Rozovian

So long as there's transparency, I'm cool with it. Can we see some more specific numbers, like an end-of-the-year report on costs and revenue? How much is being paid out of pocket, how much does patreon cover, ads, other donations, other costs...

Ah, of course. Didn't think to check the date posted. But it takes several months to get through the judging and posting process, so if you're aiming for a specific date it's probably best to give ocr 6 months to work. My xmas album remixes, usually submitted in December, tend to get posted during summer. If you really want your mix posed around halloween, you can request that in the submission email. Provided it fits the standards.

Cool source and style. The synth bass is pretty loud/bright. It almost behaves like a lead. Be careful with how loud you get frequencies of different instruments get. Mix with levels but also EQ. The beat is muffled and soft. I don't know what you're talking about when it comes to getting this through the submission queue in time. In time for what? The queue isn't purged at the end of the year or something. I have a feeling this is too conservative for ocr, but I'd have to go over the source and your remix a few times to be sure. Don't let that stop you from subbing, if that's what you're aiming for. Sub it when you think it's ready.

Sounds a little synthwave-y. Cool. I'd look into the overall mixing, how prominent an element should be at any time. You can use both track level and EQ for that. There's that big giant low rumble during the middle part of the track, which is probably too loud. Many of the synth elements are probably too bright and might also be too loud. I'd avoid panning things, my own pan philosophy involves only panning secondary elements that are backed up by something occupying the same approximate frequencies panned opposite (eg hihat vs. shaker, piano chords vs. guitar chords). Here there are some things that seems panned arbitrarily. it's usually not a big deal on speakers, but it sounds weird on headphones. It's a cool take on the source, new rhythms for the melody and a nice overall flow to the track. Needs a lot of mixing work though. Cool stuff.

40 seconds in, and it's clear your writing and the source vocals are not in the same key (and slightly off in tempo too, leading to timing problems). The overall sound design is all over the place, with plenty of good elements that just don't fit well together. There are a few things, some simple synth things and lo-fi-sounding things that you perhaps should just replace, or just mix better. The arrangement seems decent enough, so you might have a rather good track here if you can sort out those things.

Getting the original wrong can lead to a lot of fun new takes on things. I'm having some trouble not hearing it correctly and keep thinking you've got the weirdest drum writing, but the overall sound is nice regardless. It might be my headphones, I'm just listening casually on my gamer headphones, but the kick drum sounds weird during the first half of the track. How does it compare with professionally produced rock tracks? Overall, the track has a really nice, polished sound, but the kick stands out. Really cool stuff.

Niice. Short and sweet.

I like the bass a lot. I like the guitar melody a little. I don't like the drums or the rhythm guitar. Not sure what's par for the genre you've picked, but I'd look into guitar production techniques, probably start with double tracking the rhythm guitar. As for the drums, I'd pretend to be a drummer and think about what I'd want to play in a given part, because the current ones are boring. Again, it might be par for the genre, but I don't think that's the case in the more intense sections. But what do I know? Listen to the best produced tracks in the genre and see what you might want to change. Again, I like the bass a lot. Nice work with that in particular, and with the mood as well.

The kick drum doesn't seem to exist in the same space as everything else. Consider adding a second kick and layering them, adjusting their levels and effects to get a more cohesive sound. The rest of the soundscape fits well together imo. There's some nice alterations to the melodies, and a nice slow build towards more and more elements in the mix. It's quite conservative in the arrangement, but I think there's plenty of your own touch here. Don't worry about ruining the feel, your remix won't warp time and change the original no matter what you do. Just listen to the many different versions of this there are on the site (and elsewhere). They're all different spins on the same track, as is yours. Cool stuff.

The drums sound weird, their dynamics and stereo distribution, but I like the rest. The break at 1:41 could use a bit more build-up or something to punctuate it with, it seems a little random. I like the slow pan stereo effect on the guitar plucks. Cool stuff.

The groove is excellent. Maybe it's my lack of jazz background, but I don't hear anything wrong with the brass writing. Having slow attacks is more an issue with samples than with writing, though the solution is in part in adjusting the writing, moving the notes a little. The rest of the solution is in having samples with faster attack, or messing with the samples until you do. Some mixing things could use some work, the melody when it first comes in is a bit too loud against the more mellow groove. It could be your headphones. It could be mine. I'm not on my music-making headphones. I like this.

I'll provide my thoughts on this. I've been following the thread since it started, but as it concerns judging, I don't think my position as an evaluator (on vacation) is all that relevant. But I have some insight into what goes on in staff, and tend to get posted when I sub something. So here goes. *Make the panel faster - my current perception, without access to the judges' forum, is that things have slowed down significantly. The number of completed decisions threads dropped quite low during October, and the Currently in the Judging Process thread hasn't been updated since summer. For the record, I subbed something this summer, so the apparent state of things bugs me a bit for that reason too. I think the panel needs more judges. The biggest objection seems to concern breaking ties, but that can be resolved by just deciding that after 6 votes and still no majority, it'd get a formal "resub" response. When a resub isn't possible (live recording with live recording issues, lost project files etc), then it could be decided by a tiebreaker vote from djp. But the small active team vs. large team of less active people objection is valid too. I think that's a question of work ethic and perceived need for one's own effort, but that's a different conversation. *Scrutinize Yes votes - Not sure what can be done here. It would be nice to get some numbers on submissions vs. form rejections vs. NO vs. YES vs. direct posts, but that's numbers someone's gonna have to put together then. But that's not quite what's being asked for in this thread. *Valid criticisms - Yes there are. And you don't know what's being discussed (or what members of staff are trying to discuss) in staff forums and staff discord. And OCR has taught us all that criticism is useful. *Nice writeups - This has been addressed. For me, when I do an eval, I first want to listen to the remix (and source), and if I don't understand what's going on, why it sounds a particular way and have an issue with it, then I might look for an answer in the first post or elsewhere in the thread. I'm of the opinion that things have to _sound_ intentional. A bad speaker/lofi radio sound intro has to be obvious. A chiptune section can't just be a section with super-simple synthwork. Intent doesn't matter there, writeups don't matter - sound does. Although it would be nice to see more people say what DAW and instruments they used. Were the really cool strings in a mix from a big, expensive strings library, or some free soundfont? Is that guitar live or shreddage or a piano soundfont with distortion on it? *Lower the bar slightly - Nah. But I would like to see some a remix compo where people only use the instruments and effects that came with the DAW. That would show what the basic tools are actually capable of in the hands of experienced and skilled remixers, which would give the clueless newbs and strugglings forum veterans something to learn from. Better yet if these compo mixes are submitted and pass the bar, because then it's official - what's in the box is good enough. For that set of genres and sounds, at least. *Reconsider links in rejections - Not likely. Remixer privacy is an issue. There was recently a case of a remixer who was upset that his name was included in the rejection. I can understand where he's coming from. So when it comes to rejected mixes floating around, I'd rather mine didn't. But there's always the option of telling the panel to leave the link in. This could be added to the submission information on the Submit page. Alex, dude, chill. You've got a good conversation going here. Don't derail your own thread by rushing unfiltered thoughts into it.

First, let's not confuse the terms evaluation and judging. Judging requires at least three people voting, and takes a lot longer, because those works are final when released. Eval usually takes one overworked and underappreciated person, concerns works in progress (that are considered finished for the time being, when eval is used correctly), and is at most indicative of how the judges might vote, never a guarantee. Second, by all means, discuss judging, discuss eval. Identify problems, suggest solutions. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one concerned about that stuff. Can't speak for the judges, but when it comes to eval, I think I'm allowed to say we've started a conversation about improving it.

Meteo's talking about my remix writeups. I'm in the process of editing/rewriting them to be... well, better. I have the benefit of sitting in ocr staff chat and seeing progress being made on a lot of projects, ours included. We're so close. I wish I could share that stuff with the rest of you.

This has been sitting on at least one of my chill playlists for quite a while, and I only now consciously noticed how much it sounds like something from Deus Ex. Really cool mood. It's also got a sweet groove, nice choice of percussion and sound design in general, chill without being mellow. Cool stuff.

It doesn't fit ocr's standards on arrangement. It's a medley of conservative takes on the source. Medleys are accepted when they do something more with the sources than merely stack them in sequence. Regardless, an ocr-appropriate remix also needs to do something more with the arrangement of each source than just change the sound, which is essentially what's done here. The mix is also really heavy on the lows. It sounds better with my subwoofer off, which it shouldn't. So no, this wouldn't get approved. My advice: use this track for mixing practice. Also play around with the individual sources in case you come up with something more ocr-appropriate to do with them. Consider the rhythm of each part, the order of segments, the dynamics of the parts and overall, the chord sequences... The Doom soundtrack has a lot of cool sources to work with. I've been digging into it myself after listening closely to the 2016 Doom soundtrack, which references the previous Doom games, so that too can be an inspiration.

Please read the nice little stickies at the top of this subforum. You're breaking the "one thread per reamix, one remix per thread" thing, and you don't seem to know what the "ready for review" prefix is for. No big deal, but please correct this yourself so I don't have to.

Unfortunately I don't remember the procedure. Shouldn't be that hard to install just the plugin on your laptop, and then move the samples to a folder on the external and load them from there. If other solutions fail, using symbolic links should work. Starting Omnisphere without the drive connected, or with the library folders moved, gets you no library of sounds when you open Omnisphere. That's it.

It depends on the plugin. I originally put Omnisphere's sample library on an external drive using a symbolic link from the default install location somewhere in the system library. I think they nowadays let you install or move the samples wherever. Kontakt and Sampletank can both load samples from wherever you put them. Putting the plugin itself on an external drive seems unnecessary, since it's nowhere as big as the samples it uses. But with a symbolic link you could probably do that too, provided the drive in plugged in when you start your computer/DAW. Note: This is on mac. Can't say if the same can be done on Windows.

I like it. I'm on laptop speakers so I can't give any useful feedback, but I wanted to tell you that nothing about the style precludes it from becoming an OCReMix track.

The timing of the instrumentation and the performance in the intro don't seem quite lined up. You're occasionally not hitting the notes quite right in pitch either, 1:40 being a prime example of this. Consider re-recording some of the lines, or pitch correcting them artificially. I like the vocals. You've got a nice voice and I can't hear anything wrong with how it's recorded. You might want to pair the intensity of the instrumentation and the vocal performance better. 2:25 you hit the vocals with a performance much more intense than the instrumentation. The instruments are sweet and soft, which is not how your vocals sound. But hey, cool stuff, keep working on it.

Interesting sound choices. Would be cool to hear this with a vocalist. I wouldn't fade in the bass. That seems like an odd choice. Maybe use a weaker bass and bring in the proper bass eg at 0:17. Alternatively, you can start it off with the bass groove properly loud. You already signal the start of the track proper with the break pre 0:17, so I can imagine either suggestion working.

I like the instrumentation. This sounds like driving music. Cool stuff.

Haha, this is wonderful. I think you should make a whole track out of it. It's okay to make short tracks too. The shortest tracks on ocr are around 2 minutes long. edit: actually, they're less than a minute long, but I don't think that's enough for a decent arrangement of anything but the shortest sources these days. The shortest track with a track number higher than 1000 is Protodome's Luvdisc track at 1:45. Still less than 2 minutes.

Excellent intro. I can hear the Kraid reference in there. The sound choices are largely excellent as well, though I'm a little disappointed at the simplicity of the 2:12 melody synth. I agree about the listener fatigue issues LoA brought up. You might want to have the break sooner in the track, drop out more of the rhythm elements and make use of the break for drama. I know I've played around with breaks in my mixes, especially my older ones (Braincooler might be the best example with its almost 1 minute long single bass note). See what might inspire you.