Flexstyle

OH WAIT...I had an amazing idea for all us bored people! It's totally original and is in no way, shape, or form ripping off DarkeSword. We should totally take this next week or so and find us each a robot master from the Mega Man series of games, then have each person do a remix with that theme as well as a Wily castle theme. Any takers? :tomatoface:

I'm *gulp* cleaning my room. If that isn't boredom, I don't know what is.

Played this last night at a wedding reception and nobody blinked. Love this song!

I hope you're being facetious, because that seems kinda rude. Just sayin'.

I freakin' LOVED Chex Quest as a kid. I may just have to do a remix or two....

I'm DJing a friend's wedding reception on Friday evening, and I'm definitely going to be slipping a few OCReMixes in during the meal...the only prerequisite I really have to work with is "classy and understated." I think I can get that from a lot of mixes here. Incidentally, has this been added to the list? I'm planning on playing it alongside Louis Armstrong and Michael Buble during the reception's mealtime.

I'll second DA. Organization? What organization? I just throw everything in iTunes and delete any mixes I don't care for. If it's part of an album, however, I'll keep it for continuity's sake.

You might get away with that on some songs, but I'd be willing to bet money that it wouldn't work for this particular source. This is a source that I bet the judges see in the inbox every day, just because it is THE iconic VGM source. Gotta give 'em something they've never heard before, IMO.

<MODREVIEW> Oh boy. This is one of those sources that you gotta really blow out of the water to even come close to having it posted. Couple of things as I'm listening--that open hi-hat is pretty loud, and tends to grate on my ears as the song goes on. Intro: the problem you’ve got is that you start off sounding very VERY similar to the source, what with the square wave chippy sounds playing a Mario MIDI. That kinda sets the tone for the rest of the piece Brass samples are super-cheesy and obviously fake, but in an "I made it this way on purpose" sort of way. I'm still not quite sure on what the judges think of intentional cheese--I like 'em (although they're also a tad harsh in the upper-midrange), but your mileage may vary. Personally, I don’t think the kick hits quite hard enough. Perhaps a spot of compression might bring it up to club levels of punch? Gotta spike that punch in tha club, ya know. The stacked chord synth that comes in around 1:32 (a) is too loud, ( has too much reverb, and © sounds really generic. Sounds like a really “stock” unison preset of some sort. Overall thoughts—the drums throughout the song are really quite boring. The straight 4/4 kick groove with not a lot of variation gets really monotonous, unfortunately. If you’re going to go with the “classic ‘90s house” sound, you’re going to need to throw in copious amounts of varied snare drum fills. This particular arrangement isn’t inventive enough to really hit OCR’s listener base in the face, I’d say. The groove is fun and upbeat, but it’s still stock Mario at its core. The judges may disagree with me, but I need something to totally come out of nowhere to even consider a Mario Theme mix. Again, I think part of your problem lies in the fact that you’re using square wave sounds as part of your lead selection, and square waves are exactly what the original source used. Can’t really be having that. Not gonna lie, I’m really digging the rad timbale licks you’ve got going during that breakdown at around 2:19. Said breakdown is a welcome and far overdue change in the groove, I’d say. I will, however, second the person who said that the ending motif kinda detracts from the overall song. Nobody needs a downer during the party, maaaaan! Consider adding more such breakdowns during the song; that way, the listener gets a break from the incessant kick-hihat-snare/clap groove. Closing thoughts: Production is adequate, although you could stand to tighten several things (kick, hi-hats, etc.). Biggest problem for me is that some of the sounds you’ve used just don’t do much for me, and the arrangement is nothing particularly ear-catching. It is an enjoyable song—please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to hate on anything here. It’s just not got that “special” to it that an OC ReMix needs to have, especially a Mario remix. Fix up some sound choices, get a little more spice in that arrangement, add some zest to the drums, tighten the production a wee bit, and we could well be on a good road to Mario club-madness. </MODREVIEW>

I'm totally gonna visit your studio sometime if I get out that way. Cheers!

Can I safely assume that this initiative is for PC-exclusive games? I've been planning to do a Rayman remix or two, but that was a cross-platform game when it came out. PC soundtrack was the best one, though.

I want to see this.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I do have a few long-term goals that were already in place. - Get paid for scoring a game that gets released (I've been paid for scoring a game that may or may not ever see the light of day, already, haha). - Learn to play guitar with some measure of competence. - Keep ingesting less sugar and play sports more often. - Get my associate's degree and move onto the last two years of college. - Obtain necessary equipment for "full band" mobile recording setup, record some local bands, then make a profit.

Fatigue? What fatigue? The Concrete Men know no such thing!

Zero, be very terrified, because I actually have a very feasible idea for remixing Clown Man. It involves lots of HAPPY-hardcore cheese.

Sorry, clarification: By "votes are inaccurate," I was referring to the overall results of each round, not to any one person. Also, I don't want reviews. I already know what I want out of a song. I'm okay with seeing what you (note: "you" in this case is anyone in general) thought of the mix, but I probably don't care about your suggestions.

I can assure everyone that, personally, I've used the same criteria for voting this entire time. I pay absolutely no attention to who the remixer actually is--the questions I ask myself are "Do I like this track? Is it polished? Does it seem to arrange the themes sufficiently?" If yes to all the above, I put that track on my list of "tracks to consider voting for." Usually, from there, it's just "which track do I like the best?" As someone who's been churning out mixes with loads of production polish and who has been passed over for mixes that (no offense to anyone, and I'm not going to name any names) completely lack that level of polish, I get it--some people have far different tastes than I do. Something that seems like a glaring, unforgivable flaw to me may be nothing more than a minor annoyance to another listener, because they haven't trained their ears specifically towards engineering like I have. At the same time, I am always suspicious when I see a bunch of names voting in the social group that I never see anywhere else on the forums. Some folks, like orlogue and MindWanderer, are people that I can't recall seeing anywhere else, but at least they're taking the time to be present in this discussion thread so they don't seem like people who are just voting for people because they like that person. Do I suspect the votes of being mildly inaccurate? Yeah, I do. Not gonna lie. Does it matter? No, thankfully, because this contest was never about winning to me--it was (and is) about stretching my limits as a ReMixer and collaborating with a couple of really good guys. Am I going to regret having participated? Not at all. I hope, Rexy, that your experience with not winning (or not getting some deserved votes) won't sour your experience to the point where you wouldn't consider participating in another, similar contest. I've enjoyed competing against you and hearing your mixes, for what it's worth.

Some say that AkumajoBelmont's birth was accompanied by a chorus of angels. However, the heavenly bodies soon learned that his silver tongue was far more pleasing to the ear than any old angel--even the sun, moon, and stars wept at hearing even the cries of this newborn babe. The angels, jobless as they now were, still rejoiced, for they could not deny the inherent beauty nor fail to embrace the incredibly silky sound of his voice. As the child grew into a man, the legend grew as well. Tales have been told of monstrous beings whose evil tracks were halted by just one word sung by Akumajo. Still others tell the tale of when he merely whispered a song and coaxed an entire flock of baby dragons into blissful dreams. Others, too, swore that his voice was the pure essence of joy. Quack physicians were quick to sell bottles of old wine mixed with prune juice under the label of "Essence of Akumajo." To this day, the tale lives on. Small children often report seeing this mythical man at a distance, while they play in the fields. Others say AkumajoBelmont has joined a legendary team of ReMixers who bring justice and peace to the world through music, voice, and copious amounts of the finest alcoholic beverages. The true whereabouts of the man are known to but a select few, whose lives have been sworn in protection of the secret, for woe be to the world against whom this incredible power is turned.

Kinda hard to do a mod review if there's no source linkage. D:

>MODREVIEW< As a quick caveat, most of my expertise comes from the production side of things, and that’s how I’ll be approaching this mod review. Forgive me if I come across too harsh, as I’m just trying to pick out anything the judges might find. Right then, first things first. That combination of horns and strings—whatever it is that’s doing the little stabs throughout the song—really has some issues in the lower midrange. I’d say do a deep and wide cut around 180 Hz or so in the EQ, or even roll off that area entirely. I’d second the notion that the samples could be improved, since they just sound…cheap, I guess, for lack of a better term. There’s not a ton of believable articulation (yeah, there’s articulation, but it sounds kinda just “there so I can say I added articulation”) in there, since they really do just sound like triggered one-shot samples. I suspect if you lowered the volume of the stabs and made a significant EQ cut you’d have them fitting a lot better, at least, since they’re kinda clashing with the kick/snare and the bassline. If you mixed the string/horn stabs better (the EQ fixes, etc.), you might be able to get away with the “cheap-sounding” samples. Also: do you have any sort of reverb on them? That might solve part of the problem if you were to cut some significant low-mid frequencies out of that reverb, too. As of right now, they (the string/horn stabs) tend to overpower everything else in the mix. Around 1:29 or so, when the piano does its own little lead thing, you’ll want to bring it up in the mix a bit for that section. Otherwise it sounds like, “wait, there’s a piano solo here? I didn’t even notice it.” 2:00 with the unison lead—it’s a bit buried, and you could probably stand to maybe even bring it up an octave. As of right now, it’s just kinda muddy. I would also mention that it feels almost “forced,” melodically, in that it doesn’t quite fit with the source or the remix—almost as a slightly random mish-mash of notes strung together. I’m sure that wasn’t the intent, and I’m certainly not accusing you of doing such a thing, but I am saying that’s what it kinda sounds like. At the end of the song, where you’ve got everything playing at once, it sounds REALLY crowded, musically. You’ve got dissonance from melodies playing at the same time that shouldn’t play together in a lot of places (multiples of those unison synth leads, for instance). As someone who likes to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the listener at the end of the song, I can sympathize, but it just makes a jumbled mess in this case. Overall mix thoughts: The entire mix sounds quite crowded and perhaps overcompressed. You could probably get away with rolling the sub bass frequencies off of the song entirely, maybe making a sharp cut or rolloff around 45 Hz or so. An overall mix cut of around 170-200 Hz wouldn’t hurt either. Looks to me like your bassline and kick are trying to occupy the same spot in the mix. You can pull that off, but you might have to lower the volume of one or the other, or simply re-EQ the kick to throw more weight into the higher end of the spectrum and less in the low end. Also, make sure your snare/clap has nothing sitting where the kick should be. Roll it off around 170 Hz or so. To be clear, actually, nothing besides the kick and bass should really occupy the spectrum below around 150 Hz or so, otherwise you’ve got mud problems. All that said, it IS an enjoyable mix. I think the little voice clips are well-placed and tasteful, adding a nice little bit of fun to an already cheery track. It's a joyous and playful song, and the overall arrangement is, I think, quite nice. Please don’t hear me tearing everything apart in a malicious manner. I'm just pretty certain that it's not going to pass the panel as it stands right now with all those production elements (some of which are a direct result of the arrangement) missing.

Let's see--this was one of my favorites this week, and barely missed out on a top-3 spot. So far, on my first listen-through (of the new version), my only big issue is that the lead synth which comes in around 1:50 sounds just a bit too loud (leading to a harsh sound) and seems to be distorting a bit. Back off the high mid-range in the EQ and lower the overall volume of that synth and you should be alright. The bass, overall, isn't terribly present, but I think this particular song lets you get away with that. Same goes for a lot of the drums (kick in particular). That background arp which is ever-present (the one which is last to fade out at the end) might be just a bit too loud--you might consider scaling it back just a teensy bit. Overall, the song is a very bright-sounding, cheery, fairly polished mix. I hear plenty of source usage, so no complaints there. While quite enjoyable as-is, the overall sound is perhaps just a bit crowded at times, due to all the high-midrange synths in play. I don't think you're *quite* overdoing it just yet, but the judges might disagree. Consider raising or lowering some of your background synths an octave or so, as that might help with some of the crowding--which, incidentally, is probably no more evident than when that 1:50 lead synth comes in. Fix that harsh lead synth, check that background arp, maybe even change up the way some of the synths are phrased (octave-wise), and I personally think you'll have a winner.

Curse you, Rexy! You took my "<reference to robot master> This" naming scheme AND you have an incredible mix to boot. This sort of tomfoolery shall not be tolerated! Also: C7, your piano mix was absolutely breathtaking. I haven't enjoyed a solo piano mix like that in quite a while. Stellar.