetime! Great work. YES

Of all the minimalist Zelda arrangements I've heard from Rebecca lately, I feel like this is far and away the most fully-realized and successful. Although the original source is very abstract and doesn't provide much to latch onto, the original writing in this arrangement helps seamlessly weave together the fragments of original melody into something much more concrete. The instrument tones were all full-bodied and complemented each other well, nothing sounded egregiously unrealistic. Particularly, I found the low-register piano to be particularly moody and helped punctuate the track in a very dramatic fashion. There's a lot to love here. Aside from the volume fixes, this is an easy pass in my book. YES

I feel like Brad did a good job breaking this down and I agree 100% with his assessment. The real strength of this submission lies in the reharmonization of the original Midna's Lament track, and I appreciate the efforts you took with the instrumentation to accentuate this creative choice. I just don't feel that the arrangement has been fleshed out enough to pass muster by OCR's submission standards, especially considering how long the fades last on both ends of the track. An arrangement that short can work if the song is ironclad in terms of production quality, but in this case, I also agree that the soundscape feels unpolished from a mixing standpoint for the same reasons that Brad mentioned. Love the concept and creativity that went into this, but there's not really enough for me as it stands. Would be interested to see this back again in a more fleshed-out form! NO (resubmit)

Wow, this is a very ambitious fusion of different themes. Your arrangement is really excellent, it moves through a number of different ideas but still manages to segue fairly smoothly between them. Love the 12-string action that leads into the meat of the arrangement. Really, there's a lot of great ideas going on here so please don't take any of my criticism to suggest that I didn't enjoy this. There are, however, a number of production-related things that are holding this back from the OCR quality bar. Overall, my impression of this track is that the sounds don't gel together like they should. I'm all for mixing synths into metal arrangements, but the synth patches are so basic and unprocessed that they sound pasted on top of the rest of the track rather than properly integrated into it. A touch of reverb and level adjustments would go a long way to making these current patches work, but you could also find some more interesting synth sounds, even from freeware plugins, to help massage those parts into the arrangement better. The master as a whole sounds like it needs some compression to help glue everything together. Right now, it often feels like your instruments are all existing in completely different spaces, and the mix lacks cohesion. On a more specific note, it sounds like the high-end bite was scooped out of your guitar tone. Some EQ adjustments ought to fix that up, but it's currently holding your guitar (especially the lead) back from delivering a proper punch. The bass starting at :12 doesn't sit right with me either. The tone is very exposed, and the lively rhythm clashes with the rest of your instrumentation. Once the overdriven guitars come in, I don't have an issue with the bass, but I would strongly consider reworking the use of bass in your intro entirely. I'm also not a fan of the shaker - for one, it feels like it's frequently off-beat, and it's mixed MUCH more prominently than your hi-hat. It certainly doesn't feel like it's coming from the same area of the mix as the rest of your drums. What's going on at 2:19? Sounds like a rendering error or a bit of recording that wasn't properly faded in. I know this is a lot of criticism, but I honestly wouldn't share this level of critique if I didn't feel that there was merit and incredible potential in your arrangement. You just need to bring your production game up to par and you'll be golden! NO

Right off the bat, this track is brickwalled HARD and is excessively loud. In fact, there's several times it's clipping and peaking over 0db. The waveform looks like it had the peaks sliced off with a knife. To sanity check this, I compared this to some of your previous tracks and saw that, although those other tracks were fairly compressed, they had much more headroom than this and still had some dynamics to them. I love this arrangement for all the same reasons I enjoy your other work - it's energetic, full of incredible transitions, and for lack of a better word, it just slaps. Evidently my evaluation setup was giving bad readings so please disregard the comment about clipping. All of the other feedback still stands regarding the loudness and overall compression, but without the clipping, the arrangement still puts this over the bar. I'd like to see a less aggressive master on future submissions though! YES