Emunator

Not much else to add here, the sequencing and sample usage here is extremely rigid with no dynamics or humanization to speak of. The samples themselves aren't very high quality either. The drums kind of just come in at full-force and there's no real lead-up to their entrance. I really like that distorted synth melody that comes in at 1:04, that's one of the most interesting sounds you've got in the arrangement. The writing here is very dramatic and sticks with a pretty cohesive mood, but I can't say the same about the instrument choices themselves, there seems to be some degree of randomness to the sounds being used and, like Fishy said, there's not very much cohesiveness going on here. Just some random stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the mix, I think Fishy nailed it with his assessment of what would need to be fixed for this to pass so I don't have much to add. NO

Gah, I hate to keep doing this to your subs but the mixing here still sounds messy, Mike The balance and overall mastering seems way off; your kick drum is weak and when you do several quick hits in succession, it just sounds like mud underneath the rest of the mix. The toms are probably the worst offender here, they're extremely boomy and compressed oddly, so they drown out everything else when they play. Truthfully I'm not sure what's causing the mixing problem with this song, but something sounds really strange here. Sample-wise, I feel like the strings are too weakly-sequenced to suffice here, at least when they're exposed in places like the intro. When they're layered in, the orchestral elements work a lot better. Not a dealbreaker but if you could add a bit more humanization to the string writing, I think it would really help the intro reach its full potential. On the plus side, your arrangement is absolutely fantastic and your performances are among the best I've ever heard from you. This is a really great arrangement that lives up to your reputation from back in the day, but the mixing is not where it needs to be. I'm comparing this to some of your older submissions from 2004-2006 to try and figure out what's up, since I've been noticing a lot of production issues on your recent submissions that are really difficult to pin down. Maybe another judge can clarify what I'm talking about here (or chime in and let me know that I'm totally nuts ) Either way, I'm not comfortable with how the overall mix on this sounds as it is. I'll be keeping my eye on this decision though. NO (resubmit!)

Right off the bat, your synth samples sound really low-quality and generic, this sounds like the kind of thing that would be right at home in an actual retro game soundtrack but here it just wasn't capturing my attention. I feel like your arrangement is competent enough but the sound choices are just too bland for me to feel at all engaged in the remix :\ Sorry. Other judges have rightly pointed out that your drum writing is pretty interesting and you use a lot of cool fills and techniques to make that part of the song interesting, so props on that. However, the rest of the song is just not grabbing me. Also, the arrangement is really short and doesn't offer enough room for expansion, and the sound choices kind of stay the same throughout the whole song so there's not much development in that area, either. Not feeling this submission, but you clearly have some talent so keep trying and experimenting with more unique sound combinations to help take your remixes to the next level. NO

I'm definitely with the rest of the judges here, I was a little nervous listening to the intro here. The super-dry synth wasn't really impressing me and I didn't really have high hopes for the rest of it. However, once it kicked in I did a complete 180 on this track. You've got a lot of really lively melody lines dancing around each other and, despite working with some pretty basic, generic samples here, every synth has a lot of energy and life to it. This is how you do it when you're working with a basic sound pallet Your use of fills and transitions is also really impressive here. Totally digging this! Short, sweet, and on point. YES

Just stopping in with a quick vote, I think this pretty much addresses all my concerns that I had with the last one. Great resub, this was literally just inches away from being a YES last time around and I think you nailed it with the production and the polish here. YES

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37859

No technical comments right now, just wanted to let you know that this is beautiful. Especially the intro, when the marimba/vibraphone/piano/strings were all going together, it's just magic. I was a huge fan of your last mix and this one is shaping up to be just as enjoyable, if not more <3

This is exactly how I felt about this song. On first listen, when this came past the judges panel I wasn't sold at all on the performance or the execution, it all felt too underdeveloped and rough to me. However, now that it's posted, I can see what all the hype is about. I guess the song just needed a few listens and some time past so that it could "click" in my head. Glad I'm not the only one who felt this way I've chatted with others before about this subject, and I've come to realize just how much potential that various Zelda tunes have to work brilliantly in an indie rock style, and this just confirms my suspicion. It captures the quirky, carefree, childlike nature of the original in both the lyrics and the arrangement, and makes me feel the same way while I'm listening. Great stuff

This is revolutionary, I've never heard anything like this before but I can honestly say it's been executed delicately with the utmost tact and respect for each respective style being merged, and of course Shnabubula is probably the best-equipped musician in the community to pull this sort of thing off. Bravo!

Always been a huge fan of your work and I feel like this is some of your strongest material to date

Superlative. Not got much to say about it that hasn't already been said but every single instrument and sound in this mix adds its own bit of emotion to the overall piece, you can feel that sense of sorrow and melancholy coming through even in smaller instrumental parts like the bassline. Beautiful work dude, glad I could help it along to completion

Hey guys, this project is actually going to come out in 2012!

This guy is good. REALLY good. Welcome aboard dude

I was digging this last time but even I'll admit this resub fixed a lot of issues I didn't even notice last time. Still a YES from me, but a much stronger one now: YES

Original decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=33556 RESUB decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36066 ------------------------------------

I'm just posting here real quick to cosign with Drew, he covered exactly what I wanted to say about this. I feel like it's just too difficult to make out any details here and really get a feel for what's going on because the noise is so strong. NO

This is a HUGE improvement on the older versions I heard, I feel like you've really gotten a better hang of mastering. Mixing-wise, I think your leads could stand to come up here a bit, and I feel like the small filter you threw on the percussion in the intro happened too fast to really create an effect. It was just a little bit confusing to me. Overall, I like your writing though, the bass kind of ripped into your melodies but with some rebalancing, the writing will all sound really nice. However, I still feel like you're limiting yourself by working with such simple synths in pretty much all of your songs. I can understand that being a trademark of your style, and it does make your tunes rather identifiable, but there's a whole world of possibilities you haven't explored that you could accomplish by using more complex synth samples, or alternatively, utilize more automation/articulation on your leads to give them some more personality. Portamento, pitch bends, LFO tweaks... all that stuff can really help give some personality to your melodies, even when working with simpler sounds. Just some food for thought

Any production issues on this are pretty much superficial, this is a pretty strong arrangement with some neat processing and writing despite the exclusive use of very basic chiptune synths. It gets pretty noisy at times, I think that's due to the drums being overcompressed, but at the end of the day this is pretty great. Could have fooled me into thinking this was old-school halc at times YES

Truthfully, I wasn't quite as sold on this for the first half of the mix. Right off the bat, I wasn't liking the drum samples used. The kick here seems very aggressive and sharp, where something a little more smoother with some EQ cuts in the mids/highs would probably work a lot better for this style. Like halc said, the rest of the drum sounds felt kind of slapped together, and there wasn't all that much cohesiveness there in how they were mixed or which sounds were used. The drum writing itself is also a bit problematic in my opinion. Most of it was passable but I do feel like there's some parts (such as that ride cymbal or some of the tom fills) that you'd do well to revisit and polish up a little bit. Also, consider doing something different with how you actually bring in the kick, it kind of just drops right in there without very much of a lead-in. (That's definitely just a personal suggestion, but maybe you can come up with an entrance that's a little more nuanced and creative? I think it would make the intro a lot better.) Drums are pretty much my biggest issue here though, everything else is sounding much better, especially for your first time working with a DAW Your melodies are great and reasonably well-sequenced. I wasn't bothered by the piano sequencing or the tone, really - I thought it fit pretty well. The writing is pretty restrained and the synths are pretty basic for the first half of the song, but when you start getting some more solos and dynamic writing going, this really kicks in and I can see why the other judges enjoyed this so much. The organ/synth solo at the end is practically euphoric, and I'm really getting into the mood of the song at that point. The supporting writing on the piano and your secondary synths is really smooth, no sore spots there as far as I'm concerned. Your overall mastering is troublesome. I had to crank my volume way up to get this one to sound right, which means you mastered this too quietly. That's definitely something to fix too before you resubmit. The mixing and levels was pretty solid, I'm impressed that you were able to get such a good sound out of your first submission! Lots of great stuff going on here, but it needs some polish. Hopefully between the 5 votes here you'll have plenty of advice to take into consideration and you'll be able to fix this up and send it back. Really looking forward to a resub on this NO (resubmit!)

Hey, I checked out your song and it was really quite nice. However, I don't think straight club/trance/dance music is really what we're looking for in terms of style for the project Everyone else who's subbed a WIP in the past few days, I'm gonna talk to Theo soon and we'll get an answer back to you. Thanks for your past and future patience!

Yup, I noticed that the production sounded more whack on this version than last time. I was okay with the overall production on the last version but this just sounds odd to me. Good thing is, you fixed the arrangement up so that's definitely passable as far as I'm concerned Production needs some work though, as Larry stated. NO (resub!)

Not much to add, I still feel like the timing on some of the drums is sloppy or cluttered but this is over my bar. Good stuff Vurez Good job capturing the source vibe and merging it with the rock instrumentation, I love your work with genre fusions. YES

Oh. My. God. *_* I'm really stunned here. I've been listening to a lot of Sigur Ros and Death Cab for Cutie lately and this feels like the immaculately-conceived lovechild of the two styles. So, right from the start I feel like I've already got a personal investment, so to speak, in this mix I wasn't familiar with the source, but I have a general idea of how the Skyrim soundtrack sounds so I was curious how you could have adapted that kind of material into a mix like this. However, as soon as I listened to the source, the connection became undeniably clear, despite the fact that much of the source usage is chord based. If I can listen to a source that I've never heard before and I can instantly feel the connection to a remix I've only listened to once, that's pretty strong in my eyes. I think my favorite part about this is how delicately you handled the arrangement. It takes a lot of restraint to pull off a slow-burner like this but you really seem to have a good sense of when to bring in each new instrument or when to ramp up the energy of the song in order to create the strongest effect. The mix of acoustic and distorted elements is pretty seamless, and the mixing is pristine, right up there with what I'd expect from professional bands that employ this style. I'm gushing at this point so I'll cut this short, but I genuinely enjoyed listening to this and I know it'll be going on many a playlist of mine in the future. Thanks for submitting this dude YES

SO glad we got a resub on this one This doesn't completely address all my concerns but it does more than enough to push it over the bar. Very nice work, I look forward to seeing this one on the site YES

I personally love this intolerable piece of noise Keep it up guys!