Disco Dan

it filled my winamp EQ like a porn star fillin-- nevermind. it was loud, yes. DC

if your gut tells you no, go with it. Remember, you and I have very different tastes in music. DC

wow nice download speeds. 360k/s Wow, this is a marked improvement from the Guardian Legend remix from a while ago. I'm liking the layering technigues... I'm feeling a bit ripped off, but that's probably more of a coincidence than anything real. Granted, I'm still waiting for something I recognize from the game. Oh there it is. Nice I don't know. I um... this feels weird. I actually like this. I honestly never would have thought to do this like it is done here. Granted I'm not exactly sure how close it is to the original... hmm I guess I'll go get the original while I'm just sitting here pretending to work. I mean, the melody is the same, exactly, but I don't know about the accompanying parts. But this mix feels really good in my earhole. Solid sound, solid constructoin, some semblance of an ending, and honestly, because of the speed and the brevity of the melody, I don't feel it's too repetitive here. Anyway, it's got my vote: YES I promise not to make this a habit. Sorry about this. DC

I think I needed prot's help to figure out what I was feeling. Here's the thing. With DKC and DKC2 (not sure about DKC3, haven't heard it) music, a LOT of it has already been done in very high-quality format. It could use some EQ'ing here and there and some bitrate increases, but for the most part, you can listen to a Donkey Kong Country OST just fine without feeling like it needs to be redone in a better fashion. Now, if this remix had been of an 8-bit tune it would be a helluva lot more impressive. (which is what I tend to stick with so that people don't complain about sound quality... MUHAHAHAHA) As a remix of a 16-bit song, and especially one from the DKC games which had exceptionally high quality music for the time, I can't say it's up to snuff. So, sorry, I'm gonna have to say: NO Though I do love eastern Europe... DC

I'm actually kind of flattered. You have one post count and it's for a positive review of my song. Really. (For once, I'm not being sarcastic here). Anyway, There's an update available at: http://jonx.net/~discodan/misc/updates/Megaman%203%20-%20Intro%20-%20Blue%20Lightning.mp3 Dig. Thanks for the compliments. DC

Why do tripod and angelfire always want me to save mp3s as mpeg files? is this some sort of conspiracy with Microsoft to endorse Mplayer??? oh well. If this is as as bad as DC13 makes it out to sound, it probably won't matter what I play it in... er... Hmm... some white people just shouldn't rap. Actually, some black people shouldn't rap too. Too much maniac mansion original. There's ... ok, I'm not really sure what this has to do with the original, besides the music playing in the background which IS the original. Hmm.. Let me clarify: NO I guess what I'm not sure about is why this didn't get a straight rejection letter.... DC

I DO understand what it's like to not have access to the best of sounds... Though there are ways to make things sound good using whatcha got. For instance, that harmonica panned to the left sounds very dry compared to the über-delay-drenched music box and some of the other sounds. Oh, there ARE crickets in this mix. Actually the sax doesn't bother me so much. And there is variety from one section to the next. I'm torn on this one. I'll listen again later and decide.

OMG, I want to hear A-Ha sing over this-- wait, what's that guitar? Nevermind. No operatic 80's singing for you! This song seems very centered in the stereo field. Also pretty short. The drums I like. Some of the sounds are not so poorly chosen. The ideas contained are not bad ideas considering how they are used. However, the ending is piss-poor. Maybe even poo-poor. I don't know. But I can't abide by that. End your songs dammit! NO DC BTW, many of my submissions have had bad id3 tags on them. It's not intentional, but so far I haven't gotten any complaints from the pretz about it (not that I plan to do this to spite him, but people CAN be forgetful... actually I have no other mode.)

I don't know if any of you have heard the album "She" by Harry Connick Jr. but it's my absolute favorite of his. It's done in a very funky style with all sorts of things that you would never expect in a Harry Connick Album. At points this song reminds me of this song called "Booker" from that album. Also reminds me a bit of Satriani work from Surfing With the Alien, but only at parts.... Anyway.... damn. This has a good bit of potential, and I sort of hate to say no to it because of that, but there are some definite sonically unpleasing aspects about this song that push it to the NO line for me: 1) clipping. (If anyone listens very closely to my "Blue Lightning" mix, you might notice faint clipping at one point, but I'm not going to tell you where, though if you guess the time correctly, I'll tell you if you're right.) This isn't a MAJOR fault in this song because it IS during a heavy guitar part and that can be expected sometimes in those parts, but normalization is your friend (along with compressor). 2) sloppy panning and cutting. Some of this seems intentional, but I can hear where reverb gets cut out because of the clipping at times. I'm not sure what kind of set up you have there, but I'm pretty sure there's got to be a better way to record guitar and edit it apart from the song so as not to end up with these unsightly cut/paste spots. 3) transitions. Well, really there's only one. It occurs at 3:00. Although this kind of ties back into my second point. I think it's just kind of sloppy. I don't honestly know how much of this can be redone (I would hope you kept the guitar audio as a separate file), but with some touching up to make it cleaner, it'd get a yes from me. However, in its current form: NO DC

Though this isn't always the case, I think most instrumental songs need more than one lead throughout the songs. Also if your idea of lengthening a song includes repeating the same section over again with no variety at all, it lends itself to sounding too repetitive. The exception to that rule is when the part being repeated is short enough that it can stand to be repeated more than usual. I do like the variety between about 2:30 and 2:55. But everything seems too cookie cutter to me. With the exception of that syncopated submelody sound that fades in and out, this mix is pretty darn close to the original (I couldn't find an nsf, so I actually had to play the game to hear this music... what a pain in the ass game). I think more could be done with the percussion, and maybe add another layer or two. honestly, it sort of feels like one of those demo reels you hear where not all the parts are there. I'm all for minimalism, but this is a bit too minimal... NO DC

I don't know why I always feel the need to defend myself, but here goes anyway. The date for creation on my file, metalman.mid is: Friday, May 04, 2001 10:17:28 PM The post date for AE's Metalman is: 2001-06-15 (I don't know when the file was actually created on his HD) I had started this mix about a month before hearing AE's mix. And actually if the old forums were still around (which is what was around when this mix was posted) you'd see that I addressed this in my review, stating something to the effect of "weird, I've started a metalman mix that begins exactly the same way." Now, as a few of you know, I've recently been going back and updating my old mm3 and mm2 mixes with newer, cleaner, more 'professional' sounding samples, and so the metalman you hear on this site is (in regards to the notes used) the same metalman mix I wrote back then, but with better sounds. So in all reality, the most probable case is (seeing as AE and I hadn't spoken up to that point, and I certainly wasn't on his "have this person review my WIP" list) that AE and I, after hearing the same original song, had the same idea for initial inspiration. Granted we took it, from that point on, in two very different directions, but the initial inspiration for that creepy solo saw effect was exactly the same. And as for our styles as a whole, I'd have to say that AE and I differ significantly. AE plays with the melody much more than I do. He cuts his songs to a degree far above my beat-breaking calibre. He takes the song in directions that I wouldn't dare, and if you're looking for a standard break down of his songs, it's like this, (ith the exception of "With the Quickness"): Intro, melody (maybe repeat), percussion breakdown (lots of beat splicing and dicing), return of melody and outro. I'm more traditional with my methods of varying including layering and isolating parts, and sometimes soloing a part, but I generally don't do as much with a song as AE does. Anyway, hope that cleared things up. DC

um, I'm wondering if maybe you listened to a different spc than I just did, because this "remix" is pretty much notated the exact same way down to the drums. The only difference would be the instruments used, and even THAT doesn't vary much. All the guitar work is samples, which isn't bad, I don't use live instruments in my performances, but it also means that I can't fall back on the "well at least it's performed well" line, because it's just sequenced notes. Oh well. Too much like the original. WAY too much like the original NO DC

working link would be nice. Maybe you could host temporarily, t-bone? His mp3 is not being found on that site. Maybe it's the time of day... DC

one whole minute intro of completely unarranged vg goodness. nice. NO Nice guitar work, but it's just so weak other than that one aspect. DC

Yeah. Definitely got some problems with the mixing here... starting at ... well DC13 pretty much summed it up... which is strange. I feel weird echoing him. GRR this makes me want to say YES just to be different! No, I kid. This is just pretty sloppy overall. And the drums should definitely be EQ'd in the same fashion as the rest of the song. Honestly the ending doesn't bother me so much, but it seems to come too soon on the heels of a song with very little development. Sorry. NO DC

Well, this song sounds really good to me. But only as a song. I kept waiting for the metroid to kick in. and yeah it did in that middle part starting at 2:00 but that was pretty much the same as the game. If I were you, I'd cut out the middle part, come up with something more original for the beginning and end parts, cut the little voice over with "the last metroid is in captivity" and market it as an original instead of a remix. NO DC

Tomb Raider had music?!? DC

When I get to a song that's already been torn apart I usually start to feel sorry for the guy and tend to be like "well at least it's got such and such" and while I kind of like where this song is GOING, I honestly feel it could use a few things: 1) a back beat. Yes, I know it's orchestral, but it would REALLY fit in well if you had some sort of breakbeat/industrial thing going on really heavy (not to outweigh the music but to blend perfectly (yes I realize this takes time)) 2) maybe if this song went somewhere. Like, maybe if it didn't sound like an intro to a full song 3) they're right about variety. There IS variety at :49 on, but since the song is more than half over at that point, it seems kind of moot... Anyway, these are the only things I can think of for now. Please, in the future, put more stuff in there. Thanks, but NO DC

This is like smooth jazz... no wait, it is, without any real jazz theory. No wait there's a little there... I just heard a few real jazz chords. The difference between jazz with and without theory is (and this has nothing to do with how the person thinks, it has to do with the end product) that jazz that has some theory base (or just got lucky in the creation process) generally SOUNDS like jazz, whereas the other stuff you can tell seems just "a bit off" or something... Anyway, this is actually very close, except I'd need to hear the original to see if that's in there as well. Hmm... guess I'll go check out the original. I'll give about half credit because some of those chords ARE in the original and some seem to be original, so good job on that. I don't know. Great, I have to download it again because the cache expired or something... Well that was fun Ok, so yeah, I guess this pretty much is gonna get a yes, despite the fact that it bores me to death. Oh what am I talking about. The drums being a standard smooth-jazz loop plus there's really not much variation there in the percussion... though the other parts are very well varied, and the improv is good. Fuck it. You get a yes despite your über-crappy beats. YES I'm only leaning towards yes because of the amount of time that was put into the improv piano and jazz guitar parts. For sequencing, it's a lot better than most of the "jazz" stuff I've heard on this site. And when those fake strings come in later, it's a nice effect. I must admit I started to head-bob for just a few... I feel so dirty.... anyway, congrats, you beat my conscience. DC

Well while that other song is downloading, I guess I'll listen to this one while I'm waiting. Wow... this is like playing one of those old dos games, with FM sound. No wait, drums. I hope they're good. Well they certainly keep my interest. I have no idea what this is based on, and I just don't feel like.... wtf is that... Right around 1:55... hey. Great atonal music. Nice to have some noise on the site with all that boring tonal music running around. How about we get some sense of pitch and key here. Nice drums, but the rest pretty much kills it for me. That "hey let's make it sound like two different songs in two different keys are playing at the same time" thing really grates. I hear a lot of djs on the radio that do this kind of crap and it annoys the hell out of me. Ok, they've got a nice sense of rhythm, but their sense of tonality is absolutely AWFUL. Anwyay, as I was saying... NO DC

Yes. Why did all the GOOD piano arrangements wait til now to get submitted? ok, some wrong notes. Actually, the arrangement isn't specTACular like that other one on the panel. But it's varied and interesting, and though the recording quality isn't great, there's only so much you can do live on a small budget... which is why I sequence! Anyway, yeah this is much better than some of the other mediocre piano crap on the site. Well thought out, varied, though maybe it's exactly like the original, I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired, but this gets my vote. DC

Ok, first of all, rename this "Chopin's Library" and I'll be ok with it. Because this is not NEARLY dissonant enough to be Scriabin. But.... compared to the other mediocre piano arrangements we've let in, such as mp's ffvi track, and the klutz's ct and ffvii tracks, this is pretty damn well arranged. See, I'd say "get a better recording, but I'm not sure if this was live or not. And if it WAS live, the complications behind trying to do this a second time are just too much and I'd say "fuck it" if I were you. So I'm going to say yes because the arrangement of this piece is just so much better than most of the other piano crap on this site. YES DC

I'm pretty much gonna have to mirror prot's views on this one. I mean, I don't HAVE to, but I feel the same. The drums are a nice touch. Very industrial "Tears for Fears" sound, but the rest seems way off. Notes are out of sync. This cou.... hmm. I think I know how this was done. Sounds like it was board sequenced. Like, that would explain the bad rhythm, AND the good beat. I wonder... Anyway, drums are good, nice and full of reverb, but everything else sounds dry in comparison. And the out of sync notes are gonna have to get straightened out. Try quantizing. Might work, who knows. Until then: NO DC

Wizardry 'Medieval Magic' First impressions: High quality samples. Not sure how much is different from the original as far as notation goes, but what I hear I like... glad I used "save target as" on this one. The intro reminds me a bit of Monkey Island for some reason, maybe it's just the instrumentation. Ok, this is really a creative mix. Some one else say something good about this, because it sounds really cool and I can't think of anything else original to say about it. A little more variety might have been nice, I can easily hear a solo going over this music, but on the positive side, this mix DOES have an ending. A REAL one. DC

Actually that trance lead is standard in most of these trance songs and it breaks down like thus: The trance lead is made up of 3 or more saw leads. The middle one is usually in tune, but the other two are usually detuned up and down from the middle one, so it's essentially three saw waves detuned from each other, so yes, it IS out of tune, but I think the idea is that with three different saw waves and one of them IN tune that they'll cancel each other out. Took me forever to get this to sound "stereotypical" though. But yeah, your ears aren't deceiving you, it IS out of tune, in BOTH directions. Anyway, hope that clears something up. DC