Emunator

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35548 name: Brandon E. Strader remixer: Brandon Strader forum: 3123 website: www.bstrader.net game: Mega Man 9 / Mega Man 5 composer: Ippo Yamda (MM9) / Mari Yamaguchi (MM5) source: Splash Woman / Wave Man ( / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtEcfF1STWY)remixname: Lady in the Water link: genre: Orchestral An orchestration somewhat in the vein of "Mirage", this is my third orchestration so far that I've submitted... I've maintained most of the orchestral elements from "Mirage", including the koto and shamisen. I wanted to add some more ethnic instruments but I ran out of RAM and my computer was crashing, so what can you do. There's some production tweaks but I felt Mirage was pretty strong, so I didn't go overboard. I made this for Round 1 of the Grandiose Robotic Master Remixing Competition run by DarkeSword. I wanted to get involved with a Shariq Production™® and I thought this would be a cool way to enter that Darke World. I made an orchestration I am very happy with, combining Splash Woman and Wave Man themes -- sometimes simultaneously. When I was writing the harmony for the Wave Man melodies during the chorus, I knew I was on to something special. (1:21 heard on the Oboe / Pizzicato violin). And the Splash Woman melody is going at the same time, which I thought was really awesome. Some stuff just works together nicely, you find out while you're in the process of fiddling around with doodads. I did a lot of doodad fiddling with various gizmos. Wanted to make sure I actually represented Wave Man properly even though I wasn't particularly interested in using that theme. I'm all about the Splash Woman, folks. Anyway, it's used for the intro, and also at 1:58 which represents 1:34 in the source youtube. As you can tell I really didn't go that deep into its source, really just a couple stand-out melodies were used. As for Splash Woman, I think it translated to orchestra extremely well. It's another charging piece at times, but I think it reaches a level of major-key epicity that the darker previous orchestrations didn't. I probably won't do many more orchestrations soon. It'll start to seem like a gimmick and people won't be interested in hearing more of them. I like to try different stuff, genres, and fiddle with the gizmos of various genres -- it keeps me interested in music. I hope it keeps ya'll interested too.

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36685&highlight=excalibur

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=39383&highlight=requiem+dying+world Woooooop.

ReMixer names: Jordanrooben Jordan Plutchok - 46229 Chimpazilla Kristina Scheps - 45254 Emunator Wes McDonald – 16467 Submission information: Game arranged: Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess ReMix name: "Forest of Purple Mist" Songs arranged: "Faron Woods" Composer: Koji Kondo, Toru Minegishi, Asuka Ota mp3 attached Jordanrooben’s comments: About a year ago, I discovered OCReMix through videos on Youtube, and in a short time I made it a goal to become a posted mixer there. Best. Decision. Ever. The people in the WIP forums have helped me so much in my remixing and composing skills that I wouldn't even be considering an OCReMix submission if it weren't for them! Thank you to everyone, especially Rozovian and Chimpazilla! I can hardly see why Chimp fell in love with this mix so much, but I'm so glad she did! If it weren't for her, this would never have gone anywhere. And thanks to her, I've fallen in love with this track too. A huge thanks to Emunator too, for his help finalizing the writing and mixing on the track. It's an honor. It's been a great experience, and I hope you'll like it! Chimpazilla’s comments: I discovered Jordan’s Faron Woods remix in the wip forum in February 2012. I was immediately captivated by the melodies and countermelodies he had written. Twilight Princess is my favorite Zelda game… and I was transported right back to Faron Woods while listening. There was something magical about this mix for me… it touched me deeply. Jordan made several updates but I felt that he could use some assistance with drumming and mixing, which he was kind enough to allow me to do. The updated song then caught Emunator’s attention, and he liked it enough to dive in and help with some final writing edits, some instrument replacements, some improved mixing and a brand new ending. Faron Woods never sounded so good! The song has changed in some ways but basically stays true to the melodies Jordan originally wrote, with some additional embellishments added. I am thrilled to have been part of this collaboration with Jordan and Wes, two very fine gentlemen. I hope we have captured the mystical feel of spending a weekend in the beautiful Faron Woods! Emunator’s comments: I came on board this arrangement in the 11th hour when I heard it on the WIP forums in a very after the arrangement was pretty locked in. I fell in love with the very anime/orchestral style that Jordan and Kristina had crafted, and found the instrument choices and dancing melodies very inspiring. The arrangement was already great, but I wanted to do what I could with my (very) minimal experience to help improve the production end of this track. I actually met with Kristina in person to work on this track and, over the course of a day, we made a mountain of changes to the remix, including replacing samples nearly across the board, resequencing certain instruments/percussion, and adding on a brand new outro, which is the only actual writing I did in this track. There were some limitations that we had to work with on this track because of how absurdly complex the project file had become, but I'm pretty happy with the final result. Thanks so much to Kristina and Jordan for letting me be a part of this mix! Source:

Honestly, after reading some of the other votes, I've decided to actually change my vote around. I guess the bass wasn't as much of a subjective personal-taste issue as I thought, and re-listening I definitely feel like there could be some objective improvements made to get this up to the bar and more listenable for everybody. Sorry to hold this up. NO (resub!) (oh wait, I just realized I never actually wrote in a vote the last time. Whoops.)

Just wanted to chime in and say thanks to Dave for making an extra effort to get so many mixes posted in the last few days, you've been doing great Your work has not gone unnoticed.

This makes me so unbelievably happy to hear

Love it dude, I feel like my judge comments mostly summed up my feelings on this, but honestly the borderline part of the vote really only applies when viewing this strictly through the lens of OCR's standards. Outside of that context, as a personal listener I find this downright fantastic and there's nothing borderline about it. This is definitely the track where I realized how much potential you had in terms of producing downright fantastic vocal tracks, and your recent attempts have gotten even better. Be on the lookout for more from Mansoor, he's done some amazing stuff recently!

Honestly, this is a very conservative arrangement, but where I think it shines is in the expressiveness of the instrumentation. Every performance feels EXTREMELY soulful, even if a lot of it is sequenced. There's some definite sloppiness throughout the song but this is one of those rare occasions where it adds to the overall effect instead of detracting. Some very interesting chord changes and additional harmonies keep this fresh without really straying too far from the beaten path at all. I think this has just the right amount of personality to clear the bar. Honestly, this is the kind of track my gut tells me would be a resub vote, but I'm finding myself charmed by what you've done here I get the feeling that others might be a little more critical but for me, it's a pass. YES

Definitely siding on the NO's here, the rhythms don't work for me. Also, those string stabs sound REALLY exposed and weak... the rest of the samples are fine, but the ever-so-slightly offbeat rhythms are making this really hard to listen to once you notice them See if you can polish this one up, Gui! It's an excellent arrangement and I absolutely dig the style! Excellent instrumentation choice, just get the timing to click better and see what you can do about those string stabs, while you're at it. NO (resub!!)

My album dick is longer than yours!

Haha, I thought I remembered voting on this track last year? *checks* Yeah, this track already passed the panel back in 2011. You should probably get in touch with me when you're totally finished with revisions so we can sort this out

Ahhh yesssh. I love the expressiveness of the synths/guitar in the mix, there's even some subtle vibrato/articulation on the lead synths. I disagree with OA about the snare, I thought it worked just fine here. Overall, some really strong melodic ideas that cover a lot of ground... maybe a little bit too much ground, honestly. I feel like the arrangement is sort of meandering all over the place without much direction, which is a bit disappointing. I would have liked a more concise arrangement with a more clear structure, but overall I feel like this is strong enough to pass. Not bad, guys. YES

WhothefuckisthisguyRock

Good to see you on the forums again dude This film's showing a huge jump in production quality for you, I'm really impressed with what you and your crew have been doing lately! I trust I'll be able to come over and check out the full thing when it's done?

Oops! Fixed

Alright, I've held off on making any official announcements until now because I was tired of stringing you all along with an endless slew of posts about how it would be "just a little bit longer!" I've been making those posts since around this time last year and we've all seen how much that's worth However, now I can finally say with confidence that... The music of DKC3: Double the Trouble! is 100% FINISHED! I hope this announcement alleviates any sort of pain (physical or mental) that may have been induced by the album's long lifespan. I can't express how happy it makes me to be able to finally say those words. Before I get to the big picture stuff, I want to give a HUGE thanks to Theophany for really coming through on the last few tracks... the final WAV file containing both Beneath the Moonlight (Stilt Village GBA) and Distant Dreams on Stormy Seas (Game Over GBA) is over 12 and a half minutes long and sounds absolutely incredible. I know I can't speak for everyone, but it's my personal opinion that it was entirely worth the wait to allow this opus to realize its full potential. Beneath the Moonlight was arranged by Theophany and features extensive guitar performances from Harmony and Fishy, as well as live violin by Jeff Ball. The latter part of the track, the Game Over remix, was arranged primarily by me with sections added by Cody and Theophany, and produced with Theophany's incredible sample libraries. I'm extremely proud of the contribution I was able to make here and I'm sure all the other artists feel the same way. So, a little overview now! This project was officially started in November of 2009, and made public 4 months later. This means that it took roughly 2 years and 10 months to finish. To put it in perspective, that's roughly the same time it took to produce the DKC2 album, which was half the size! With that in mind, I don't think we did too badly in terms of production time, despite what some of you may say The final tally here is 64 artists/performers, contributing 76 songs (64 main album tracks and 12 bonus tracks,) spanning over 5 discs and nearly 5 and a half hours of music. These figures place it comfortably above the competition as the largest OCRemix album to date. Those who have heard the whole album can vouch for the fact that we haven't just stuffed our tracklist full of half-baked filler remixes, either. I'm fully convinced that this album has built off of the greatness of the two DKC albums that have come before it, and improved in many areas overall. But I don't necessarily expect you all to take my word for that, though... so in that spirit, I've also uploaded the long-awaited final audiovisual preview. Big thanks to Peach and Cody for producing this, hopefully it'll give you an idea about the kind of quality and diversity that you can expect from the final album. Please enjoy and share it around as much as you'd like, we'd love to build some publicity and hype as we move forward to release. Click to view an all-new 13 minute audiovisual preview! So what's next? At this point, I'm going to try and finalize the album eval package and get it uploaded tonight, since I won't be by a computer at all on Friday or Saturday. Most of the album eval has already been finished, so that phase shouldn't take nearly as long. We have most of the album artwork finished but I need to talk with TheMaverickk about getting that package 100% wrapped up. The website and the release trailer are the two things that we still need to start on, but that will be completed concurrently as we prepare for release. I'm not really going to discuss release dates in detail, but I will say that we're deadset on a 2012 release at the very least. I'll say more when I can but I don't plan on getting into details regarding an exact date until we're a week or two away from release. I ask for just a little bit more patience while we get things wrapped up, but it brings me great joy to announce that the music of the project (which is really what this is all about, right?) is DONE! My deepest gratitude goes out to Cody Wedel, Flexstyle, Theophany, Peach, TheMaverickk, and every artist who has put forth their best effort with their songs, and every one of you who has kept the hype alive, even when progress slowed to a crawl. This project wouldn't be worth very much without people who are looking forward to listening to it, so a hearty THANK YOU goes out to EVERYBODY who helped us along the way I hope the final product does not disappoint. Cheers!

Ok, I've actually revisited my vote on this because I got the feeling that I was giving the source usage a little more leeway than I normally would have. On second glance, I'm noticing a lot more "inspired by" or "loosely derived from" instead of direct source usage for most of the mix. As much as I love what you guys have done here, I'm gonna have to revise my vote on this NO

That sounds like an awesome, unexpected twist that could be really fun if pulled off with the right amount of finesse. Color me interested, let me know when you've got a WIP

Make a post on your alt account with proper grammar, then. Just for verification purposes. Or, alternatively, make a post on this account with terrible grammar. That would verify it too.

Oh shit, sorry, I didn't realize you guys actually WANTED this album to be released. I'll get right on that. My bad.

Word up to Deia and OA, they nailed it. The synth selections all feel like they've been filtered like crazy so everything is very mid-high heavy. It's grating most of the time and doesn't gel right. The hi-hat rhythm is also driving me crazy in the intro. The hardstyle section in the middle is hilarious though, I loved that The bassline is pretty good, albeit pretty predictable at this point as far as dubstep is concerned. The cut-and-paste bassline about 2/3rds of the way through the song is a disappointment Production overall is what's killing this for me here. I hate to be blunt but this needs a lot of work to bring it up to our standards. However, your arrangement is a ton of fun and I think you could improve your mixing/sequencing skills to a point where this would be passable, and it would probably be awesome and very well-received. If you feel up for it, send this back our way, I'd like to hear it again. NO (resubmit)

Pretty much agreed with what the two above me had to say. I love the expansion you've got on top of the Gameboy-esque foundation. You could definitely add in a more constant, dominant bassline once the breakbeats actually come in, those sections still sound strangely empty because of how much attack you have on the bassline. There's truthfully just not even CLOSE to enough source usage in here unless I'm just missing something during those extended sections where only the delayed broken chords are playing... I don't think I could pass this on those grounds alone. I'm really enjoying the unconventional approach here but I don't think it's right for the site, either. Sorry man NO

Hah, the production style reminds me of WillRock's "Above the Sky" remix. Dig it Overall, this piece shows a lot of technical skill (though things can get a little bit muddy when the runs start to enter into the lower octaves.) I love this too, but I agree with Larry that it just goes a bit too far off the rails for me to sign off on this. I think you'd need to reign in the performance a lot to get things more recognizable and I think that might actually hurt the piece overall, so I don't know if I'd advocate a resubmission on this. It works great in its current form, but just not quite what we're looking for, I think. NO

Absolutely loved your sub letter and the concept behind this mix This is probably your most ambitious arrangement to date, and from the sounds of it, one of your best produced, as well. It's nice to hear you progressing and beginning to approach things with a more bombastic, cinematic edge. This song just feels larger than life and I can't speak enough to how much I enjoyed your arrangement. Samples are still mildly problematic, but honestly I think this is the best work you've done to date as far as getting a professional sound out of your samples. The staccato strings are a bit too static in terms of velocity, and the choir patch sounds very unnaturally articulated. Piano still feels kind of fake and too bright... Sound effects at the end totally came out of nowhere That's about the most I can say on that note, the rest of it all sounds pretty good to me! I love this to death, best of luck with the rest of the vote Gui! YES