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djpretzel

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Posts posted by djpretzel

    OCR00002 - Bonk's Adventure "Prehistoric Xmas"

    in ReMix Reviews & Comments

    Posted

    Catchy for sure, but besides that I don't know how I feel about this. The wahwah and piercing instruments are a little grating, and I feel like the song runs out of things to say with a minute left in the song. This song does have groove potential, it's got a fun little beat (even if it repeats for entirely too long :v) , but it's a very flat song dynamically which is really too bad. Good try, friend from 16 years ago :)

    Agreed on all points :) I'm just bummed it's been so long and no one else has submitted anything from the Bonk series... don't let this be the only one!

    OC ReMix Unveils Revolutionary New 3-Value Genre Classification System!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    You've asked for it...

    Repeatedly...

    And we've waited until the time was right and until we had the technology & taxonomy to do things PROPERLY...

    OC ReMix is proud to announce that all ReMixes will now be classified by genre according to an innovative & intuitive three-value classification system!

    No more frustrating searches for VGM arrangements that fit your mood, poking around aimlessly in the absence of a comprehensive label that sums up anything & everything one could possibly say about a given song... those days are over. Likewise, we don't want to overburden you with tons of genres like "acid psy-trance happy two-step trap drumstep" that don't mean anything to you.

    . No, we've distilled our entire genre classification system into three values that we think will cater to almost all of your needs. As Lincoln famously said, you can make some of the people happy all of the time, or all of the people happy some of the time, but you can't make all of the people like dubstep. He was way ahead of his time.

    But we digress; after a series of intensive focus groups, many internal discussions, and extensive field testing, we will be labeling ALL mixes according to the following three genre values:

    1. Techno

    2. Possibly Techno

    3. Probably Not Techno (Maybe)

    We feel that this trio of options succinctly captures, with minimal loss of fidelity, the breadth & depth of music on OCR. With 3,000 mixes in genres that might otherwise be described as rock, metal, jazz, classical, hip-hop, funk, ambient, and of course EDM, the variety can get overwhelming. Therefore, using advanced algorithms and pseudo-neuroanalysis, we were able to get to the bottom line and eliminate the vast majority of confusing, extraneous options.

    Here's an example - you can now find this information on EVERY SINGLE MIX:

    ocremix-genres.jpg

    NOTE: We've included red arrows in this screenshot to help highlight the new genre feature, in addition to yellow highlighting, to help enhance the focus & draw the eye. These arrows won't appear on the actual HTML web pages, but the yellow highlighting will.

    For more detail, we are providing the following definitions to guide you in the utilization of this exciting new feature:

    • "Techno" - A ReMix that is techno. May or may not also be manga.
    • "Possibly Techno" - A ReMix that is possibly techno, but also might not be.
    • "Probably Not Techno (Maybe)" - A ReMix that is probably not techno, but we can't rule it out entirely.

    Please remember that this feature is in BETA; we anticipate feedback and are seeking any input you can provide as to how we might further refine this list into only two options or, ideally, a single value.

    Please use this thread for feedback, suggestions, etc.

    The song that made you want to remix

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Well, what made me think about music from an arrangement perspective in the first place was high school band - hearing the individual part & section writing for a composition, working it over ad infinitum in class, etc. really gives you an appreciation for the nuts and bolts, and (in my case at least) makes you wanna tinker with them.

    That being said, the title theme to Phantasy Star III will always be one of my favorites, and it stuck with me from the day I beat the game to the day I started OCR.

    OCRemixUpdater

    in Site Issues & Feedback

    Posted

    We're cool with it... if you intend for others to use it, however, it might be better hosting it with source intact on github or something with more transparency - I can't speak for many, but downloading Java apps from random sources (mediafire links, etc.) isn't something I'd consider safe.

    As a side note, SOME DAY we'll have an official API, at which point we would prefer (and eventually even insist) that it be used instead of any scraping methods. In general, we don't want folks scraping the site, for any reason whatsoever. However, in this case the application in question has a specific focus & limited scope, and protections in place to prevent server load, etc., so we're cool with it!

    *NO* Pokémon X 'POKÉMOTION'

    in Judges Decisions

    Posted

    I'll put it out there that I'm not sure why we should care whether the audio was sampled vs. recreated. What matters is how conservative the arrangement is

    A couple reasons:

    1. Direct sampling of audio carries with it different copyright implications re: derivative works...
    2. It speaks to the amount of effort involved - even if recreating a passage verbatim results in material that is unacceptable by our standards, we do know that effort went into AVOIDING direct sampling of audio... this doesn't necessarily hold a huge sway over the judgment, but it's akin to using extensive presets and loops that end up comprising a major percentage of the arrangement.

    "As I worked, I felt this piece needed a larger sound that the sample could not provide. I re-programmed the piano line via MIDI, and sent it through Kontakt's a beautiful concert grand piano instrument. After that, the mix grew almost on it's own."
    Here are the results of our analysis, with A/B comparisons:

    The first two examples are A/Bing between the submission and the original (beat-matched), and it's downright seamless.

    UPDATE 2015-03-25: While unwilling to send us his project file, which would have provided a more conclusive look at the piano part in question, Chris did send us a short video displaying a quantized piano part, running through Kontakt, in the context of the larger Ableton Live project.

    Kris and I believe we can hear, at the VERY end of this mix, some doubled-up notes, where the original piano part and potentially a quantized part coincide and there's a kind of phase cancellation effect. It's extremely subtle, but that's what it sounds like it could be... None of this changes the fact that, in the above A/B comparisons, you can clearly hear how the piano line is essentially verbatim from the original. The part that Chris illustrated in his video was quantized, but the attacks of each chord in the original are not. Had the quantized part that Chris added been loud enough to actually hear, the phase cancellation effect observable at the end of the piece would have been more noticeable throughout. In other words, if there's indeed a programmed Kontakt piano part being layered in this mix, it is mixed VERY low and is essentially obscured past recognition or substantial effect. If it were prominent enough to actually hear, then the A/B comparisons linked above wouldn't be seamless at all - there'd be a noticeable change in piano timbre when switching between the mix and the beat-matched source. This is what alerted us to a potential concern regarding the artist's claims about the mix, and it remains true.

    Nevertheless, I had written some words here that were too aggressive in construing this situation as involving intentional deception. For this I apologize. It remains unclear to me why we would have been expected to hear the effect of such a piano part, which is essentially completely obscured by the sample of the original recording, but it is entirely possible and even probable that this was simply a miscommunication and not any sort of misdirection. I alone made a bad faith assumption that was ultimately unnecessary & counterproductive, and again I express my regret for this assertion.

    The mix still fails to pass OC ReMix standards, primarily due to the extensive reliance on sampled material that well exceeds our threshold for how much of arrangement we want to be coming directly from the submitting artist.

    Discussion: Faithful Remixes and OC ReMix

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I like both types of arrangements, for the record. Here are my personal opinions, which more or less echo the thinking behind our site standards:

    • If a ReMix is on the liberal side of things, I still want to be able draw lines and hear how the source was taken in a new direction. I don't mind having to do a little work to make that happen, as I appreciate arrangers being both creative & "crafty" in re-purposing things - that's part of the art of arrangement.
    • If a ReMix is on the conservative side of things, I still want to hear that the arranger thought about each decision s/he made with regard to tempo, chord progression, structure, instrumentation, etc. If those are all identical or there are large swaths that are identical, I have to ask: Where was the arrangement? What decisions were made? Making the decision to keep an individual component intact, verbatim, is a PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE choice, but it still needs to be a choice, not a foregone conclusion... if tempo, progression, AND structure are all left intact verbatim, there are two possibilities: the arranger thought about each of those aspects at length and decided that, for their specific vision, they needed to remain the same... or the arranger didn't think about them at all. Usually you CAN tell, because of other aspects of the arrangement that come into play as far as addition/subtraction, interpretive performances, melodic modifications, etc. This delineation is nevertheless one of the most subjective and challenging aspects of evaluating submissions. It is not our job to read the minds of submitting artists and divine the thought process involved, but we DO have to be able to analyze whether there's interpretation going on, and to what extent.

    I object to the word "faithful" in the topic title - it's the "glass half full" adjective to describe near-verbatim arrangements. The "glass half empty" adjective would be "lazy"... :)

    I'd object to that adjective too, though, because it's not a glass half full/empty situation... if arrangement is conservative or, in extreme cases, almost verbatim, I don't think of it as a question of "fidelity" or "faithfulness" to the original, nor do I think of it as pure laziness on the part of the artist involved (unless they are explicitly claiming otherwise - that they really "made it their own"). It's just an inquiry that speaks to suitability for being posted on OCR, where we explicitly value arrangements that are interpretive to a certain extent, because we DO want artists to make it their own...

    *NO* Pokémon X 'POKÉMOTION'

    in Judges Decisions

    Posted

    Let's resolve this conclusively...

    As I worked, I felt this piece needed a larger sound that the sample could not provide. I re-programmed the piano line via MIDI, and sent it through Kontakt's a beautiful concert grand piano instrument. After that, the mix grew almost on it's own.

    Comparing with the audio... is it being used verbatim, or has the piano been re-programmed? The guitar and strings, ditto?

    Let's get scientific here :)

    To me, it sounds like the original isn't JUST sped up, but that the actual timings are altered... however, this CAN be done w/ variaudio and time-stretching, etc.

    BETTER CALL SAUL... err... zircon. Let's see what he thinks. Reopening. All artist claims should be dealt with in good faith, trust but verify, etc.

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