Emunator

I’m finding myself aligning most with Vinnie on this vote. I’m not exactly blown away and ultimately feel like there’s a lot of untapped potential here, but it functions well enough as a standalone arrangement. The first minute of the track is a fairly straightforward treatment of Final Hours, but it sets the stage nicely for where the arrangement goes next. The treatment of the Majora Incarnate battle brought a lot of your own character to the mix. Some of those sections felt more liberal (I’d love to hear a source breakdown from someone who is really familiar with Majora Incarnate) but that actually worked in your favor in my book since the overall source usage seems to check out. Overall, this is right on the line but I think the creative interpretation introduced in the second half, as well as the excellent use of dramatic buildup and tension puts it on the right side of the fence. Nitpick time – the sfx at 1:07 was shrill and could be brought down just a tad, and the strings at 1:46 – 1:53 have some unnatural attack/decay issues. Neither of these are a huge issue in my book. YES (borderline)

Loving the intro on this one. The use of sound effects is ace, I admire how you actually integrated them rhythmically with the track instead of dumping a few one-shots over the track and calling it a day. It makes me feel truly immersed in the track. Moving onto the meat of the arrangement, this is a classic Hakstok formula that really ticks all the boxes in a very satisfying fashion. In general, I felt like the guitar work outshines the synths (but that’s pretty much what you sign up for when you bring Sixto on board – that solo was mean!) and in my opinion, it took a little too long to bring a lead instrument into the mix (it wasn’t until around 1:25 that a dominant lead entered the arena and I was definitely itching for things to progress by that point.) All in all, those are minor quibbles, and the mixing sounds much improved. I dig it! YES

Unfortunately I had the same impression when I was checking this out in the inbox, and on repeat listen I have to agree. Take this and throw it on an original album and sell it for $$$, but I'm just not hearing a tangible connection to the source, as much as I love what you've done here. NO

Kristina has a good handle on a few of the issues present with this track, but in my opinion the problems go a little further than just the mixing and variation. The sound pallet here is really cool in the way it lends more of an ethnic flavor to the track, and in all honesty I love the idea of a nighttime-sounding, downtempo Gerudo Valley interpretation. I wish I thought of it first! However, even for a chillout track, things never seem to progress or build up very substantially. The beat does ebb and flow to an extent but the actual level of excitement in the instrumentation stays almost too mellow the whole time and doesn’t build or layer as the track moves along. Experiment with layering and writing additional parts so that the track has more of a dynamic curve that follows the progression of your beat. It’s possible to write much more engaging, humanized melodies without compromising the vibe you’re going for, and right now I feel like you’re missing that mark. The production definitely could stand to be reworked, Kristina left some great feedback on that so I’m not going to re-tread much over it, but right now everything sounds very flat and quiet. You’ve got a cohesive set of samples that sound very nice together, and you’ve done a good amount to personalize the source tune to your own taste, but right now the production and the actual arrangement itself feels like it’s lacking in life. This is a strong concept and I’d love to see you expand on it. As it stands, I think it would take a lot of work back at the drawing board to flesh out this idea more fully, but I think it would be worth the time spent because, as I said, you have a great foundation here. The execution just needs to come up to par. Good luck! NO

This is a lovely adaptation of the source tune that’s very cleanly produced and adeptly performed, but unfortunately I feel like this doesn’t go much further than that. The track hews VERY closely to the source tune both in terms of style, tempo, and actual notation – Kristina correctly points out some moments of personalization but I don’t personally believe there’s enough development to set this apart from being a cover. This really is an improvement over the original song, and I love the little harp/zither enhancements throughout, so you should be proud of yourself for what you’ve created here. It’s very well done. However, in order to pass the bar, I feel that you would need to introduce some more variation from the original, especially in the 2nd half of your arrangement which is just a retread of the first half of the song. Sorry to be a downer, I enjoyed listening to this as a standalone piece but you’ll need to get a bit more interpretive with the track as a whole in order to pass OCR’s bar. Best of luck if you choose to resubmit! NO

Well, for what it's worth I had a 2 minute WIP of Fungi Forest done in a mellow orchestral style a few years ago. Probably won't go anywhere at this point but here it is!

Which track do you want a second opinion on? You're correct in that I don't really have time right now to fully evaluate all the WIPs that come in but if you have particular problem tracks that are close to completion you want to send my way for opinions, feel free!

I know, I know... there are literally already 20 remixes of Schala's theme on the site. I don't think anyone's ever done it quite like this though! (There's a hearty dose of 'The Last Day of the World' too, to pair it with something a bit less-often touched.) I am considering this remix finished, but I wanted to share here anyway because I'm really proud of this track! So, last October I visited Theophany, my longtime friend and one of my favorite musicians of all time, for a weekend and we had a chance to speak at length about our music making processes. That visit gave me a huge burst of inspiration and almost immediately when I returned home from the trip, I began work on this track. It features plenty of my signature bells and pads and a heavy focus on atmosphere, as always, but I think you'll agree that this is far different from my usual style. I wanted to create something dark, brooding, and extremely dramatic to really capture the larger-than-life spirit of the Chrono Trigger storyline. I took a lot of inspiration from film scores like Inception, post-rock bands like Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and of course, Theophany's own music. I've worked very hard to push my personal envelope with this track, and I feel like the last 2 minutes of the song in particular are the best thing I have created to date as a musician. Hope you enjoy! PS: Just for fun, here's a picture of my finished project file! This mix took about 30-35 hours of solid work to complete.

I've heard a couple of your submissions while I've been judging recently, Matthew. I admire the level of creativity and effort you've put into your tracks. You've got a distinct sense of atmosphere in all of your songs, and there's always a level of your own personal touch. The gritty lo-fi approach can work, but to put it bluntly your tracks all sound low-quality in a not-so-intentional way. The mixing is very compressed and muddy and indistinct, like you're overcompressing certain elements or haven't properly adjusted the levels of the instruments in your track, so you're left with a master that has very little dynamics or breathing room. For example, the guitar in this mix is almost completely indistinct even though it seems like it should be operating as a lead instrument. The beats/bass are drowning it out almost entirely. I think this might also be a factor of using low-quality samples to begin with - the choir and the timpani drums sound very low-fi to me and stick out sorely. Additionally, your tracks tend to rely very heavily on loops. While this arrangement you do employ some buildup/development over time, but the heavy reliance on the same core loops (in this case, particularly the bassline) causes the track to drag when you don't introduce much variation. I actually really like how you adapted the Main Title arpeggio into your bassline, but it doesn't change up at all throughout the song. I think this arrangement actually has some potential, and you've clearly got a good sense of style, but I don't believe your execution is quite there yet. Keep practicing and hit up the Workshop forums for more feedback and your mixing skill will catch up to your vision NO

This is exquisite! I think the artist's submission comments say it all - the source tune adapts perfectly to a classical style. The arrangement is pretty straightforward, without a lot of original writing or frills, but the performance is incredibly emotive, and introduces an even more dramatic and satisfying dynamic curve than the original. The number of solo piano submissions we receive seems to have dwindled lately, so it's especially gratifying to hear something this well-done that touches on a source from a very under-appreciated game. Bravo! I'm not listening on my normal setup at the moment, so if someone else could check the volume levels and see how that sounds, that'd be awesome. From an arrangement perspective, I think this is firing on all cylinders. YES

Yeah, I regretfully have to agree. I had a gut feeling that this was pretty liberal at first, but my silly math error made me give this the benefit of the doubt. On a repeat listen it's pretty clear that the original sections are too dominant for OCR standards, especially because there are periods of time where the track will go almost a minute or more without any callbacks to Ocarina of Time. I'm not a strict 50%-er like Larry by any means, but the source usage in this track is heavily lopsided and I can't sign off on this in good conscience, as much as I love this track. Send us a slightly-abridged radio edit version, or work some source usage in somewhere else, and I'd eagerly give it my stamp of approval. As it stands though, I've got to flip my vote. Sorry NO

Eugh... I got sloppy there - I had originally lumped the timestamps for source and non-source passages together, and when I was deleting the non-source ones I accidentally left that section in my count. I don't actually hear any source there. That puts my rough estimated usage at 45%... shit. Larry, mind doing a breakdown on your end to see if our percentages match up?

Let's get the stopwatching out of the way here, first off... :51 - 1:06 [15s] 1:20 - 1:52 [32s] 1:52 - 2:30 [38s] 2:30 - 2:35 [5s] 2:52 - 3:04 [12s] 4:06 - 5:35 [89s] Total: 191 seconds / 335 = 57% source Cool! This felt VERY noodly during the Lost Woods sections, but that Title theme cameo section really helped bump your source usage. So, now that the formalities are out of the way... This. is. SICK!!! Your past submissions have been very compelling but this is the first one that really stopped me in my tracks and made me realize how damn musically-savvy you all are. There's some seriously-bonkers jazz wizardry going on here, and it's cool seeing everyone flex their performance chops as the track morphs between an upbeat jam, the sexier smooth-jazz sections, and... whatever you call the madness that happens around 1:55. One minor quibble I've had in the past with YamaYama's performances was the relatively-stiff sounding sax, which was performed very well on a technical level but sometimes lacked in expression, in my opinion. I'm happy to say that's not the case here - the sax performance sounds very lively and dynamic here, as does the rest of the instrumentation. Nobody's slacking on this track. Level up! This mix makes a compelling case for the most fascinating and all-around well-performed arrangement I've heard all year. Seriously, you guys have outdone yourselves. Vote changed below :(

Right from the start you establish a great pastoral vibe with the original piano writing and the extremely clever galloping percussion. The mood is strong but I feel like the execution is falling a bit short in some areas. The piano sample sounds ever-so-slightly thin and stiffly-sequenced when it's exposed in the intro, but it works a lot better as a backing instrument. The soundscape feels rather barren for most of the mix - not to say you HAVE to fill it out with sfx like Kristina is suggesting, but I do think that would help! The big issue for me is the very straightforward instrumentation during the middle of the mix, coupled with some unrealistic sequencing. I hate to be blunt, but everything from :38-1:42 is just so straightforward. I appreciate the slow, dynamic build you've got going, but the first few verses are so basic that it leaves me wanting more, and simultaneously highlights some of the unrealistic sequencing issues that Chimpazilla touched on. Conversely, everything from 2:44 to the end of the song is just splendid, and provides a really gorgeous climax that shows your true potential as an arranger. The soundscape is full and the arrangement really feels like it hits its stride. I can't say enough good things about that last section! The rest of the track just doesn't seem to be living up to that level of quality and I think you could take another pass at the first 2 and a half minutes of the track, improving the sequencing and also adding more "ear-candy" to bring those parts up to par. Tough call, you do have a lovely track here but I think there's enough room for improvement that I feel comfortable sending this one back for revisions. NO (resubmit please!)

Unlike OA, I actually wasn’t totally feeling the intro, the gradual EQ filter felt slightly awkward and I feel like some sort of ambiance or effects to fill out that space just a bit more would have been nice. However, once the guitar kicks in, things flesh out nicely. The rich, warm guitar tone supports your voice well, and the layers of backing vocals add an additional level of depth to the soundscape. Love the violin accents, too. While the core of this arrangement is very much focused on the lead vocals and rhythm guitar, the extra details take this a step beyond your typical acoustic performance. Overall, very adeptly produced and performed across the board, not bad at all for your first collab! YES

I have to ask what your plan is to juggle the three albums you've started recruiting for... as someone who's directed and seen an album through to completion in the past, it took 3 years of constant effort in planning, recruiting, critiquing, and coordinating to get it done. To be blunt, you don't have much of a history with this community and from my perspective, you've posted several times starting up a remix project without really putting any thought into a cohesive tracklist, a theme or style for the album, or recruiting anywhere else within the community. Not to say that just posting a thread to gauge interest is against the rules or anything, but I've been down this road before and it literally consumed my life for 3 years while I was working on the Donkey Kong Country 3 project alone. Three albums at once is an insane and unmanageable undertaking for anyone, let alone someone who is pretty new to the community. It's not as simple as finding a nice soundtrack and waiting for the music to roll in. Not by any stretch. I don't want to discourage you if you really are serious about working on a community album project, but based on the fact that you've started up 3 separate projects over the past month, I get the feeling you haven't thought through just how much of a commitment it is. And at the very least, if you are going to do that, to be successful you really need to put a bit more effort into your post than you have here or on your other two projects, or work on establishing yourself in the community a bit more first. I'm sorry to be a dick but I feel like you need a bit of a reality check when it comes to the album projects you're starting. Hope I'm not overstepping my bounds and you understand where I'm coming from!

Some quick thoughts: The whole track is mastered very quietly, especially in the intro. The intro wasn't grabbing my attention but things ramped up when the drums came in. The drum and bass programming is pretty nice, the guitar playing is wild and expressive but the guitar sample is not very convincing. Might be worth contacting a live guitar player to get something more realistic in here. The arrangement is pretty conservative, though you start to introduce some personalization through the soloing midway through the track. There's some little details, but the bigger problem right now is just the length of the arrangement - it's roughly the same duration as one run through of the source material, and it cuts off pretty abruptly right at 2 minutes. I need to hear more here! This definitely has potential, but the synth guitar isn't doing you any favors and the overall short length of the arrangement doesn't give you much time to really personalize the track to the level we're seeking on OC ReMix. Good luck if you choose to resubmit! NO (resub)

Contact Information Your ReMixer name : Maxxorz Your real name : Max Linsenbard Your email address : Your website : linsenbard.com Your userid (number, not name) on our forums : 32503 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged : F-Zero Name of arrangement : F-0 to 1000 Name of individual song(s) arranged : Mute City Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site) : Already on site Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site) : F-Zero X arrangement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQwMDftbXI Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. This remix was actually made for a game I'm working on that's a hybrid of F-Zero and Audiosurf. Our team wanted to focus on having the player feel like they're constantly on their toes while also enjoying the simple aspect of just going really fast. Since the game is rhythm-based, having a completely original soundtrack would make it hard for players to learn the game, so I figured having a tribute to F-Zero itself being the tutorial level would be fitting. I'm a drummer and brass player in the real world, so I worked the most on making the drums in the track sound like they're realistically being played and included a some amount of varying rhythms and fills to keep the beat fresh. I don't play guitar and my background in mixing/mastering is limited, so the lead/rhythm guitars are more focused on keeping that old-school non-realistic sound while the rest of the arrangement is more 'live'. The remix itself is mostly note-for-note the arrangement of the F-Zero X version of Mute City, but I believe it brings a new light to an old classic. The whole tune was made with a MIDI Keyboard and Logic Pro X. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0WzWdSVFmE

You're off to a decent start here - I like the breakbeats and some of the textures you've used... the glitching is pretty simplistic but it adds some flavor to the mix. Right now, though, there's a couple of things that need serious improvement before this can be postable on OCR. First, your leads are very bland and have no personality or variation... using the same lead throughout the entire song is definitely something to stay away from in order to keep things fresh. The bulk of the track is very repetitive and close to the source - it sounds like you built this primarily around loops and didn't do much to change them up throughout the duration of the track. This needs a lot more to set it apart from the original, though you have worked in some SFX and sound upgrades that hint at some expansion on top of the source. This track is not cutting the mustard for me in its current state, but you have some potential with this style! Put some more of YOU in the mix and see where it takes you. NO

Hello! My name is Ian Baggett, I go by Iananimate on soundcloud. My email address is the primary one being used to send this message, and my soundcloud link is soundcloud.com/iananimate. I am user (32502) Here's a remix I did of Sonic 3 & Knuckle's "Lava Reef Zone." It's titled "Heat Rush" user comments: The inspiration came from childhood nostalgia. I always imagined modernizing video game soundtracks that fit popular genres of today. In the case of lava reef zone, it has progressive and glitchy break vibes while still maintaining the original feel. my favorite part of course is the glitch solo I did by hand which is a great way to end the track. I hope you enjoy my mix and thank you for considering this submission. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo_4R17gYSY

Contact Information - EAR - Weston Ahern - - www.DjEAR.com - USER ID 22858 Submission Information - Sonic CD - 'The Madness' - SONGS ARRANGED Metallic Madness Zone (Present) JP Metallic Madness Zone (Past) US Metallic Madness Zone (Bad Future) JP - COMMENTS I actually had the idea for this combo-arrangement several years ago but never found the right way to express it. Flash-Forward to 2015 - a month into leading the SoTSS15 Tropical Paradise album project. I had recently pulled out the older Rave, Eurobeat, and Hard Dance tunes that were so much a foundation of my musical influences in HighSchool. Suddenly it all just clicked - I could almost imagine Sonic & his friends at this late night rave on a tropical island (That, let's be honest - we would ALL like to be at!). So yeah, who's up for some Stepmania? LT EDIT (3/16/17): Weston reminded me about this mix after pinging us on Tweeter. It's my fault for letting this get lost in the shuffle due to my question. I asked him about the lyrics, and here are his comments below. - LYRICS The "Lyrical Paragraph" Rap is from An old 'Masterbits Rapsody' Sample CD - Used in tribute here to Hideki Naganuma (who employs heavy use of samples) who used it in the game Ollie King - and for his highly praised work on the SONIC RUSH soundtrack. The following are from a Sample Pack titled: "Breakbeat Paradise" - I no longer have it since making the song - I believe some of the samples are original recordings for the pack, and others are older classic samples used in many rave & dance songs over the years, likely originally sampled from much older records. They have sort of been passed on over the years like the Amen Break - but with far less attention paid to their history and original source. "The Cry of Youth" "We Just Gotta Hold you on Baby" "It's the Darkness that Fascinates Me" "All Night" "Alright!" "Lets Party, Put the Boogie in your Body" "Peace, Watcha Got to say, Watcha got to say" "So Dance, While I put you in a Trance" "Are you Ready, To Rock Steady" - OMG I CAN NOT FIND THE ORIGINAL SOURCE, BUT I'M SURE IT'S FROM AN OLD HIPHOP RECORD "Cool, kick the nation with the groove, Till we rock the place when the biz gets moved" - Sampled from Topmodelz: 'I Wanna Dance' (possibly originally from the below source tho? - The history of these rap lines are hard to look into, their just sort of "standards" at this point) "Come on, freak it out the sensation - Body freak generate the foundation" "yeah a magical mystery sing check it out yeah the hit house sing" - Another classic rap line, I'm pretty sure the original source is Morhotronic: 'Say Yeah' The Female Chorus: Kathy Brown feat. Praxis - 'Turn Me Out' - A classic house & rave sample "You release me baby, got to have you near - make me burn burn burn, gotta have you here" Turn the Music Up, Don't wanna waste no time, Work me with temptation - I wanna lose my mind" "Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom" - KING KONG & D.JUNGLE GIRLS - 'BOOM BOOM DOLLA' That's about the best I can remember / and find online - Maybe with more time I could source a few more of these, but so many of them have become 'standards' over the years - and not all have their history well preserved like the Amen Break, or other famous shout samples. ^_^;; But - yeah, the whole point of the remix was to be in the style of an older 90's HyperTechno (see it's little brother Eurobeat for more) track, filled to the brim with old rave sounds and samples to fit with that SonicCD era of rave music. ^_^;; Thanks for the response tho! Hope some of that info helps. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMLDesSJ1BI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP7gYU7LL-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le5941dJKWE

Remixer name: Redg Real name: Brent Wollman My website: https://soundcloud.com/redg-sound UserID: 41181 Game arranged: Halflife 2, Halflife: Opposing Force Name of arrangement: With Indifference Name of individual songs arranged: Remix link: My first ever submission edited and remastered. Two of the best pieces from halflife for sheer \m/ Source enters at :15. Nova Prospekt's gnashing pulse eventually transitions into classic Alien Forces Sources: Alien Forces (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q5oAbqWwmY), Nova Prospekt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvypOazP54U)

Haha, I love the not-so-subtle use of Lex Luger's producer tag. Not sure if you're just using it as a random transition effect or if it's an intentional callout, but either way, nice Your bass sequencing sounds real nice, and the beats are similarly well-assembled. Onto the track... it's a huge sound upgrade from a very minimalist source tune, and I really like what you did with this in a bubble. It would fit right into the game. However, as far as OC ReMix is concerned, we typically expect a higher level of interpretation and development. This track is currently very repetitive, the track sounds roughly the same no matter where I skip to, and without any sort of lead melody or main hook to grab my attention, the mix blends together like background music, which is not inherently bad, but also not what we're seeking. More of a structure or development instead of relying on a loop format is going to be necessary in order to get this up to OCR standards, I'm afraid. Maybe consider hitting up the Recruit & Collaborate forum to find a rapper to lay some bars down over this track? Just a thought! Nice work, but not gonna work in this current form for me. NO

Remixer name: JMAA Real name: Juan Manuel Arroyo Alcón Email address: Website: http://jmaamusic.com Userid: 20952-jacktheripper Name of game: Splatoon Name of arrangement: Booyah Squid Beat Name of song arranged: Booyah Base Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ukJwWWbLU

Hayeser Alex Hayes ahayesmusic.com ID# 32443 Secret of Mana Mana Burn Fear of the Heavens Hiroki Kikuta I sat on this one for about a week, not knowing exactly how I'd like to arrange it (this is my first ReMix). Then on a whim, I reharmonized the chord structure for the opening and it took on a pretty distinct flavor. From there I finished almost all of the tracking/mixing in a day and the ideas poured out so fast that I could barely keep up. It became very much about the bass line (and utilizing its absence effectively), as well as peppering in as many of the notable motifs as possible in a [hopefully] unique way, while keeping it a groove-based track. It's a game of patience...I didn't want to rush introducing the melody. We all know it, so why not take time to let things brew and percolate? The groove(s) that take over around 1:40 I built using some of my own samples twisted up in Sugar Bytes' Egoist, and threw an auto filter on it for that "swallow the snare" effect. I struggled with whether to make the beginning more atmospheric/ambient and immediately engaging, but ultimately decided to let that synth pad stand on its own and really indulge in the sound of the chords for the first 8 measures. Hope you guys enjoy it, and I look forward to submitting many more! Thanks for listening. Here is the SoundCloud link (), as well as an attached mp3 with the requested specs. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFN0GLAMJ3k