Emunator

Once again, Ly surprises and impresses with their ability to arrange in nearly any genre. The approach here is more understated, but the source is always close at hand, and there's plenty of sonic expansion over the original. The tone of the spoken word vocals fits really nicely, though the words themselves feel non-sequitur and cheesy, though I can't argue against the fact that cheesy is genre appropriate for synthwave. No reason I can think of not to push this through! YES

Damn, the lead synth work here is stellar! There's so much going on that's worth highlighting, but this is an element that immediately jumped out to me. Crazy arpeggio fills all around. You really committed to the syncopated rhythms with some very aggressive gating on nearly all of your instruments, which gives the mix a tremendous amount of punch during the breakdowns. The guitar work is such a fantastic way to bring this home. Absolutely sick work. YES

Where's the beef? This is a killer arrangement sorely lacking in low-end presence. I can hear it with my ears alone, but the dip around the 80-100hz range is incredibly obvious when viewed through SPAN. There's definitely some sub beneath it, but the bass and kick are just not filling out that space like it ought to. Around the 1:55 mark, it fills out a little more, but even then, the balance seems distinctly skewed towards the high frequencies. Aside from that, this is a solid retro club throwback that I would be happy to sign off on otherwise, but the notable lack of bass in the mix is really keeping this from getting going for me. NO (resubmit!)

This feels much more like a sound design showcase than a traditional arrangement, but I don't necessarily think there's anything inherently wrong with that approach either. The scraped metallic tones evoke a feeling of exploring an abandoned industrial complex that has been buried under an intense frost. Despite going through several different motions as you approach the source from different angles, all of the sound design feels incredibly cohesive. On repeat listens, I found myself loving the subtle rhythms that percolate up from the granular clouds. For those brave enough to stomach it, I do feel like this is rewarding on multiple listens. Not everyone's cuppa tea, but it works for me! YES

? Ain't that the truth? Stunning job all across the board! This really benefits from the wide breadth of live instrumentation, and you demonstrate a great level of technical prowess on all of it. Where have you been? Let's get this posted! YES

Lovely variety of sounds here - I wasn't sold on the intro, but once the various winds came in, this arrangement came alive. The interplay between each of the different lead instruments gives this a fun call and response feeling. Everything feels a little heavily washed out in reverb and not totally clean, but it's sufficient at creating a good atmosphere. I'm not hearing any reason I can't sign off on this! YES

I shot you a DM on Discord but I'd like to take a stab at the Pokemon chapter

Remixer: Emunator Name: Meditations on a Beam of Light Game: Minecraft Sources: Minecraft Comments: I've always wanted to create and submit a fully ambient track to OCReMix. While I have never actually played Minecraft, the hypnotizing soundtrack from C418 felt like an obvious place to start. I took inspiration from artists like Jon Hopkins, The 1975, Sigur Ros, and Olafur Arnalds, who are all masters at fusing electronic and organic textures into something otherworldly and transcendent. With this arrangement, I decided to keep the underlying piano loop nearly intact (only broken up by a small bridge of my own original writing at 1:49) and instead let all of the personalization come from sound design and original string arrangements that build on top of that foundation. My goal was to craft something fleeting, formless, and delicate. The repetitive nature of the arrangement, which may be somewhat polarizing when measured by OCR arrangement standards, was very intentional, meant to reflect a mantra that you might repeat over and over during a meditation session.

This absolutely rips on every conceivable level. The heavy guitar tones, the quality of the orchestration, the amount of creativity in the arrangement, and the overall mixdown suggests that you've been honing this craft for a very long time. You don't usually come out of the gate swinging like this on your first attempt, but I can't seem to find much of anything else that you've worked on out in the world, so for a first submission, this is actually incredible. The highlight for me has to be the final section starting at 3:20, featuring some massive orchestration and intense blastbeats that evokes Knight of the Round's "Viking Funeral for the Damned", which is one of my all time favorite remixes on the site. I have no reservations saying that this stands right beside it in nearly every regard. You wear your influences from other artists on your sleeve, but those styles are woven so well together that it ultimately feels like something totally unique that stands apart from its inspirations. Really killer work. I'm not sure where you came from, but I'm glad you made it here. YES

ReMixer Name: Pixels & Paradiddles Real Name(s): Seph and Josh Brown Email Address: Game Arranged: Final Fantasy VII Name of Arrangement: Strife Names of Individual Songs Arranged: Judgment Day, Mako Reactor (If you are unabled to access the .mp3 file hosted at the link above, please see the attached .mp3 file) Comments: This arrangement ties together the BGMs of Mako Reactor 1 and the Great Northern Crater, the opening and final "dungeons" of FFVII. It also brings in arrangement influences from Harry Gregson-Williams (specifically his works on Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots) mixed with a heap of The Way of All Flesh era Gojira. We were shooting for death metal meets dungeon noir. Or something like that. Special thanks goes to Clint "its_CLINT" Allday for his help with the final mix. To make the two pieces mesh better, we transposed "Judgment Day" into C Minor, the initial key of "Mako Reactor." In doing so, we could easily move from the intro of the latter piece into the intro of the former, quoting the rhythmic motif of "Mako Reactor" underneath "Judgment Day." Better still, it was an opportunity to quote "Vacuity" by Gojira in the drums, alternating choked and open crash cymbal hits over a stiff four-on-floor backbeat to punctuate the thundering pulse of "Mako Reactor." Rather than run the Imin-IVmin harp arpeggio from "Judgment Day," we consolidated the arpeggio into a stacked extended chord in the choir and dropped a molto crescendo on it. Once into the A section of "Judgment Day," clean guitar is joined by woodwinds and melodic percussion on the melody line while strings hold the harmony. HGW-inspired low brass stings and a moving bassline groove over electronic drums drive this section. Trumpets and horns soon join the party while melodic percussion quote the descending arpeggio figure from "J-E-N-O-V-A" to hint at the boss rush to come at the finale of the game, culminating in the modulation party of Judgment Day's short B section. Winds and strings quote the ascending "Shin-Ra Co." leitmotif under the melody line as the harmony cycles keys. As the winds, brass, and lead guitars fade, "Mako Reactor" kicks into its A section in the low strings, mallet percussion, and a fuzzy Virus lead over chuggy guitar, bass, and drums. We tried to marry aspects of the original composition (synth and percussion melody in the upper octaves, ping-pong delay, triplet-tremolo woosh FX) with Shotaro Shima's FF7 Remake arrangement in this section, right up until the extended Cmin-Bbmin vamp. Speaking of, the "J-E-N-O-V-A" quote returns underneath lead guitars (including a very "Vacuity" inspired guitar countermelody supported by brass and synth). Taking one more nod to Gojira, bowed guitar swells through the fading orchestra into the finale of "Mako Reactor" in a nearly direct quote to the middle section of "The Art of Dying." Shimmering tremolo articulations match thundering double bass drums as choir and trumpets cry the baleful motif in G Minor to Bb Minor. Ending on a final C Minor chord, the music slowly dies... But for the mournful bell and heartbeat-like taiko drums marking the intro of "Those Chosen by the Planet." Jenova and Sephiroth lie in wait.

There's a lot of creativity to the arrangement here. I'm hearing a ton of unique adaptations and syncopation that gives this a personalized spin on the original source material. The plucky mallet leads really suit the melody well. I like the concept here a lot, but the execution is falling short in a couple of key areas that I think need to be addressed before this could be posted. First, there's some notable panning issues where the right side of the stereo field is much louder than the left, which makes this an uncomfortable listen on headphones. Even if you are panning things left or right to create more of a stereo space, the final result needs to be more balanced overall. Typically, elements like bass, which are there to ground your soundscape, shouldn't be panned too much off to one side - this is definitely throwing things off. You can still achieve greater stereo presence by double-tracking instruments with slightly different recordings and panning them left/right, which might be great for the guitars in this case. The drums unfortunately sound very stock in terms of quality and don't really have a lot of personality to the tone. There's some fun syncopation and grooves throughout the track, but I would encourage you to seek out other samples or consider applying more effects/processing to your existing samples, such as compression or saturation, to punch them up and give them a little more flavor. The same could also be said about the bass sample, which is a pretty basic tone that doesn't have a lot of personality to it. The last critique I have is regarding the structure of the song. Your transitions between the Overworld and Underworld themes are not very smooth, and feel like a hard jump every time you switch sources. Beyond that, once you hit 3:27, the track doesn't really introduce any new ideas or concepts, but still goes on for nearly 2 more minutes, which causes the arrangement to feel like it's dragging. I would also say that the Underworld theme section in general feels underdeveloped and doesn't go anywhere - it just finds a groove and rides it for nearly a whole minute. If you want to use this section as more than just a cameo, it needs to have more to say. Countermelodies, original soloing, or additional instrumentation are all ways you could explore fleshing out this segment of the track. There's a solid foundation here, but I'm afraid there's a number of issues holding this back from its full potential. I would suggest seeking some feedback from our community via the Discord or the Workshop forum to get more specific tailored feedback if you choose to pursue this track any further, or for future submissions. NO

Remixer name: byrdbass real name: Leland Byrd email add: website: https://twitch.tv/byrdbass or http://nuggatron.com User ID: 37736 Genre: Electronica Name of arrangement: MarioSka Name of original: Super Mario Bros Overworld/ Underworld Theme Comments: This was made as a celebration of the Mario Decathlon hosted by TheSalsaShack on twitch.

There's a great deal of subtlety and restraint at work here, this is not the kind of remix that jumps out and immediately demands attention. That said, the fusion of source material here is really seamless and yields some downright beautiful results. The melody treatment is the star of the show, but your sound design is also very immersive, and the production is clean as a whistle. Cheers to many more from here! YES

· Your ReMixer name o Kyaku · Your real name o Richard Westbrook · Your email address o · Your website(s) o N/A · Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile o 38541-kyaku · Name of game(s) arranged o Sonic 2 and Super Metroid · Name of arrangement o The Brinstar Chemical · Name of individual song(s) arranged o Sonic 2: Chemical Zone and Super Metroid: Brinstar Jungle Floor · Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site) o Both are popular songs for remixes so I imagine I can’t add much more here, though please let me know if I need to. First timer! · Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site) o Sonic 2: https://youtu.be/-LYB7iLZNWE o Super Metroid: https://youtu.be/tVUYyVfydqY · Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, how the source material was referenced in the arrangement, etc. o I attempted a little bit of a mash up, and though I started out with a vapory 80’s theme in mind, it probably isn’t too true to that genre in total. This is my first submission after being a lister many years past, so here goes nothing! No matter the outcome, not planning on this being my last. Thanks for your time!

Remixers: Emunator, Chimpazilla Name: Beginnings Game: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Sources: Title Theme (Primary), Lost Woods (Cameo) Emunator Comments: "Keeping it simple" is not a virtue that comes naturally to me in any aspect of my life, but everything about this arrangement felt so easy. I took a simple source tune (which I didn't even listen to during the creation of this song, opting to recreate the track from memory) picked out samples and drums, and within 4-5 hours I had a full arrangement 90% done. I showed it to Kristina, who had added a few finishing touches--specifically, the Lost Woods bell melody and bell countermelodies later on, the lush pad at the :52 mark, and some transition effects to tie everything together--within a day. I mixed everything together, she mastered it, and it was all done. Even the title (which she came up with in 30 seconds) is an exercise in simplicity. All said, there was collectively less than 10 hours of work done on this track over only 3 weeks, and I don't think the quality of the final product was compromised one bit. I love working with Kristina so much, it feels like our creative synergy reaches new heights with each new track we work together on. I'm so grateful to have such a kind, creative, and talented partner in musical crime! Chimpazilla Comments: I'm always so happy when Wes wants to do another collab! "Beginnings" came together quickly and naturally. Wes had written a simple yet lovely lo-fi remix in just a few hours, and he shared it with me. I loved it! I felt like the track only needed a few subtle textures, some minor melody/countermelody work and finishing touches. I did my part in only a few hours, and everything fit together extremely well. This track gives me confidence that Wes and I can put a lovely emotive track together much more quickly than ever before, and more collabs will be coming after this one!

My order of operations when voting on this track went something like this: Read submission letter describing a wave of impending doom and darkness Listen to source tune, wonder how the hell you were going to get from point A to point B. Listen to remix, now fully enlightened and nodding my head along as much as I can at my work desk without drawing undue attention to myself \m/ As I've come to expect from Lucas, this is out of left field but conceptually very strong! The chugging, bending rhythm guitars are right on-brand for the doom metal genre. I'd encourage any judges not familiar with the genre to give a listen to a few points in Dopesmoker by Sleep (yep, it's a 63 minute long song) to get a feel for the frequency balance expected from this genre, since the mixing style doesn't exactly follow traditional conventions, and the arrangements can easily be interpreted as "plodding." It's not a defect, it's a feature! Your guitar tones and bass seem right on point here, though I think this could benefit from having the rhythm guitars sit a bit louder than they currently do, or adding some subtle amp distortion on your bassline so they gel more. Tonally, the detuned synth elements also fit really well. I don't have any qualms about the tone of the instruments, but the mixing feels like it needs some additional saturation and reverb to glue everything together. My big gripe with the mixing here is the drums - they feel really anemic and in some cases, the rhythm of the fills doesn't seem to line up quite right (for example, the pattern at 2:29 has an unnatural stuttering quality to it.) The mixing just isn't doing justice to the drums, especially the snare and the crash cymbals, which is incredibly dry and tinny sounding. This is the major area I feel needs to be tightened up in order for this to be a clean pass. NO (resubmit)

This has a classic trance feel all the way through - the drum machine sounds, the acid bassline, and simple synth design is all taking me back to the early days of progressive trance. It's not going to wow anybody in terms of sound design or technical mixing quality, but I don't think it needs to, either. There's plenty of movement in the arrangement by way of filtering and percussion fills so that it doesn't ever stagnate, and the core melodies are banging. There's plenty of room for growth in future submissions to flesh out your soundscape further, but I love what you've presented here! YES

Hah! I love the full-circle turn on the remix title. I did a double take before I realized that it actually was the Blue Magic submitting this. I can see why you were drawn to this source tune - in some regards, it almost sounds like something you would have made yourself! Your remix punches up the energy with some really rich piano chords and harmonies. There's an impressive level of instrumental variety for such a short arrangement without feeling even remotely overstuffed; it's quite an economical use of 2 minutes and 30 seconds that feels like nearly twice that length. No reservations on the production - some of the instrumentation doesn't feel fully humanized but there's adequate use of delay and verb so that everything still goes down smooth. I really like enjoy this and will definitely be coming back to it in my own listening rotation! YES

My heart agrees with DarkSim on what I wanted this track to do. There's so much potential for this to go absolutely wild with rhythmic ferocity, and for a greater dynamic curve by letting your percussion track ebb and flow more deliberately. However, when I separate my personal wants from what's actually in front of me, there's still a lot of merit to the rhythmic adaptation from the source material, and your harmonizing synths layer together in a really satisfying way. I love that Larry pointed out the "juice" this arrangement has, because I totally agree with that and never would have found the words to express that myself. It's groovy! YES

I'm trying to keep my Zelda bias in check here, but I like this a lot. The sequenced guitar is serviceable as a lead and doesn't build tremendously on what the original offered, but all of the percussive and symphonic upgrades you've built around that core melody are what really make this shine. The arrangement feels punctuated with drama and tension - it's a modern day cinematic upgrade that would be right at home in a modern day Zelda game. I get it, the wholesale repetition is a bummer, but I think I tend to be more forgiving on that front than other judges, as long as there's enough dynamics within those repeated sections that it doesn't feel plodding. If my ear isn't picking up on the repetition and I need to layer tracks in my DAW to see if it's actually identical, and it's not a matter of "we've been treading the same ground for 4 minutes without any variations", I'm not going to ding the track if everything else is tightly executed. In this case, I think this falls on the right side of the debate for me. I honestly don't hear what Larry is talking about with the transitions, I thought that was firing on all cylinders ? I realize this boils down to a matter of personal preference, but I'd like to make the case that this one is good enough as is. Best of luck with the vote, however it shakes out! YES

This certainly nails that classic analog warmth from a sound design perspective, so your foundation is really strong! The arrangement is very dynamic despite a source that doesn't have much in the way of a dynamic curve at all. There are some minor technical miscues on the mixing and production that are less than ideal. For me, the extremely rigid timing on the piano actually feels like the aspect that takes me out of this the most. I'm not sure if the stilted performance was an intentional nod to the early days of sequencing, but especially with the shorter note runs like the ones at 2:13 and 2:26, it feels immersion breaking. There are other elements that stand out in the mix as too forward or dry, which Jack did a good job identifying and elaborating on. Also cosigning his suggestion that stronger sidechaining or rhythmic gating on your pad elements during the section with drums would give this some much needed verve. All that said, I think what you got right is enough to push this over the bar. It's a great arrangement bolstered by some memorable sound design, and in my opinion, whatever rust is present on the technical side is not enough to sink this. Would love to hear some improvements on the mixing to get the instruments to gel more, and humanize the performance on the piano leads, but I have no hard reservations in its current form. YES (borderline)

I also remember seeing you express doubts about this in Discord as well, but listening to this, I don't think you needed to worry. Whatever minor issues there might be with the realism or fidelity of the sequenced instruments is more than covered by your incredibly dynamic and creative arrangement. I don't know exactly where this started out, but I think the film score approach was executed masterfully, helping you stretch a lot out of a relatively minimal source tune without ever feeling like you're simply treading water. If you phoned in the arrangement, the production nitpicks might have held more weight, but thankfully, you nailed the part of this that you really needed to get right. YES

I love all of the little details that flesh out the soundscape throughout the track, it really immerses you in that Metroid atmosphere. The sub bass is thick and smooth and supports your groovy 2-step beat well. There's a lot of negative space in the arrangement, to the point where I found myself occasionally wanting just a little more padding, but your beats thicken up as the arrangement progresses, and the open space in the frequency spectrum contributes to a feeling of loneliness and mystery that works on a conceptual level. All the elements here are working well together, this is a solid debut! YES

This is loud as shit, but it's not peaking over 0.0db on standard metering. For what we're doing, I just don't think it makes sense to go conditional (and risk a track not being posted) based on the true peak technicality, which most people will never encounter in this medium. Based on that, I've got to go with my ear, which is telling me that, against all odds, you've managed to still get a super clean sounding master track without much audible distortion that falls outside the bounds of good taste. Aside from that, this is a very obvious pass - your arrangement is absolutely bonkers and manages to sustain a crazy amount of energy for over 6 minutes without ever dragging on or treading the same ground. What an incredible pallet of instrumental variety, all of your instruments and synths are wielded with a great level of technical precision. This would be a damn shame to hold this back from posting in my opinion. YES

No need to drag this one out any further - there is a LOT to love in this arrangement but it is overstuffed and messy as a result. The blastbeats come out of nowhere and don't flow naturally with the rest of the arrangement. There's a lot of conflict going on in the mixing that could be cleaned up if you so choose, and lots of great feedback to work with from other judges. I hope to hear this back, there's a great deal of potential here! NO (resubmit)