Gario

Got some aggressive beats, some nice psytrance basslines, good production values in general, and hey it's Dragonball Z vocal clips (and GT's shadow dragon thrown in, for good measure). Glad this is a part of the game's soundtrack, otherwise how would we be able to show off some love to Dragonball on here? That sidechaining is appropriate, though the lead at the beginning (0:52) is buried too deeply in the mix to be sidechained that aggressively; it gets lost and is a little hard to follow. Don't be afraid to make the lead stand out a little more, especially if it's gonna be sidechained; you aren't going to cause big production issues if it's getting sidechained anyway! The key change is led into in an interesting and sensible manner, but it doesn't leave nearly as gracefully; suddenly changing key and overall texture is jarring and doesn't seem justified, here. You know how to modulate into a key pretty well, so use that knowledge to move yourself out of a key, as well. The portion at 4:00 to the ending seems like it should be a bit longer before closing the song out; right now it's quite a bit shorter than prior sections, so it doesn't sound proportionally like an ending, but rather like an incomplete song. The song should've ended on a more complete note (and the cut off sound at the end doesn't help, either, as others have pointed out). Be careful with your harmonies there, too; the melody ends with a major chord, and the harmony is in minor, so it clashes. Since the melody is so strong it's hard to hear, but when you hear it the parts do clash. Be careful with that moving forward. It's a close one in my mind; the issues do add up. There is a lot of good that this song does too, though - the strong production, aggressive beats, DB vocal clips - they also produce something pretty awesome. It's a bit of a tough vote, but considering the biggest issue for me is that a four and a half minute arrangement sounds like it should be even longer that's a little on the strange side to hold the track back for that. Keep proportion of a song in mind when arranging in the future, though. YES

It's the usual excellent package from Nostalvania, jazzed up and very well interpreted. I agree with the others that the bassline is more than recognizable enough as the lava path source bassline, and with the rest of the source available it's more than enough to satisfy the 50% rule of thumb quota. Great production, excellent arrangement, and some great performances all around to boot, I'd say this is an easy post for us. YES

I'm working on finishing the last track, then I'll be trying to send it back to staff. I am working on this pretty actively, atm, so I'm hoping I'm able to get this out soon. Looking forward to providing the update when I get this back to staff.

This is definitely a fun interpretation of the sources - out of the criticisms that I have, arrangement and creativity ain't one of them. We don't have enough polka on OCR, and this would be a great addition in that regard. I can't really ignore the instrument quality, though; the samples really feel like samples throughout. It's not only the samples are bones dry with very little to no reverb to add depth, but more importantly everything - everything - sounds like it's playing staccato. I understand a lot of it is stylistic, but the overuse of these staccato hits really pulls the listener out of the experience. Many free samplers (Bigcat and BBC Orchestral Sampler, for example) have options for many different kinds of attacks on the instruments, so take advantage of this. It's a great idea, but it's not quite up to par for quality. I'd love to hear this again sometime with better sampling and some more reverb, though! NO

Hey, wasn't this one of those Castlevania Remix compo tracks? I knew I recognized it from somewhere, lol (nice job winning that compo, btw!). Oh, I like the approach in the beginning of this; using the N64 castle center theme leaves you with more to work with when you get into the meat of the track (which is the SotN castle theme), and it doesn't sound like a different track being slapped onto the beginning. I could see some complain that the sources aren't integrated, but I think they compliment one another well enough side by side. The instruments are pretty clean and bouncy, too, which fits the theme of fightin' dancin' monsters. That transition to Symphony of the Night wasn't my cup o' tea, though. I think it could've worked had the key changed been avoided by either transposing the intro or later material to match the other, but as it stands the key change sounds like something important is supposed to be happening, but the rest of the instrumentation and textures suggest otherwise. While I stand by my belief that these sources work quite well side by side as an intro to the main portion of the track, the key swap makes the two parts of the track sound disjointed. I like the instruments and textures, once again, but I feel that texture at 1:28 is overpowering that lead. You can still hear everything well enough, but some mixing TLC could've helped make the leads stand out better. This doesn't affect the track much as the song moves along, and when the lead ain't there to overpower the texture at 2:38 sounds great, so it doesn't ultimately take this track down too much. That bridging material at 2:53 is a really great way to make the returning material at 3:35 sound relatively fresh. I could slap you on the wrist for repetition, but I think it works well enough as a nice contrast to the bridging material. The melody playing over different harmonies at 2:59 was a really cool touch, too. Overall I think this does a great job at what it wants to do, despite one or two hiccups. I think this'll work out well on the front page. YES

wow, last time i saw you post off-topic was still a living forum, lol glad to see you kickin'

If you're looking to learn how to write independent lines that compliment an existing lead, there's an entire compositional art dedicated to just that called "Counterpoint". You can read "Fux Gradus Ad Parnassum" for a fairly complete presentation on how to do counterpoint, but for the short-short version: Four types of motion (aka two notes moving at the same time) are used to create independence between lines, from "most" independent to "least": Counter Motion (notes move in opposite direction) Oblique Motion (one note moves while the other stands still) Similar Motion (notes move in the same direction but by different amounts) Parallel Motion (notes move in the same direction and by the same amount) All of this motion can (and should) be used, but be careful when moving in parallel motion to not move in parallel unison (the notes will sound like the same note, losing the independence), parallel octaves (same issue as moving in unison - you lose the voice), and parallel fifths (fifths discourage motion in music, moving in parallel makes the lines sound disjointed). Furthermore, do not move in similar motion into an octave, unison, or fifth. Oblique motion shouldn't lead into a dissonance, but it can lead out of one. Overall chord intervals shouldn't be dissonant, so don't lead into dissonance between your two notes, but decorative notes (like passing or neighbor tones) can be dissonant without too much issue. Aside from that, go nuts, the world is your oyster and all that jazz. This is a primer on traditional counterpoint, which kinda ignores some modern music (dissonance is generally more accepted nowadays, for example), but it should act as a nice guideline if you're having trouble making independent lines in your music in the first place. This has been a crash course on basic voice leading and counterpoint from yours truly. Hope it helps.

Hmm, I'll need to play the game first and really get a feel for it. I like the genre choices, tho; I can do symphonic electro epic. Since I own the game, I'll give you a heads up sometime later, when I finish it, lol.

This is definitely an interesting arrangement, with some strong instrument choices and nice, meaty opening. The biggest thing that holds it back, in my opinion, is the relative lack of structure and pacing; it doesn't quite sound like it knows where it wants to go or what it wants to be. The first minute is a cinematic, wide ambient sound, ghosting the theme (really cool, btw), then at 1:32 it has a dry, almost personal or chamber feel to it with that initial wide synth behind it. Then it moves to a nice groove at 3:24, followed by stark glitching at 3:41 on the lead (which goes on for over a minute), then to a solo piano, then... yeah. I like these ideas on their own, but the arrangement needs to tie these together using more than the source. Right now things are just not coming together as a coherent piece where things stand. The other judges have covered the other issues fairly well (tuning in the bass, sour notes from too much motion in the texture, melody mixing, etc.), but the most important thing is that structurally it needs to have more focus and cohesiveness. Each part could be made into an arrangement on it's own, but you need to focus on what you want to take from this and make it into a track that adds up into more than just a sum of it's parts. NO

Very nice and clean arrangement of Storm Eagle, and it sounds pretty different from most versions that I've heard, taking on a more "airy" tone than most that lean more on the rock and metal side of things. I dig it, nice work.

Heh, and I thought I was the only one who did this to tracks from time to time (I just use Audacity when doing this with other people's music, personally). TBH it's pretty cool to do this to your own collection, sprucing it up for personal use, but do remember that while OCR distributes the music with a non-exclusive license to do so, we technically don't have the right to go put out "updated" versions of other people's music without their permission (nor does anyone else, for that matter, since it's still their music), so I would say unless you can manage to get people's permission for putting out remastered versions of their music it's probably a no-go in general, as far as distributing remasters go. That's not to say you can't do it on your own - it's sometimes really fun to have a personal copy at home of a remastered version - it's just not something that you should distribute on a wide scale without talking to the artists first.

this guy knows what's up the candy corn series of EPs are also excellent, in my humble opinion

Well, lightening up on the reverb (decreasing it's tail/length of time it rings out) will likely solve both the muddy issue and the clipping, so at least that's not a difficult item to resolve. Concerning the EQ question, believe it or not a real rough-and-dirty way to check that is to look at the "Bars" visualization in Windows Media Player; while it's not quite as informative as a spectrum analyzer it's certainly easier to read and make decisions on the fly with. Glad I could help, and good luck with the arrangement.

EVAL Well lookie here, a Corridors of Time arrangement. Can't ever go wrong with that source! I really like the instruments in this, particularly the vox lead that you have throughout the track. There's a lot of personalization that went into making that lead sing, and the work shows beautifully. The production values are alright, though you've got to be careful about that clipping that happens at moments like 1:27 & 2:22; there's too much going on in the same frequency bands and the overall production quality suffers for it. This ties into the next point: lighten the reverb on this track, as it creates an overall muddy atmosphere that makes the midrange EQ overwhelming and difficult to hear everything that's going on. I understand that this is a dreamy arrangement, but the reverb is cutting into your mixing space quite a lot. Cleaning that up will likely clean up any clipping in the production, too. I really think the instruments are great, and the arrangement itself has something good going for it, but it does sound static from end-to-end. In this case the culprit is easy to spot: that vibraphone doesn't stop for the entire piece, and it gets pretty tiring to listen to toward the middle. Don't be afraid to cut it from the arrangement from time to time, particularly at important section changes (such as at 1:30, for example) - we all know the infamous Corridors of Time ostinato by this time, so little is missed by removing it from time to time. Also, the more contrast between sections you have the easier it is for the listener to follow the flow of the arrangement, and the less tiring a piece of music will be on the listeners' ears from any instrument or part outstaying it's welcome. When these changes are all put into place, some mastering on the EQ (carving the mids, raising the high EQ for shimmer) would do this a lot of good, but that's not really a requirement - just a suggestion to take a piece from good to great. Rich instrumentation and cool atmosphere, and I really enjoyed it, but I think there are some steps one could take to clean this up before sending it to the mailbox. Best of luck on this, and I hope to hear an improved version on the panel sometime.

You've got some tasty lead work goin' on in this one. The synths used sound very similar to the FM synths used in the source, matching almost identically with the texture, in fact, and some healthy pads to fill the space where the genesis couldn't. The arrangement definitely has some fun with the lead melody of the source, too, playing with it in every section of the arrangement rather than just at the climax, which runs the risk of everything sounding a little "same-y" but with an arrangement this short it presents no issues. I thought it was cool, thanks for sharin'!

vaguepost updates are the best updates :3

Oh, well then that means I might have an excuse to remix Man with the Machine Gun again, which I've been enjoying as a track recently in a playthrough of FF8. Couldn't think of someone better to take hold of this project, tbh, so I look forward to seeing what you have in store for this.

I've not really played too many Touhou games (which is a surprise considering I actually do enjoy bullet hell games), so I'm less familiar with the soundtrack outside some very famous examples. This does sound like it could fit into a game, considering it seems to give some space for SFX. Not sure if that's the intent; if this isn't for a game, this could use a little more EQ balance in the higher EQ range, just to give it some more clarity, and carve into that midrange EQ since that's coming out pretty hard throughout. The composition is subdued, but somewhat intense with those stabs. The almost guitar-like synth is smooth as butter on top of all of that, and just sounds great above the rest of the mix - almost reminds me of that Terra Cresta C64 title track by Galway (the lead at 1:57 in particular). I like it. The instruments are kind of basic, but that's not really a bad thing; if it works for what you want then it works. The production is fairly good, so I think you did a pretty good job on this for what you were looking for. I've been lookin' around lately, so if you don't mind me asking how did you do your visualizer? I've looked at a few options, but I haven't come across something that I wanted to use yet.

Man, Starcraft has some classic music - it's a shame people don't do more arrangements of it around here. This one shows that the Blizzard soundtracks have a lot of potential for some great ReMixes, to boot. The arrangement is pretty clean cut, but the change from synths to guitars adds a lot of character to the arrangement (especially considering how ambient and alien the source sounds). It is a hair on the conservative side, but I think there's enough personal flair to it to give a pass to it. Oooh, I am falling in love with these filters applied to the guitars to create those alien sweeps and other effects. It's really a song that benefits from such wild filters and effects, with much of the song being otherwise static and/or repetitive. It's a really great way to keep things interesting and maintain the illusion of movement in the track. Great production values seal the deal for me. While I could see others perhaps being hesitant on posting this due to it being conservative, I think it meets our bar pretty well. YES

pretty sure that's emu that commented on it with jive this time, not i :3

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EVAL Well let's see what we've got here. I haven't done one of these mod evaluation things officially in ages, but let's give this one a shot anyway - I've got work to do, and this is a great way to avoid it! Well first and foremost - fantastic production values! That's some really good sounding orchestra you've got goin', here. I like the breadth of instruments used here, too, plenty of woodwinds and brass to accompany the all-too-common-yet-still-beautiful string sections. The pairing of pan flutes with the strings really gives it a bombastic, Hollywood sound (a trick of their industry, if anyone wants to add a little oomph to a string lead - layer flutes over strings!), though on the second pass of the theme changing that lead out a little bit would help the arrangement stand out a little better as it's overuse does make the arrangement sound a hair static. It's not too problematic since the brass lead for the middle section does help break things up, but it's a thought to spice things up. As you say, this is a little conservative, but you'd be surprised on how permissive the panel can be on that front. While minimal, there is definitely some personalization going on in here (don't think I didn't catch that wonderful "Prelude" reference at 1:46, for example). It might still be too conservative, but I think it's worth at least sending over to the panel even if you have no plans on expanding it further. The production quality is definitely there, and the arrangement & orchestration is quite good. The worst that could happen is it gets rejected with the judges saying "It's too conservative", so I'd say give it a shot. Of course if you add some more texture flairs like the prelude at 1:46, or even do some subtractive arranging in the second half of the song (e.g. remove some source elements to give the arrangement some more variety) that would probably be enough to bring this over the top from "too conservative" to "hey, this is interesting and different enough for OCR". Regardless, I think it's pretty well done and I definitely got a kick out of it, so nice work!

Holy shit, you're getting a live performance of this? That's fantastic! Y'all, if you haven't listened to this one before, go check it out, it's a *fantastic* arrangement. It's about an hour long, but hot damn if it isn't a *great* hour of your life.

This is definitely an interesting direction to take the track - I like it quite a bit. I wonder if you could provide a timestamp for source usage? If you have it tagged for mod review it sounds like you'll want to submit it to OCR (that's what the tag is for, after all), so I figure I can help you out a little bit while I'm browsing in here (haven't done that in some time!) - if anything, that's the item that'll most likely raise an eyebrow, but it's not too difficult to nip in the bud with some timestamps up front. Whatever the plans for this, I do think it's a really cool track regardless. Sounds like you want to take a second pass on the mixing and EQ, which I can agree with - sounds like you already know how you intend to improve it. Anyway, enjoyin' the sound on this one!

Oh, this is pretty cool, with some rich pads in the background and nice, twangy bass to ties it all together. I like the variety that the lead has throughout the track, too - doesn't take the track one for one, but it also really feels like an extension from the source all the same. There are a lot of cool background elements that are happening in the back ground, too, though the lead is a touch loud so it's harder to hear that stuff. Great stuff!