Eino Keskitalo

I can't get this to play. Try http://ocrwip.fireslash.net ? Source link would also be nice. --Eino

Sound is alright for me, playing is enjoyable to listen to.. enviable improv chops! I'm curious how much did you plan it ahead? Alas, I'm not really feeling this as a whole. First three minutes it feels like it goes the same thing around over and over without really changing enough. Yes, there are actually a lot of variations but it feels like it keeps saying the same thing, you know. Then when it changes, it's like it bridges to a separate song. It pretty much keeps the pace from the previous movement, which makes it sound even more even. So, the flow didn't work for me. I like the part from 4:11 onwards, I feel the piece really starts talking here. Left hand playing sounds kind of rugged and hesitant at places though, and it doesn't quite lift off the ground like it could. It's still decent, but not a keeper for me. Looks like the opposite for many other commenters though. --Eino

Interesting arrangement. I like the instrumentation. The guitar sound is not good, otherwise it's passable for me. Recording quality is quite lo-fi, yeah. It sort of adds to the charm, but that's possibly just me. It doesn't sound 100% deliberate (maybe I'm just too used to the original), but if it was played to the max that could end up great. --Eino

Long overdue comments. It was fun to hear how this track has evolved. Since you only listed negatives yourself, I'll post some positives: - the original writing fits well to the source - lots of good details - lots of creative arrangement ideas - details and arrangement ideas highlight the playful nature of the piece - the piece has a cohesive mood Just keep at it, it's worth it. I think it's a good idea to move on to the next project and have some more fun. Like I said from the start, in my opinion you clearly have the ear and creativity for this, all you need is to churn out lots of songs to practice it. =) --Eino

Good show again, some really good tracks, and I liked the talk on Commodore and chiptune scenes. --Eino

Disc 3, track 1: Tales & Trials Solid, pleasant orchestral track. Sounds fun and laid-back, with a few "serious" and more contemplative moments. I really like the 00:38-00:57 section and the french horn line around 01:00, as well. I tend to drift off a bit towards the end after about 02:30 mark, the ending is not perhaps quite as captivating as it could be. Great disc opener anyhow, and segues well to the next track. Disc 3, track 2: This Fate Perfectly complimentary to the more relaxed previous track. The mood flows really well between these pieces. I really like the material here, and the orchestration is spot on in my opinion. I like how isolated the wind leads sound in for example 00:38-01:02 and 01:35-01:40. The final minute is lovely. Disc 3, track 3: Smile and Forgive Charming track. I like the initial sound very much, when there's just the simple synth thing going on. Not that the glockenspiel, piano and percussion et al sounded bad - all fits together well. I also really like when the strings come in at 03:02, that's a good moment. The middle "drop-out" section is lacking, especially when the strings are bare for a moment, it's not an interesting sound by itself. This also is not a track that I'll return to on it's own, but in the context on the album the piece works alright. Disc 3, track 4: Café Mantra A favourite from the album. Great instrumentation. The bass is deep and warm, the percussion is very central to the track (often hand percussion sounds kind of auxilary), the mallets & electric piano are a great combination.. mellotron is always good. It just sounds great, and melodically and structurally it's also very satisfying. The piano solo is tasty. Great job! Disc 3, track 5: Chaotic Heart A change of pace from other Sixto tracks on the album. Poweful intro until 00:19. From there the clean guitar on the right sounds sort of out of place until the bluesy lead comes in at 00:41. The soundfield feels very left-oriented on headphones until that moment. The overdriven guitar is so much more full and the keyboards also feel like they lean left (which they might not do, it might just be the "vacuum" on the right side which makes it sound like that). After the lead comes it it's better. It's a great lead too, varied playing with a strong hook. Drums and bass are boring but I suppose it comes with the genre.. it's like stadium blues. Not a big fan, I'll admit. I like the break with the electric piano. The fadeout feels perhaps a little premature. --Eino

This update finally hits the halfway mark. Disc 2, track 10: Riddles in the Dark Such a weird track. And rather wonderful. Begins with a sparse, heavy, omnious piano in a large space. I really like the sound and the writing here. 00:38 the right-hand piano changes to high arpeggios and some strings are introduced. I like the rythmic shift, and also the shift back when it refrains the original feel with strings louder. *And* the next shift when the drums come in.. this track is always on the move. By 01:30 the feel is dizzying, like a picture bending out of it's frames. I like how sudden the chord change at 01:28 feels - I'm fully expexting it to continue in a dark, serious mood but it does unexpected changes, it's humorous, sort of tipsy. The title of the track is quite perfect. After 02:24 my first impression was of two pieces of music playing at the same time. The drunken feel definitely continues. 3:30 it pretty obviously shifts from one ReMixer's work to the next's. Rather than a seamless singular work, this is a segue of two related works. The style shifts, but the mood doesn't, which is great. I have to admit I don't find the later half evocative, like the first one. I like the sound though. And the segue in itself is aptly wierd. Disc 2, track 11: as time goes on Tricky track.. the combination of the source and the style of the execution is unique and has an unexpected appeal for me. On the other hand, there are a handful of clashing notes around the track which are quite unpleasant. The production is pretty good, the combination of sounds and instruments works well. The saxes sounds wonderful. The vocals sound fairly good. They're mixed back in the soundscape, which works well, but the tradeoff is that the lyrics are hard to hear. I'm not sure I like how you can hear the processing on the vocals, especially while they are exposed the most, but on the other hand I think it contributes to the sound positively too. Perhpas it could've been toned down for the middle. The source sounds challenging, and unfortunately there are awkward moments. The sax figures at 01:24 and 03:52 are definitely off the mark, and I feel there are other problematic spots as well. The end result is that the track is not quite there, which is quite sad as this is rather close to being really awesome. Disc 2, track 12: Deity Hard-hitting, cold sounding, powerful track. As little as I normally listen to pieces in this style, I enjoy this one. Some writing problems (which SirNuts already referred to). That harsh pad-thing instrument that sounds on the background at 00:30 for the first time is often dissonant, but that adds to the piece. The eerie background pad at 02:23 should definitely resolve into non-dissonant chord by 02:26 in my opinion. The dissonant chord we're left with at 02:36 is absolutely cool. The bass, or the arpeggios, not sure what to blame.. well, they go wrong after 03:08. (Possibly before, just can't hear it properly). The 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th bars of the eight bar chord sequence don't work - 03:12 starts sounding bad, 03:20 good again. 04:46-05:00 which doesn't have the arpeggios going sounds fine to me. With the arpeggios again, 05:43 onwards, it sounds better, only the 5th and 6th bars sound strange to me. I checked the source, it's a very effective and interesting take on the theme. Well interpreted. Disc 2, track 13: Sweet Dreams Hehe, this one is so not my thing at all, but I still get to hear it in this context.. I can tell it's really quite good. Some commenters in the review thread said the piano was a little too quiet/sax a little too loud, I agree (others don't), it is slightly overbearing. I have to actually turn the volume down to enjoy it. --Eino

Fantastic work! I think all the arrangement choices worked out great. I can hear a couple of strumming/timing fumbles in the track but that's about it. Fun track, simple, happy and powerful. OT: Mr. Pretzel, it's not "Wiki", it's Wikipedia. "Wiki" makes it sound like it's a wiki on this site. --Eino

Monthly update.. Disc 2, track 8: New Technology I love this track. I love it's harsh, abrasive sound. That ring-modulated line is ace. It's very tense. Good beats and percussion loops. It's a little rough, sounds kind of unmastered. Now that OverCoat has grown ears, if he made this one now it would probably sound quite beastly. Already a fine, thumping beastling as it is. Disc 2, track 9: Horizon's Walk Overall, this is a great guitar pop instrumental. The piano riff/melody of the song proper after the intro is so damned catchy, so good. It sounds fantastic with the acoustic guitar. I like the choppy drums too. And the sound the track begins with. So much to like here. That first bass flourish in the intro isn't to my liking - it just sticks out, it's like a potentially great fretless bass line but it's obviously a synth. Maybe it's just too loud in the mix. Otherwise the bass is pretty good, the octave oscillation works throughout the piece, the lines in the bridge, around 02:30 are very nice. I also like how the sound changes 02:50 (I only just noticed). I think the 01:14 lead guitar note is slightly off. Initially it bothered me so much it turned me off completely from the piece, and it kept bothering me. This time around it's was hard to hear anything wrong with it, so it's very subtle, but it's indeed there. It's the only brown moment in the whole piece, but it really did have a huge effect on how I felt about the piece. (This is a good time to let me know if you think I'm just hearing things..) It's a great part otherwise. Very evocative guitar sound! Sounds kind of ghostly to me. Nice work on the time signatures too. The move from 3/4 in the bridge to the 4/4 in the final solo is very effective. You took out 5/4 though. Not sure if that's a forgivable act. --Eino

http://www.ocremix.org/info/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Isn.27t_this_music_copyrighted.3F - sure, the sources are copyrighted. Technically you'd have to ask the copyright holders permission to make a derived work before making and distributing it. Game companies most probably don't mind the additional exposure towards their franchises, there for no cease and desist letters so far. I recall I read in an interview about SSF2HDReMix that, along the other paperwork regarding that project, Capcom explicitly gave OCR permission to use Capcom music, which is a cool thing of them to do. I might be wrong about any of the previous things. I really don't think the Facebook thing is about the apps or their content - it's for the user submitted content. Facebook would want to provide a profitable (ad-revenue) ground for appmakers, so that in the end their users used Facebook more. Them owning the apps & content of the apps would be a deterrent to anyone to expend effort & money into providing the apps. Again don't take my word for this. --Eino

Iji has a great one. --Eino

Excellent interview. Rock opera, hmmm? I'm certainly intrigued. Good stories too about starting the project, and the king of Sweden churning out great tracks. Previews were alrite too. =) --Eino

I like the genre switch, that worked well for me. The bass writing in the swing section was quite bad, it really throws me off. Walking bass should support the piece instead of wander aimlessly. The heavy distortion lead guitar in the first half was somewhat choppy in both sound and performance. There also seem to be a few guitar note choices that could've been chosen more carefully in both sections. Looks like nobody else in this thread minded these things much, though, so you should check it out. The first section was pleasantly energetic and apart from the bass the swing section was decent as well. --Eino

Hey, cool to see an update on this. I can't listen to it right now but will do so later. --Eino

Hehe, a little patience.. It's only been a day. Anyway, I've thought it's been cool to see you post so many pieces, it shows you're really working on music. I haven't listened to this one yet but I will. --Eino

I'll be downloading the show. I'm eager for the project's release and glad how fast it progressed. Looking forward for the interview! --Eino

Gario said what I'd have wanted to say about using midis. If you like it the way you are doing (i.e. 4/4 - which I support doing if it's your vision), just say so, don't say stuff like "it's the only way" and "only the authors could get it right", it sounds unnecessarily defensive. A defensive mindset keeps you from getting the best out of feedback. I know, I've done that myself, still do, and trying to accept feedback without having my claws come out is often quite painful. It doesn't mean you have to lose yourself either - feedback can help you realize why you are doing the things you are doing, why you like them etc. You can say "ok, I want to make this work in 4/4 'cause I think it would sound great, there's some potential there." Or you may come to the conclusion that you'll need to explore the different meters more thoroughly. Whichever's the honest approach, following it will lead to the best personal musical development. I'm starting to sound kinda new-agey so I'll stop here. --Eino

Length itself hardly would, it's just has to be good and consistent and avoid having "length for length's sake". A technical concern is OCR's size limit, which means lower kbps for the MP3 compression i.e. ending up with lower audio quality. --Eino

I'm playing this right now and definitely digging the soundtrack. (And the game in general.) Yeah, would love to hear some mixes. --Eino

Thanks for the explanations, zircon Info/lore on the sets was cool to read, too. --Eino

I like the mood you set with the intro! Your whole sound gives a different feel to the original, so that's good. I agree with SnappleMan, don't think that a straight ahead beat is the only way here.. you'll learn a lot of new things. I think doing half-time beat and implying the odd rhythms with accents is a great idea and probably fun to try out too! At least the first part can be counted as an uneven number of fast 4/4 bars I think. I don't think 4/4 is necessarily that problematic (although the rhythm is a key component of the source), but right now regardless of what source you're using the rhythm and beat feel very even. I mean it's a breakbeat beat! Going wild with the rhythm should be part of the package. For the harmonies, I'm not doing a side-by-side comparison, but the transition to the second part (after 00:30) feels uncomfortable and the b-part has some wonky-sounding notes. (warning: rambling ahead) Having to rely on midis sucks because you're at midi maker's mercy when it comes to mistakes. Yet it's no use blaming them (not saying you are), as the end result is the mixer's responsibility in any case. It's definitely a challenging source.. --Eino

Those sounds you've replaced the synths from the first part after the intro - exceptionally delicious. --Eino

The short original is haunting, I really like it. While this version's arrangement is fairly strong, it suffers somewhat from not departing from the source, which hurts as the source is just 30 seconds long. I love that bass, who wouldn't! The lead synths sound kind of lazy to me. The basic sounds is pretty nice, but they sound very static. Need more processing, more variation, especially as the melody repeats so much throughout the piece. There's a little solo in the middle, and a harmony to the lead towards the end - these are very nice, even though more could've been done. Nice little trills in the melodies though! Apart from lead repetition, the structure works pretty nicely. I might keep this! --Eino

Haha, FFMQ indeed! Criminally short, totally lacking in bass department and aged samples. However, I think the samples are used quite well and the combination is interesting. I thought towards the end the string chords started feeling a bit messy - perhaps bleeding into each other with the reverb. The last cello note came up in the mix a bit too much, a bit nasty. Place this piece carefully in your playlist and you'll have a nice intro to another piece. --Eino

Quirky and groovy! The sounds are very nice, only the mixing/processing shows the age. Slightly repetitive, but regardless, it's making me move, it's good! --Eino