Beatdrop

Problem 1: I don't have a frickin' CLUE what the loud squelch could be, but the "click" noise followed by silence sounds like a case of extreme clipping. Try EQing and compressing EVERYTHING until it stops doing that. Problem 2: Before I could even fathom a guess, I'd need your system information (ie: processor speed, memory, OS, soundcard, etc.).

The sounds are passable, although they sound very unrealistic in comparison to their real-life versions, but that's to be expected unless you have LOTS of money to spend on very expensive soundfonts or gigasamples or whatever. This is why I try to avoid using strings in my songs (although I do have to sometimes). Arrangement is very nice. I'm not greatly familiar with the original in that I haven't heard it in a long time, but this song didn't bore me, so yay. It sounds to me as though a fair share of work went into this, with positive results, and based on the fact that worse songs have gone through and worse songs actually DO exist on OCR (worse by my opinion, of course), I'll give it a YES

Hmmm... yes, yes indeed, the arrangement is very nice. I like what you've done with the Endless Mine theme. HOWEVER, all of the percussion has GOT TO GO, because it's just downright yucky. Not so much the programming, but the sounds. They're really not good. And this probably should have been encoded at about 160 or so, because the little whisking sounds that are trademark of a song that needs a higher bitrate are really bugging the hell out of me. Also, this needs to be EQ'ed very badly. The fade ending works in this case, so yay. ALL IN ALL, fix up the drums, EQ it, and render it at a higher bitrate, and it earns a yes. NO

No... No... No... No... No... No... No... No! I think AP's and DC's posts pretty much sum up EVERYTHING that there is to be summed up. djp, you were right on the mark with your impression.

Actually, I think AntonioPizza's statement about how it's a test to see how to load a MIDI into FruityLoops is VERY accurate, in that this is a seemingly exact duplicate of the original, minus a few of the complexities, except with some FL samples dropped on top of all of the original sounds. And to think I was really excited when I first saw that there was a Corneria remix that needed judging NO

Very interesting... Things seem to be pretty well mixed, and I like the sounds used. The drums are very well programmed... nice work Transitions are smooth between the different songs, and the arrangement flows really well. Its sound gives me the feeling like it was recorded live, although I know it wasn't. I will say that, although the samples used aren't fantastic, they're used very well and they function well together. I do think you could have used a different snare, though... I absolutely love how easily everything in the song can be heard. Nothing is drowned out, and nothing stands too far out from anything else. Niiiiiiiice mixing. Only thing I really found to be painfully wrong was the ending. It was going, and GOING, and GOING, and then blah, dead. I'm not going to really hold it against you though, because the five minutes and fifty or so seconds preceding the ending were very cool. YES

It's about... *checks watch* 3 months late, but that isn't a reason to reject a song. The sleighbells really shouldn't go on throughout the ENTIRE song, although they are the only percussion in there. The guitar sounds like crapola, and I think it's a default FL sample (perhaps I'm wrong), but it's not bad enough that I'd say "NO" based on that alone. All in all, this song is pretty boring. The flute and choral pads, like Coma said, are nice, but I found myself yawning a whole lot while listening to this. The ending was nice... unoriginal, but nice. Mmmmmmmmm.... I'm gonna have to go with NO

Hmmmmm... this is a toughie. It's actually enjoyable to some extent, but there's a LOT of reverb, and that makes some of the sounds a bit hard to hear. The arrangement isn't that hot, and could use some work to make it more interesting, but there were aspects I really enjoyed about it all, such as the break at about 1:49. The drums do seem to have a rather strong tone to them that clashes with everything else a bit, but I don't think that really hurts anything too much. The ending was... non-existent. It just kind of died really abruptly. I wasn't too satisified with that, suffice to say. Lighten the reverb, try to mix things a bit better (leads take priority over all else), cook up an ending, and I'd say yes, but until that happens NO

Well... 1:30 has passed and the song is still doing the same thing, just with a few more instruments than it had in the beginning. The sounds are a bit raw, although that may be intentional. The song just seems a bit dry to me, but the ambient sound effects and other creepy shiz going on in this help to loosen it up a bit. ...2:30... same thing... more sound effects... I'm not really too sure what to say. This song probably wasn't the best choice for a remix, as the original is also very very very very repetitive. One would have to be a GOD to make it interesting for 3+ minutes, and that just wasn't accomplished here. There are some very creepy sounds going on throughout that I do like a lot, but again, I can't even find myself wanting to hear this a second time. NO

I heard this while it was still a WIP thanks to Rayza sending it to me in #ocremix. As far as this remix goes, I've said it once and I'll say it again: Rayza rocks.

...Some very GOOD questions... I was unaware that the judges have said NO in the past because of things like this. It certainly does make me wonder why this guy should be any exception. I mean, what are we doing, casting sympathy votes? And while the name thing is a valid argument and could possibly cause some confusion, I'm not sure if that's reason to reject it alone. But I think the first question definitely needs answering.

It seems to me that when he said "riffs," he actually meant "melodies." However, I can't be sure about that, because I don't remember the music from Unreal at all. I must say that the default FL sounds REALLY kill this one for me. All of the drums, the bass, and more are some of the samples that are initially packaged with FL since the release of 2.7, I believe. And that was about two years ago... This thing is SCREAMING for some better EQ work, too. It sounds pretty lifeless and-- er, I'll continue when I get home.

Hmmm... well, I didn't even listen to the Tyrian arrangement at first, because I have no fucking clue what the game was like, or any of the music, and since there were just so many remixes I had to choose from, I decided it'd be best if I stuck to what I was familiar with. But yeah, the Tyrian one is pretty good, although there were some seemingly very wrong notes. Of course, like I said, I don't know the music from Tyrian, so maybe that bit of dissonance was intended...? It definitely has a lot more meat to it than the Kraid arrangement, and on that, and the dynamics, I will say YES to Tyrian But I do share Protricity's grief and disapproval with this method of submission. Just because you're angry that your works are no longer on a community like VGMix or you haven't been posted on OCR at all, or whatever, doesn't mean you should take out your frustration on us poor judges by making us painstakingly listen to as many of your remixes as we must to determine which ones are crap and which ones aren't and then finally cast our votes on the non-crap ones (if there are any). If you want to see your remix posted, making us go on a treasure hunt for the OCR-worthy remix is not the way to get on our good side and make us slightly happier while we review your remix. Okay, I'm done ranting.

Well, title stolen from BT aside, this remix kicks ass just like all the rest. I do think it's a bit too timbre-rich in contrast to, say, djp's Cyan remix on Squaredance, but I'm glad it didn't turn out as cheese trance. Quality is very, very high, but I'm reluctant to say that this probably won't get that many listens from me, since it's a bit too happy for my liking. However, don't let that fool you. This remix is easily one of the very best non-anthem trance remixes on the website.

Er, so that's four yes's and four no's... Tie-breaker, anyone?

Wow... everything has reverb... Well, this thing actually has four no's, which is enough to reject it, but I figured I'd cast my vote anyway: Yeah, there's lots of reverb, but I can deal with that. I just think you might want to lay off the Fruity reverb a bit in the future. It's hard to use in moderation sometimes, but you should try to drop down the amount and the decay quite a bit, especially for drums. Not much there. There's the lead, the big choir-y pad, the bass, the drums, and the piano. That's about the same amount of elements as Sandstorm (that horrid Darude song). Well, yeah, there are a few others, but those are the dominant ones... Anyhow, it's pretty repetitive, like the other judges said. And the lead is detuned a bit too much. I like the use of the TS-404, though. It sounds pretty nice here. The drums are also pretty crisp, but they're very large thanks to the massive amounts of reverb caked to everything. I'd say you pulled trance off well enough for OCR, but not as well as you could have. YES

Yeah, definitely happiness in abundance in this one... The drums, specifically the kick, definitely feel very left in the background. Maybe a bit more thorough mastering next time could help remedy that. Well, besides the fact that the happiness is really starting to bug me, I think I'm going to pass this one. The strings and flutes in combination with the arrangement are really the only things that make this listenable for me. Other than that, it's pretty bland, generic stuff. I'm not a big fan of the bass... it's kind of like a semi-distorted square wave. Bleh. So, not something I personally enjoy, but I know other people will (I'm picky about trance music), so this gets a YES

Drum l00p-age... I can't safely say what percentage of the drums are loops (possibly even ACID Loops?), but it's fairly obvious that at least that swing drum rhythm is. Actually, based on the repetitve nature of ALL of the drums, I think I could safely guess that they're all drum loops. The bass is rather cliché, but I can't hold that against this remix, as cliché is sometimes just what the doctor ordered, and certainly isn't a reason to reject a remix. The sounds used for melody and such don't really seem to fit well with the rest of the song... I mean, the light, flutey stuff and piano doesn't really fit in well with the dance drum loops and thick synth bass. At least, it doesn't in its current state. With a bit of EQ and other assorted polish, it could work. And yeah, the recording quality is bigtime ass. NO

(Kraid) I absolutely loved this piano arrangement. I don't usually get really excited about piano arrangements, but this one was just great. I loved the original song, and he pulled it off quite well with seemingly no errors, and managed to capture the creep-factor of the original song, while also capturing the ambience. This one also stuck out to me above the other songs of his I listened to, as it didn't have any major mistakes (if any at all), and as it went, I enjoyed it more and more. I'm not a piano player, but by listening to this, I'd imagine it's pretty difficult to pull off... Although, there seems to be a fair share of step-wise motion in the melody, but I still think it'd be pretty difficult. And the part at 1:09 where he's only playing the high pitched melody and no backing was very fitting and added to the dynamics of the sound, as well as helped bring it around to a close. All in all, I thought it kicked ass, despite its short length. All this means is that I'll have to stick it in the playlist a few extra times. YES (on this particular remix, dunno if anyone else wants to go along with it)

Heh, the voice stuff gave me a pretty decent laugh... ANYWAY: I think I definitely prefer the sections of the song based off of Id's theme. The heavier sections just sound really empty due to the fact that the guitar needs some EQing to make it thicker and also due to the fact that the guitar and drums are the only things playing through those sections primarily, except for the hard-panned noisey, unidentifiable instrument, which I can only assume is a guitar... It's a bit repetitive. I think this repetitiveness would be lessened were the final heavy section shortened quite a bit. Of course, the song is 5:15 in length, and for the amount of substance contained within, that's a bit long... You probably could have thrown in a couple change-ups on the guitar part to make it more interesting rather than playing the same thing over and over again. Perhaps the hard-panned noise was supposed to be what made it more interesting, I don't know. All I know is that it ended up sounding like a big mess... On the other hand, the mellower sections sound cleaner and fuller, primarily because you aren't relying on a single guitar and drumset to fill out the stereo field. The primary problem during these sections, in my opinion, is the drums. They're just a bit harsh for the feeling, and the programming (and I say "programming" because that snare just doesn't sound real to me... the rest of the drums are pretty convincing, but the snare sounds really fake) of the drums gets pretty repetitive and just seems to hold the quieter sections back. There are also, as you mentioned, a few problems with the quality. I'm hearing the hissy noise that you get when something isn't encoded high enough or what have you, but were you to encode this one at any higher of a bitrate, it'd be over the file size limit. I think you had a cool idea with the arrangement, but the afore mentioned issues turn the entire thing into somewhat of a flop. NO

Oh man... Well, right off the bat, the song's only 1:12. The first time through, I listened to it without once looking to see how long it was, and it started and then BOOM it was over. Well, actually, it was more like a "swissssh it was over." I think the creator summed up pretty well when he said not much happens and called it boring. Also, maybe I don't remember the original song very well, but it sounds as though there are some wrong notes in this. Again, it might just be my memory failing me... So... FMish bell thingy plays some notes with a single-note string solo backing, and then ambience, and then it's over... Sorry, this one needs a lot of work. NO

Hmmm... it sounds familiar. I used to be a System Shock 2 addict, so... but I don't know if I'd trust my memory on the music. But like I said, it sounds familiar. It could be that I'm being thrown off by the way its arranged, but due to my all-around uncertainty, I don't know if it's wise to go based on my belief at all. Fucking cool though. If my ears serve me correctly, this was done in FL, and if I'm right about that, this person actually knows how to effectively use FL The use of samples from the game is also fan-fucking-tastic.

The Fruity Phaser has a knob on it called "Feedback." This is essentially your Wet/Dry mix knob. Simply automate this knob in your song to turn the phaser on and off. There is no way to deactivate/activate FX plugins via automation. However, most of the FX have controls to allow you to increase/decrease the amount of application. Just automate that to turn 'em on and off.

Wow... impressive synth programming. I mean, I don't know what you used as your master sequencer or any of your softsynths, but I like it when I can't recognize synth patches/drum samples. So you get bonus points for originality. But then you have to take into account how professionally mixed everything sounds, and there's no clipping, and no over-compression, etc. So even more points for being able to control your synths, volume-wise. The drums are really effective, although they don't seem to change themselves up very much. It isn't a boring drum beat, though, so it all works just fine. Sequencing, although tight, is a tad repetitive, but not enough for me to want to burn this remix at the stake. It kept my interest plenty enough through the four minutes and three seconds that it was going. Not really much else to say... It sounds really high quality and professional, and coming from a listener perspective, this one's a definite winner. Just try to arrange more dynamically next time and you'll be good to thoroughly rock everyone's socks off. YES