Gario

Haha, man I really am missing the boat on this. I've been pretty crazy-busy in life, lately - moved, super tight work schedule, etc., so while I wanted to comment I've been weigh'd down by too much. I'll say this, though - the sound of this has improved considerably. The soundscape does sound more full, so nice work on filling that out. Now, about the off notes that I mentioned earlier. To detail them out, here's a list of things to pay special attention to: - At 0:31 there's a flat note. - At 0:41 - 0:58 the melody seems to lose any sense of meter, which makes it sound like it's meandering. - 1:02 has another flat sour note. - 1:36 - 1:42 gets out of sync with the meter again, though it corrects itself at 1:42. - 1:51 actually misses a note from the source, which throws the melody out of sync with the meter again. These are very important things to be listening for. The sour notes are simply being out of line with the key that you're playing, or playing a conflicting note against another that's playing (it's out of key, in this case). The 'out of sync metering' concept is a little more complicated: a track like this one is played in 4/4, so if you get out of sync with this it just leaves the listener confused and lost. The drums amplify this issue, as they are in lock step with the meter while the theme gets lost at these parts, so the conflict is more poignant. At 1:36 you begin the theme on the wrong beat, which messes up your otherwise correct timing following that, and at 1:51 a missed note has a similar effect. I want to point these things out since, as you've said before, you're still learning. In short time you'll be able to hear these things more clearly in your writing and avoid them altogether, but for now these timestamps will help you know where to look in this, and what these issues sound like, in return. You're production skills are quite good for a beginning artist, but production is only half the story, here - compositional technique is important, too! I hope this helps a little bit, and I'm sorry I didn't come in sooner about it.

Solid metal goin' down, here. Very loud, dense, and the performances hit all the right places. The backing instrumentation, while not perfect, does compliment what you have going down in this fairly well. Chimp runs down the potential issues that I would have with the track quite well, but I don't agree that they're deal breaking issues, here. The string part, for example, has an issue with realism in the beginning, as the attack swelling is handled in an odd manner. String sections may swell the first note of a phrase, or they may swell a note periodically for effect, but from 0:07 to 0:21 ever low note has that distinct swelling attack, which doesn't sound realistic. This improves later, so it sounds like a purposeful choice rather than an accident, but it's one that doesn't reflect how a line like that would be performed. Other than that, though, I found the humanization to be decent in general. The track is certainly overcompressed. I don't agree that this breaks the entire track, but you would've done better to sacrifice a little volume for the sake of decreasing the levels of compression you have going on in this track. The mix often gets crowded, and as Chimp mentions there is a noticeable amount of artifacts that come in due to the overcompression. That all being said, I don't agree that it's quite enough to turn this into a NO vote. The arrangement works well with the source, utilizing the creepy nature of the source to both create quiet and heavy moments in the song, and it breaks itself up quite nicely throughout. There's little repetition, and the performances are very well done. I think the good outweighs the bad in this, but do pay attention to what Chimp said, there - she's not wrong, and you would do well to pay attention to what she said for your next track. YES

Aw yeah, I love you guys. You probably know that from the WIP board comments, though - I do have a tendancy to gush a tad. The arrangement for this is incredibly fun, easy to recognize and ultimately even more playful than the source material. The skaw style goin' here is full of flavor. It's not without it's issues, though. Chimp is correct in pointing out the muddy presentation, as well as the relatively dry synth work that's present at 1:09 (it's not bad, but it does feel inconsistent with the rest of the track when it's too dry). I feel that the mixing also has it's ups and downs, contributing to the 'muddiness' factor that we're hearing. The balancing of your lead guitar, for example, is alright in the beginning, but when all of the other elements come in at the mini climax at 0:47 it gets drown a little by the other instruments. The saxes at 0:58 are underwhelming behind that pad, as well. A lot of the production and mixing is well done, but the quality is inconsistent throughout, as far as balance and mixing is concerned. The overall performances and arrangement outweigh the production issues, though. It's still a great tribute to Undertale, and I think it would work wonderfully on OCR. Awesome work! YES

Is this a resub? We have an active version of it still on the panel, but it's a different length here - might be a version 2 that he submit later.

EVAL Haunting. The atmosphere is dark and easy to get absorbed into. The arpeggio sounds relentless and menacing, while the rest of the sounds above it really add to the creepy atmosphere. The drums coming in at 1:32 are dirty and driven, without losing the fragmented aspect that the track held before. The only thing that might ding you in the panel is the relative lack of upper-midrange and highs in the general EQ. When you have an instrument that utilizes that range it sounds fine, but in general you save that space for special instruments (like the one that comes in at 0:33). It's a nitpick, but overall you could've filled that space better with the instruments present here - the piece otherwise sounds a little dulled. There's a good deal of silence at the end of the track. It's minor, but I think you could cut everything after 4:45 in order to clean up the track a bit. Those are small complaints, though; overall I think this track will pass the panel, as it stands. I say send it off, after cutting the track at 4:45 - it's a pretty slick track that I can easily see passing. Good luck!

Gotta go with Kris and Larry on this 100%. The guitar sample doesn't work well as a substitute, the snare and crash are weak, and the overall sound design of the synths sound plain and uninspired. Overall, the sound design choices really hurt this track. I've heard better from you, so I know you're a capable musician. This arrangement, though, is a miss in many ways that Kris and Larry have detailed better than I have. Seeing that I'd probably just repeat what they said, I'll defer to them for the details. NO

Neat arrangement of the track, and interesting choice of source. It's very ethereal, adding to the haunting effect that the source had. The instruments overall are very wet, heavily relying on reverb in order to achieve the haunting effect that it has. While the layers of reverb does give it that ethereal feel to it, all of those layers of reverb just make the whole track sound like a wash of sound. It's not exactly pleasant to have the layers of reverb turn the song into sound soup. The piano is mechanical, as Chimp mentions. The reverb does well to mask it, but because overall the reverb is causing a series of other issues along with it, I suggest looking into how to humanize a piano better, as well. Be mindful of the dynamic range of the piano, learn how to emulate the pedals (especially the damper pedal), learn how to create convincing phrasing, etc. Without the heavy reverb the mechanical nature of the piano will be exposed, so it will need to be fixed. I agree with Chimp on the relatively repetitive nature of this track, as well. The constant presence of that piano and using it as the backing of the track eventually gets old. It's a great place to start, and it's a nice launching point, but since the track doesn't really develop past that point it never really feels like it develops. The saw at the end sounded like it was getting ready to do something new, and then the piece just... ends. The arrangement leaves the listener wanting for both variety and the resolution of the ideas present. There isn't too much more to say on this - everything is just too wet. The over-reliance on layering reverb pretty much kills this track, so if you want to continue with this idea, clean up that reverb to manageable levels. The arrangement needs some work, as well, developing past that piano part as well as having a satisfying ending, as the incomplete idea that it ends on leaves the listener wanting. NO

Damn, this was pretty kick ass. Love the approach on this one - the singing is clean and crisp, and the whistling... just slick. The accompanying guitar, sax and male singing backup singing just meshes perfectly. The only thing that I can say about it is that the mixing might be a little bit cluttered when everything is going at once, but I'm hearing everything well enough throughout. Send it off to the front page (when the project is done), this is some great stuff. YES

Very interesting combination of instruments. Chippy goodness to chippy sources, I'm always a sucker for it. The different harmonizations are absolutely great on this, and the drums add a nice dimension to the track. Quoting votes are so last month, but I'd like to say Chimp pretty much hits this on the head in her vote - mixing is inconsistent, and the triangle/bass causes distortion with the drums big time. The triangle itself specifically is mixed uncharacteristically loud, for a track like this, so consider bringing the level of that instrument down a bit, as well as sidechaining a little to the drums to give it space. The drums themselves, while I like them overall they are generally repetitive. The fills are great, and there is some variation with the open hat, but overall it didn't feel like it was enough. It's a great drum part, but it's a great drum part that eventually feels like it's droning on. Change the pattern up a little bit - variety is the life spice, and all that jazz. The second half of the track that covers the Mario 1 segment makes some odd choices when it comes to the stereo spread of the theme. It's not bad on it's own, but it contrasts negatively with what was done prior. If you like that effect, incorporate it more with the section prior, though I PERSONALLY think it would be better to leave the melody line without the spread, but it would work fine either way. Some of the SFX throughout the track (the brass hit, the stuff at the end) hit pretty loud, when they come in. Too loud, really - bringing the SFX down to the levels of the rest of the track will still have the surprise factor that you're going for with it, while giving the listener a little less ear bursting. I've said a lot, but I do like this track, in the end - it's clever with it's harmonizations, and the little additions here and there really make for something enjoyable. I've got to side with Chimp on the mixing end, though, and the stereo spread is inconsistent and disorienting. The loud bursts of sound also contribute to taking this below the bar, so fix those things and send it our way again - I'd like to see something like this posted. NO

Believe it or not, I didn't think this was terrible. Granted, it's not good, with the midi repetitive piano and odd distorted sound choices later, but it IS old OCR - standards were different back then. The drums were actually surprisingly fitting, considering I was hearing comparisons to bad tuna being thrown in here - they have a swing to them against the more straight melodic pattern of the source. It creates a legitimately interesting (and good) effect, once you start swinging with the drums, but it's easy to be thrown off by them, if you're not ready for em'. Not something I recommend to a casual browser of OCR's music, but I legitimately mean it when I say it's not THAT bad. Tonally, it's fine (not too many off notes), rhythmically it's very interesting (neat idea setting a triplet rhythm against the straight theme) and it does have enough source for OCR. It's interesting and shows off a very different way to approach a song, so it could be worth giving it a listen, even if it isn't something you'd listen to casually.

Wow, for a first time around, you really did a good job on this. Really quickly I do notice that some of it sounds a little off in comparison to the source (sorry for the lack of specifics - I'll likely come back to this), but the production isn't half bad. Sometimes the soundscape sounds empty, especially toward the middle of the track, so beware of that. Not a bad start, though! Funny that you began with Kuwanger, there - that was my first remix on Reason, as well.

I want a Konami Noah's Ark mixflood. Oh yeah, I went there.

Haha, well this IS a "remix" in the most technical sense - you re-mixed and balanced the tracks from the SNES. It's certainly not a "ReMix", but that's fine. Very interesting. For what you were going for, you did a pretty good job. This is just the place you'd post something like this; as long as you make clear what you're doing (which you did) it's just the place to show off your mixing work.

Hey there, welcome to OCR! I'll say this first and foremost: the best thing you can do in order to get into making music is to... well, make music! Every DAW has it's perks, and people have made great music using nearly anything (FL, Reason, Famitracker, Milkytracker, Audacity, etc.). Fruityloops is apparently a good starting place, Reaper being a great free option, too. As a guy who studied music theory thoroughly, I'll let you know the ups and downs of music theory. The biggest benefit of basic music theory is that it teaches you a language for communicating musical ideas. It can be tough for others to convey what notes to fix when one doesn't know what the names of the notes are, for example (I should use C instead of C#? What is this magic?!). The more music theory you know and understand, the more concise you can convey and receive advice, which can speed up your learning process. Basically, if you know what notes and chords are, you'll know what others are saying when they claim notes X, Y and Z are sounding off, or when some chords are not meshing well. To be honest, there isn't really a downside to learning theory, but sometimes people can mix up music analysis with composition. Often, people learn theory in the context of older classical music, and how THEY used chords. Strictly speaking, back then there was a "right" and "wrong" way to utilize chords, so sometimes overextending older analyses with your own (or other people's) compositions, you can needlessly be thinking there's a wrong way to write music, when in reality it more comes down to making things that you enjoy. Keep that in mind and you'll only benefit from music theory. Learning an instrument is very useful for being able to... well, hear what you're writing or composing. I highly recommend at the very least learning to sing what you write, as that saves a WHOLE LOT of time when you make music. This might be a more general recommendation, but being able to hum your themes and melodies as you write saves you the time and effort in playing the music back to know how it sounds. There are other more obvious benefits to knowing how to play an instrument (Hey, I can include guitar in all of my music because I ROCK!), but that's one relatively hidden benefit to being able to play your own music back. Otherwise, hang out here, show others your work and be receptive to advice that others may be able to provide. I personally like learning how to use a DAW by doing covers and arrangements of VG music, so feel free to listen to music and see if you can imitate. People on here will likely be able to give you the advice you need in order to move forward on your music (especially if you post your music in the workshop forum), so do take advantage of that. Good luck, and I hope you get the help you need, on here or elsewhere!

Ooo, you have a cool voice. Really could pull off bluegrass, or some other more lyrical or folksy style of song (probably why you're labelled as 'Folk', lol). The guitar playing is pretty slick, too - from "Love like You" it's fitting. The percussion is well placed, too (though sometimes it sticks out just a little much, like the stick hits at 1:40). You have some strong chops. I only listened to one track (which is normal, if you want constructive feedback - gets tough doing more than one track!), but I feel the reverb provided by the guitar and singing are not matching up. When utilizing reverb like that, it's always ideal to make every instrument sound like it's in the same room - otherwise it makes the instruments sound like they're two different performances stuck together artificially. I mean, technically most recordings ARE that, but you've got to give the illusion that it was one performance. It's a relatively minor nitpick, though - otherwise the production is pretty on point. I know the "Originals" forum doesn't get TOO much attention in comparison to the ReMix workshop, but man, if this were a video game arrangement people would be eating it up like crazy. Hope that my little bit of feedback helps, but you're certainly pretty good. I'll give separate (and perhaps selfish!) advice, too: a lot of people look at the VG arrangement forums more than the originals area - if you want more people to hear your stuff, makin' a remix is a good way to catch a lot of people's eye. Am I saying this because I want to hear folk VG arrangements in the WIP boards and possibly posted? Hell yeah I am, but it's also a great way to garner more feedback, too. Great stuff, though! I'm glad I checked it out, and I hope my advice helps.

From what I see it's in the third part of that trilogy, beginning @2:47.

Don't worry, just re-tag it when you feel ready for another eval; I just wouldn't have been able to tell if you wanted another one if I hadn't deliberately removed the tag, and didn't want you to think I was tampering with your stuff all sneaky-like. Re-tag when you do the fixes you want and one of us will eval it again.

Just quietly (or not so quietly, as is the case here) taking this off eval, for the moment, as the track has had an eval, and more importantly is changing quite a bit over a short period of time. Tough to know if what's present is what's planned for submission, or if the tag just wasn't removed. No worries, but just poppin' in for that. For what it's worth, I listened to it and thought the orchestration was bitchin'. Dynamically it's rich, though I think it would benefit from just a little limiting on the master track for those few spiking moments in the track, as it's pretty quiet all around - might be able to get 2-3 dBs without sacrificing a noticeable amount of quality. I can't try for myself since it's a soundcloud track, though. The arrangement is pretty slick. It's a medley, but that isn't necessarily an issue, as long as the parts are arranged in a clever manner, and the track doesn't sound like a few different songs slapped together or the parts don't transition well. I think you'll be alright, there. This isn't an eval, so I'm just giving a general feel for the track, here.

@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. --