Palpable

Maybe I didn't choose my words carefully enough in my original post, I didn't mean that the title has to 100% describe the album or even give you a sense of what the album is about. (Though honestly I think that does help it find its audience. I bet that Chrono Symphonic was a lot better at finding its audience than something like Delta Q Delta.) I'm more saying we have the conversation to see if an arrangement album title is misleading when there's a musical term in the name. If Drew wanted to call this "Sonic the Hedgehog: Jazz Runs" just to be punny, we'd for sure ask him why he had the word "jazz" in the name, given that much of the album isn't jazz. Did you all have that conversation for Voices of the Lifestream? If I had been on staff then, I might have brought it up, especially as someone who doesn't know FF7 and doesn't get the significance. Misleadingness should be weighed against catchiness and artistic significance and all that good stuff. I should really put this effort into judging huh.

The Voices thing is an even better criticism! I mean, forget the people who listen to the album and hate it because it's not what they were expecting. The worst thing that happens is maybe the album gets some negative publicity, but whatever, it got more ears on it. But the people you lose that you could have hooked by giving your album a more accurate description... I dunno why you'd shoot down the idea that we give album titles more thought.

There's a lot of defense of the album title going on here, and maybe because this is OCR, it's hard to see what effect a title can have. Personally, I purposely overlook the title when evaluating songs, and I think the site is geared towards overlooking the title and the game and just trying to appreciate the music, man. When the title of this project was announced, I thought it was really clever and thought no more about it. But it is worth considering things like the expectations of a project with that title, and I wish we had done more brainstorming. It's not just a matter of disappointing people who were expecting faster songs, but also that we may have missed hooking the audience we wanted because they thought it was a bunch of fast songs. Basically I kind of agree with JustinShaltout. Particularly with albums, which more than songs are aimed at people outside the community, the title needs to fit the music in order for it to get the audience it deserves and maybe this time there was a better one that could have been used. Case in point, there's a band I really like called Disco Inferno, who make music as far away from disco as you can imagine. For a long time, though they had been recommended to me, I didn't check them out because disco wasn't what I was looking for. A title matters.

2. Lost in Space Robot 14. ED-209 from Robocop 18. Ahnold 19. Number 5 from Short Circuit 30. Dot Matrix from Spaceballs 35, 36. Hahaha the robots from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey 48. C3PO 45. Those dumb robots from Episode 1 57. Cylon from BSG 64. Matrix 70. Calculon from Futurama 76. Bicentennial Man? 77. Bender 78. Eve 79. Tin Man 115. Tick-Tock from Return to Oz 119. Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 120. Rosie from Jetsons 132. Gir from Invader Zim 155. Tom Servo from MST3K 165. R2D2

Yeah, I think this is great as far as arrangement goes. It started off pretty conservative, but had some great ideas as it went on. I fell in love with the minimal section in the middle, where it felt like you were just playing enough notes to keep the song moving. That was a great dynamic. The piano sound is not bad, though the higher notes tend to stand out more. I do think we need to raise the volume level of this track before it go up, but once that's done, this should be G2G. YES (conditional on raising volume)

Wow, some very cool sounds, but you've really got to balance them better. My ears were getting blown off and not in the good way. Well, sometimes in the good way and sometimes not. Some of those synths are ridiculously loud, you're drowning out everything else. There's also a lot of repetition here and I think you need some more arrangement ideas, rather than just changing up the sounds. Food for thought if you decide to resubmit. NO

Very creative mix. It helps the source itself is so weird, you just expounded on that and came up with a song that sounds like the score of a movie. I have to agree that the balance was a little askew, and the song could have been smoother. The intro sounded kind of stiff and not that powerful. When the drums finally broke in, they hit the sub bass regions without filling in the more thumpy parts of the bass regions. They had power but no thwack. As a result, the song never felt very sprightly like the instruments suggest it should. Good candidate for resubmit, I hope we get another version. NO (resubmit)

My vote is pretty close to Andy's. While I like what's going on here, the arrangement style is pretty close to the original. There's enough difference that it's not problematic, but I'm not excited either. The drums and bass are barely there and in the section when the guitar drops out, it's really apparent. The song loses a heck of a lot of power. Needs better balance, more reverb or delay to fill out the gaps. I'll just echo what he said: beef it up. NO (resubmit)

Wow, this is an awesome arrangement. You've got the power of the orchestra, and the badassity of electric guitar and glitch. Add in a gentle acoustic breakdown and this has it all. Really stunning work. It pains me to agree with pretty much every production criticism mentioned so far. The guitar is piercing and overpowers the backing, the panning is too far to the sides, the drums are too muffled. I don't think I can quite call this a conditional much as I'd like to - the mixing problems will take a little bit of effort. But please please please resubmit this one. NO (resubmit)

Gotta agree with Jesse that the vocal didn't suit the style for me, and I hate making that criticism because there's only so much people can do with their own voices. This needed a more powerful take to match the rawk, maybe even bringing it an octave up if you can hit those notes. I thought the choruses did a much better job by bringing in harmonies, that gave it more depth. However, that's not even the biggest issue; the amount of original material in this is problematic and makes the source less than dominant. Can't sign off on it, which is too bad, because I do think apart from the vocal delivery, it's a cool song. NO (resubmit)

I'm a huge fan of this soundtrack too, and I'm happy to see remixes of it. This is a really nice song but I think it goes a little off the rails. Apart from the A-section, which plays it totally straight, the rest is original, sometimes with the chords from the original (but often not even that). Could see people passing it for that reason, but I thought it was too liberal. I needed to see more references to the original melody, something more obvious. The song is super relaxing and well played, and I'll be holding on to this one. It's also a big step up from your last submission, production-wise. Unfortunately, I can't give it the YES. NO

Not sure why the bass would bother anyone except source purists, but to each their own. Thought it sounded fine in this context, no dissonance at all. The song was a little thin, but I thought it was above the bar. The backing pads give me a really warm feeling, and though the song is a little noodly, the new writing is nice. I like. YES

previous decision I believe this is the same as the last version, except with better production. I'll give a full vote later but it seemed over 50% usage and good enough production to me.

Speaking of things the OP already made...

I agree with halc that the balance was a little off, in favor of the low notes instead of the melody, but I also agree with him that this was a great arrangement and made good use of the full range of the orchestra. Loved the section starting at 2:19 where the flute gave this a suddenly buoyant tone. Not much to say, this was classy and well-done, and an underremixed source from the game, no less. YES

Oh I really like the harmonic changes here, even though a lot of this has stayed the same. It makes this sound so much happier. I think this could maybe use one more element, but the concept is real cool. The song did have some major problems though, starting with the way-too-loud panned synth, and moving on to the overcompression and overuse of the same patterns. This sounds like you knocked it out pretty quickly, and while it's nice to get your ideas down while you're still inspired, this one could use more attention. NO (resubmit)

Much better writing, much better mixing, better humanization. That last one is still a little bit of a sore spot, but I agree that the whole package is good enough to pass at this point. Thanks for making the fixes! YES

Cool arrangement. There's a lot of places to go with such a simple source, and this went to some very interesting places. There were a handful of production issues, mostly relating to reverb and instruments sounding like they were in different rooms. Jesse covered some of this. The orchestral hits were also a little too cheesy for the rest of the song, but that's minor. I agree with Larry/Justin that the rock drums were pretty weak and held that section back. Despite having a really nice arrangement, I also can't sign off just yet. With one more version, I think you can nail the landing. NO (resubmit)

I'm gonna be saying what has already been said but the heavy reverb and repetition of the piece are both problems. There were parts I enjoyed, but the writing was just too simple much of the time, going back to the same right hand arpeggio patterns over and over. I'm not gonna say that can never work, but here there wasn't enough going on to compensate for it. Try to work on getting a better recording and varying your writing. NO

Like Jesse, I found myself liking the introduction most in this song, because of how off-kilter and minimal it was. I won't say the source was super obvious there, but I was hearing it in the places Larry mentioned, plus those liberal areas, some of which used the original's chords. Actually I felt a little disappointed when the song switched into happy bubbly mode, but that's more a subjective preference - it was fine as far as songs go, there was enough to sustain my interest. I don't really see any reason to say NO to this. YES

The piano bugged me too, in spite of good intentions. I wouldn't say the writing was too noodly, but it was too even and mechanical. The synths completely overpowered the piano when they came back. And the sizzle on those synths was pretty ridiculous, you have to tone down that area some. The wobble bass was way too big as well. I like some of the ideas here, and with some more fine-tuning, this could be a very polished arrangement. NO (resubmit)

I occasionally have the same problem but I haven't found a pattern for when it happens. Most likely I'm accidentally hitting a keyboard shortcut, I bet.

Very cool, creative sources - they really make me want to check out the game. Your remix is creative too, a dark dancey track with swooping FX and a breakdown that skitters like skeleton fingers. I thought the source was kind of loose at times - either that, or I wasn't fully getting how it was used. There was enough for me to recognize from both sources and I feel ok with that. Have a YES. YES

This is a pretty easy pass, the bass holds on the sources for most of the song. Two things I dug in this song: 1) how weird the panning is, even though the song still sounds totally balanced, and 2) the stiffness, almost fakeness, of the bass and drums juxtaposed with the fluid organic instruments that chime in. That's pretty much what I love about Mazedude - he takes things that shouldn't work and makes them work. YES

The drum sounds were pretty bad to me. Not quite dealbreaker bad, but pretty close. Fair enough to you if they didn't sound thin and plain, but to me... well, it sounds lo-fi! It just didn't work in this context, I thought. The song was also kinda disjointed without a strong direction, and a little bit lacking in body. The ideas were good and I liked the piano, but the overall package just didn't work for me. Best of luck getting a fourth YES. NO (resubmit)