djpretzel

Preview it: http://youtu.be/ja7S7jcgORQ Download it: http://ff9.ocremix.org Torrent: http://bt.ocremix.org/torrents/Final_Fantasy_IX_-_Worlds_Apart.torrent Firstly, credit where it is due! This album project was originally started by Brandon Strader, who you might also know as the director of the FFI and FFII albums on OC ReMix. Please do check out those, and all of the other Final Fantasy albums! As you might have heard, this album has been a long time coming. This is partly because it is humongous, featuring 58 tracks with contributions from 57 artists. Final Fantasy IX has a huge soundtrack (over 120 tracks), and the reason for this is the great number of variations on motifs. There are so many variations that we actually had to limit the number of versions of similar themes. Twice in interviews, Mr. Uematsu has said that the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack is his favourite of the series, and you can definitely tell he got carried away given the depth on display. Even if you don't agree that it's his best, I definitely think it's the most cohesive effort in the series. One thing you might notice about this album is the amount of new faces (or new at the time) who contributed multiple tracks. This is because they actually joined OC ReMix just for this project because of how much they love FFIX. I'm personally really happy for that to be the case, as I've always thought that you can really hear when people are invested in their tracks. Spotlighting the game music you really love is what we're all about here, and I feel like that is particularly true with this album. I'd like to extend a huge thank you to all the contributors to the album including the 57 ReMixers; the awesome artists at Game-Art-HQ; José for working on the trailer; Kevin "TheGreyNinja" Merriman for the cover art; Flexstyle for a bit of mastering; and finally djp, Larry, and the other staff for helping to get everything out the door. Thanks for waiting, and I really hope you enjoy it! - Cain "Fishy" McCormack

Andy's voice has gotten a lot deeper since he's been working out! But he seems angry about it...

Just chiming in quickly to say that the hard work & effort is truly appreciated - staff spent a long time, many hours, coming up with this list of tags, refining it, debating it, etc., and it's great to see it finally being employed. Example conversation: we must have gone back & forth over the term "ethnic" to label exotic or non-western instrumentation alone for 5 minutes. You DO see it employed sometimes elsewhere, but we all felt it was antiquated & offensive in its ethnocentrism. Yes, we actually care enough to discuss these things in such detail, so it's good to see the community care about helping out!

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Most of the right column is intended for non-context specific content, but yeah... this is planned, just not in the same exact location.

ONE of the sep. floods will probably be a second FF9 flood

RE: being pedantic, we know there's a LOT of room for that here, but we've been over this list dozens of times and feel like it's at a pretty good place. If we keep adding going forward, we won't know which mixes were analyzed before or after a new tag was added, etc. I defer to Larry as to whether you can proceed with tagging your own mixes - I don't see a problem, personally, BUT when the whole project is done we ARE going to reach out to artists to verify/comment on what we've got for their mixes, so there will be a second chance for EVERYONE to review. Auto-tune is a little tricky because of the dual usage - when applied subtly, the effect can be difficult to notice, and is employed in this fashion quite often. Would that still count, or are we only talking about T-Pain? I'd guess the latter... "tracker" is intended to convey a certain instrumentation aesthetic that involves lower-fi samples, often quirky & being employed outside their natural range, etc.

Eval has completed, album PASSED (woot! was there ever any doubt??), feedback was provided to Pieter... It's going to be a bit before we can publish, because we've got FF9 and then a couple others (gonna be a busy 3rd & 4th quarter!), so I'm hoping some of the feedback can actually be used in the meantime to improve a couple of the tracks. It's optional - as mentioned, the album passed - but the third & final ass can be even badder if some tweaks are made here and there prior to the big day...

Seems reasonable, and we ARE working on tags/terms that would enable this... we like to strike a balance between encouraging diversity (both on the part of artists AND listeners) and being accommodating to folks who may have more specific tastes. The human voice will always be my favorite instrument, personally, and I love the extra layers of creativity that original vocals/lyrics can provide.

We can attempt to force download by specifying MIME type for MP3 as application/other, I believe... however, this does seem like an oversight in Edge that I have to think WILL be fixed, given the fundamental nature of the action in question. I need to get a Win 10 test machine together, clearly

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

I'd have a very hard time posting this to the site without it feeling wrong... I think we should close it out based on that and hope that a revision can be recorded.

What Kris said, in this case. TOUHOU MUSIC IS SO SPASTIC!! Goodness, so many notes... quiet section wasn't hitting me as 100% perfect but it also didn't jar me like it did for Larry, and the clarity of the overall mix does let you hear the guitar & many, many, many kick & snare & synth hits. There are special challenges in choosing to embrace the Touhou madness and do something that maintains the uber-brisk tempo and machine-gun sequencing, and I think they've been handled well enough. Energy is through the roof... musical caffeine! Some of the sections Larry identified COULD have used a bit more polish, but they breeze by so fast that it really didn't bother me much. This has been revised several times and this incarnation feels ready for prime time, to me; there's perhaps a tendency to see multiple revisions and be a little more sympathetic, but I don't think I'm doing that nor do I think it's necessary for this mix as it now stands. YES

Oh shizz, I've been invoked Larry's basically right - beautiful track, arrangement checks out, only gets better as it goes both in terms of production & the interpretation factor. It's a tad "clean" which maybe we're not as used to hearing, but ain't nothing wrong with that, and yeah, does have that Japanese arrange feel. LOVE THE BASS WRITING. YES... and I'd consider moving to DP, personally

Very cool! Your production has really improved! Arrangement checks out, sounds are big, exposed choral bits are brave and, while they hit some uncanny valley territory, strike me as a bold and creative decision. Know what this needed? Some Bartok pizzicato. Know why? Because it's awesome. Just kidding, although it WOULD have added to the creepy/evil factor a bit. I concur with Kris's comparison to The Omen soundtrack - hectic, apocalyptic, and well done! YES

SO MUCH AMERICAN PSYCHO!! And yet no sussudio reference When the bass sits on the same note/chord, it's hard to call that the source bassline, since the source bassline is always cycling through a progression. So basically, the portions you've labeled source bassline would need to be further broken down and only the portions where the progression is present should be counted, if you really wanted to stopwatch it. That being said, it's psytrance... there's gonna be glue, and that glue is gonna be significant, and to me it's more that the portions of the bassline that just sit on one note may not be arranging the source in a strict manner of speaking, they're serving no other melodic purpose, either - they're not introducing a different melody or progression, they're simply there to put everything else in a psytrance context. It works, for me, though it does sit on the borderline in terms of source usage. Solid track, but I think my biggest issue is that I'm just not sure this source melody is well-suited to a psytrance treatment - it's a strong tune, but it's got this celebratory, plucky melody going on, and tricking it out and making it psychedelic ends up feeling a bit odd. Not BAD, per se, just not intuitive or entirely comfortable in its own skin. I still got a kick out of it, and since I've seen American Psycho a dozen or so times, the Patrick Bateman was fun. Not without some reservations, but still a... YES

Realllllly cool style to apply to this specific source. To be honest, I have no idea how well this aesthetic would apply to almost any other VGM source, if at all, but damn if it doesn't fit like a glove in this case... very effective, very atmospheric, and lends precisely the right tension and uncertainty. YES

I haven't had time to check, but I did just receive this, and it bodes well. It addresses the content ID match but doesn't remove the offending material. I'll see what can be done in that regard.

Neat concept; love that Dexter piece and I think the spiritual (not literal) incorporation of it into the CT source worked well. Not much to add relative to Emunator's vote; strings were a little weak, as he said, but not a deal-breaker. YES

From 1:54-2:10, is that source?Sounds like the Cid chorus to me How about 2:10-2:28? Sounds like Cid chorus chopped in half and turned into a longer phrase, filling space We need Larry's stopwatch, but to me the "glue" holding this together does feel interpretive, making connections to the source, of varying degrees of obviousness. Sounds like Road to Perdition or Angels in America at times, both great Newman scores. It's definitely liberal, but I'm definitely hearing connections. I don't have time to stopwatch atm, so: YES (Assuming source usage checks out!) Kris, you'd change to YES as well if you got a source breakdown that shows the usage, right?

Such a cool source to adapt for solo piano; love it. Very lonely, perfect for a rainy day, but (key point) it does pick up a bit and introduce some shift, so it doesn't feel one-note in terms of mood. Agree with Larry's additional observations. YES

Good stuff... a little simple, at times, in a way that seems underdeveloped and not stylistically minimal... for example, at the end, I really wanted that harp to glissando, or at least strum, as that's one of the "neat things" that harps can do that helps define their sound & their relationship to other instruments. Simple plucks are nice, and can be very dramatic, but they work best when contrasted against the more elaborate playing styles the instrument is capable of. In gamer terms, it feels like the harpist was nerfed, in other words... My second observation is that, while attention HAS been played to dynamics, I think you could do even more. Right now the dynamic shifts are something like a 3 in magnitude/contrast, and they could easily be more like a 9... if that numerical abstraction doesn't help: velocity is one way of achieving dynamics, but with sustained woodwinds and strings, you need to think about each note and how its volume can (and should) change over time. Pull the strings way back for the solo/duet wind parts, for example, and within those parts, have melodic lines that flow from one note to the next with a volume curve that feels more natural, like a human being is breathing into a tube/pipe, not pressing a key on a keyboard. The mod wheel is generally your friend for stuff like this, but you can also draw in curves after the fact in your DAW of choice. A good mantra is: "Dynamics are not just between notes, they're within each note," especially for a genre/style like this. These two things, very specifically, are what can make a good ReMix like this one into a great ReMix, so I really hope the feedback is digested & considered for future arrangements. That being said, what's here is pleasant, well-constructed, and enjoyable... there's room for improvement with regard to the above two points, but I still think this passes muster. YES

Weird, lo-fi, chipfunk, syncopated groove...such a strange vibe, almost feels like video game music from a completely different game at times I highlighted the two criticisms Kris made that I agree with, above... texturally, you need to watch out for self-similarity a bit within each mix... it's such a distinct sound/aesthetic, which is great, but if you ride those accompanying arpeggios and repeat that synth lead a couple times, it starts sounding "too much like itself" - hopefully that makes sense Getting a little more minimal with subtractive breakdowns, and (especially) working more with dynamic, shifting panning & DSP could help with this. It's not a deal-breaker, it's just something you can consider to improve each piece. Dig the overall vibe, dig the combination of themes. YES