Emunator   Judges ⚖️

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

Yay! I'm always happy to see another Katethegreat submission cross our panel Admittedly I've had this one downloaded for a long time but haven't truly paid attention to it with any sort of critical ear, so let's see what we've got here... This is a fairly minimalist arrangement, but given the brevity of the source I feel like you still managed to squeeze a lot of mileage out of your remix. At the end, I found myself still wanting more, perhaps some sort of reprise of one of your initial instruments/melodies. Still, I must say that you certainly make the most of the 2 minute runtime, and each individual instrument makes a memorable impression. Honestly, not much to say here. This feels like a pretty easy call - while there's not really much melodic expansion going on with the Silent Hill melody itself, there's plenty of auxiliary melodies being added, and a great deal of personalization coming through the instrument choices and performance. Another lovely sub from Kate, keep throwing more stuff our way! YES

This is so fucking cool. Your rapping chops are fantastic and the lyrics are extremely well written. Your lyrics and performance style remind me like a much better version of the Knuckles stage music from Sonic Adventure 2. The record scratches are sweeeet, too. You're continuing to showcase talents I never would have guessed that you had, and with each submission I feel like you're raising the bar for yourself The beat itself has a few minor problems, such as the Temple of Time melody lead being a little bit dry and the rhodes piano feeling rather small and reserved. A sample with some more stereo width and more resonance would have worked better, IMO, but I can also respect it as a stylistic choice. My other critique is that I think some of the soloing from the first minute and a half would have fit better at the end of the track instead of clustering it all toward the beginning. Right now, it takes so long for the raps to come in that I sort of lose interest in the track. I don't foresee that being a problem, but just something to consider! Very easy YES YES

Ugh... I want to pass this so badly, but honestly I don't think there's enough development in this song until the piano soloing comes in about 2/3rds of the way through. From there, everything is golden, but before that I feel like this never reached its true potential. You need more layers, more dynamic writing, creative sound design... SOMETHING to help spice up the first section of the track, or cut down on the length somewhat. It's not solely the conservativeness that I think is an issue, but rather the overall lack of musical expansion and going on until the piano break. Honestly, the sections need to transition better too, in my opinion. For the last few bars of your D&B section, you could gradually build up your drums more and then add some sort of crash/boom to end off that section more conclusively, instead of juts dropping into the piano part with no warning. Your production is great, sound choices are fantastic, drum sounds are great and the soloing at the end is amazing, but I know you can improve this and make something truly awesome. Right now it feels like you're playing it pretty safe for the first 4 minutes of your track, and there's a ton of room to make that part as memorable as the last 2:40. I hope you don't think I'm coming down on you hard because I dislike the track; on the contrary, I IMPLORE you to revisit this and resubmit if this ends up being rejected. I recognize a lot of potential in here but I don't think it's quite at the bar at this point in time. Good luck either way! NO (resubmit!!)

I'm starting to really appreciate the amount of effort that you put into selecting sources for your remixes. It feels like, with each new remix, it's almost like you've composed an entirely new song by patching together existing melodies from vastly different sources. I think, melodically-speaking, this is one of your most successful outings yet - that DKC2 melody really goes well with anything! Your sound choices are really pleasing to hear, on the whole. There's a few leads (like the one that enters at :43) that I wasn't full sold on, but overall you've pulled a lot of very recognizable, nostalgic 80's sounds together into a rather seamless package... None of it ever sounds TOO cheesy though, and you've got your fair share of modern production techniques going on to bring these sounds into a more modern context. I don't think I fully appreciated the style on mix one until I sat down and realized how much textural variety there is going on here. Like all of your other songs, you've got a huge amount of individual sounds each playing some part in the mix overall. Some highlights include the very-retro sounding piano chords in the background at :43, and the synth flute sample at 2:25. Overall, I'm very impressed with that aspect of your mixing here, and it's definitely one of your most cohesive soundscapes to date. If I had to suggest anything to you to help improve in the future, I'd recommend getting a little more complex with your melodies at certain sections in order to highlight them a bit more. Structurally, the mix is very much a sequence of melodies presented without ever really defining anything in terms of verses, choruses, etc. The end result is that the arrangement feels static, and I'm never really sure where the energy level is supposed to be at. I think you could really help create more of a climax with this track if one of the melodies was adapted to sound more like a solo, with more complex writing and some improvisation, at a key point in the track. Keeping an eye on your backing track and being more deliberate with the energy level throughout your arrangements might help make your arrangements a lot more dynamic in the future. Overall though, this is very clearly over my bar, despite a slightly-plodding arrangement and a few questionable leads. There's a lot of heart here and I think the strong points in your music making process (vibrant sound choices, seamless source blending, and emotive melodic writing) are improving with each submission. Hopefully you find some of my suggestions useful (or, at least coherent!) YES

Right on man Best of luck in your future endeavors. If you ever want an extra ear for your new tunes or have any material that you just want to share, feel free to send anything new my way and I can critique/give feedback/whatever, if you'd like.

This is so much fun I liked it back when you put up your first version, I like it even more now that it's been cleaned up. I thought the drop at 4:30 was a bit of a disappointment but that's not a big deal. Sub it!

Love it dude Btw, what happened to your website? Is there anywhere I can find the rest of your tunes online at the moment?

Oh my god I can't wait to listen to this when I get home Thanks for taking the crits to heart and getting some live performances on this, I'm sure it'll be amazing!

Absolutely exquisite. This really follows in the footsteps of Disco Dan's "Green Amnesia" in the way the instrumentation starts out very subdued and low-key, but eventually works up to a more energetic D&B pace while never sacrificing the relaxing, lush vibe that it started with. I'm absolutely in love with the approach and I think you pulled it off excellently. This is an instant classic for me. Glad to see you back in the community again

Hey all, just wanted to drop a line and let everybody know that I've been talking with Kristina and I'm gonna be hijacking this track again and hopefully bringing the production/sequencing up to par so this can hopefully pass the panel. I'm super-excited to be working on this track, I love the arrangement to death and hopefully I'll be able to bring the production up to standards Among the edits I have planned are redoing the string/oboe samples, potentially working with the drums, adding an acoustic bassline, and maybe tweaking with the overall production a little bit more too. Can't wait to get started!!

Well, *I* thought it was good!

Haha, as someone who has a pending solo mixpost but still has no clue what he is doing, I can vouch for the "dumb luck" part of that equation