GrayLightning

Be glad you guys aren't paying $200 every year for Cubase upgrades.

I heard this several weeks ago and I feel exactly with what zyko said. To me this brings up the age-old policy debates we've had, especially this year. What do you do when you get ify material with either amazing singing or amazing rap? Certainly vocals are an integral part of pieces of this nature and they should serve as positives or important elements that can aid the mix. But do we give too much credit to such mixes? If every average mix had stellar vocals (singing or rap) would that push them above our bar? These are some of the questions we have to grapple with. With that context perspective out of the way, I'm borderline on this mix. I think zyko hit the nail on the head "the idea is fantastic. for the first minute, maybe and then its just the same beat repeating." The vocals are of course incredible. Good drumwork throughtout, but I think the piece generally is pretty simplistic. There's this groove going on and not much else for most of the mix. Though a bit jarring, I actually enjoyed the metal section. Sure the guitars aren't super fancy, but I think they're passable. I'd like the first half to be addressed in terms of adding more elements, making it less repetitive and the second half's section tweaked in terms of the concept. Having listened/voted on several of Larsec's stuff I've noticed some inconsistencies. Sometimes this guy is capable of amazing work, sometimes it's just weaksauce. But more towards this context, I think sometimes he tends to focus too much on the vocals while leaving the supporting elements of the mix for dead. Though in this case, I think this is probably the best I've heard of him in trying to bridge the two. But, I'd still like less dependence on just the great vocals you have at your disposal. The vocalist, I should note again, if I haven't prior, is amazing. She really does make this mix. This is tough. The more I listen to this over the last few weeks, the more I'm tempted to borderline YES, but I can't in good conscience. Not yet anyway. I'm going with my gut with a NO.

I thought FL upgrades were free?

Congrats everyone! Mythril did an awesome job running this project. Even if it did take an eon to finish.

Been loving this tasty mix for a while now. Love the use of the percussion and fx to highlight the mix. The ending will get you everytime. Splendid work Dan.

I was starting to wonder whatever happened to beatdrop. First some minor complaints: When there's so many loud elements as this mix has, there's always the possibility of the wall of sound and cluttered sections and indeed this mix has some of those problems, but in this case they'd probably be nitpicking. I think there's too much high frequencies here personally, a lot of the sounds are overly bright. I wish there were more instrumental or compositional aspects in the middle frequencies that could have sat in between the drums, lead, bottom end. I don't care for the lead too much either. A little too brittle for my tastes...but Slight gripes aside, this is very well put together and has a distinct quality in the level of polish. There's also a good amount of energy running through the mix, which for this style of music is key. Cool. YES

I'm very borderline on this mix, because the arrangement is great and interpretive. I'm not too hung up on the genre labels, you can call it jazz, you can call it fufu or whatever. I don't really care. This is a lot more compositionally complex than some of the stuff we get and pass. But the execution and polish just isn't there. I agree the piano gets more and more overbearing by the end. If you're stuck with these recordings, then better mixing is in order here. I would reduce the piano, bring up the bass and sax levels. The sax does sound pretty poorly recorded. I'd like to see some better processing of the sounds to make them sound better, considering what you have to work with. Try some nice modulated delays or reverb on the sax, with a medium/long predelays. I am tempted to go against the grain with a borderline YES, but I have a few gripes that I'd like to see at the very least quickly addressed. I strongly suggest a resubmission. Sadly, a NO for now.

Wait, this has nothing to do with the coolest members of the Judge panel? Lightning and Larry, ok fine the cooler former and the lame latter. Quality as usual from weed. I thought the production and mixing here could be a bit tighter though. Personally would have did some tweaking on the guitar with some compression and EQ, but the arrangement is ACE and it more than makes up for the minor gripes I had. Keep in mind, as someone who has been listening to Zyko for 3 yrs now, I have high expectations. Good and enjoyable stuff weed. YES

Gotta disagree with Larry about it not being realistic in sequencing. Let me assure you how beyond difficult it is. Considering this, I think the mixer did an admirable job not only in the woodwind sequencing but everything as well. I don't think something this minimal would work unless you had live performers. In this context I'd really like to see more timing humanization in the sequence as well as some development in the sequencing and the concept. The production needs work, everything sounds a bit dull. I think you could do some eq'ing here to help give a richer sound. This needs more bottom end and more top end. I'd like to hear this with a full string ensemble backing up the flute and harp, personally. Like dan outside the problem areas mentioned, I too think the composition and arrangement is up to task. Frankly, I'm tempted to yes it as is now. But I'm going to go with the safer route of borderline NO. Please resubmit!

Corny is right, but this is really catchy. The arrangement is well done, the lyrics though cheesy really convey that quality time was spent on thinking this up and performing it to more than acceptable levels. Some parts were a bit too cliche for my taste, like the drum line. But overall this is a nicely thought out idea and pulled off very well. Very good work in putting this together. It's not the kind of thing I'd listen to, but I can easily appreciate the amount of work and creativity put into this. Without question, YES.

I love the rainmaker percussion sounds. This reminds me of a lot of new age music, I wonder if your arkenstone handle was an accident? But the problem here is the lack of instrumentation. You have a nice chill and pleasant listening atmosphere going on. But I think there's a very distinct lack of instrumentation and thus thin sound going on through the mix. The synth bells are particularly bright in my opinion. The mix in general could do with more reverb and delays. The change up in the middle section with guitar was great, I'd like to see you incorporate more of that in a resubmission, possibly more or throughout the latter parts of the mix. I too would like to hear a little more expansion in the harmonic/melodic sections as well as some more restructuring of the concept. Secondarily I think this is in sore need of pads to sit between the lead, bass and drums percussion. A good framework, but I'd like to hear some more substance included. This is a lot better than the first version you sent us. I think you can rework this some more and resubmit something of much higher quality. Please keep at it, you show promise. NO

Let me first complement you on putting this together. This is nicely composed and the various instrumentation, tempo changes and other compositional elements are nice. But sadly there is very little personal interpretation here. A lot of sections follow the path of the original. The structure, pacing and instrumentation is very similar for a majority of sections from the original. It does indeed sound like an upgrade to me as well. Please work on injecting your own concepts. I highly suggest you rework the structure, pacing, expand the harmonic and melodic sections and resubmit. But this as it stands sounds for the most part like a superficial upgrade. I agree with larry for the most part. NO Override

I agree this is interesting, certainly not something we see everyday. But I also agree that the source sounds like it's just a glaze for the mix. While the concept and composition is unique. I think this is severely lacking on many fronts. A lot of the mix is filled with wierd distorted noise, with nothing else. This is like super abstract minimalism. It's too sparse and too vacant for me for an OCR mix both in sonic terms and instrumental terms. I really like the metallic percussion sounds. Those are handled nicely, what is that (triangle?). Anyway the production was unsophisticated, and the samples here I thought were well bellow the bar as well. Some sounds were downright ugly with the cheap distortion. Interesting and unique, but there's way too many holes in here for me to consider it near or at the bar. NO

The intro alternatingly panned percussion rubbed me the wrong way - on headphones they kinda sound overbearing and annoying. I guess it's a minor gripe, but they got distracting during the less busier sections. Now that's out of the way, the arrangement here was put together very nicely. Nice synths, they really do go well with the context of this mix. Very good percussion and drumwork all around, except for the bit noted above. This is creative, and very nicely put together. Definitely the best I've heard from you. YES

This collab version is definitely a lot better sounding. I actually agree with harmony, shna and dan that the arrangement was neat, at the very least at least interpretive. To say anything more against that is personal opinion, and that's fine. My main beef of the mix, like zircon this is all high frequency sizzle. There's not enough attention paid to the lower and middle frequencies. Those high frequency percussion and lead though really kills the mix for me. Lazy, cheap ending though. While I like the arrangement for the most part, the mix felt flat and yeah it tended to drag on at some parts. I like this and almost want to yes it, but the presentation and execution could be worked on more. This needs more than superficial rework. NO

For one thing, this is over the size limit at 6,381,570 bytes. Sorry, we have to place a bar somewhere. More info at: http://www.ocremix.org/about/?artid=4 This is meandering, but the main problem of the mix is the execution on several levels in the composition, arrangement and production are just off. This definitely needs more attention paid to the low and high frequencies both in EQing and adding instruments that will supplement that. The guitar tone is very lofi. It definitely needs more shimmer. I do like the delay processing on them though. I would have dropped the rain sound effects during the guitar sections personally. They serve a stronger purpose during the mellower piano sections but during the guitar sections, I thought it wasn't that purposeful. This mix has a lot of fat, that I think could be cut out. It's too long as is. Focus on the meat of the mix then rethink the concept and composition and repolish the execution. Needs quite a bit of work in my opinion. Hope to hear more from you soon. NO

We normally don't accept mixes of this nature, because ultimately this early in the game, we don't know if this E3 music would be officially included in the game. In this case though, I don't have any source material to compare this with anyway, but the composition here needs some work. There was a lot of needless repetition that never evolved over the period of the mix. There's a lot of simplicity going on here throughtout as well. And the production is very lacking, it does sound like stock GM soundfont sounds. Outside the OCR standards context, I do want to say this is some pretty good stuff, especially for a blind person. Sometimes one just has to appreciate things for what it is, and I do appreciate this for what it is. I'm certain this took a lot of work and care to do and that does show. Good work in that regard. But the OCR standards are OCR standards and anything beyond that would just be background context. Keep making music though! Good luck. NO

Well, I'm not sure how tracktion works, but most rewire hosts can run more than 1 slave at a time. You should be able to run both madtracker, reason under tracktion at the same time. See if this works for you...Granted I'm sure it's not the same as using reason within madtracker.

Paige, you are one of a kind!

How would one launch Reason 2.5 as a ReWire slave in Madtracker 2.5.0? The first thing to determine is if Madtracker can act as a rewire host. Based on what it says on their page "Hook it up inside any ReWire host, and use MadTracker as an expansion with your current musical projects!" I can only assume by this that Madtracker, like reason acts as rewire slaves. You'd need a rewire host, like the free tracktion (or at least, it used to be).

I agree with what analoq said, this is most noteable in the intro parts of the mix. The first minute and half is just the same simple dance beat with some wierd voice fx that sounds like a chipmunk. I'm sorry, but this is not listenable outside the club. An ambient musician could in turn do a minute and half of one chord with some bird fx and use that as a justification. As I say a lot, there's a lot of fat here that could be trimmed, and not enough meat. Finally at the three minute mark something more substantial happens. I want to hear this shortened, more ornamented with instruments/compositional ideas. I have to say though, this mix as a whole was put together and executed well, but the lack of substance here, repetitiveness of the beats and grossly long length of the mix just sink this for me. NO

The problems already have been covered by the previous votes. Anything I say would just be overly repetitive. There's a lot of serious problems here in composition, production and execution. Please use our Works in Progress/Completed forum for feedback before submitting a mix. Keep working at it and don't get discouraged. NO

I was discussing this with DJP as he posted this to the panel. This is really way too straight forward an arrangement. Damn, I wish we got more suikoden material, better yet, more suikoden material that is passable. I'd love to pass this but, this has no major evolution in style, genre and concept for it to be considered an OCR mix. For various reasons, please don't consider the Suikoden 2 mix on the site as our arrangement benchmark either. What I'd like to see in this case is a lot more structural, harmonic, rhythmic or melodic expansions - even if you want to keep the ethnic flavor of the mix like the original that would be fine as long as something is changed. Most of this really just sounds like a sidegrade to the original. I do like how you put together this mix, and the percussion is nicely sequenced and goes well with the mix. Love the use and the rhythm of the ethnic hand drums, nice! Samples and production are ok generally. Please reinterpret the mix more and resubmit. NO

Hollah chz. Good of you to finally grace us with a joke mix. Now as far as this mix, The only bad news here is this is better than Toyota Disco. Now for the good news, NO.

This sounds way too crunchy and thin in the production department. For a groove oriented mix, that better be done well. The groove also better be hot. This doesn't have any hooks for me, sorry to say. The synths playing the lead and everything else not only sound poor, but overly crunchy. Not only does this need more compositional expansion, but it needs more compositional elements. This is very shallow in that regard. Good ideas here and there, but you gotta present them better bro. This needs a lot of work in my view, both in composition and production. Ending was also unsatisfying. Keep working at it and feel free to post your mixes in our WIP/Completed forum for more feedback in the future. NO