Emunator   Judges ⚖️

There's something really cool about this approach, it's clear that you put a lot of effort into this (the artwork on the Youtube video is neat!) I think you nailed the production and genre-conversion element of this... the duration of the track is the only issue I have, but unfortunately it's a dealbreaker in my book - 1 and a half minutes really isn't enough time to develop a substantial arrangement per OC ReMix standards. I'd love to hear this arrangement more fleshed out - what you've got here is excellent but I just don't think there's enough of it. NO (resubmit!)

Quickly co-signing on this one! It's true that the soloing can be a bit on the sloppy side and some of the production work is rough, but the power of the groove won me over here. The energy and creativity you brought to the table easily masks any blemishes in the detail work of this mix. YES

Sorry dude, but a remix that draws this heavily from a direct-MP3 rip from the source tune is not kosher with our standards. This sounds really cool, but the entire track is built as layers over the original source tune, which is a no-go as far as this site is concerned. NO OVERRIDE

I love me some Banjo-Kazooie - I was hooked on this game as a kid as well, and the entire soundtrack has been permanently burned into my brain Hmmm... I actually am hearing some level of interpretation on the original (mostly within the first minute of your arrangement but at a few other points later on in the track) that has some merit. I thought the synth riff introduced at 1:07, for example, was a great modification to the original source that injected some original personality into your track. Overall though, I agree with OA that this hews pretty closely to the source tune and could definitely benefit from his suggestions. Additionally, at nearly 6-minutes long, this arrangement tends to drag at times without any significant variations in your beat or instrumentation, and a lot of sections being repeated several times throughout the duration of the track. My bigger concern with this mix is the actual production quality, which just sounds wonky to me. The balance is all over the place, in some sections your lead instrument is barely audible over the drums/bass, and due to the way you've mixed the track, everything feels very washed out and lacking in clarity. A lot of this will come with experience - keep practicing and hit up our Workshop forums, as OA suggested, and continue to hone your craft. Unfortunately, right now I think you've got a long way to go in terms of improving your production game before you're ready for OCR primetime. NO

OA hit the nail on the head with this. The beats are absolutely blown out of proportion to the point where they are dominating the rest of the track. There's some potential in the chill atmosphere you created but the beats absolutely need to be brought down to a reasonable volume level, and the arrangement needs to be fully fleshed out... right now, it cuts off completely without a clean fade or resolution. I would love to hear some additional melodic components brought in once the song hits full-swing to really flesh out your interpretation. Past that, check out your hi-hat velocities - right now, it feels like they're riding at a very similar velocity level, which gives this a very mechanical groove. This needs quite a bit of polish and additional development but you've showed some cool concepts here. Take another pass at this track if you feel up to it. If not, take some of this advice to heart and double-down on your next attempt. Either way, keep at it! NO

Dave is right, this is a very straightforward approach in a lot of ways. There's definitely a coolness factor in hearing Corridors of Time adapted to a chip-house style like this, but to be honest I don't feel like there's a lot of polish or nuance to your approach. For a 5 minute remix, I'm hearing a lot of repetition and looping without very much variation, and several rehashed transitions throughout the track. I'm getting some serious déjà vu listening to this - after the first minute or two, it doesn't seem like you're introducing anything fresh to the table. The production is also lacking in polish - for example, your choir patch has a very unrealistic attack/decay, and many of the other synths are dry and lacking any sort of expressiveness. Sorry to say, I'm not feeling this arrangement much - it doesn't do much to differentiate itself from the original source tune, and the repetitive structure of the arrangement isn't really doing it for me. There's a lot of potential in this style but I would strongly recommend hitting up our Workshop Forums for some more specific one-on-one feedback! Good luck. NO

THIS IS A PROJECT MIX! For the FF6 Kickstarter project. Remixer names: Diodes, J.Psycle Real names: Amy Hsieh, Jeremy Feder Email addresses: (this may be changing soon), Website: amyhsieh.com (this may be changing soon), districtsound.com UserID: 21446 Game: Persona 3 FES Name of Arrangement: True Calling (Unplugged) Song Arranged: Heartful Cry Composer: Shoji Meguro Comments: The story behind how this came about is complicated, but I'm just going to call this version 2.0. Version 1.0 was an electronic dance version that I had started working on with Jeremy. It was during that collaboration that I had the idea for this remix, in a totally different chill acoustic style, but with some common elements, like the lyrics and the violin. So we ended up with two different versions, and maybe you will hear version 1.0, too. Breakdown: I wrote the lyrics and performed all the instruments, and Jeremy did all the production, mixing and mastering, and helped out with recording engineering and equipment as well. These 2 remixes were our first experience collaborating on music, and we learned a lot from the process. I want to thank Deia and OA for inviting me to be a part of the FF6 Kickstarter project, as that was what introduced me to the source. The first time I heard Heartful Cry, I liked it immediately, and was inspired with a lot of potential ideas for remixes. Evidently so, as I couldn't stop at just making one.

Link updated in the first post with a non-404'd/WAV encoding. Any judges who have already listened to this want to check out the new version and make sure it's kosher?

New version added to the first post - volume level sounds fine to me! I loved this track from the first WIP I heard. Alex has always had a way with delicate, impressionist arrangements but this has to be one of his best efforts to date. Taking such a short source tune and expanding it to a full-length arrangement is no easy task, but this feels downright effortless. This is a stellar example of a mix that, despite being instrumental, perfectly conveys the mood and concept that the artist was going for with no explanation or pretext needed. The orchestration is serviceable - Deia is right, this would have benefited from a live performance to really capture the true spirit of the arrangement, but the sequencing is nuanced enough that it gets the point across, and sounds perfectly pleasant to my ears. Now that the volume is normalized, I have no holdups here! YES

This is FUN! This is, admittedly, a very straightforward arrangement that I initially thought was too cover-ish, but the adaptation for sax trio and additional added harmonies nudge this over the bar, in my opinion. In addition, there's a great deal of emotion and expressiveness in the live instrument performances that, along with the solo section, lends plenty of character to the mix. Nothing groundbreaking here, but I'm totally on board with your guys' interpretation. This seems like a great mix to post around Christmas time, so I'm going to flag this as a priority so if it does pass, it can be ready in time for the holidays. YES

ReMixer Name: LongBoxofChocolate Real Names: Trevor Burch, Daniel Perry, Aaron Schmitt Website: https://www.youtube.com/user/LongBoxofChocolate/videos Game: Super Mario 64 Title: Frosty Britches Source: Snow Mountain Hey guys. This track marks the revitalization of my ongoing project, LongBoxofChocolate. Although it started in early 2013, it has been plagued with half-baked ideas, technical limitations, and scheduling problems...until now. For our comeback (and first submission), I wanted to choose a simple tune that would showcase our improved recording techniques and new members. Cool Cool Mountain was perfect, as I thought it was just begging to be led off with a sax trio. I made a quick adjustment for a solo section, and the rest of the arrangement basically wrote itself. We are still finding our roles in the project and refining our process with every session, but I'm very happy with how this turned out. We hope to be putting out more content on a consistent basis, learning more and more as we go. Cheers! - Trevor PS the name just comes from when Mario falls down the mountain and gets stuck in the snow, lol. Source:

First impression - really gorgeous, ethereal arrangement, and lovely source tune. Feels very airy and free-floating... I'd love to hear more of a solid arrangement/dynamic curve, but the ambient structure is pretty fascinating. Excellent percussion and instrument tone, the choir is the main point where the sequencing seems a little unrealistic to me. I'm digging this but I need to mull it over - structure is unorthodox but I think it works, and I don't really feel like the choir is a dealbreaker. I'll check back on this later.

RebeccaETripp Rebecca Tripp http://www.crystalechosound.com/ ID: 48262 Game: Skyward Sword Song's Remixed: Fi's Farewell/Fi's Theme Song Title: "Fi, Emissary of the Goddess" Sources:

I agree with Deia, the vintage soundscape definitely has some potential, but right now your level of re-arrangement and personal interpretation doesn't seem to go much further than that. I think if you were to work in some original melodies, harmonies, or change up the structure of the song, you could work with this sound pallet you've built, but there's just not much to go off of here. Like Deia said, take a listen to some of the other tracks that have been posted so you can better gauge the level of interpretation that we're looking for from a mix. Good luck with your future submissions! NO

This is so bad. Soooooo bad Honestly, the execution of the musical parts is actually pretty well-done, though I found the voice acting to be pretty muffled and indistinguishable a lot of the time without reading along to the submission letter. Sounds like maybe a low-quality recording on the voices or just sloppy enunciation, but the dialog seemed to get buried behind the rest of the track so that element of the track fell flat to me. Agreed with the above judges that the structure and source usage is also problematic per standards. I have to kick it back on those grounds alone, but I have to be honest and say that the voice acting or the actual script just didn't feel engaging to me Sorry dude. NO

No need to hold this one up any longer - let's close this out because the other judges have provided a lot of great feedback in addition to the panning fix that I requested. I better hear this one back on the panel! NO (resubmit!)

This piece is surprisingly vibey and understated. The drums and bass are inherently energetic and powerful, but the synth patches are silky smooth throughout. It captures and holds my attention without shouting "LOOK AT ME!" like a lot of high-energy, uptempo electronica tends to do. Despite that, it's also very nuanced - lots of fun melodic variations and processing tricks keep this fresh without compromising the overall mood of the piece. I wouldn't call this your strongest or most innovative piece, T, but it works great for what it is. Another one for the books! YES

Excellent sound design, Brent. This is a head-spinning arrangement that really captures the feeling of uneasiness that comes along with entering an unfamiliar boss's lair for the first time. I dug the minimalist beats, I couldn't pick up any discernible rhythm from the patterns so they ended up feeling more atmospheric than anything, but it worked for me regardless! I'm curious what the logic was behind the nearly-15 second-long pause in the middle of the track. I don't mind the idea of a full dropout but doing it for that long with no texture or atmosphere to fill the void just doesn't work for me. I'd love to hear the logic behind that, but I'd really love to have that trimmed down to a more manageable length. Other than that, I'm on board! YES (cond. on trimming silence)

Completely agreed - this is actually a SICK arrangement (love the choir) but the lack of articulation on any of your instruments, and lower-than-average sample quality is problematic. This is way too good of an arrangement to let slide, but you're not sequencing your instruments at a level that does it justice yet. Look up tutorials on sequencing orchestral instruments to have more realistic attack and decay, hit up our Workshop forums for some more direct feedback... whatever you gotta do to improve the sequencing on this! I really love your arrangement! NO (resubmit!)

I'm with Mike - I expected this to be WAY worse in terms of vocal mixing, but to be honest I wouldn't have even identified this as a vocal level issue. If anything, I feel like the bass is too loud and dry, and would benefit from being brought down in the mix, but there's enough space in the rest of the mix for the vocals to occupy that it's not a dealbreaker in my book by any means. The vocal performance is certainly a highlight here, you really don't hear this style on the site very frequently, so this is exciting to me. Is it sacrilege to say that I actually enjoyed your cover more than the source? Your crunchy guitar tone fits like a glove, as does the drum kit. Other than the bass tone and level, everything here fits together naturally. I dig this quite a bit. YES

This one is a little divisive for me. On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of effort that went into keeping this arrangement fresh and interesting... the drums are energetic and there's so much chopping and filtering and processing going on, there's really a lot going on to keep my attention. There's a lot to love here and I can totally understand why this got 2 YES votes already. The downside for me, and I think it's a bigger deal than the other judges made it out to be, is the extremely vanilla synth design. Although the writing and effects are interesting, and there is a good variety of synth patches used, none of them are very interesting to me. The texture of the track just sounds plain. On another note, the ending does feel like it's lacking resolution - I don't understand the choice to cut the track off where you did. The saw basses are very loud and overpower a lot of other instrumentation, making things feel very cramped during the choruses. I would suggest bringing those down just a touch. I don't know... on repeat listens I'm really finding myself enjoying a lot of elements of this, but the vanilla sound design makes it hard for me to really get excited about this. Couple that with some of the other nitpicks, and I unfortunately feel like this is just under my own personal bar. Depending on how the rest of the vote goes, I may re-consider, because it's a very close call, but I'm on the other side of the fence right now. Good luck with the rest of the vote! NO (resubmit)

Gotta co-sign quickly with the two judges above me... I'm at a loss, I just don't think this sounds very good, musically. I can see what Kris is saying, it could be cool with a LOT more polish on the production and more space given for the instruments to breathe, but this just seems messy to me. Sorry dude NO

Very cool approach - the Water Temple is such a tough source to remix, but it's also instantly recognizable so I'm glad to see a solid effort to this. You adapted the source to a much more fluid structure, the light hand drums really give this a whole new quality. The key changes are integrated really well, I enjoyed that quite a bit. The original source worked pretty well, in my opinion, because the dissonant flute/plucked melodies are kept relatively segregated from the more tonal, beautiful opening part of the song. The downside that I'm hearing with your remix is that when you try to juxtapose the dissonant melodies the way you have here, they just don't sound good. Not sure how else to say it, but I found the flute in this track to be extremely distracting most of the time. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that your flute sequencing makes almost no attempt at realism - it sounds like you loaded the patch onto a MIDI keyboard and jammed over the original track without really getting anything to fit properly, tonally, or timing-wise. I hate to rag so bluntly on that aspect of the track, but it really feels sloppy and takes me out of the vibe you crafted. The rest of the track is a lot more pleasant, but it also rides the same tempo and groove for the full length of the song. The hand drums don't change up much and there isn't much identifiable structure to the song once they come in. The plodding structure works in theory, but some more variations to the backing instrumentation would have been nice here. I probably sound like I'm coming down really hard on this, but in truth there's actually a lot to like here, I just don't think certain elements are clicking at all. Sorry NO

RebeccaETripp Rebecca Tripp http://www.crystalechosound.com/ ID: 48262 Game: Ocarina of Time Song's Remixed: Water Temple (dropbox link: Song Title: Holy Water Temple Here is a YouTube link: Source:

Remixer Name: KingTiger Real Name: R. Corey Oltman Email Address: Website: kingtigermusic.com (I know I told you to take this off my profile page but I'm going to put the website back up again) Userid: 13864 Name of Game Arranged: Homeworld Name of Arrangement: Migraine (Learning Curve) remix link (192 kb/s mp3): Name of Individual Song Arranged: Heavy Radiation (Supernova Research Station) source link (Youtube): https://youtu.be/U1kPqZm6bg0 Composer: Paul Ruskay System: PC (CD-ROM) Genre: RTS Release Date: September 28, 1999 Developer: Relic Entertainment Publisher: Sierra Entertainment Soundtrack (Youtube): https://youtu.be/6WbvIEL5Iyk Remastered Version -- Publisher: Gearbox Software Developer: Gearbox Software Release Date: February 25, 2015 System: PC (digital download (Steam)) Mix Comments: This soundtrack is awesome, but since it's mostly ambient, it's a challenge to arrange. Given its six-and-a-half minute length, this 7/4 remix might seem a bit liberal simply because of the minimal source material, so here's a breakdown: - the bells that play an octave apart starting right at the beginning of the source that continue to play throughout are mimicked by the chime-y type notes in the remix that are also an octave apart and sound at the beginning of every measure starting at 0:13 and continuing until the last one sounds at 5:58, albeit the distortion & other effects on them increase quite a bit by the end - the chords that begin at 0:25 in the remix may sound too major, considering the tension of the source, but the source actually seems to be in a major key itself (chords in the source begin at 0:29). I've actually kind of flipped the simple two-chord progression of the source (alt chord / root chord, mine is root chord /alt chord), along with some different chords during 2:35 - 3:47 of the remix. - the lead from 0:51 - 2:55 in the remix has the same movement as the lead from 0:29 - 1:28 in the source, although I started stacking my lead to add another dynamic After Syllix called me "master of the LFO" when he heard my intro track to disc 3 of Temporal Duality, I remembered how much fun it is to mess with synthesizers, LFOs, and the like, and this track has a lot of that sort of thing, along with several slow-burn automation edits and other subtleties. I think it's a pretty rockin' ambient piece (as much as ambient pieces can rock), and hope you all enjoy it, regardless of the panel's decision PS. To help with source usage, I could claim that the entire soundtrack inspired me with all its drone-y bits, like the low bass in this one: https://youtu.be/0CJhFa2Y-Lw But in all honesty, I didn't have any other sources in mind besides "Heavy Radiation" when I made this remix. Source: