Gario   Judges ⚖️

Welcome, hope you find a welcoming space that helps you in your craft here! If you haven't already, be sure to check out the OCR discord, as well, since a lot of members are pretty active there, as well.

Hope you enjoy the space here :)

Man, most votes on a track ever? More likely than you think!

So the good: this does a very nice job blending the sources, and it uses both in ample amounts (mostly using the C64 source as texture), and I like the soundscape. The production values are decent, as are the instruments used.
However, the mixing is dense, and sometimes is easy to lose track of what people should be listening to in the arrangement, with the lead often being no louder than the accompaniment. This leads to a larger issue of the arrangement sounding like it's meandering aimlessly - there's little for the listener to grab as important so the overall arrangement sounds like a bunch of textures and ideas put into one package rather than an arrangement. After the 2:41 there is a melodic hook that's easier to follow which helps the song close off strong, and there's some material from 0:30 - 1:00 that could be used to grab the listener's ear if it wasn't so washed in reverb and mixed to match the levels of the rest of the texture.
There are a lot of good ideas here, but I don't hear enough to keep the listener's attention over the textures, and there's too much going on to consider this minimalist or atmospheric music. I *hear* elements that could be used as leads in various points of the arrangement, but they need to blend less with the rest of the texture and not be washed out with reverb as well as be mixed more in the lead to work as such. I hear an arrangement in this, but it needs to be mixed better so that the listeners can hear it, too.
I like it, but it needs more focus. Better mixing and cleaning up the likely intentional leads so they don't wash out so much would bring this the focus it needs.
NO

I'm on the edge of my seat- the album finally nearing release. I've followed this from the start, and my aged heart can hardly take it anymore! Much love to everyone involved.

I say we should give Netscape Navigator 9 another shot.

I say we should give Netscape Navigator 9 another shot.

I say we should give Netscape Navigator 9 another shot.

I say we should give Netscape Navigator 9 another shot.

This may or may not be relevant, but just something to think about, timing-wise: Project threads, traditionally, have been locked for historical record sometime around the release of the album.

@Atomicfog It's pretty much up to OCR staff to get the albums they plan on releasing ahead of this out in a timely manner. XPRTNovice will likely release his track ahead of the album with a nice music video attached to it, so there will likely be some opportunity to hear at least one track ahead of the full release (and it's one heck of a track). The music itself is done, though, and the album does sound pretty darn good if I do say so myself, just gotta get the rest of the behind-the-scenes work finished for it.
 
Sorry it's taking even more time, but it will be worth the wait, I promise!

@Atomicfog It's pretty much up to OCR staff to get the albums they plan on releasing ahead of this out in a timely manner. XPRTNovice will likely release his track ahead of the album with a nice music video attached to it, so there will likely be some opportunity to hear at least one track ahead of the full release (and it's one heck of a track). The music itself is done, though, and the album does sound pretty darn good if I do say so myself, just gotta get the rest of the behind-the-scenes work finished for it.
 
Sorry it's taking even more time, but it will be worth the wait, I promise!

Legit man -- thanks so much for the response.  It's incredible how much goes into some of these projects.  But yeah, so much untapped potential in the Lufia 2 soundtrack, and I'm sure it's going to be something special.  I don't come by the forums that much these days, but it's things like this that keep me comin' back.  If you want to link that other xprtnovice track + video here when that's released (or if they do) that would be cool, that sounds like a lot of fun.  Anyhow, cheers for having the dedication to bring this album so far. Much love.

Alright folks, got some news for this one - yes, the album is still moving along!
Even better, it's been submitted in it's entirety!
I've listened to the finished product with some of my fellow judge peers (as well as with Bahamut, the original director for the album) and it seems like it shouldn't have any issues under review, so I can finally say that this thing is happening, and it's happening soon. There will be some teasers and such in the coming months to get y'all excited about the album, but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the *second* most fun organ bit from the album. Ain't the whole song, but I did have a lot of fun making an organ part for one of my tracks so I figured why not spread the joy a little bit?
Actually pretty excited to have this submitted, and not just because it'll be a decades-long endeavor coming to a close, but also because the album sounds great. Will it be worth the wait?
... well it was a long wait so I can't be sure, but it'll definitely be worth spending some time with, that's for sure!

Damn, wish I did my job and gave some judge commentary on it - it's literally my favorite Final Fantasy theme from the series, and they did a great job on it here. The steel string lead sounds like it's picked a bit too hard, makes the notes sound forced, but that's my only real criticism here (and it's really nit-picky) because this sounds really cool otherwise.
Fun fact about how this theme integrates into the rest of the score, by the way: it's pretty obvious how it's blended into the first Overworld theme and the "Deception" theme of the OST, but did you know Lenna's theme is beat for beat, nearly note for note rehash of the second part of the main theme? It's got a completely different feel and is reharmonized to some degree, but it's the same lead - and then it uses the first section of the main theme as it's second section.
Just another fun tidbit about my favorite main Final Fantasy theme - great choice for a track to arrange.
Nice work, y'all. :)

yes in this case you are right. just couldnt resist ;)
Tim Follin is indeed one of the greatest

Alright folks, got some news for this one - yes, the album is still moving along!
Even better, it's been submitted in it's entirety!
I've listened to the finished product with some of my fellow judge peers (as well as with Bahamut, the original director for the album) and it seems like it shouldn't have any issues under review, so I can finally say that this thing is happening, and it's happening soon. There will be some teasers and such in the coming months to get y'all excited about the album, but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the *second* most fun organ bit from the album. Ain't the whole song, but I did have a lot of fun making an organ part for one of my tracks so I figured why not spread the joy a little bit?
Actually pretty excited to have this submitted, and not just because it'll be a decades-long endeavor coming to a close, but also because the album sounds great. Will it be worth the wait?
... well it was a long wait so I can't be sure, but it'll definitely be worth spending some time with, that's for sure!

Alright folks, got some news for this one - yes, the album is still moving along!
Even better, it's been submitted in it's entirety!
I've listened to the finished product with some of my fellow judge peers (as well as with Bahamut, the original director for the album) and it seems like it shouldn't have any issues under review, so I can finally say that this thing is happening, and it's happening soon. There will be some teasers and such in the coming months to get y'all excited about the album, but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the *second* most fun organ bit from the album. Ain't the whole song, but I did have a lot of fun making an organ part for one of my tracks so I figured why not spread the joy a little bit?
Actually pretty excited to have this submitted, and not just because it'll be a decades-long endeavor coming to a close, but also because the album sounds great. Will it be worth the wait?
... well it was a long wait so I can't be sure, but it'll definitely be worth spending some time with, that's for sure!

Alright folks, got some news for this one - yes, the album is still moving along!
Even better, it's been submitted in it's entirety!
I've listened to the finished product with some of my fellow judge peers (as well as with Bahamut, the original director for the album) and it seems like it shouldn't have any issues under review, so I can finally say that this thing is happening, and it's happening soon. There will be some teasers and such in the coming months to get y'all excited about the album, but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the *second* most fun organ bit from the album. Ain't the whole song, but I did have a lot of fun making an organ part for one of my tracks so I figured why not spread the joy a little bit?
Actually pretty excited to have this submitted, and not just because it'll be a decades-long endeavor coming to a close, but also because the album sounds great. Will it be worth the wait?
... well it was a long wait so I can't be sure, but it'll definitely be worth spending some time with, that's for sure!

Alright folks, got some news for this one - yes, the album is still moving along!
Even better, it's been submitted in it's entirety!
I've listened to the finished product with some of my fellow judge peers (as well as with Bahamut, the original director for the album) and it seems like it shouldn't have any issues under review, so I can finally say that this thing is happening, and it's happening soon. There will be some teasers and such in the coming months to get y'all excited about the album, but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the *second* most fun organ bit from the album. Ain't the whole song, but I did have a lot of fun making an organ part for one of my tracks so I figured why not spread the joy a little bit?
Actually pretty excited to have this submitted, and not just because it'll be a decades-long endeavor coming to a close, but also because the album sounds great. Will it be worth the wait?
... well it was a long wait so I can't be sure, but it'll definitely be worth spending some time with, that's for sure!

So, to date, my favorite remix I've ever done is this one. I finished it nearly four years ago and nobody has ever heard it.
I am probably going to completely redo everything involved. 

HA! Gario put that in our #judgechat and it requires being shared with the world. :-D "ChroNES Trigger" would have also been an acceptable title too. :-)
Dropoff at 1:09 was "WTF", so nice way to catch me off guard, then shifting to Game Boy-style instrumentation at 1:18. I put a hex on you for 3:28-3:56's section, but the slow de-sync to re-sync was a fun idea. :-P
Nice deconstruction at 4:07; not the mooooost engaging thing to listen to, though I'm trusting it to go somewhere, so I'll let it simmer. The track filled out the most at 5:00, and to me the way it essentially crescendoed here is disappointing. 5:35 though had a nice textural change to start winding down (not really, as it spun right back up).
It'll sound like I'm saying I didn't enjoy it; to me, this is good, but the track plateaus in energy too early and then some sections feel like they go a while without saying anything new for too long. When the texture changed up at 6:27, I love it, but it also should have happened, say, at 5:00 instead and you wouldn't have lost anything, IMO. Though I wouldn't be shocked at a NO for basic production, the creativity is there for me. :-)
YES

The Judges Panel has been talking about ways to work through the queue of submitted remixes at a faster pace, and after a lot of discussion and weighing the pros and cons, we've come to a decision that's probably one of the biggest adjustments to our process in a long time:
Submissions no longer require four (4) YES votes to pass. A decision is reached as soon as the difference in votes is three (3).
To clarify the key change here: when a submission receives three (3) YES votes and there are zero (0) NO votes, the submission is accepted, because the difference in votes is three (3).
If a submission continues to go back and forth without reaching +3 in either direction, the panel will continue to vote until all active judges have voted and the majority will determine the decision.
This update to our decision making process will immediately apply to any submissions on the panel at the time of this announcement going live, and for all decisions moving forward. We won't be going back to previous rejections to find decisions that started with three (3) uncontested YES votes but eventually got rejected; in those cases, what's done is done.
We hope that artists will find this new criteria a little bit easier to understand. Overall, we've been impressed with the quality of work being sent in these past months, and this should make it easier for us to get the slam dunk tracks through the process faster.
Thanks to all the artists who continue to participate in our curation process. Hope to hear your work soon.
- DarkeSword

I tried to keep this brief, but as you might know, that's not my forte.
FIRST, the facts...
On October 28th I informed staff that I was stepping down from my role as president/admin/owner/etc. of OverClocked ReMix, and on November 1st I also stepped down from the board of Game Music Initiative, the 501c3 non-profit organization that funds OCR. In short, I no longer feel I have the bandwidth to do these roles justice and to not only maintain, but advance, the missions of both projects. I will be working with Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword) to transition my responsibilities and ensure continuity of operations. The (excellent!) mix posted on Halloween was published without my direct involvement, subsequent posts up to the milestone #OCR04500 have been superbly executed, and I am confident that staff will continue the work necessary to operate - and evolve - OCR in my absence. I will be even less available than I have been, lately, so I apologize in advance for any lack of responsiveness.
THEN, the feels...
Where to even begin?
It's hard to encapsulate over two decades of history; omissions are inevitable. What began as a neat side project I started in my parents' basement in 1999 snowballed into something far beyond my wildest expectations, due to the blood, sweat, tears, and unbridled, rampant creativity that thousands of you have contributed. Much of this happened before social media was even a thing and before the platforms/services we now heavily associate with the modern internet had come into being; it was a frontier, and we were on it, and we took it pretty seriously because we knew how amazing VGM is, how creative arrangements could effectively convey and explore that vast musical landscape, and how a small fandom communicating via email, IRC, & forums could collaborate to build mighty, new things. We took it seriously, often too seriously, but we ALSO played more than a few rounds of Shaq-Fu at conventions, made some truly ridiculous (but always musical!) joke mixes, and developed internal circles of lore with our own memes & jargon.
NOT in strictly chronological order: there was some drama with now-legendary composer Jake Kaufman; VGMix entered the fray; we added a judges panel so it wasn't just me making stuff up; we released our first community album; the unmoderated forum birthed its own sort of... subculture; the site itself evolved to be database-driven and not just two giant dropdowns sorted by game/date; we posted mixes submitted by composers George "The Fat Man" Sanger and Jeremy Soule; we met/interviewed Hiroki Kikuta and Nobuo Uematsu; our album trailers by the incomparable José the Bronx Rican started blowing minds; we started appearing in person at Otakon, PAX, MAG, others - much love to all for having us; we bumped into Leeroy Jenkins at ROFLcon and gave him a hoodie; we started hosting from our own server and managing the technical side of things ourselves; thanks to Mr. Shael Riley (among others!), we got to remix the music for an actual Street Fighter game (!!); we released fifteen more albums...
...and then we turned ten, on December 11th of 2009.
Quite a first decade, and I missed hundreds of things I shouldn't have. Hundreds of firsts, some tragic lasts, and millions of memories that can't quite be conjured by words.
In 2011, we stood up for Fair Use at World’s Fair Use Day, an event organized by the non-profit Public Knowledge.
In 2012, we launched our kickstarter for Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin, it was taken down, we talked with Square lawyers directly for a couple hours and made the non-profit project structure clear & contractual, and we relaunched a successful kickstarter. That's not always how those things go!
We launched Game Music Initiative in 2016, creating an official 501c3 charity to formalize the finances around OCR and potentially support other VGM-related projects, too. On a related note, I’ve absolutely loved seeing OC ReMixes featured by charity speedrunners Games Done Quick (GDQ) - it’s exactly the type of thing I always wanted to see, that synergy.
Things do start getting a little quieter from then on out, and I think there are a ton of reasons for that, but it has been an incredible and improbable journey that I wouldn't have missed for the world. Thank you ALL for making it possible; OCR was always yours, I aspired only to stewardship of something I wanted to exist for everyone.
FINALLY, the future…
It's time - some would say past time - for OverClocked ReMix itself to be ReMixed.
That's the point, right?
Infinite permutation; endless possibility.
You don't always know the day, month, or even year when your influence on something starts holding it back, or when the waning amount of time and energy you can dedicate becomes a liability. That type of certainty is often elusive; it can be a difficult diagnosis to even contemplate, and you need to look for & listen to signs. In addition to just being too much of a single point of failure for OCR (sorry, engineering mindset), the last year I've been asking myself whether it was time to let go, and I think the answer is sometimes in the asking. I have been stretched thin, like butter scraped over too much bread, and that's when you leave the Shire.
Beyond representing what I genuinely believe is best for the future of OCR, I absolutely confess a personal wish to redirect reclaimed time & energy to my family and my own music. Being a husband to my wife Anna and being a father to our daughters Esther and Sarah is my meaning; I have always put them first, but now I can put them even MORE first. Esther just started learning trombone, so in a few years, expect a collab! Sarah is building her confidence learning piano & makes me proud every day. I want to write new music for them, and with them, and that requires more time than I've had.
I believe the principles that have driven us - embracing all games & all styles of music, emphasizing interpretation & creativity, offering both curation and critique, and providing a non-commercial platform for those who seek it - are truly timeless, but there are many ways to honor them.
I look to the new leadership/staff to galvanize, streamline, diversify, and re-imagine, within that immense space.
I'll be leaving them with some ideas of my own; please let them know yours. I ask the community to support them, embrace change, provide guidance, and be patient; I believe it will be worth it!
Thanks,
- djpretzel
 

Hello!

The music is done, I had to go through a move in the meantime which stalled me for a bit. It's mostly an organizational effort on my part to give both the music and the track order to the staff for review, which once my computer equipment is set up shouldn't take too long. I'm shooting to get it out before the end of the month, since I will be presenting at a panel during MAGWest in September - would like to give good news at that point!

Oh, this is pretty cool, love that bass instrument in particular. Spends a lot of time on the opening of the source, which I mean I can't blame you for since I did it for my own interpretation of that source a decade ago - it's just a really cool and easy to expand part of the source. Plenty of good little ideas and variations in the textures, too. The arrangement uses some nice subtractive arrangement to make sections sound different, which does keep it sounding interesting throughout.
I always love a good Sparkman arrangement - thanks for sharing!

Hello!

The music is done, I had to go through a move in the meantime which stalled me for a bit. It's mostly an organizational effort on my part to give both the music and the track order to the staff for review, which once my computer equipment is set up shouldn't take too long. I'm shooting to get it out before the end of the month, since I will be presenting at a panel during MAGWest in September - would like to give good news at that point!