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Disco Dan

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Everything posted by Disco Dan

  1. So you're like 40 now, but you've got 40 really good years. Wishing you the best and hoping for another 40 or so years to come!
  2. This thread is lame. Ahh, life before responsibility. I get nostalgic sometimes.
  3. Impressive. This is actually a really solid mix. My only complaint would not be the quality of the piano/string instruments, but their volume. I can barely hear the beginning and end of the song, and then the middle is quite loud. But quite good, too. The whole middle section, I loved. Not a huge fan of the slower parts, but one kind of gets over that with a varied, jumpin' midsection like this had.
  4. I think any artist would be lying if he said he didn't care what the public thought of his works, so I won't pretend to be any different. That being said, I can say: Wow. Thanks for the reviews! It's been a long time since I've had that slightly-inflated ego feeling! And I'd like to respond to a few of your remarks, so I will. It kind of hit me while writing this, that it would make sense to build up and then drop into the original sounds, but I couldn't bring myself to just sample it, so I had to try and emulate it. I STILL couldn't quite get that synth-harp sound that they use for the bass line in the original soundtrack, but I guess it was close enough. I'm glad people notice the details! THIS is really good to hear, because you know, when I'm working on something, if I play it back enough times, it starts to sound ok to me, even if I wasn't sure originally. So to hear that other people "got it", so to speak, makes me happy. I beamed a little bit when I read that! Yeah I wasn't sure how to go about it, BUT, there is a 192kbps version here: Donkey Kong Country Riptide OC ReMix.mp3 I kept the tags and file name the same, so I hope that doesn't add confusion. If it does... well... too bad. Oh, and this made me laugh: Thanks!
  5. I have this habit. If I'm going to do an arrangement of a theme, I see what's already been done with it, to make sure I don't cover old ground. And if it's been covered, then I have to make sure I cover it better. Or more thoroughly. Or with astroturf. Anyway, I may or may not be working on an arrangement of this same theme, so I came to the OCR archives to see what existed, so as to not duplicate any efforts. So I found this mix and the previously mentioned Techtris TypeZ mix covering the Type B music. Now see, I never had a gameboy (Sure, I played my friends' Gameboys from time to time, but I didn't play Tetris. I mean, what was the point? I had Tetris at home on the NES. And that was bigger. And in color. Sure the gameboy was portable, but I was in 3rd grade when this came out, so if I wasn't at home, I was probably at school, where Gameboys and walkmans were confiscated) but the Tetris that I had had 3 themes you could choose from. Type A was "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" by Tchaikovsky, Type B was the music (basically) remixed here, and Type C was this ethereal atmospheric chill tune with a weird time signature. The Korobeiniki theme that's USually associated with Tetris wasn't even on the NES version I had. In any case, I always prefered this theme, though I don't know that I could explain why. Maybe because the Nutcracker Suite sounds much better orchestrated, I don't know. However, this remix. Yes. The topic of this post. It is VERY well produced, albeit a bit short and abrupt. I know, 4 minutes is longer than most songs played on the radio, but with the build up time (foreplay), we don't reach the melody (coitus) until nearly halfway through. Then the climax (orgasm) comes near the very end, and leaves no room for the regression (cuddling) that would usually complement the rest of the work. In addition, I have the same qualm that a previous reviewer had: I think the obvious answer to the question of why this has occurred is because both remixers used the faultily transcribed midi file. HERE is what the original "B" theme sound like. It's not quite the same as this arrangement. Actually, they're considerably different. Anyway, the remix as a standalone song, is a rather enjoyable piece of trance/dance/etc music, but the shortcomings are the abruptness and the lack of accuracy with the melody. It's like hearing that your favorite book is being made into a movie, only to watch the movie and discover that it doesn't quite interpret the book properly. You watch the movie thinking "No, that's not right, that character dies in the book." I listen to the song, and it gets to the melody and my brain starts humming along with it, except my brain knows the melody, and I find that the notes aren't matching. It's a bit like hitting pot holes in the road on an otherwise nice drive. Bittersweet, really. Anyway, yes. Great quality, just work on the other stuff. That is all.
  6. I was going through my "temporary mp3" folder tonight with the intentions of deleting and organizing files because, like my room, it's a mess. When I was judging remix submissions, I'd forget to delete the tracks after voting on them, so that made up a good deal of it too. ANYway, I stumbled upon this track while weeding out the crap, and was pleasantly surprised. It's very unassuming, and sticks pretty much exclusively to the original, but I couldn't help thinking that I had no idea what I would do to make it better, because it seems perfect as it is. It's one of those songs that gives me chills. Noice work!
  7. But in all seriousness, my issues with this song have already been brought up: tuning, precision, lack of dynamics, incoherence of the middle section, sudden cliff-drop ending. These, I feel, outweigh the pros, and push it over the line for me. The recording quality is not bad enough that it's an issue for me. It's the other issues that put it in this category. So I reiterate my earlier vote of NO. Not awful, but not great. D
  8. OH! Like John Cage! Or something ... I don't know. It's not BAD. Not really my STYLE, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the fact that work WAS put into it. Unfortunately, though, at times it sounds like someone was throwing down notes and beats randomly and didn't really have a good idea of what it was going to sound like when played back. But there are other parts that indicate a semblance of musical knowledge. Random, but I'm gonna give it a YES. D
  9. YES This song will do great to put me to sleep at night! Oh wait. There is volume now. Hark. I hear an increase of velocity. Quite well done, actually. I can't tell if it's live or not. The ambience is convincing, though I've heard some really good samples, soundfonts and plug-ins that can mimic that same sound reeeeeeeeeeeally well. Either way, it's played live, i.e. it's not sequenced. So for that, you have bonus points from me, so... Oh wait, I already voted. D
  10. Nice samples! Actually, they're not all THAT bad. But given their use, I'm reminded of a Blue Mountain E-Greeting card. I'm sorry. That's the driving force behind my NO. The arrangement isn't spectacular, but it's not awful either. I can't tell what's from the source material and what's original to this mix. Also it's ... very short lived. Ok I already voted. Enough chat. D
  11. I like the beat. I will not lie. It turns me on. And on and on and on. Etc. Not so much a fan of the synth leads. They seem really runny and muddy. As has been said, not much in the harmony area. Pretty much bass and lead. And the repetition is actually getting to me. And I can take quite a bit of repetition. NO D
  12. The thing that bothers me about this mix is that it never settles on one thing for more than a few bars at a time. Well, not really until 1:30 or so. But there is also some evidence of "one knowing what to do with notes." My only other complaint would be that only the second half of the original song is really included in this mix. The first half being only played with in the first 20 seconds or so. I'm quite torn on this one, but I'm gonna go with a YES for the original work and energy that is created with this song. And the pad work is decent. Yeah. Neat. D
  13. Not really jazz like the Duke, and not really "smooth jazz" (a misnomer if ever there was one) either. It's a bit more unstructured than classical jazz in that, while it comes together as a whole very well, it seems most of the time as if the individual players were doing their own thing instead of playing as parts of a whole, more like a jazzy jam session than a song. However, it's not quite to the point of being Phish on dramamine. It's not really my cup of tea, to be honest. While I appreciate the performance skills of the players involved, the piece as whole doesn't keep my attention. This would be something I would enjoy more in a live setting where the experience of being there makes ordinary music more exciting. As a whole it bores me, but there is no doubt that the players are capable of playing exceptionally well. And as Ellington once said "It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing." D
  14. For the record, neither McV nor myself were aware of the others' intentions of remixing zelda 3 pieces. And I'm glad we weren't. Because this is quite beautiful and haunting. McV has never had trouble picking instruments that sound right together and then writing GOOD parts for them, and this is no exception. Nice time signature changes also. From 4/4 to 5/4 to 3/4 to 6/4. And I only wish I had beaten this game more recently, 'cause I don't recognize that ending theme for the life of me. Beautiful regardless. A seamless mix of styles. Awesome ending. I feel like I'm not saying exactly what I'm meaning here, so I'll cut it short. But seriously. Great work Vaf. Glad to see you've still got time to sound awesome! D
  15. Often I feel obligated to add something new to the reviews before saying Yea or Nay, but in this case, I'm going to stick with a simple NO for the reasons already stated. D
  16. ReFX Slayer. And not used very well. Everything else has been said already. NO D
  17. Jazz sometimes seems to many like "any music that has a few dissonant notes in it to make it sound different," or "all music that has a certain instrument set." I think this falls into the first of those statements, with a touch of the latter. Maybe I'm just being picky that the title calls the song "jazz" and yet I've heard maybe 2 jazz chords in the song. In addition, the encoding is fairly bad. It almost reminds me of music I'd hear when turning the TV on to the community channel, right before turning on the VCR 'cause it's set for channel 3. This is due partially to style, but a lot to the encoding and mastering 'cause it sounds like it's coming out of a TV with little to no stereo or bass. NO D
  18. Very nice sounds. VERY nice dynamics. I'm torn. It DOES have some of the best dynamics of any piece on this site, but it lacks a lot of compositional innovation. I'm going to have to come back to this, and hope that everyone else voted before I do, so that I can relieve myself of responsibility. D
  19. it's like... OVERCLOCKED REMIX PRESENTS: EINHÄNDER E-GREETINGS!! D
  20. I'm picking up distortion all the way through this song. For the majority of the time, actually. And as far as sound quality has come these days, this general midi set isn't going to do it for me. I don't think it would be that hard to find some higher quality samples to replace the ones used. The lead is fine, but mainly because that's a synth anyway. Sound quality aside, the distortion is killing me. It could be an illusion though. The more I listen, the more I'm wondering if it's the distorted reverb on that snare rimshot that's creating that distortion sound at the top of the spectrum. I still can't tell. Oh well. NO D
  21. seeing as I've already posted twice, I'll post again. I don't know about the validity of the first 3 votes seeing as they're basing it on the idea that the remix is too close to the original. I'd like to get the opinions of some people with more musical training before locking the thread. D
  22. after listening a second time, I can see a SIMILAR motive in the original as in this remix, and while it has nearly the same rhythmic values, the notes are different. The melody has been altered to the point where you could sell this as an original and never have to worry about being sued for copyright infringement. So, once again. Very very very nice work, BUT, comma, it's way too original. D
  23. What is there to remix in this?? It's like... trying to remix something by debussy. I think I hear one motive from the original here. But it's distorted quite a bit. I'm having trouble accepthing this as an arrangement of the original. Though I love the quality of the sounds used and love this as a piece. It's quite beautiful and haunting. I'm just having difficulty placing it with the original. Great original, but until I can figure out or someone else can point out where the original and this coincide, I'm gonna have to give it a no. Put this on an original album though. It's good stuff. NO D
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