Gario

@Mannywing The levels are generally pretty solid, but as I mentioned there are a few moments where things like swells and texture overtake what parts had been the focus, leading to places where the mixing sounds a bit unfocused. An example: at 1:33 you've got the horns playing a duet on the theme, and the accompaniment has a presence that gives that duet enough room for that to be the focus, but at 1:38 the keyboard comes in a bit loud simultaneously with the swelling sax, overtaking the horns. 1:40 - 1:48 has the Bonetrousle theme still playing on one of the horns, but it gets overpowered by the accompaniment, which doesn't have anything significant in it, though it does have cool textures. That's one example of what I'm talking about - there are more, but I didn't/don't want to spend too much time outlining it. These decisions may have been purposeful, but if the listener gets lost regardless then you should still be aware of it. I'm nitpicking what is overall a great performance & arrangement, and generally solid production, though - I wouldn't be doing any favors by withholding my reservations on some of the mixing.

Is the microphone a directional one or an omni? It'd be odd that it's catching so much of the reverb if it were a directional microphone - an omni would absolutely cause some issue, in that regard. The upright piano sound comes from the intonation of the piano itself. I was just a goof on that, and was trying to cover my bases as much as possible giving advice on both styles of piano. Good luck on the next recording, though - I look forward to it.

EVAL Damn, this is filled with quite a lot of emotion. It honestly sounds like improve on a piano that you might here in church, with slick flute above. It's very different, and it's something that I personally enjoy quite a lot. It's a little nostalgic, in some ways. The flute is very jazzy, and works wonderfully with the piano. Sometimes it loses a little power and becomes a touch too quiet, but it's not that big of an issue to an otherwise great performance. I can hear the issue that you have with the piano - it sounds like it's recorded in the back of a room, whereas the flute sounds more up close and personal. That's an issue with the recording set-up; you probably have the mic somewhere in the room, correct? For a grand piano the ideal recording placement is to take two microphones and place one in the room (like yours is now) and one above the strings. That way you can mix the reverb as you please against a more clean sound. From what I can tell, though, this isn't a grand (or baby grand) - it sounds more like an upright. The ideal placement in this case is one mic in the room (again, as it is here) and one right behind the upright. If you want the best sound, you can remove the back panel of the upright and expose the strings - that way you can place the microphone similarly to how you place it on a grand piano. If you only have one microphone to use, placing it on the back of the piano will give you the cleaner, stronger recording, and thus will let you add whatever reverb you like (though I really like the reverb here - it's something that can't be imitated easily at all). The piano itself is slightly out of tune, as well, but I actually think that's part of this piece's charm. When the piano is just slightly out of tune, it actually makes the whole tone warmer. Again, something that is very difficult to imitate, so I would personally take advantage of that. The piano execution has a few mistakes here and there, too - the judges would catch you on that. They're not frequent, but it'll knock it down a little bit. As far as whether this can pass the panel as it is, I think it has a shot, but the piano recording might hold it back a little bit. You might be able to mix it more to the front to give it more presence, but I'm not sure if that would take it over the bar on it's own. I really like this performance and overall mood, though. It's up to you - it has a shot on the panel, but if you're not comfortable with the piano recording here hopefully my recording set-up advice will help you get the recording quality you want. Good luck! I think this is a great idea for a track, so I hope it does make it's way to the panel, either as-is or with a more ideal recording.

I really like this - just jazzy and funky as all hell. I do have some reservation about the mixing/dynamics from time to time - sometimes instruments that hold the themes get drown behind everything else. It's something that can be addressed in post production, though - raising and lowering levels a little to make the themes punch through a little more would pretty much make something like this perfect. Great work!

Ah, that's much better. Yeah, the new version addresses the issues I had pretty solidly - it's a pass for me, now. YES

Very haunting source, and at first this gets that style down pat. Then it slams your balls with the dub bass and overall meaty presence. I like this approach a lot - deceptively cool. I like the sounds that are used throughout. The synths are very tasty, but sometimes that distortion physically hurts my ears. I don't know what it is about those high frequency distortion makes my ears hurt, but it legitimately does - the highs on the the distortion need to be EQ'd down a few notches whenever it's present. The mixing on this one gets pretty cluttered, from time to time. At sections where everything is going at once (like at 1:50) it becomes pretty muddy, and overall the track is pretty overcompressed. The sidechaining helps quite a bit, but instruments do still get lost in the mix quite often. I enjoyed the change of the meter from 3/4 to straight up 4/4, with an offset theme against that 4/4 beat. It's disorienting, yet it fits perfectly. I really enjoy the approach on this one, but it's really hard for me to ignore that the distortion is actually hurting my ears on this one (to the point where I actually can't get through the song more than once). The overcompressed nature of the track and the overall muddy mixing when everything is going at once take it down a little, too, but those extremely piercing distortions really do affect the piece quite negatively. I really, REALLY want to see a resubmission of this with the highs of the distortion EQ'd down a bit, though, as I really like this a lot. --

Well, this source is short. There are a few challenges to arranging a short source like this, but the biggest one on the table is that it's quite tough to make something like this sound interesting and varied throughout if one sticks too closely to the source. You very clearly have the source theme playing throughout, so to mitigate that you change the texture around a lot, dropping instruments out and introducing other instrument combinations to keep things interesting. This works pretty well, though I feel the track lasts about thirty seconds too long using these strategies alone. I give you credit for keeping me interested for the majority of it, though - that's not an easy thing to do, considering the length of the source in question. As far as production goes, for the most part the mix and production is okay. Instruments are easy to hear in the mix, and are mostly clean. In the beginnng, though, the primary synth has what I think is hard-limiting production issues with the lead instrument. Starting at 0:18, the lead sounds like it's clipping at the beginning of every note strike. It doesn't last very long, and it's pretty faint, but while it's there it's pretty noticeable. The note at the end of the track cuts off just a little too soon, as well - it could've used another few beats for the resonance to die out on its own. Overall, though, I think it's pretty good. There are issues with the relatively repetitive arrangement as well as a few production hiccups, but overall it's pretty well done. If this is the first submission you've got I look forward to hearing more from you. YES

It certainly is an interesting arrangement - nearly nothing like the source, yet has a solid presence all it's own. One thing that I like about OCR and potential OCR tracks - they transform a great, enjoyable source into something different, new and equally enjoyable, and this track fits that quota perfectly. The drum work in this, first and foremost, very energetic and has a whole lot going on down there. They're interesting, varied and complex, which allows them to really carry the track. The closed hat sound is a bit underwhelming, though it doesn't take the quality of the drums down too much. It's only really a bother when it's standing alone (like at 2:18 for extended stretches), as it sounds bare and mechanical without the other instruments it normally supports. I found the choice of synths to be interesting throughout. Almost sounds smooth, with those pads and that imitation vibraphone, but incorporates more unexpected drops that almost sound like they use dubstep bass. It doesn't always click for me, but that may be personal preference in this case - the jarring contrast between sections is not for everyone. From what I gather on the last submission of this track it was too liberal. Going through the source and this arrangement, it sounds like you've more than made up for it - the chords that are struck throughout are consistent with both what chords are used in the source and how they're used, and the melodic parts either play many parts of the source themes close to note-for-note, or with more fills and melodic variation. Either way, I think it holds enough source to cover it in that regard. I do find the chord usage to be pretty odd, though. Most of it works well, but there are enough moments that either have the melody sound out of key with the chord behind it (like at 0:43 and 4:09 - 4:11), or the chord progression sounds a little random, like at 1:15; the chord sounds strange used as it is there. I don't think these strange chord choices break the track, as they're not grating, but they do move from chord-to-chord using some strange voice-leading from time to time. Regardless of this, I think the track is pretty neat. The overall atmosphere and transformative nature of it certainly outweighs the sometimes strange chord structure that I hear. Nice work on it! YES

Very in-your-face, and certainly is a good example of black metal. I love Diablo music, and Tristram is the best of the lot. I'm coming into this with the understanding that, since the band isn't together anymore, this is a take-it-or-leave-it sort of deal. First and foremost, damn that intro is a slug in the gut, but not in a bad way. It catches you off guard with just how intense it gets right away, and I like that. The snare, though, sounds like the snare on it needed to be tightened a little bit, as at the speeds it starts off with it almost sounds like a tom. Later in the song it sounds just fine, but it doesn't hold well when it's going at blast speeds. The bass is pretty quiet, overall, but neither of these are deal breakers, in my book. I think the performances are pretty solid, especially that drumwork. The mixing is acceptable, though I feel the bass gets drown out from time to time. The production values are not bad in this, but I admit the mixing could be stronger overall. As far as source usage is concerned, it's a bit of a tough call. Half of the 0:00 - 0:45 references the first two chords that are played in the source (though not exactly - the source uses much richer, more complex chords, which gives it that ethereal sound), but the other half (like at 0:11 - 0:22) uses chords I'm not connecting with the source on. 0:45 - 1:19 isn't ringing the source up for me, either. 1:19 - 1:36 uses chords that are under the most recognizable part of the source (video is loading slowly, I'll fill in the blank when I get home), capping off with an easy to recognize lick at 1:33 - 1:36. 1:36 - 2:01 uses a different variety of chords, which again I'm having difficulty linking with the source. 2:07 - 2:24 has the source clearly playing in the bass. We have more chords later on in the song, which may or may not be connected (again, video is loading slowly). I don't think I can call this enough source for this one. While I hate to send this off knowing it won't be resubmit, I don't think we can take this one due to how liberal it is. I'm going to go back and double check the source usage again when I get home, but I'm suspecting there isn't enough to get this to pass. EDIT: This is what I've got. I'm sure there's something that I'm missing, but it's very tough to parse out what's actual source reference and what is mere chord usage (the chords are VERY rich and complex in the source - transforming them into their more stripped down versions like in this song is debate-ably source). 0:00 - 0:11 - Chords from introduction of Source 0:11 - 0:22 - No source 0:22 - 0:33 - Chords from introduction of Source 0:33 - 0:45 - No source 0:45 - 0:57 - No source 0:57 - 1:08 - No source 1:08 - 1:19 - No source 1:19 - 1:33 - Chords from major part of source 1:33 - 1:36(8) - Riff is easy source reference 1:39 - 2:01 - No source 2:02 - 2:04 - Filler 2:05 - 2:08 - A variation off of 0:31 - 0:37 flute part 2:08 - 2:27(4) - Source clearly in bass & chords 2:27 - 2:38 - A variation off of 0:31 - 0:37 flute part 2:38 - 2:50 - A variation off of 0:31 - 0:37 flute part (repeat til' end at 3:32) ~125 / 212 ~59% Source Please correct me if you're hearing more than that, but I wasn't catching it. The lions share of that is from the repeating ending (which is a third of this arrangement), so I'm feeling like it's cheating a little bit, but I'll stick to raw numbers here and say it has enough (though I'm still weary of calling parts like 0:00 - 0:11 source due to it being strictly chords, and not even the exact same chords, to boot). Giving it some more time to settle in my ear, that fading repeat at the end takes up a third of the track, which really feels like a lot of padding for length, there. I don't think the mixing and production issues are dealbreaking, here (it's pretty consistent with Black Metal, from what I gather), but that ending does break it for me. I think it's a no-go, from me. NO

Definitely a bold choice in source choice - not a common source, but it's a great example of an older system that tried to sound 'epic'. It's a source that begs to have something that can fully realize that sound it was going for, which this arrangement makes a solid attempt at doing. The arrangement is fairly conservative, but it pulls a lot of motifs that occur later in the track and sprinkles them throughout the track instead. The string arpeggio motif that often comes in is something that is introduced later, but it's often used as a transition that builds tension. Things like that put the arrangement within our standards, and it makes the track more interesting to boot. The use of space is quite good in this arrangement. Instruments are generally panned appropriately without having anything stick out in any glaring sort of way. It's a common mistake for people to pan something too much, or make it stick out like a sore thumb, but this track doesn't suffer much from any of that, and it certainly helps make the track sound very "big". That being said, there are some issues with the instruments that are used throughout. The trumpet sample (the one that comes in at 0:31) sound like... well, general midi. OCR isn't against the use of free samples at all, as long as one can make it sound good, but that trumpet uses a distracting thin, terrible sample that can't be ignored. Most of the other samples are acceptable, if they're humanized well, but that trumpet is not good. Overall, the use of dynamics to humanize the performance is quite good in this, but the instruments otherwise have a mechanical performance. Articulation and phrasing is something that you need to pay special attention to. Everything has the same attack throughout, everything uses the same amount of vibrato throughout, etc., which certainly makes it sound like it's sequenced. It's not an easy thing to emulate (some samplers come with articulation options, other times you have to fake it using attack, release, and volume envelopes), but once you get the hang of that your orchestra will sound amazing. I hear the concerns over the quiet, dry snare in this. I don't think it's too quiet, myself - often snare is used more as a background element in an orchestra, as it is here. However, it IS too dry in comparison to the other instruments, and the longer drum rolls tend to sound like a machine. If you're hand-inputting some of the rolls be sure to add some variety to the volumes and velocity between the notes on your longer rolls. I like it, I think the idea is a great one, and the source needs some more love on OCR. However, the instruments are pretty mechanical in this one, and some of your samples (Trumpet!) are not as high quality as they could be, even for free. Thanks for the submission, and I hope you pay attention to the articulations and vibrato in this and resubmit it. NO

Well, THAT was a different way of approaching it. It really pulled out the core of the themes and melodies that are in the source and transformed them into something completely different. Chimp is pretty right on, in this regard - it's actually pretty conservative in the actual material used, but it uses it in such a different way that it sounds like a completely new song. The samples that are used throughout are pretty top-notch. I like the use of the sitar, and that vocal clip adds a lot of cinematic flavor to the whole thing - it reminds me of the later Tomb Raider soundtracks. I've... gotten pretty familar with those, as of late. The quality of the samples are great, but I feel there was quite a bit of humanization TLC that should've been put into the big string section and horns. Dynamically they work alright, but every note has the same articulation (swell into the note). For booming background chords (like the strings tend to have) that articulation works, but for quicker passages and more melodic phrases the articulation used throughout makes the lines sound disconnected and wonky (Listen to the strings at 3:04 - 3:20, for example - that's supposed to be a melodic hook, but it doesn't sound like a connected line of music). Considering the quality of the instruments around those instruments this isn't a dealbreaker, but it's something you should try to address for your next orchestration, as this issue is pervasive throughout the entire track. Production on this is spot-on; it's clean, rich, and makes nice use of reverb to fill the space realistically. One issue I might have is that overall the track is a little quiet, but it's not too extreme an issue. Some limiting and raising of the volume would help make the beginning much easier to hear at normal levels, though. Regardless of these things, this is a great track. It transforms the source into something that I never imagined it to be. That alone convinces me that it should be on this site (though the solid quality of the track certainly helps, too). YES

Thanks for the album! The rapping is pretty good, though that reverb is really heavy over the samples in the background. I Keep em' clean, it'll distract less from the rhymes you're droppin'. Duane and Brando are great at this kind of rap - take a look at some of the things they do and listen to how clean they leave the samples underneath. Your drum work is pretty slick, too - works well for the rapping that you have. I was a little disappointed when the rapping over the tracks stopped, though - that's what set the tracks apart from being just tracks with drum loops under them. Regardless, this was a fun album to listen to. Nice work!

Even if it's not technically a thing, that deadline should still hold. It'll probably be the thing to finally push me to get something going, at any rate, lol. But yeah, this really is a huge bummer, but at the same time it's not hard to argue that it's for the betterment of the site at this point, too. You can't let people do what he was doing without repercussion.

Well, to be fair, if you strip an arrangement down and take off the elements that make it different from the source, very often you get something that is... well, not interesting and too conservative. That's probably why YoshiBlade added all of those cool, interesting elements on top of the arrangement. There are mixes that change up the form of the track, but that's not a requirement for a track to be posted - it just can't be a straight cover with nothing added to it to make it really stand out as his own. As far as I can tell, it's not against site or submission policy to have a mix that stacks a whole lot of other elements over a relatively straight arrangement, as long as the source isn't straight sample'd from the game itself throughout (which isn't the case here). In this track, all of those extra elements, the gating of the theme, etc., add a lot of extra atmosphere. Changing the atmosphere of a track (or making it so much more intensely "that atmosphere", like in this track) does count as change, as far as following OCR standards is concerned, and adding elements on top of a straight source certainly counts as "adding a personal touch", as well. This is a good example of a track that's extremely conservative that got posted (along with the judge decision that lead to it being YES'd) - very conservative, as far as arrangement goes, but it adds so much flavor in how it presents the material, in the little bits added on top, that it got a pretty solid pass from the J's. Following the form of a source isn't an issue as long as you do something to it to really make it your own. On that front, anyway, I think YoshiBlade would fare alright.

Staff knows, but for the public's sake here's my announcement: I'm cool with my mixes being ad'ed in. I'm hilarious.

What did I think? I thought it was awesome. The atmosphere of this one is just crunchy and dark, breathing life into a depressing song. I may still be hungry, but this is music to feed your SOUL, maaaan.

*Shrug* It's a fun arrangement. I say it doesn't need to be all that interpretive to be enjoyable.

To Brandon's credit, his presentation of this topic elsewhere (wherever I've seen, which is at least Facebook) was neutral. This is getting off topic, though - keep the focus on OCR's Youtube monetary policy, please.

He linked the threads, that is enough for that point, specifically. If you want specific names, go get um', but while the opinions are nice to know it's otherwise not important. EDIT: The names specifically, I mean.

I think the list he gave was enough to prove his point. Don't worry about specific names - anonymity doesn't need to break, here.

You really need to work on your numbers. 80% is coming completely out of your ass - again, you are the only one here that is even talking about alienation, here. A few more are saying they didn't like the move (which they have fair points), but even if they said they wanted to leave (they haven't) it would be a far cry from the apocalyptic numbers your shouting. Saying things like this doesn't suddenly make them the case, and you lose credibility for the fair points that you do hold. @Neblix There is a completely separate issue that actually comes up, if OCR decided to use the non-profit status to compensate it's staff: the submission agreement never covers this for those that are submitting their music, and those that submit under the previous agreement would have the right to claim that we broke our end of the agreement and demand that we take their music down. We COULD send out permission to the 1000+ arrangers whether this change was acceptable or not, but not only would that be incredibly time consuming, it would almost guarantee that we'd lose a load of users and content from those that didn't agree to the new terms. If we claimed that staff would be compensated from the beginning and filed for the non-profit status fro the get-go this issue would've been avoided, but go ahead and ask 1999 Dave whether or not it would've been worth creating a non-profit company out of his fledgling site. We already have a written agreement up, and it does not cover staff costs, merely hosting costs and promotion. No matter how you slice it, most of the staff are not involved with hosting the site. One can make the argument to compensate staff for promotion when they're involved with promotion (say, paying for panel spots for a big convention, perhaps), but that is minimal in comparison to moderating, quality control, feedback, etc., that really keeps OCR alive. Regular compensation would be a breach in the contract that we've already made with the previous artists.

It would be a tough call. On the one hand, yes, staff DOES work quite hard on keeping the quality control high on what is pushed through the site, as well as making sure music always meshes with the site objectives. On the other hand, Brandon's point that we shouldn't make money off of other people's work would come into play - why would the staff contribution to how this site is run outweigh the contribution that the artists put into their music? It's not a bad point, actually. I think both sides of the argument have merit, though I personally don't want to work with the quagmire of ethical and possibly legal issues involved in getting paid for this while the artist didn't. So from my stand point, I'd be against compensation for the work put into the site. On the other hand, I will point out that if this were a site about the free distribution of other people's original music, and we had the same work in quality control, I'd be all for compensating staff - the work that goes into quality control, feedback and hosting is definitely worth something. However, I would also be 100% for giving the artist a share in the revenue, too, as they would be contributing music to the site. That is neither here nor there, though - OCR will never have the benefit of original compositions passing through it, so this is moot. Since we can never compensate artists for their work, so too do I think we can never compensate the staff for their contribution. Alas. I do want to also note that my contribution to the thread is completely hypothetical - monetary compensation to the staff has never come up in my time working here, nor has it ever been considered a possibility, due to the nature of the work. I do have to make that clear, being a part of staff, and all. EDIT: Do note that this is a general statement on how to deal with revenue - I am not taking the non-profit status into account. I can comment on that aspect later. (Spoiler:I'd be against it for slightly different reasons)

It's also been stated that the revenue that exceeds expenses are re-invested into OCR. There is nothing left at the end of the day that staff or Dave can take home, so it is not in fact profit. You're correct that a non-profit status would tremendously help OCR make this very clear, though. I look forward to it, as it takes away most of the ambiguity present, here.

You. Satisfy you. Literally no one else on the site would want to see everything burn. The site is also not profiting off of the revenue, though saying that probably won't matter to you. Here's something that does matter: You're making things up about the site (claiming it's both profiting AND that the staff is sharing that profit are completely fabricated - the fact that you don't know the difference between revenue and profit doesn't matter here) with the intent of damaging both it and those involved with it. This is suspiciously close to libel, if I'm not mistaken. Regardless of its legality, it certainly isn't productive. Cool it with the accusations, they're not funny. --- As for the (legitimate) question on why OCR can do what they're doing, it's a part of the submission agreement. If you plan to submit music to OCR, the submission agreement shows that OCR will likely use advertising to create revenue, and that OCR, in fact, does have the right to distribute your material as they see fit. Now, @Neifion makes a decent point in that those reading it are not aware that Youtube ads could be included in this, but there isn't anything that precludes their use, either. I completely understand (and agree) that the ads that have been done over the past two months probably should've been done only with the approval of the affected artists, if we were merely testing to see if it would affect the user experience overall. As they say, though, hindsight is 20/20. As there isn't anything to be done about that now (other than perhaps an apology from Dave for it), it's more beneficial to discuss the Youtube ads moving forward. I absolutely agree that even more clarity in this policy would be beneficial, and I also agree that we should be discussing this in good faith. I believe that a consensus that satisfies most in this discussion can be reached, but it has to be done with the trust that the staff will do everything in their power to comply with this. @IForgotMyPassword While I'm quite upset at the simple accusations of lying from Brandon (that's actually far worse than normal, in my book), his opinions do tend to be heated - they have been for a long time. Don't worry about him.