Rozovian

Your dubby wubby bass thing from 0:50 and on feels a bit too bright, its highs drawing attention that the piano and other instruments should have at that point. Maybe it's just me, but I don't know whether the piano or the dubwub is the focus of the arrangement. 2:02, that plucked string thing, possibly a guitar. I know you like it, you use it a lot... but it doesn't sound human. Seems like it's either difficult to humanize, or you don't care. I mean, even if it's a dulcimer or something like that, it'd be more dynamic that it is now. Maybe I'm just not hearing the dynamics in it properly. Perhaps make your sampler filter the softer notes a bit? The source is long and tricky to wrap my head around, but I hear source. If it's too liberal, then... something. idunno, maybe my occasional source-deafness is getting in the way of learning sources. Maybe I haven't heard enough mixes of this to remember source parts from the remixes. Could be too liberal, but I can't tell. A couple of mixing edits and a humanization effort and you should be good, afaik. Chill stuff, as usual.

Eww, horrible choice of source vid. Good thing I've heard more than enough of the original. Source is obviously there, and it's a cool take on it. I like it. I like the choice of background sounds. I like them more than the piano, actually. The piano's loud notes are a bit too loud. You might wanna even out the velocities / compress the audio a bit to get it under control. The worst offenders are the ones that jump out, like at 0:35. Really, the piano is the only problem I have with it. The low range is robotic and controlled, while the upper range is too dynamic. The piano could use some brightening too, whether a subtle touch of EQ or through controlled multiband compression. In any case, I'd want the piano under control before I'd pass this.

Sounds like some of the mids got scooped out. Lotta sub power, bright and clear highs, but the mids feel overlooked. Could just be an effect the bass has. You could tone down the sub to get some more headroom to balance things out. From what I can tell, as the 0:53 instrument seems to have enough mids, it's as if you went a little overboard on carving room for it. Good idea, just a little excessive. Yeah, I hear the source in here, and it's not a midi rip. Yeah, this works for me. Weird structure in the middle. You go into the source's intro in a really weird way, changing the mood of the whole mix. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it doesn't quite flow as smooth as it should. Maybe the tempo change adds to the confusion, tho that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the judges were fine with it, I guess it's good enough for ocr, just... know that it could be smoother. So yeah, some frequency balance issues and some weird arrangement choices aside, this sounds pretty good to me. If the judges had any problems with the percussion before, I think you've managed to address that now. Nice work.

My guess it's a no for arrangement reasons. The electronic bit doesn't quite flow with the rest, but the medley structure is a bigger problem. There's plenty of source in here, it's just that the book ends Lone Star usage alone doesn't feel like enough for a cohesive arrangement. That said, I still think you should sub it. The judges might have a different view of what counts as too much of a medley for ocr, and if it's passable, we really wouldn't want to let this one go us by.

It's like totally almost 2 years. Some projects are just that slow amirite?

ocr's idea of a good medley, one that meets its standards, is one that doesn't rely on a "source 1 source 2 source 3 source 4" structure in order to have new material, to flow, to change, but instead has all the sources tied together into a single cohesive structure. My impression of your track, not being that familiar with the originals and admittedly leaving that aspect for later, was that there's a chance of this arrangement being too much of a medley for ocr. The second half of my mod review is gonna address the source usage and arrangement... once I get to it. No, audio compression, not... audio compression... It's not an encoding problem. Low-quality encodings do something akin to bitcrushers - just more subtle. It starts off just losing transparency in the background, then starts to sizzle and after that you begin to notice a loss of high frequencies. That's the mp3 compression, or pretty much any audio _file_ compression. Slower sample rate, lower sample accuracy. Some online players compress files to stream them faster. Dunno if SC does that, and even if that's the case, I usually overlook stuff that's obviously a result of the encoding. What I was talking about was the dynamic compression - the compressor that changes how the audio behaves rather than how it's sampled for the file. The compressor/limiter effect. If you don't focus on the synth bass during that part of the mix, you should hear how everything else gets squashed by the compressor. This is what we call overcompression, when the compressor doesn't just push down loud peaks, but rather pushes down everything. They're both called compression, which gets confusing sometimes. I think it's just the bass that's the problem there, dropping it by a couple of dB should solve the problem. Gonna have a closer look at the sources and the arrangement later, possibly today, just wanted to make sure you get what I meant in my previous post.

I thought this thread was gonna be "The Fat Man has a guitar made of horse bones" or "Motoi Sakuraba did a little dance before sitting down to write or mix". I am disappoint.

In any case, ocr's a little more high-profile just for being organized, so we run a slightly higher risk of C&D's than any random remixer on youtube or wherever. If they wanna get us for competing for listeners of their soundtracks, that could be solved with a C&D... tho it's pretty bad PR. On the other hand, C&Ds seem to be aimed at fan-games most of the time (anyone with stats on this can correct me if I'm wrong), because that's what the game companies make, that's the they distribute, that's what they primarily sell. Nobody in their right mind is gonna mistake an ocr album for the game itself, which isn't necessarily true for fangames.

Some intense rhythmwork here. That thing that comes in at 1:51 sounds like it should be further back in the soundscape. It's cool, but it's not loud enough to take center stage like it does now. The glitchy effects are sweet, you've got a lot of cool stuff going on here, in the writing, the sound design... So yeah, all that is cool. Source? Well the first Oni stuff is obvious, so's the Yang backing. Oni-based lead. Yang-based breakdown. More Oni lead. Yeah, you know what you're doing source-wise. Kickass track, Pete, nice work. My assessment is that this is postable.

I'm gonna take your word on the judges' thoughts on the arrangement and focus on the production, just to expedite things. The bass is strong with this one... but that's about it. It's surprisingly pleasant in this mix. Somehow, it doesn't feel like that's the intention. This feels like it should be louder. Side-chain more? Subtle multiband compressor on top of everything? A touch of tube distortion/overdrive or things that need a little more brightness and presence? The bitcrushed tone gets old. You need to do more with it, change it up. Some _careful_ loudening, some more variation in tone for that bitcrushed thing... I'm not sure exactly what this genre entails, so it's hard to eval. Cool track tho.

As the judges seem to find the arrangement kosher, I'm gonna focus on the concerns they had. Those concerns, as codified by zircon: PRODUCTION [X] Low-quality samples [X] Overcompressed (pumping/no dynamics) [X] Cluttered/off-time sequencing [X] Mixing is muddy - many sounds do not gel together, too much reverb, panning, compression etc STRUCTURE [X] Lacks coherence overall (doesn't "flow" enough) So... my impressions... Didn't really care before, but at 1:07 it turned into an overcompressed mess. Really. 2:26, some kind of distortion. Not sure if it's clipping from actual overflow or if it's a sound design thing, but when it's this loud, it doesn't sound intentional. Doesn't help that it sounds like it's supposed to be a smooth instrument. I can get LP noise and radio filtering and all that jazz, but this doesn't sound right. Up until this point, it's flowed all right for me... and keeps flowing. It works, imo. Some really groovy shit right here. There's some weird mixing choices, but I'm willing to tolerate them in a track as weird as this. Really, my only problem with this is how loud it is and how the sound suffers as a result. Ease up on the compression, give it a little more room to breathe, and I'd pass this. Well, there's also whatever that thing at the end is...

Half a mod review: Spectacular track, my main concern would be the cohesiveness of the arrangement. ocr needs something beyond a medley of sources, and a quick listen to this suggests it's a medley with book-ends. I'd have to learn the soundtrack properly before being able to properly eval it. Haven't played the game through yet, either. Sound-wise, the only crit I have is that the synth bass is too loud and pushes the compressor (tho it's too loud regardless of the compressor, which only adds squashedness in the loud parts).

aaaand a long overdue mod review: I can hear source from the start. Intro suggests something quite conservative. Saves me thr trouble of figuring out the source. Whoa, some bass notes are _really_ loud. I don't get the disparity between the heavy lows and the otherwise light track. While a juxtaposition of these two can be used well, here it's... well, not. Compare the frequency balance to some good reference tracks and figure out how you wanna fix the disparity. It's probably a sound design problem, you just need to figure out if you're going for a thick, light, or juxtaposed sound, and be more consistent in how you realize it. The track is also a bit quiet. Getting the drums and bass under control should give you a little more room for the rest of the track, but it's also worth looking into various techniques for gaining a little more room to work with. There's a few parts where there's something weird going on, harmonically, eg 1:12, 1:39, 3:32. The bass might not be in tune, either. This feels pretty promising tho. I like how this track flows. Aside from the sound disparity it seems mixed ok. It seems different enough from the source, tho someone more familiar with the source would be better qualified to comment on that. Sounds postable, but it ultimately hinges on the source usage. Nice work.

Then there's the fact that the arrangements are ours, even if the originals aren't. As such, we have the same right as the owners of the originals to stop infringers of our tracks. Our tracks themselves may be infringing, but that doesn't mean they're free for others to take. Goes for both attribution and commercial gain.

Props for this, I've been meaning to learn to play keyboards well enough to be a decent wild card in any church band I end up in. Gonna be reading this. I asked a year or so about a guide for keyboard sounds, specifically e-piano but the most common synth sounds wouldn't hurt either. Dunno to what extent you know the specifics of the Rhodes and the DX7s, but it's an idea.

It takes a village to raise a child, they say. Maybe because in a village, ppl can tell the kid's mom. The internet is a village.

If you mean album projects, we've got a few. There's these. Also some here. If you mean collaboration on songs, either wait for one to appear in R&C, or arrange one yourself and get others in on it... in R&C. Don't wait for them to come to you, go to them.

Welcome. You should check out the 1-hour compos for some idea of what can be done in an hour. Give ppl a week, and they'll come up with stuff like the Mega Man compos here on ocr. It depends on the song. If you play piano and make a piano song, you're likely gonna work a lot faster than if you're writing and humanizing an entire orchestra. It also depends on your skill and your tools, obviously. I could make something listenable in an hour, I think. Others might not. It depends.

I think it's brilliant. It's a lot faster and ultimately a lot less damaging than the DMCA approach, and it has the potential of teaching the kid to live so his mom can be proud of what he does, rather than teach him to rip off more obscure artists instead. That said, it's not a good idea to go after random ppl's personal life unprovoked.

It was a lot faster than the other means, too. Nice work BS.

One album left on his page. Success! Any idea what that is, if it's also stolen? edit: nope, now it's jumping to random albums. Weird. edit2: now his albums are disappearing one by one. Seems like it wasn't random at all, just going to the most recent album that's left. ....aaaannnd it's gone. Success!

On the flip side of that outlook, we're making music worth stealing. If that guy's made money off of my arrangements, I will be angry. I have no moneys.

Sent one as well. Found 5 tracks that were mine, the two from Missingno, also the aforementioned EYOD, Dragonfood, and Reverse Rain. Dunno about his first album, but his second was released August 10th 2009 and had ocr stuff on it. Too bad he flew under the radar for so long, he could have been stopped way earlier.

One of his previous albums, Boss Rush, has ripped off The Dual Dragons' take on Laughing Octopus. AND DRAGONFOOD! ima do something. (and going to bandcamp's front page, I see a testimonial from our danny b. yay. now back to vengeance/reporting.) edit: Boss Rush seems like a direct rip of BadAss. Most if not all tracks are from there. Most of his other albums seem to be ocr stuff as well. edit2: found Spume. Seems like his Pokeman is a stolen Missingno Tracks. edit3: found Reverse Rain. dreaming symphony is Lucid Dreaming. edit4: Eat your Own Dust found.

Yeah, it seems less about achievement and stardom and more about whether novices want the expertise of these stars. I'd be considered a star in this dichotomy, but there are ppl on ocr who have things to teach me about the things I consider to be my strengths. Then there are areas, styles, genres, techniques that I'm less proficient in, and would learn a lot from someone more experienced in those areas. I can be someone's star, if needed.