zircon

Yeah, I really don't see the problem with DVDs as it is... I don't think they're outdated or obsolete at all. I DO notice a pretty big difference from my Xbox 360 on a 10 year old tube TV w/ the standard 3-input cable, vs. my new LCD HDTV @ 720p... but I don't think the difference is that striking for DVD vs. Blu-Ray.

Go for it!

We don't really care how much time and effort someone put into a submission, unless it's a case where they're obviously using all default loops and presets and it is especially lazy. Sounds harsh, but if you spent two years on a mix and it doesn't meet our standards, we're not going to go any easier on you. Simplicity is definitely not a problem - we have accepted lots of solo piano remixes, as well as acoustic guitar duets. You can't get much simpler than that. But like anything else, you can make a solo instrumental piece and do it poorly.

Personally, off the top of my head (without being in front of my playlist) I can't think of ANY remixes that were obvious NO that I still listen to. Lots of mixes that were borderline, or that I YESed and the panel NOed, though.

There's definitely no numerical or quantifiable method of determining what level of interpretation is solid enough. You can't JUST add new notes. They have to make sense within the context of the track. You might have a piece that's generally close to the source tune, but has a decent amount of melodic embellishment, some new fills and transitions, a couple new chords, and a solo section, and that might be enough to pass. On the other end of the spectrum, you might be taking a 2 second source like Pac Man and turn it into a 5 minute avante garde track. The only numerical rule IN GENERAL, that isn't really a "rule" so much as it is a personal guideline for many of the judges, is that the track must relate to the source at LEAST 50% of the time. In other words, if more than 50% of the track is original material, that new stuff might be great, but it's not an OCR standards-complaint arrangement anymore; the majority of the material is now unrelated to the source. In terms of what constitutes as interpretation, just about anything, really. We've written about this in our guidelines. The things we are LEAST impressed by would be simple changes of the instrumentation. That's easy to do and doesn't require much thought. Even if you took a chiptune and made it into a 4/4 dance track, if you just did a "genre adaptation" (so to speak) it probably won't pass. You need to do more than that.

Thanks for the comments, guys! I don't think this is quite dramatic enough to be a boss battle, but also keep in mind that this is a tactical RPG, not a traditional turn-based/ATB kind of thing. Battles are usually a bit slower paced, and thus longer.

Man, this was a great way to start my day. I'm really happy. Honestly, I wasn't even 100% confident on my entry because I had actually made no less than THREE attempts at a remix for this before I arrived on this concept, which I started really late into the contest. I ended up submitted about 20 minutes before the deadline Also, it looks like I can actually make use of the tickets, too! I'll be taking Jill (pixie) of course, and our flights would only be about $190-200 each for round trip, plus $100 for the hotel. Plus her birthday is March 4th and the concert is the 1st.

DarkeSword's job is basically chargin' his lazers.

As Jon said, both Jill and myself are studying music at school and earn money from it part-time (as our primary income source.) When we graduate, we both intend to be full-time musicians (Jill as a composer/performer, me as a composer/producer.) We've both done a fair amount of commercial/professional projects already. Vigilante is at Berklee College of Music, so I imagine he'll probably want to be a musician full time as well, but I could be wrong on that.

It's goin DOWN!

Yeah, of all the judges I'm *probably* the most accessible in terms of the amount of time I spend on IRC and on the forums, but these days it's definitely tough for me to give any one-on-one help aside from possibly listening to your track and pointing you towards resources. These days I just have an insane amount of projects and things I want to do. I feel good if I can do 3-4 mixes a year now, though I'd like to get back into it more.

Hopefully Larry won't mind me answering some of these We look for a number of qualities in potential new judges. There are no formal requirements, and we've brought people on who didn't have all these qualities, but the list should give you a general idea: * Active and constructive involvement in the community. Specifically we look for people that regularly spend time in the Reviews and WIP forums, as well as ReMixing and #ocrwip. * A personality that we think we can get along with. If you are a regular troublemaker on the forums, or if you have a huge ego, or you tend to fly off the handle constantly, that doesn't bode well for the group interaction. We've definitely had to let judges go in the past because of this. * Good musicianship. If you get rejected all the time, how are you going to give useful feedback to other people? The exception to this is people with an excellent musical ear who are not themselves musicians, such as Larry and CHz. * The ability to be articulate and give constructive criticism. Probably obvious, but you might meet all the above criteria but have poor English, for example, in which case it might be hard for you to give useful feedback to people. Alternatively, you might be a great musician but simply not be good at critiquing. This comes up more often than you'd think. * A good sense for where our standards are at, and a general agreement with how we do things. If you like the site but think that we really ought to accepting covers and MIDI rips, you ain't gonna be a judge. Not to say that we don't allow disagreement within the panel, in fact, we regularly discuss issues of standards; especially on borderline votes. However, any new judge has to at least agree generally with where we are now. This last point is maybe one of the biggest reasons we turn people down - they don't have a grasp of what we're looking for in submissions and either accept or reject things that should be obviously going in the other direction, or simply have poor reasoning for why a mix should or should not be posted. -- As for the actual process, we're always looking out for people with the above qualities in the community, but believe me they are in pretty short supply. If there's someone really outstanding we may look to test just them and bring them on without doing a whole multiple-candidate evaluation - this is what we did with Harmony. MOST of the time, however, we look for new judges when we feel like our ranks have either thinned to the point that we need replacements for people that have left, or when things just seem to be moving too slow and we need fresh blood. When this happens we begin a process that usually takes a couple months to complete. We compile a list of names of people who might be good candidates, then have a lengthy discussion and eliminate ones we don't think would be a good fit. We're then left with a smaller list (<12 people) who we'll interview, then test by giving them a number of remixes to judge as if they were already on the panel. After the test, we interview them again and talk about their votes. While this is going on, we typically post the "test batches" of all the candidates as well as the interview logs, where possible. Finally, we review everything as a group and determine which people would be the strongest to add to the panel. In short, be active in the community, give feedback in the WIP and Reviews forums, sharpen your skills as a ReMixer, and regularly read the Judges Decisions forum. And don't call us, we'll call you. To my knowledge, this has only happened once, where we absolutely could not find the source anywhere. Luckily, the production in that case was such that even if it had a hot arrangement, the production issues alone were enough to NO it. I think if we were really unsure and could not find the OST at all, we would have to solicit the community and the ReMixer to help us find it. Though I think that if something is really that obscure, it might not even qualify as acceptable material (eg. random homebrew PC game from 1987.)

Personally, half the time I don't even read who the remixer is. I often find out simply by reading the votes of the other judges. I don't think the person necessarily has an impact on my final vote, either, though how I write it might change. If I'm NOing a sub from an established remixer, I'll phrase it differently than if I'm NOing a sub from someone that hasn't gotten passed yet.

The progression during the intro is a variation of the source(s) but doesn't seem to be directly from either, and it has some nice original writing on top. The riff at :34, as CHz pointed out, is also good for the interpretive value. Periodically, the chord progression is varied as well; such as 2:25. It's not major, but it's there. 2:52 and 3:47 both have some solid thematic variation mixed with original writing. thought the original writing was tasteful and incorporated well. Production is very nice overall - I did think it was a little muddy actually, maybe a bit too much reverb and low-end stuff, but really overall, I don't have a problem. The guitar and perc sequencing is excellent. I don't really think this is too close to the sources. There are a bunch of examples of variation and original writing that is either closely related to the sources or that actively references them. Even the more straight-up Corridors of Time parts have at least a little performance embellishment. We've passed closer, IMO. YES

I really like the style here. Excellent mood, great performances and execution. We don't get a lot of more "legitimate" jazz subs, and we pass even less, but this one is definitely solid. On the production end the only thing I have to criticize (like the other judges) is the distortion/clipping. Arrangement is another story. Personally, I've always had a hard time with Super Metroid's soundtrack as I think it's really unmemorable, and it just doesn't stick in my head. But even though I listened to the sources over and over here, I simply could not make nearly enough connections between them and the remix here. I would really need exact citations of how the source is used in this to be able to pass it. As is, I'm straining to hear things past what Larry pointed out and even those are tenuous connections. Unless Jesse or the mixer can provide more information.. NO

Got a commission recently to do a small soundtrack for a tactical RPG styled after classic sprite games in the 16 and 32bit eras. The first track I worked on is the battle theme, which is now done; http://www.zirconstudios.com/music/wips/wilmeth-battle.mp3 (NOTE: Sounds are all temporary, will be replaced by awesome samples soon, just need approval of the final arrangement) It's heavily influenced by Kenji Ito (Romancing SaGa III) and Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics, etc.) so hopefully you'll enjoy it.

So good!10char

Still have RA available, any takers? I can go down to $350 on it.

The "leaked" design was from a fan art contest, AFAIK. It was declared to be fake for quite some time. I don't think it had anything to do with the viral campaign at all.

So I guess everyone is 2 kool 4 skool and imported moonspeak Brawl, huh?

Most MIDI keyboards connect to the computer via USB, and can be used to sequence or record in FL. Besides that, I'm not sure what other USB devices could possibly be used. What exactly did you have in mind..?

Pretty cool stuff. I like "Mosane" a LOT, but many of the tracks are a little too happy and upbeat for my tastes. Was hoping for more dramatic and minor material.. though I have to say, Luna Sans is a good addition. Don't think I'll be buying this though; $27 (after ship) is way too high for a CD.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not a web designer of any kind and I don't know anything about art. I'm just using the first theme I found online that looked cool; I know I need a better one, but I wanted to focus on content first before seeking a designer to rework the whole site on my behalf. I do want to check out that captcha plugin, as I've already been getting spam- again, I'm new to this and have only scratched the surface of what wordpress can do If you have any other plugin suggestions you think might be useful to me, I'm all ears. I do have a WIP of an "About Me" page but I'm not that great at writing about myself so it has been a second priority.. plus I feel like if people knew I was "just a student" they might not take me as seriously. I'll keep working on it though. Took your suggestion on the permalinks, too.

Bump because I've started the artist workshop stuff... guide to setting up a home studio is the first page (check nav in the upper left!) More to come soon of course.

Playing two or more sounds at the same time. It's a really broad term and the meaning is kind of obvious. You can layer drum sounds, or you can layer a choir and strings, or whatever. It's not typically used to describe just normal accompaniment ("I'm layering piano with vocals".)