Gario

This is worth a thread. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A2jpeFlfX60 I hope this isn't a one time thing, I missed them terribly.

That is a good route to go, as far as getting people's attention. If I need any, I'll hit you up (and I might, so beware!)

MOD REVIEW Alrighty, mod review time! Yes, dropping out that arpeggio helped a lot. The pads used really sounded like a breath in the song that was very much needed. Very nice update on this one Giving it a full listen again, the drums and clap don't seem to fit all that well against this chill atmosphere. I understand you were going for a hip-hop feel, but I don't quite think this ended up being hip hop. It seemed to transform into something more new age-y instead, so the drums, rather than bring you back to the hip hop style, seems instead to clash with the rest of the song. Also, in the same vein as the arpeggio before the update, I notice the drums literally have only one pattern. Believe it or not, if drums just fill the space they just get in the way of the music. Your drums will need some more spice, more variety and less stylistic clashing (unless, of course, you can really make it work - do enough cool things with the drums in a hip hop style and it might actually swing the whole track in your favor). I'm not sure about the ending on this, still. It sounds like it could really use one more chord, or something to close it off. It's not abrupt, it just sounds a little incomplete. Production is pretty good in this one. There is a lot of bass in this one, though. Don't be afraid to fill the high end by utilizing either different instrument, or (less disruptively) incorporate some higher end EQ in the reverb setup that you have. Overall, this is very good, almost there, I feel. The drums are not really up to par with the rest of the track, though, and that ending is a bit on the rough side. Barring that, though, I could see this being a possible post on the site, but not before these things are addressed.Great track otherwise, though; the chill nature of the instruments and the subdued pace of the track really give it some charm that I get a kick out of.

If you don't like this game or soundtrack then you have no soul.

Hmm... Well, I find that doing things in the community often helps get your things noticed on here. Competitions and such are great avenues for getting people to notice your things more on here. Otherwise, commenting on people's things on Soundcloud of Youtube can often get people to reciprocate, too, outside of this website. It's not easy getting people's attention. Also, I really hate to put a damper on your medley, but that is also something that generally isn't accepted on OCR, if it's a straight medley. Mixing two or more sources together in a more synthetic manner, however, is considered a great way to create something new out of your sources. It's something I have a lot of fun with, myself, from time to time. Man, I feel like the biggest sour puss, but I feel it's better for you to know rather than finding out the hard way, lol. Hopefully what I say helps you out, though!

I do see that you have a lot of variation in your instrumentation throughout, and you DO keep it interesting throughout. But yeah, the track sticks very close to the source throughout, as well, which would probably make it work less within the framework of the site. It's nothing against the track itself - covers are cool, especially one that rocks as hard as this one. It's a specification of the site itself, so as you requested a Mod review I thought I'd let you know that before you submit it, only to find out six or more months later that the site wouldn't accept it on that premise alone. It's one of the benefits of a Mod review, after all

Aha, thanks for the consideration. Let me also say thanks for the patience - sometimes tracks go by the wayside for various reasons, such as too many people posting at once, or sometimes the source isn't as popular. I can't say that last point holds in this case, though... I mean, this is freakin' Top Man! You can't not know this one; it is literally a sin not to know it. Anyhoo, let me give you some review lovin'! I'll give you a regular review, as I don't think you're looking to submit this (unless you are, in which case this review applies, though the track is too conservative for submission purposes). Love the cover, here, as it really captures the heart of the source. The drums rock my socks off, though a few samples stand out as a little too mixed to the front. The snare, while fitting, could use a pinch less volume, while the bass drum could be a pinch louder. The tambourine sound is a little mechanical, as well - a little volume variation would fix that right up, since as it stands it is in your face with the same sound repeating without variation. Otherwise, the drums are really great! The guitar work is great. Sometimes all of the guitar parts blend together, which can make it hard to hear any one part. 1:52 is an example - everything comes in, and while there are a lot of cool parts, it's hard to tell one from another. Consider using slightly different timbres for the guitars so it's easier to hear what's going on. That's my two cents on it. Overall, this is tight and awesome - the above are more nitpicks than anything else. It's a shame more people didn't comment on it, since it's pretty sweet. Nice work!

How is your recording setup? Are you doing it on a single microphone, or did you set one up close to the inside of the piano and one outside to catch the ambiance? If not, a two-microphone setup can help you capture both the meat of your performance as well as the ambiance, with which you can mix in such a way as to make it sound as balanced as you need it to be. Just make sure that the two microphones are recording onto two separate tracks. Hope that helps!

Hey there, I am later. 1. Boomer Kawanger 2. Cyber Peacock 3. Crystal Snail 4. Slash Grizzly 5. Duff McWhalen. Not Bubble Crab, though, that song sucked. Alrighty, SuperiorX and crew. Let's bring it down. The house, I mean.

MOD REVIEW Sound effect! Woot! I likes me some sound effects - not even kidding, I can't make a Sonic mix without em'. The whole mix sounds pretty quite, though. There just doesn't seem to be anything filling the track past the melody and the bass. The whole arrangement sounds hollow, because of this. That square is quite piercing, which almost hurts in contrast to everything else. The bass actually is really awesome (lots of play with it throughout), but it seems to be fading in and out, which is just distracting. The fading in and out seems to be occurring throughout the track in almost all of its parts (not just the bass), so the effect is much more pronounced and distracting. Unless you're going for a particular effect, I would leave the larger volume envelopes alone. The arrangement doesn't seem to have any organization. The source is there, and it's creatively interpreted, but it's just... hard to follow. The lack of structure is distracting. I enjoyed the bass and a lot of the effects you used, but I don't think this would pass if you were to submit it.

MOD REVIEW Overall this was pretty awesome. To the claim that there isn't enough 'original' material, that's kind of a misnomer - the handling of the source is pretty creative, in its own right. Moody and atmospheric - much moreso than the source could ever provide. I think it will pass for the arrangement. Production was tight, as well. That computer bit at the end only makes sense if you read the story. If you want to post this on OCR (which is your intent, since you requested a mod review) there would be no context for that. You'll need to cut that part out if you want to pass the panel. Cutting it off at 3:10 - 3:15 would work out alright - it does provide some interesting atmosphere that compliments the piece overall. Short and pretty damn sweet, for the most part, I could see this passing if you cut the ending much shorter.

MOD REVIEW That is an awesome source. I actually never heard any of the music for the game before, but it sounds awesome. The orchestration is pretty spot on, and I'm glad to hear that you worked on the humanization on this one (it really shows). The production sounds very hollow, though. There is little in the way of bass, and honestly the highs could shine a little more, too (a LITTLE more). The slight shimmer helps the track sound more 'live', though it can mess you up as far as 'loudness', so you need to be careful with it if you play with it. The reverb is also a little distracting - it's like the orchestra played in a poor, echo-y auditorium. Bring that down a few notches and it'll clean up your mix, giving it more headroom to help with the other suggestions, to boot. The Adams Family harpsichord, while neat and fitting, might be an issue with the panel when you submit it (there is a rule attempting to limit copyrighted material that ISN'T a source originally from the game). It's up to you whether or not you keep it (they MIGHT let it slide), but know that will be working against you when you submit it. As it stands, I'd say this would get a NO-resub, but I would like to see it become something posted someday - I didn't know the source was this awesome, so you need to be the herald of this great message. Good luck!

Ack, no feedback yet? That's just cruel. Sorry, people slip through the cracks sometimes - a terrible first experience of the OCR WIP boards. I'll try to rectify that now, at the very least. Alrighty, MOD REVIEW TIME! MOD REVIEW Very soulful arrangement. Clean production and nice mood being set. I likes it quite a bit. The ending cuts off, though, so you should probably fix that before submitting it on here (that IS your intent, right? Seeing you requested a mod review, and all ). Very sorry for the short review, but I think it does just what you wanted it to, and I think it would pass if you fixed that ending. Very nice work, and I hope to hear more from you in the future

Mmm, seeing that you're planning on working on the track further, I'll just give some more advice rather than give an 'official' mod review, for now. I'll get back to giving you one when you post your update, promise! I see what people are saying, as far as the piano part is concerned at the beginning. I don't know, there is a subtle variation in it that I like. In my humble opinion, I think it could work either way. I will mention the electronic arpeggio that you have throughout, though - it sounds good, but it doesn't need to play throughout the rest of the track. Don't be afraid to drop it out and have it come back throughout the track. It's cool, but it grates on one's ears as time goes on. Go an listen to Disco Dan for some great examples of this - he tends to lay out all of his textures and tracks early, but he always drops the lines and textures out throughout his tracks in order to create variety through the whole track. It never plays the same combination twice, yet almost nothing 'new' comes up, either. tl;dr, the arpeggio is nice, but it drones - drop it out from time to time to keep it fresh. That ending, too... yeah. At least let the reverb fade; there is no reason to cut it off like that. I don't know if that is an artifact of the video, or if that was intentional. Nice work otherwise. I look forward to the changes you plan to make.

MOD REVIEW Eclectic! I think if I were to sum this one up in one word, that would be the word I'd pick. Arrangement-wise, you have it going on! It's a pretty short source, so I'm glad you were able to do as much with it as you did. Kudos! The production is pretty good, overall, too. If anything stands out in this as a possible issue, it would be the slow strings in the background (like at 1:04) - they just sound mechanical and low quality, in comparison to the rest of the instruments. The swells all sound the same, which make them stand out in a way that isn't good. When going for the effect myself, I tend to use a straight set of string samples and swell the volume manually using volume envelopes - custom swells fix that issue right up! Other than that, honestly the track sounds pretty good. Good luck with it on the panel!

Ha, I knew it, it IS pretty good! You just can't have enough MM3 title arrangements in this world. Very rich sound, though it's muddy throughout. A lot of good ideas and sounds coming out of it, though, so I understand why it'd be hard to remove one to clear things up. You probably know that, though, considering you said you've improved. Thanks for sharing with us - I hope we hear more from you in the future

MOD REVIEW Mmm, interesting style, and easy to hear what you were going for, source-wise. There were a few notes catching me off guard in the intro at first, but upon hearing the rest of the track & its style I can understand where they come from (the notes in question were the background tritone notes - they were throwing me off out of the context of the rest of the song). The intro portion while neat, was fairly short on source. If I had one suggestion it would be to make the intro have slightly more to do with the source while retaining the sound it has. Otherwise I'd say this one is in quite good shape. If you submit it now I'm pretty sure it would pass the panel. Nice work on it!

Hey there! I'm sure your track sounds pretty good, but the link you provided is to a Game Grumps video. You might want to fix that, if you want feedback

Welcome to the OCR forums! Glad to see you around here, using the WIP forums. I gave the Altered Beast track a listen, and it actually isn't too bad. The production isn't bad, and the drums are pretty tight. If I were to give a quick critique I would say the structure is rather repetitive, looping the same bassline over and over again. Starting at 2:46 there are some odd melodic lines that don't harmonize very well, so be sure to make sure that the melody and harmonies match up. It's a good start, though, and shows that with time I think you'll get better. A quick tip on posting on here - if you post one track per thread and label the thread after the game track being arranged it may attract more comments. Hopefully you'll have a good experience around here.

*Thumbs up* The title of the song pretty much makes this song and genre mandatory. Nice work, you all!

Ah, Gario, either a combination of Greg and Mario, or a combination of Garfield and Mario. Which would be good, save for those double pasta cravings... (Damnit, Archeon, and your weird PMs) But yeah, ages ago (1990+) my oldest brother tried teasing me by claiming that I played videogames too much. I think he just wanted to play more himself, but whatever. Anyway, over time he'd actually male fan comics including myself as the antagonist, and at one point I merged with Mario and proceeded to enact a reshaping of the real world, calling myself Gario. After losing interest in that comic later in the 90s, he dabbled in RPGMaker 2k and 2k3,in which I was once again the primary antagonist (much less to insult me and more because it made for an interesting antagonist). I've been helping with that story from time to time, and it turns out to make some incredible fan fiction that we'd actually still like to make into a classic jRPG one day. So seems simple, but it does have one big ass history. Fun fact: if you look at the character on the cover of 9-bit Blitzkrieg that represents me it comes directly from my brother's sprite art vision of myself. tl;dr, my brother merged my name with Mario's out of childish spite, and it grew into something cool from there.

Yeah, as everyone else has said, it's probably best to simply request a source file from the artist in question, if you really want to see it yourself. For reasons that everyone here has presented (custom presets, different vst/vsti's, etc.) I understand that they're probably impractical anyway, though since Reason doesn't deal with these too often the RSN files would be an exception to that (the use of samples still apply to this, though).

Well, the concern that the panel has about this song mixing-wise is that in comparison to other tracks on this site there is too much dynamic variation. PERSONALLY I think that's a poor call (I personally would love to hear more dynamic variety in orchestral arrangements, as that fits very well stylistically), but at the same time I understand that it would make this track stick out like a sore thumb as far as in comparison to other tracks on here (even other orchestral tracks on here). Overall it's about allowing the listeners to hear what's going on clearly without the need to turn the volume up or down during the mix. The dynamic range really shouldn't be too great (y'know, probably from loudest to quietest should only cover 5-10dbs), but by using the accompaniment (instruments dropping out, more static parts for the background instruments, etc.). It sounds like your arrangement already does this sort of thing to an extent, so I think you're alright, there. I think Timaeus222 covered the humanization issues well enough, though I will cover that the idea of making legato notes sound smoother/less disconnected also applies to your brass, as it has a similar type of disconnect when it's exposed (like at the climax). Be careful with the brass and strings, and make sure that for phrases the samples sound more connected. Nice to see you using the forums, and I hope we're able to help you out in getting this thing submitted

Sorry I wasn't clear - by bringing something down I mean possibly transpose an instrument or two down an octave, so as to have it out of the high range and cover your mid-range better. Your mixing and volumes are fine. The 'hissing' is nothing more than overcrowding in the highs. That's just how I hear lots of activity in the 1k+ range.

MOD REVIEW Ha, givin' yourself a challenge with a bunch of different sources, eh? Well I'm going to rely on the breakdown you've got and say there's enough source, and it sounds like the sources are meshed together well enough (that is, I don't hear any problematic cases of the dreaded medley-itis). The production is pretty decent, but I have to question your overall choice of instruments and their respective use of range, here. While on their own each instrument is a good choice, when put together the song as a whole becomes very high frequency-heavy, which makes the song sound like there's a constant "hiss" going on. The synths nearly all cover a high range, and the piano accompaniment often uses the high range, as well. The hi hats are also using up the same frequency space, so it sounds too busy in that frequency. On a related note, there seems to be a lack of mid-range in this track, as well. The bass could use a little more support too, but it's not too bad. Mid-range needs some love, though, so perhaps bring down some synths (like your pads) so the middle gets covered better (that would help your high overload, as well). Otherwise the track sounds empty, even though there's a lot going on in there. Otherwise the track is alright. That high frequency overload and midrange emptiness would get this track a 'NO - Resub' on the panel as it is, though. Fix er' up and I think it would be alright.