djpretzel

Fully embraces the wubs; I dug the arsenal of Serum-style basses being fired in succession, and the overall attitude is HEAVY but also slick. Great stuff!

The guzheng solo here is sublime; great mix, but also a great ad for ISW's library! Would love to hear @DDRKirby(ISQ) continue with the lofi-jazz & Asian influences!

@Liontamer did the writeup but I had to chime in - so creative & unique! Lovely lower viola part that hit me like a cello, had to double-check the credits, but of course the thing most will latch onto is Joshua's vocals/vocalizing; really neat stuff, reminded me of Bobby McFerrin (High praise! he's done a lot more than "Don't Worry Be Happy"!) - interesting concept overall, loved the intro strumming (which reminded me of "Iguazu" from the Insider soundtrack), and the whole enchilada applies a very acoustic, folk, "organic" incantation to Metroid's contrasting stark, electronic, sci-fi universe. Precisely the type of mix that's less "obvious" and less likely to be made, which are the ones I tend to gravitate towards - kudos to all!

I've emailed the artist requesting a unique title.

This. At two minutes in I was in the NO camp, but it eventually sold me. This is one that takes the full listen to appreciate; over the duration, I think the artist incorporates enough evolution & interpretation. I would have preferred the first third to be a little more engaging - more contrast, more drama... just "more" in general - but after that we go from borderline to "hey, I'm digging this" territory, and we basically stay there. It's close, but it's a YES

In the interest of progress, I'll weigh in and I guess my vote will count twice / be the deciding factor. I enjoy unorthodox production and, well, this is that. I can certainly see it rubbing some folk the wrong way or "sticking out" on a playlist, but I don't find the issues (volume shift on initial drop, etc.) deal-breaking, and I suppose I find them a little more subjective. I'd usually rather listen to something that surprises me and justifies that surprise with some creativity & unexpectedness, and I feel like the arrangement and sound design both deliver on that promise and help support/"explain" some of the less orthodox production choices. We look for certain things w/ regard to production, but there are always gonna be some arrangement ideas that demand lo-fi, or a "garage rock" sound, or any number of similar permutations where "polish" isn't really the point, and in those cases we have to ask whether what's here works for us. It doesn't, for some judges, but it does for others, and it does for me, so I say let's roll with it. YES YES (X2 DJP YES DECISION-SPLITTER COMBO BREAKER)

That's a heck of a gear list; jealous a bit! Everything here is good, but the ambient intro and break are, to me, the "differentiators" that make the mix stand out more, along with the unexpected-but-welcome turntablism. The ambient choir pad right at the very beginning reminds me of the music they play in Dredd when people are taking slo-mo.

First off, my apologies to @Jorito for sitting on this; I mistakenly assumed he had also contacted the panel. Glad this revised version can finally see the light of day - it's catchy, well-produced synthwave/pop, and the edits made do a lot to mitigate what I felt was a vocal that didn't quite match the rest of the track. I'm a bad-but-enthusiastic singer, and just to be clear my own Lunar mix would NEVER pass the panel today. I think this newer incarnation of this mix lands in a much better place, and while the panel did pass the original version, I would have veto'd it in that form, whereas now I'm on board. Good stuff!

Should be fixed now; thanks for reporting & for the detailed/specific example!

Beautiful mix! I actually got "Stairway to Heaven" vibes on the intro, perhaps due to the renaissance-style melodic motif & recorders. So much to love, from the mixed woodwind and brass instrumentation to the singing/choir to the oscillation between intimate & epic. French horn stands out with a solo that conveys the richness/tone of the instrument, but really everyone involved delivers, in spades - these types of things are insanely difficult to pull off & make work, so I'll echo @Liontamer's tip of the hat to coordinator/arrange extraordinaire, @Jorito. Bravo!

@evktalo Only familiar with the Genesis version of this game & its music, so this was... interesting! The source is nice enough, but I do love the less fanfare/celebratory and slightly darker direction you've taken it in, without changing the major key vibe. Lovely sound design with lots of different textures; bass slides in particular stood out. I have some very specific feedback that you can take or leave, of course: While there are elements that are cross-panned or spread out, all of the melodic leads seem center to center-left. Having at least one melodic lead (flute, one of the synths, etc.) panned center-right might make the "melodic lead space" a bit wider/dispersed, in a good way? Could also open things up to leads occasionally overlapping/harmonizing while remaining distinct. Just a thought. The backing synth line that fades in at 1'06" sticks around all the way to 1'35" or thereabouts, with the same straight sixteenth-note pattern; wondering about dropping it out for 1-2 bars and differentiating those measures as a break and/or modulating filter cutoff or something else to give it more movement/evolution over time? The switch to double-time might benefit from a longer dropout & gradual rebuild or something else to differentiate the two sections, since the same basic sounds are being employed. I think using the same sounds is fine - it sounds good at both speeds - but something more elegant & deliberate to facilitate/bridge the jump to double, maybe? Good stuff, as always!

All the Zigs were already launched (for great justice), so that's a negative. Our lawyers have unfortunately informed us that we would need specific contracts consenting to sale of digital assets as RFTs, and also that RFTs "aren't actually a thing," so with many regrets we've had to withdraw these bold plans. The ALL POLKA ALL THE TIME thing is still on, though 😉

@zircon That's your call obviously but if you've checked the markets, Zircoin has already tanked this morning after our announcement. I don't think it will recover.

OC ReMix Announces Bold New Crypto/RFT Direction April 1, 2022 Contact: press@ocremix.org FAIRFAX, VA - OverClocked ReMix today announced the immediate availability of all featured OC ReMixes as RFTs, or "Re-Fungible Tokens," in a bold move to embrace the latest technology, regardless of its apparent benefit to artists and listeners. "There's been a lot of hostility towards and criticism of NFTs, especially from the creative community," writes David "djpretzel" Lloyd, President and Founder of OverClocked ReMix. "I'm an artist myself, and I think I know what the problem is - you can't funge NFTs. I've tried, but it's right there in the name, and I think that what most artists and listeners alike are looking for are tokens they can not only funge once, but repeatedly." Lloyd maintains that many of the perceived weaknesses of NFTs are mitigated by addressing this limitation - "Once you can funge over and over, and you've got that critical refungibility angle down, that's when the dynamic synergies and the Web 3.0 start to shine," he enthused. Environmental concerns about whether all this funging might expedite climate change and hurtle humanity ever faster towards living on an uninhabitable heat-sphere of death are unfounded, Lloyd says, because "this is all probably a simulation, anyways... and Web 4.0 will fix it." OverClocked ReMix will start accepting cryptocurrency immediately, to facilitate this shift to an RFT-based marketplace of digital web 3.0 content assets. Instructions are available on all mix pages. Ethereum, Bitcoin, and NiceWorkCoin will all be accepted from the start, with additional cryptocurrencies to follow. There are no plans to support Zircoin, now or in the future.

@duskvstweak Basically agreed on all points. I could be additionally unkind (to myself) and say that most of the site feels a bit outdated, too, but the homepage is a good place to start. Step 1 is updating our site navigation to be responsive, which I've sat on for far too long. Hoping 2022 is the year.

@RANDOMDUDE222 We actually built it ourselves, using Unity, so there's nothing *exactly* like it out there. Just as an aside, since someone else asked, we can't open-source it since it uses a bunch of third-party assets, and it's also very specifically tailored to our own needs. That being said: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1026380/Overture_Music_Visualization/ https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-learning/fl-studio-online-manual/html/plugins/ZGameEditor Visualizer.htm Those are a couple other options, and if anyone else knows some good alternatives, please share!

I'm personally bummed animeremix didn't catch on, but I did have a lot of fun on the three mixes I did there... that being said, we've got a laser focus on VGM at OCR, to such an extent that we're pedantic enough to not allow the Wii menu music since it's *technically* not a game, but part of the operating system

Production is phat AND fat, with some buttery-smooth synth brass & bass, and generally I think this instrumentation is rock solid & absolutely suits the source. The arrangement is equally intuitive, and perhaps TOO intuitive - this is definitely a relatively conservative arrangement that leans on production enhancements more than gobs of original writing or harmonic alterations. What's here & additive is good, but there are also extended swaths that run parallel to the original, more or less. I would have liked to have seen a bit more addition and alteration in the arrangement department, but I concur with the above that it meets our standards in this regard, and from a pure joy/funk/production perspective, this is ace. YES

@Damashii!! I'll talk to Brandon and see how things are going on his end; very real possibility that Thanksgiving time frame will work, and would be awesome to include your work. We sent some emails your way, trying to make sure everything's okay. Let us know what's up, and also I have a spare PSU I can send you, if it helps.

@Lashmush I do sorta feel like you glossed over my response and simply repeated your many misgivings about the overall process; your second post here reads very similar to your first. We do seem to have a fundamental difference of opinion - and yes, it's opinion, not fact - regarding what's off limits or counterproductive when it comes to criticism, specifically of music. When a judge points out that a piano part "doesn't sound playable" and it's intended as criticism, you can infer that not only does it not sound like someone could play the part - which I agree isn't really an issue by itself - but that it sounds unplayable in a way that is displeasing to the judge, doesn't sit well with the rest of the arrangement, etc. Your definition of criticism would eliminate some of the best, most specific feedback I've seen the panel provide, over the years, which in countless cases was implemented and resulted in a better mix - with the judges AND the artist agreeing about the improvement. It does happen, and frequently enough to reinforce to me that such efforts are not in vain, as you imply. You mention some fringe cases, where a musical work defies orthodoxy in one way or another and would presumably run afoul of our standards, but... we've passed a ton of material that is experimental, unorthodox, or otherwise "challenging" over the years. In the case of your arrangement, the piece wasn't really out of left field - it has familiar aspects of structure/genre and doesn't strike me as a particularly unusual VGM arrangement. As I've mentioned, I liked it. And I agree, with several judges, that the bass is poorly mixed. Your response is that you meant to do it that way, you love the piece as-is, and you question our ability to isolate any single element as being problematic; I profoundly disagree with this thinking, because it would mean that judges could NEVER hone in on muddy mixing, weak drums, abrasive high frequencies on a guitar part, an out-of-tune trumpet, etc. - all of that COULD simply be how the artist wanted it, and who are we to judge? Except, that's just it. It's a judges panel. A panel of judges. That judge. Always has been. And inherent in having any sort of evaluative mechanism of subjective/creative material - whether it's a panel of judges, or a "Quality Control" team, or whatever - is going to be an analysis of what's presented, how it works, and what is or is not preventing it from being featured on one small corner of a very large Internet.

@begoma I've been in contact with Brandon and we hope to put things behind us, make this the best album possible, and release something both OCR & he will be proud of - given that it's the third leg of a trilogy he started, I thought we should at least try to make this happen, and @Rexy has been helping make that possible. Right now mithius is working on some epic material that I know will elevate the final result - I still hope to release this year, and we'll be discussing timeline soon. So, short version: Not dead, trying to work with Brandon to make something happen, stay tuned.

We don't, or at least we try not to, but perhaps I'm confused about precisely what you mean... we may not be the "arbiters" of someone's creative direction, but we're each the owners of our own opinion/experience, which we can bring to bear when evaluating a track. If you're trying to say that only the original artist can evaluate whether a specific instrumentation or mixing/mastering choice makes sense, you seem to be taking issue with the idea of... evaluating ANY music, ever, unless... you yourself made it? Our judges make every effort to listen on higher-end phones, but to be frank... the issue with muddy, somewhat overblown bass on your OTHERWISE AWESOME recent submission would have been noticeable on $10 airplane earbuds or the DT-880 PROs that I just listened on. I do not believe each of our judges need to list their headphones - when one of them hears something the others don't, that's when they need to get together and figure things out and potentially listen on different phones/speakers to figure out what's going on. In this case that wasn't necessary - we could all hear how awesome your mix was... and we could all hear that the bass was muddy and not sitting right. This is necessarily going to be different for each judge. The nature of having a panel of different musicians/listeners with different, diverse backgrounds is that, for any given mix, some of them are out of their "preferred" genres or comfort zone, but the goal is to evaluate on some common principles. One of those principles is clarity - are parts discernible, or is there a situation where one instrument's frequency spectrum is cluttering the soundfield? That's a *fairly* genre-agnostic issue that will negatively affect dubstep, classical, jazz, and cha-cha alike, and that's exactly the type of issue we're dealing with in this case... Yes. We all loved your track, for the tenth time It would have passed easily without the prominent issue with muddy low-end, and will pass easily once this is addressed. I don't know who wanted to hear what, but everyone enjoyed the mix... and everyone hears the issue. Your question is a bad faith attack on the judges panel, essentially accusing them of being biased against metal... and I mean.... we've posted a LOT of metal. And I damn sure hope we can post this particular metal mix, as well. Sometimes panel feedback can be less than ideal because it's contradictory - different judges might hear different issues, or prioritize different concerns. That's one of the worst outcomes from the evaluation process, because it doesn't yield the most actionable feedback. In this case... nah, that wasn't the situation. Everyone digs the mix, everyone hears the issue with the bass. Thanks, legit appreciated. I assure you, though, we do get tired One of the things that's most tiring is bad faith accusations when someone doesn't take our feedback well on a specific mix, and turns that into a giant referendum on our overall process/staff. It doesn't happen THAT often, but it does happen. If you've listened to the mix in question on a variety of hardware and you don't hear an issue, we're kind of at an impasse - perhaps you could get a second, third, fourth opinion from others that you trust, and see if any of them notice the same issue? The bass is literally the only thing any of us took serious issue with, and all of us noticed it. Either we're all wrong, or bad, or listening on crap headphones, etc., or... perhaps there's ***something*** to our observation? At any rate, once more for good measure: we all loved the mix, we all heard the bass issue. I don't believe this observation reflects poorly on the judges panel - if anything, it's an instance where there's unanimous agreement about a single, actionable issue... which is actually a pretty good outcome, if music's going to be evaluated at all...