zircon

Unfortunately, I too think this should not be passed, because as Darkesword said: I want to make it clear that in terms of arrangement, sound quality, and production, this is great. This is NOT a bad song at all. It is, however, in violation of the guidelines of OCR. NO

It's in the writeup, you know. (yes, it's Hysteria)

No, you can change your startup template to whatever you want. Mine is set on a blank sampler. Unfortunately I'm at school so I don't remember how I did it Check out the FL help though, it's definitely in there.

hey, thanks for the comments everyone! I just want to add a few words to djp's review Basically, this was a seamless collab - we sent a project file back and forth because we use the same sequencer, and used synths effects and samples that we both had, so we could easily tweak eachother's work. It was truly a blast working with tefnek, and I give him most of the credit for this. The way it generally went was I'd throw down some arrangement and synth ideas, and he'd take those and, essentially, make them go crazy. Of course, I tried to do that too (I'm glad he was there to fix it up) and he put in his arrangement and synth ideas as well. We ended up with more audio tracks, effects, and patterns than I had ever used before.. I really learned a lot. Bottom line is that it was an extremely fun project, especially for me because I got to work in a style I love but had never tried before, with someone who (imo) has mastered that style. Glad people are enjoying it!

I listened to this first before hearing the originals, and I was leaning yes at that point - Gecko's overall production values are always strong, with some tight synths, percussion, effects, and accompaniment. However, after hearing the originals, I'm inclined to say no. Gecko's style has never been to stray far from the original, and there's nothing wrong with that as he makes some of the most enjoyable mixes around. Nonetheless, this particular mix is too close for comfort. It's not just the arrangement of the mix either, which is relatively close (including some small variations), but also the instrumentation. The timbre of Gecko's sounds is more like an update of the original sounds, like the synths, organ, hats, snare, and kick. It's one thing to have a close arrangement and make up for it by overhauling the execution of the original, but it's another thing when both the arrangement and execution are close. I like the style, I like the production, I like the sound of the mix in general, but it's simply not enough of a reinterpretation. Switch up the sounds more and throw in some new sections or add more variations and this'll get a yes from me. For now, NO

Yeah.. arrangement here isn't that bad, but it's difficult to judge because of the mixing issues. The drums just keep repeating themselves and are very lo-fi and uninteresting, while the other instruments are just irritating and poorly executed. For instance, the piano has a bad, super-compressed tone. Changing the pattern it plays as well as the sample (and using tools like reverb and delay) would make it much less dry. The bass synth is far too loud, which might work in a dance mix, but not here. The string pad synth is very "big" and doesn't add anything because clutter to the overall sound. The lead synth, among other things, is obnoxious and biting, partially because of the patch in question, and partially because of the seemingly-random notes it is playing. Please go back and completely rework your instrumentation and mixing. NO

This isn't a bad mix, but there are a few problems that stick out. Arrangement-wise there is not much going on, which in and of itself is not a big problem, but there is not enough variation in the instruments used to keep things interesting. For instance, the drum loop seems awkward and out-of-place, especially when combined with the good guitar playing. I would ditch that drum loop entirely and try a new one- though even if you decide to keep it, I would recommend putting more variation in it. I know you're capable of it, so I don't think there is much of an excuse not to. Getting back to my original point, you can compliment changes to your instrumentation with a more interpretative rearrangement (as Larry noted in his post). I actually have more of a problem with the technical/sound quality aspects than the arrangement, though. While no individual part of the mix (besides the drum loop) is bad by itself, they just don't seem to flow together. The orchestral instruments, percussion, guitar, and synth parts don't create a pleasing harmony - not because of the arrangement, but because of the timbres. The uber-basic and boring synth lines are the worst offenders here, especially when they are placed alongside the high-quality orchestral instruments and the solid guitar playing. Go for some more interesting synths, because the ones you have now are bland and abrasive. If you really want to keep that texture, I would adjust the accompanying orchestral instruments so there isn't such a huge difference in sound quality. This certainly not a bad mix, but until you spend a little more time on it by reworking some of the arrangement and instrumentation, I don't think this is passable. Resubmit! NO

I think this mix gets better as it goes along, but the piano sequencing really needs work, as everyone else said. You have softer piano parts in some parts, just apply the same technique there to the rest of the mix. You might want to increase the reverb on the piano as well, sustain some of the notes more, and generally make the playing more legato. Offsetting some of the notes and chords so it doesn't sound as mechanical would be a good idea. Arrangement is good, albeit somewhat minimal for the first half. Sounds sort of like this is still a work-in-progress: try to humanize the piano more, add more layers of sound to fill in the more minimal sections, go for more variation in the first part of the mix. NO, but resubmit!

Man, this is great stuff. Using vocals in a mix is often tricky, but this one just nails it. As Larry and listeners of VGF should well-know, Dan B's voice is pretty amazing, and this proves it. Of course, zyko pulls his weight too with some superb, chill rapping that fits in perfectly. Nice recording and processing there too. Lyrics works well. Instrumental parts are rock solid, complimenting the overall strong production values of the rest of the piece. High end is a little lacking, but that has to be expected from a 5:37 mix compressed into 6mb. Definitely not a big deal, though it would make Dan's voice and some of the synth parts fuller. Arrangement is wonderful. The original wasn't all that interesting to begin with, but this mix breathes life into it with dynamic percussion, synth, and instrumental parts. Lots of great improvisation, variation, and soloing. Thumbs up. Great job to everyone that worked on this. YES

eek. The arrangement here isn't terrible, though it's not a lot more than a simple cover, but the production is really poor. 128kbps encoding plus an extremely muddy sound over about 75% of the frequency spectrum is making for a cluttered, ugly sound. The individual synths themselves, which are more or less generic to begin with, sound even duller when mashed together with eachother and lots of messy reverb/delay/long release times. The percussive sounds are stock, too, but not bad - of course, when stuffed into the rest of the mix, they sound considerably worse. The vocals, especially the "go", aren't doing much for the mix either. Simple arrangement that's overly repetitive, no variation in percussion or synths, no real structure, no ending, awful production/mastering, textbook dance/trance sounds. NO. Definitely hit the Remixing forum to pick up some advice on how to do cleaner mastering, at least.

This would have been passable had it been submitted around the time of u-ji's earlier mixes, but unfortunately, his style hasn't changed to meet the higher standards of today. LOTS of bread and butter sounds which aren't necessarily bad, but they never change in any way and are certainly not interesting enough to stand by themselves combined with the incredibly repetitive arrangement. Putting in some dynamic synth patches, automation (filter sweeps etc), percussive changes, and more aggressive EQ/compression/filter would all help to up the overall sound quality. Arrangement-wise.. as DS said, this is way too repetitive for such a small amount of source material. The production is probably the strongest aspect of the mix, though it's pretty standard - in the future, though, I would advise using VBR rather than a CBR of 128, because it sounds noticeably duller at that bitrate. NO

My problems with this mix have already been said. Guitar production could be cleaner, the orchestral section doesn't seem to really fit the flow in its current form, the percussion is dull, and there are a few performance issues in the performance. I do like the arrangement and the concept, though. If at least a few of the issues were fixed, my vote would change, but as it stands I'd like to go with a NO.

Heh, that reminds me.. My sister, a longtime musician and composer who graduated Princeton having studied music (along with Russian), had asked me to do some mastering work for her on some of her recordings. As I finished one, I said I was going to test its final volume level compared to some other orchestral music, and I picked this remix out. Keep in mind she is someone who has studied music for about two decades now, in-depth. About 10 seconds into the mix, she asked me "Is this Williams?"

I'm not feeling good about this mix, for a number of reasons. First, let me say that I have nothing against avante garde music and have dabbled in the genre quite a bit myself. However, I think there are some major problems here that can't be overlooked, despite the fact that I very much appreciate when remixers think out of the box and make more experimental music. The source tune is extraordinarily sparse, with maybe.. 15 seconds of material total and a bare progression. Turning that into 3:20 of music is going to be very hard and require lots of original work. I think that Shnabubula's effort is commendable. I can detect the original through all of the layers, and the mix works with the simple melody and progression well. My problem with the arrangement is its structure. I believe our standards call for a more defined concept - not just lots of synth patches, harmony lines, breakbeat-style percussion, and original material rolled together in no particular order. To build on what I'm saying about the structure, I suppose I should bring up Hunter's Community Chest. In that mix, though the source was better, there was a more solid structure. The arrangement took a slew of esoteric sounds and combined the original material with variations and improv to create a very creative interpretation of the original. There was progression which involved changing sounds and parts of the original melody, but also layering and chaos at appropriate times. Getting back to this mix, though, I just can't see much of a concept at all. You could cut up this mix into 8 different parts and rearrange them and essentially no one would notice. There's some hint of buildup in the middle of song, which was promising, but that turned into more chaos and a whirlwind of synths and all-over-the-place drums at about 2:28, not returning to melodic ideas. All things considered, I firmly believe this mix pushed the boundaries of acceptable arrangement a little too far. The sounds themselves, outside of the drums, are exceedingly plain and boring - most of the synth patches appear to be quite simplistic, not only in programming but also in lack of interesting sequencing/automation. I think that when you're working with a synth-laden arrangement, it's important to make sure that the sounds have some depth to them. Things you might consider: throwing in some filter sweeps, bitrate/samplerate reductions, resonance drops/increases, rapidfire mono slides, or even pulse width/pitch modulation. Because the arrangement itself doesn't really contain any exciting ideas (mostly the fault of the source tune), it's vital to make up for that by ensuring your melodic sounds are lively and dynamic. In this mix, I'm hearing a wide variety of melodic and harmonic sounds, but because they are all so basic, they don't do much to keep my attention. The drumwork here is by far the most interesting part, but I think it's overly spastic and chaotic in nature and never really falls back into a groove. It forms a bridge to the ending, which is abrupt and without resolve. Don't get me wrong: I can't get enough of crazy panning/filtering/phasing (etc) on drums, and I think McVaffe, Rellik, and tefnek, among others, really get that down well. The key difference between their drumwork and the drumwork here, though, is that some sort of underlying groove, pattern, or rhythm exists to keep the piece on track. I want to emphasize this, because it ties back to the earlier problem I have with the structure of the mix. Going nuts with your drums is a fine idea, but when it's practically what you're relying on to progress the mix, it has to be used more sparingly. I would encourage creating some more 'grounded' drum patterns and using those as the foundation for the breakbeat/processed drumlines. There are some cool ideas in this mix, and it is very clear to me that the mixer has a lot of technical knowhow. Nonetheless, the problems here are large enough to merit a NO vote from me.

Whoa, awesome! Really amazing that this was done with all free samples - you could have fooled me. Great sequencing, great humanization, great processing; excellent implementation all around. Arrangement is fantastic also - it is long enough to express multiple ideas and possess a structure, but not so long as to become boring or repetitive. You have tempo and rhythmic changes, variation, the works. I couldn't ask for more. An obvious YES.

The guitar playing and recording here sounds good to me, though there seems to be some fairly excessive reverb making it a little muddy. Some high end EQing could possibly fix that, if you can't get rid of the reverb; the same applies to the piano part at the end. More variety in the guitar playing would really be great here. It's always good to have variation, but in particular when you're working with a simple melody like the LoZ theme, not putting in improv/original stuff can leave things pretty bare. Like Vig said, the level of depth/layering here, even though it's sufficient for the intended genre, is below our standards. However, what you have now is a good start - with some added variation in the playing, more layers of support and harmony, and maybe some touching up of the mastering issues I mentioned, this would be a rock solid mix. NO

They don't sound *all* like FL presets to me, but yeah, the sounds here aren't hot. My main concern here is the mixing. Very cluttered, particularly in the bass - each of the individual parts don't quite stand out enough. Try messing with filters and equalizers more to bring some of the important parts of the song out (ie. the lead). There's not all that much rearrangement, but it's something - try to build and expand on the original rather than just repeat it. Also, the drums are pretty weak. If you're going for dance/techno, you want the kick to be more audible, but as it is, you can barely hear it at all. Not much other percussion to speak of. To top it all off, a complete cutoff ending. Could have been worse, but NO. Check out kvr-vst.com and hammersound.net to beef up your sounds, and hit the Remixing forum if you still need help.

I actually thought this had a fair deal of promise before the drums came in - they're WAY too lofi, for one reason or another. Clearly, you have some idea of what you're doing in terms of sequencing and synthwork, but as Vig said, you need to focus on more development here. I think the level of arrangement is solid, but there needs to be more structure in one way or another. If you redo the percussion and perhaps add in more interesting leads (through porta, automation, fast sequencing, whatever), this could be a very cool mix. The break in the middle really sort of ruins things - it's pointless and doesn't add anything at all. A better transition would help, for sure. You should probably ditch some of the panning things you have going on, like after the break with the drums and synth, since it's just irritating. Same goes for the white noise/wave effects. Building more on that flute section would be cool. When the annoyingly panned melody comes back in, rather than approaching a final climax, things basically peter out. Come on! NO, but I'd really love to see a resubmission of this taking some of our advice into account.

This is pretty obviously OCR material. Top-notch samples, great rearrangement, solid mastering; anyone reading this should take notes, as this is the perfect example of a great orchestral ReMix. I would like to mention a few complaints though: it feels like a few of the sections, particularly 1:43 through 3:10, drag on too long. The percussion tends to be on the repetitive and uninteresting side, and while I can't offer specific suggestions since this isn't my area of expertise, it seems like more could be done in terms of drumwork. Basically, I think this mix could have been a minute shorter without losing any quality, but nonetheless, an easy YES.

Clipping, super-dry and boring drums, exceedingly minimal, arrangement drags on forever and only gets somewhat interesting towards the end, bad processing of basically everything. Lame. Normally I try to be constructive.. but.. NO

I had commented on this one in its wip stage, and basically what I said then holds true now. As Larry said, you need to work on how you sequence your drums - they're too random. Regardless of whether you're going for a realistic sound or not, there is just no groove here. Drum variation is always good, and I appreciate the effort you put into it here, but you need a more constant rhythm and backing before you start putting fills and such in. What I would suggest, if you can't think of any ideas for interesting drum patterns, is to listen to songs you like with good drumlines and try to re-sequence them yourself. Don't concentrate on the timbre of the sound, just the pattern. Also, to get rid of some of that mechanized feeling, consider putting some light reverb/delay on some of the drum parts (I usually reverb my snares a bit and slightly delay the hihats) as well as increasing the "Swing" value in the step sequencer in FL. I do think you have some good ideas here in the arrangement. The key thing is retooling a lot of your sounds and improving your transitions. Use more synths or synth patches to make things more interesting, or use automation. For instance, if you decide to keep just that one lead patch (which I advise against), try automating its filter cutoff or its pitch (w/ the modwheel). This is the type of thing people like Starblast, tefnek, Protricity, and Rellik do to make crazy synthlines out of mundane synth sounds. In regards to the other instruments you're using - they're not low quality, but they need to be arranged better. The brass, for instance, is too loud and abrupt - it should be more of a pad instrument. The pizz strings are used relatively well, though. Another thing to consider is making use of layering more. Some parts of this are quite bare, with only the lead, drums, and maybe one other instrument. Incorporate more backing instruments, like some soft synth pads or legato strings, or even filter sweeps if you think those would work. Generally, I think it's a better idea to have 'more' rather than 'less' when you're doing a genre hybrid like this. NO. Keep practicing - I can hear that you are improving, and look forward to seeing how you progress by your next submission.

Yeah, there's really not much rearrangement to speak of here. However, I actually have more of a problem with the technical side of the song. The mixing is really very messy and sounds unrealistic - as if the drums were simply slapped on the recording of the guitar, rather than played WITH the guitar. It's definitely possible to sequence realistic, energetic drums for rock remixes, and I'd like to see that done here. Also, the whole mix sounds pretty flat - the guitar, drums, and bass are muddying eachother up without expanding across the whole frequency spectrum. I would go back to this, reset all of your effects, and start from the beginning with them. Use parametric EQs/compression/reverb to create a more "full" sound. The guitar playing is solid, but if it's not processed well, it doesn't do the mix much good. NO.

Wow, especially after checking out the source tune, I have a lot of appreciation for the rearrangement here. There shouldn't be any debate about that; for such a simple original, there is an abundance of improvisation and variations in the mix without losing touch with the source. So, moving on to production, I've listened to this several times and I really don't see it as much of an issue. This is DAMN good sequencing, very believable. I wouldn't have known without the mention of it. Awesome dynamics and humanization. Whatever piano sample is being used here, it's amazing. The whole mix actually sounds like a typical piano recording in, say, an empty cathedral would using one or two nice stage mics. Less reverb wouldn't have hurt, but the amount it has now simply doesn't strike me as detrimental to the piece in the least. I know some of the left hand chords *sound* cluttered, but plenty of classical piano pieces tend to sound like that, if not worse. In regards to the high end, again, this is really what piano recordings (and hell, actual pianos) generally sound like, and I think that's all that is important. It's not a mastering issue. In fact, if it was EQed more highly or intentionally made more bright, I'd go so far as to say that would be worse for the mix, if anything. I simply don't have any complaints here. I'd be OK with a NO decision over the reverb, but I really think that it adds to the realism of the mix by making it sound more like an actual piano performance/recording. Anyway, this is a big roundabout way of saying: YES

I like the concept here overall, but I think some of the details could be more finely tuned. The piano/violin don't sound that great, for example, and it's fairly obvious at some points. Also, when the piano plays alone, it's a little *too* minimal, not enough to capture the listener's interest. Try adding more layers: soft pads (strings, choir, synths), or maybe some light ethnic percussion. The idea would be to fill some of the gaps you have. What percussion you do have is a little lackluster; not enough emphasis on the snare and bass, while the hats are too dry and loud. I think layering is the key to solving that, along with judicious use of delay. You might consider changing some of the drum samples also, because at times they have hip-hop style grooves, which really doesn't fit in all that well with the style of the rest of the piece. Finally, some of the instruments, such as the flute and oboe, aren't mixed very well and sound somewhat sharp and biting. Basically, that considered, my vote is NO. I do suggest a resubmit because luckily, the arrangement on the whole is pretty strong. I can sense the feel you were going for easily enough. At this point, start focusing more on your choice of instruments, your layering, and processing, all of which are important when you're trying to make an emotional mix. Sorry about your cat, by the way. We had to put my cat Smudge down earlier this year. Very sad, especially since she was alive longer than me.

Kind of a shame, since this is a great mix, but I don't think it's passable. Production-wise, this is good stuff - very nice implementation of dance elements. I have no complaints there. Pretty smooth game sample usage, also. It's not the original verbatim since it DOES expand on it, but I think it's too close in that when the original is used, it's basically unchanged. Parts like 1:52 are fine, but they're not really reinterpreting the original, they're just sort of filling space. I really would encourage a resubmit on this, varying the melody and accompaniment of the original itself more, rather than simply adding filler sections. For example; introducing new elements (new percussive layers, new synths), changing your synths more, building some original material into the same progression as the original, and even spicing up what you have now with some automation - filter sweeps or maybe some lofi drum breaks for example. This is a cool mix, but in its current state, just not what we're looking for. NO