Gario

Oh hey, I remember when you made this some time ago. Let's see what you've done since, I remember liking the last iteration of it. MOD REVIEW Lots of neat sound design on this one. If I recall correctly, the last rendition had some pretty cool sound design, too, so I'm glad that aspect remained. The guitar, however, has a poor tone, when introduced at 0:34. It just sounds muddy and non-distinct. Considering how clear the other instruments are, it's quite noticeable how messy the tone is for the guitar. At 1:08 the tone sounds much better for the lead, but the performance could use quite a bit of clean-up. Hearing the fingers scratch as they slide is distracting for every note, and every note sounds disconnected, due to being deliberately re-struck for every note change. The performance needs some considerable tune-up before it'll be considered on OCR. I'd suggest PM'ing one of the many guitarists on the boards for some advice on this, as my expertise is limited in that area. At 1:08 and 2:38, I'm not sure that doubling works great, for the leads. Contrapuntally, 6ths & 3rds would give a richer sound than pure 4ths and 5ths. You likely won't get nailed too hard for that on the panel, but it could be better than what is present here. I'll have to say the guitar work on this is holding this back from being posted, as of yet - I recommend getting in touch with other guitarists and garnering some advice from them. Glad to hear a new rendition of this, though!

Well, my girlfriend is actually a HUGE fan of the series, so I will probably get into it at some point. Just got the 'Dancing All Night' game for her a little while back, and the music seems to actually be really, really good, to boot. Personally I recently beat Shin Megami Tensei IV for the 3DS, and I loved it. Persona is a sub-series of SMT (both utilize similar mechanics & conventions, and are made by Atlus), so I guess I'm somewhat a fan.

2015 Moseph still could, indeed.

Under 'References' on the side tab there's a link to the current KNGI homepage that has a download link to both the first and second Vampire Variations albums. Or you can click here and find the download from there, for now. I'll let staff know about the current broken download link, thanks for the heads up.

Ooo, I'm liking where you're taking this. Calm, but fairly potent. I'll add a quick note and say the high string in the arpeggio portion that plays throughout sounds a little flat. Be sure everything is tuned pretty tight with one another, rather than use a tuner for each note, if that's what you use. Otherwise, I like it.

Funny you should bring this one up. I actually addressed this very thing in great detail in the VG Analysis thread that's up here many years ago, it might be relevant. TL;DR, the form for a solid majority of jRPG town music follows as such: A - A' - B, or some variation thereof (such as an intro preceding the "A" section). A is relatively soft, A' is an elaboration of A, and B is fresh material. The Lufia theme follows this structure, as well, if you listen for it. The beginning of the Ragnarok theme also begins this way, though it takes an admitted turn by continuing to expand rather than repeat to the beginning. Soft instruments help evoke the mood, as well, but I feel that form really contributes to the whole thing. Those are my thoughts on it.

Sadness. It was a good run, though, and I completely understand where you're coming from. Surprised my track did so well this round, too - glad y'all liked it!

Gario Ghetto Lee Lewis feat. Jason Covenant & WillRock - Myth Lab (Rainy Turtloid in Gate's Laboratory [X6]) Usa - Gate's Secret Dream Lab (Shield Sheldon in Gate's Laboratory [X6]) Jorito feat. Tuberz McGee - You Know The Game (Gravity Beetle in Gate's Laboratory [X6]) Sigma's Enigma

Sorry for your loss, Trism. I'm submitting mine real soon, just in the process of exporting & submitting, myself. Just giving the heads up!

If you get started on it, send me a sample and I'll let you know if you're on board. For the project status: Almost moving again, since I almost have a whole bunch of backlogged things finished + gaining more stable work. I'd like this one to be finished as much as anyone, and I'm really REALLY close to being in a position where I can dedicate my full attention to it again. I insist, keep an eye out on this one, and the wheels will start moving once again...

C'mon, it's not D Fb F G G* Bb B#? Don't crush my spirit, Darkesword.

I'm uploading now - it'll probably be one or two minutes behind the timer, here, but I had trouble naming it, lol. It's a fun track.

Apologies on the lack of Mod-Review, but it actually seems that this track was more a WIP than a Mod-Review, considering how often it's been changing up. I'm setting the tag to WIP, for that purpose, so when you get everything button'd up again you can set it right back. Good luck on it!

Gario - Sigma's Enigma Es-cop-ay (Crescent Grizzly in Sigma Palace [X8]) Leap of Faith (Vanishing Gungaroo in Sigma Palace [X8]) Straight Outta RAGE (Flame Stag in Sigma Palace X8)

Nice to see you around here! The more people posting music in here, the more exciting the forum is. A quick note, though - it's a bit odd to have more than one track to review in a thread. If you want to have two tracks reviewed you will probably have better luck making two threads about them. Just trying to help out. Haa, I actually love the direction of the Sonic track. It just screams hip hop or rap vocals over it, though - while really good, it does feel like it's making room for something. If not, then it does sound pretty quiet, overall. Lots of fun, though, glad to hear it up here. The drums are at a nice level for the Balrog track, though the rest of the synths are a bit in the background. The lead could really stand out more, in that one. Overall, pretty good, but there's a lot of space that you could use to increase the volume a lot with minimal quality drop. This one would really benefit from a volume boost. Nice tracks overall, though. I hope some of this helps

Loved it. Great work on it all, guys.

Let's see, I'm doing what I can to cover the WIP forum Mod reviews, participating in the Sigma compo, trying to find time to work on a project track for Mario RPG, working on some other things behind the scenes and, perhaps, trying to connect back with the community again. It's been a while, and I finally found time to be around again, so woot. Also, KingTiger, I would freakin' love to collab sometime. You're just so damn fun to work with, lol.

MOD REVIEW The arrangement is quite cool - I like the relatively slow direction you took it. The instrumentation generally works, too, though it IS a little similar to the original, in that sense. The drums, though, are a bit weak and washed in the bass and snare, respectively. That bass should really dominate the track, in this genre, but while it sounds meaty, it's pretty quiet. Bringing up that volume without clipping the track, while difficult, would bring this track up significantly. The snare just has too much reverb. That needs to tighten up, or else it just bleeds into everything. While the synths are pretty vanilla, I think they work okay. Making them a bit more interesting somehow would help this track, though, in just making it stand out from the source more. Sometimes the pads get loud enough to cause some noticeable clipping (like at around 2:02), so be careful about that. The drums are the biggest issue, though. They need to improve if you want this one to pass. Sorry about the delay on the feedback; I just noticed it when I was scouring the forum. Hope this helps a bit.

MOD REVIEW Kind of hard for you to keep away from these Castlevania jazz remixes, eh? Comes with adding '-vania' to your name, after all. Odd as it is for me to say, this one is relatively smooth, compared to the other things you posted on here. I dunno, I liked the gritty, 9th and 11th filled tracks from before a little better. It's just me, though - being smooth isn't problematic, at all. That has little to do with this mod review, though. It almost goes without saying that this one is an easy pass. Go submit it, and watch your name fly on the front page.

Well hello there! Nice to see you postin' your stuff here. Welcome to the OCR WIP board. Doesn't look like you got too many comments on this one, though. It probably had to do with the Tindeck link (as well as the fact that it's a 60MB download) - too many advertisements, and too large of a file. Personally I use box.net (Free!), but a lot of other people use different sites to achieve the same thing (also free, in general). Also, I'm not sure if FL has an mp3 conversion method on its own, but I know a lot of people use Audacity (freeware) with the "lame" plugin in order to convert WAV files. Anyway, this is pretty cool, for what it is. Pretty straight, and pretty well covered. I like a lot of the electronic effects that were used throughout. The orchestra often sounds pretty mechanical, but learning how to make it sound real is something that comes with practice. Cool song, though! I hope you get more attention on the next song you post, and I hope some of my advice on posting a link helps you out.

MOD REVIEW Dayum, man, this is freakin' awesome. I can still pick out the mechanical nature of the banjo myself, though - it just... yeah, sounds thin and not real. I listened to the performance of the other track, and I would have to say that it sounded so much better. While it's entirely up to you, I feel your track would stand much better with the live banjo performance over the sampled one. Otherwise, I think it would pass quite nicely - there's just such a nice feel to the whole thing. But yeah, I compared the two and I feel the live performance was far superior to the sampled one. Great playing on all those instruments, by the way

Gario - Sigma's Enigma Caffeine Shoveling Hunter Turtloids (Rainy Turtloid in X-Hunter Stage 1 [X2]) (Don't Wanna) Hurt You (Gravity Beetle in X-Hunter Stage 1 [X2]) A Blaze in the Northern Fortress (Blaze Heatnix in X-Hunter Stage 1 [X2])

Hey there! Glad to see you posting in these forums. That very question you asked is very much why they're here. I'd like to help by first stating that making a separate thread for each song that you post would help get each of them the attention that they deserve - people like to focus on one track at a time when they make posts. Two or more tracks in a thread generally leads to people ignoring the thread rather than giving it the attention you'd appreciate. While I don't have the time to give too much detail right now, I did give Megaman a listen. I actually liked what you did with the arrangement in the second half - all that layering was pretty neat - but the production would affect it negatively on the panel, probably resulting in a 'No/resub', as far as posting is concerned. Sorry for being brief (I normally give more details, when I'm not under time constraints!), but I do hope that helps you out a little bit. People here do like to give good advice, when they can!

This is the album that was being worked on. Tweex leaked it a while back so everyone needed to scramble.

Nice to see you drop by in here to get your music checked out! I'm glad we also get to hear what you sent to the judges, too, as that helps give an idea as to what you were trying to fix. Sweetness. Well, it's certainly not the source, that's for sure - DKC2 credits is an awesome theme. The arrangement plays it rather straight, too, which is alright. You do have some fun diversions to it, which gives it a little spice. I'd argue that it's not enough to get it posted, though - that's one thing OCR tends to specify. Right now, while the instruments sound better than the source, overall the sound, the feel and ultimately the arrangement sounds like an improvement of the original, rather than something that has your own input added to it. There isn't anything WRONG with that, but it won't be accepted on the site unless it sounds like you really made it your own song. Evolving a track over time truly helps achieve this end, but know that the very instrumentation itself is working against you on this front. Not saying it's impossible to get the arrangement post-able, but I suspect it'll be an uphill battle. The SFX and sweeps actually do help the track considerably. Nice work on incorporating them. The sidechaining is a bit much. The issue that sidechaining solves is the fact that the drums cut into the rest of the music, which muddies them considerably. Of course, when you sidechain it gives you the space you need in order to avoid that, but it can also give a pulse that can be distracting (unless, of course, the genre is designed for it). It's distracting, in this context - minimal sidechaining is ideal. If you want to improve the use of your drums (aside from using a different drum SFX - freesound.org has a few alternatives, if you're interested in looking), you need to have your other instruments designed to allow enough space for the drums to function properly. Using a low pass on the bass drum, for example, will kill any excess high frequencies that may be getting in the way of your other instruments, and ensure that the bass frequencies of your low notes don't play as loud (or at the same time) as your bass drum. You'll be able to make your drums louder without sacrificing the rest of the sound of your music, that way. I did notice the variety you added to your drums. That actually helped a lot, though the fact that the bass drum pattern stays the same when it is playing still works against you a little. Consider switching up the beat from time to time - it adds some spice and interesting color to the music. The levels of your track are a complicated issue. On the one hand, the sounds are a bit hot in the original (that is, they sound like they're cutting out due to being "too loud"). On the other hand, overall, both tracks are a bit on the quiet side. It's very difficult to perfect, but there are ways to get the best of both worlds here. Whenever I personally try to achieve this, I tend to make sure there isn't any clipping coming from the instrument first (whether it's from the recording or from the synth/sampler). If there is not, I maximize the volume as much as possible without clipping, then I move up to whatever it's connected to and check for clipping there. I keep moving from plugin/mixer to plugin/mixer until I get all the clipping and muddiness out of the instrument. This will garner you quite a bit of volume, overall, and it will make your instruments sound clear. Even a little clipping in the instrument itself will just magnify throughout the other effects until you fix it, even if you lower the master volume of the instruments in question. After doing all of this, a limiter of some sort can be used to bump up the sound with little loss, if you want. All of that is tricky at first, but you get better at it with time. I do hope some of that helps you out. Also, welcome to the WIP forums!