DarkeSword   Administrators 🎮

I almost wish it'd been submitted. It would have been an absolute joy to be able to call him out in a judgement thread.

Fantastic! I give it a YES.

Wait...what's going on here? I'm at work and I can't download MP3s.

Percussion is really repetitive throughout, and is lacking in any kind of strong kick element. I think that's really important in the case of a beat like you have here. 1:54 note choices are really bad. I see what you tried to do with moving outside the major key scale, but you've layered it over the melody and notes just clash. You're lacking in bass instruments too; your strings and pads are for the most part mid-range stuff, along with your piano melody, and you haven't really found a balance in the sound. Synths further crowd the soundscape as the piece progresses and you really start to lose focus around the 3:00 mark and then just continue repeating over and over again until the song ends. I think you got caught up in the layering approach, but didn't really give a lot of consideration as to how the layers actually interacted with each other. As the composer, it's very easy for you to filter out the layers that were introduced early in the arrangement because you understand what you're listening for, but the listener isn't part of your composing process; they just hear the end product with all of the layers mashed on top of each other. You have to keep that and mind and try to strike a balance; lock things together rhythmically and don't crowd the soundscape. NO

Oh man! The beats in this are pretty hot, and I love all the funky keyboard stuff. Great groove with a lot of variation for such a short mix. Speaking of which, only 1:50?! BOO. Anyway I like this. I think it's a nice take on the source, if a little short. YES

I can see you're kind of going for that spacey electronic Metroid Prime sound, but ultimately I think you just didn't interpret the source tune enough. Take out the SFX and you're essentially left with very little in terms of actual arranged music. You can't let the SFX do the heavy lifting for you here; making them the whole focus while allowing the music itself to become peripheral is gimmicky. You need to beef up the non-SFX stuff in here. Try to make stronger melodic and/or harmonic statements, chord movements, do something. Bring up the volume too; it's quiet. NO

Hey man, I'd like to throw in my hat too, this looks pretty pro. I dunno if I could commit to a whole soundtrack, but if you're looking to round out a few tracks, I could throw down. Click my sig for a list of remixes I've got here, and also check out http://darkesword.com/revamped_soundtrack for some older original stuff I've done. I realize it's not all exactly what you're looking for, but if you need some "story" tracks, I think I could come up with something.

Lookin' great Dave. Just want to throw this in to anyone who's going to reply to this thread: Don't be a douchebag when giving your opinion. If you have any kind of problem with the new lists, talk about it intelligently. I know Dave's been working on this for quite a while now, so keep that in mind.

I read the books, and I wouldn't take this bet. The fact of the matter is that by the very definition of the word, "God" cannot be killed. It's impossible. If you believe that God is all-powerful (which is pretty much one of the things that makes God God), then you'd know that. If whatever they're calling "God" can be killed, then I guess it wasn't really "God" in the first place, right? I guess people take more issue with the notion of theocide than anything else.

I could see this getting onto the site maybe 3 or 4 years ago, but as it stands now, I think the synth work is too generic and the song is just too repetitive. You have a lot of nice ideas as far as arrangement goes in terms of building up sections, but I think some better sounds would really bring this piece up. Larry also made a good point about changing up the melody. I was only halfway through the song and it was already getting old. You need to vary up your interpretation of the main melody a lot more. NO

I'm a huge fan of Yanni's Live at the Acropolis, which One Man's Dream is from. In fact Blue Skies Over Guardia was subconsciously inspired by Santorini. I've said this on occasion, but I think that Live at the Acropolis is required listening for any aspiring OC ReMixer. A person can learn a lot about catchy melodies, syncopation, and arrangement development from that album; it's not the most complex music in the world, but I think it's a very educational work. But I digress. In any case, starting off, the piano is way too mechanical, and fairly straightforward in terms of interpretation; but at the same time, it's interesting how the Banana Fairy theme works out to almost a major key version of One Man's Dream. The bass pizzicato also sounds too dry; you've got some lovely high strings with the wind sound adding a lot of depth, but the plucked strings sound like they're just in the wrong space. Same with the percussion in the guitar section. As for the guitar, it certainly does rock out sufficiently, but going from that to such an obviously mechanical SNES music box sound sounds very jarring and exposes the sequenced stuff even more. We get more of the guitar in a more rocking section after some wonky zen tomfoolery (which I ultimately felt was pointless, but to each his own). I think the guitar is more at home here, but overall, the percussion feels pretty bland and the bass feels thin. Great soloing though through the end though. I think the first half of this mix is really what's holding it back, moreso in terms of samples and sequencing than anything else. I realize this is older piece of yours, so you might not feel like revisiting it, but I'm going to say NO (resub) anyway.

It's less anti-Christian than it is antiestablishment, the establishment in this case being 'church.' Pullman is an Atheist, yes, and the story definitely appeals to Athiests in the sense that it's about destroying the Authority (i.e. spoiler: the being that claims to be God, but isn't actually), but if you actually read the series, you'll find that it's more of a criticism of blind faith: people do horrible things in the service of the Church, using their religion as an excuse/reason, without thinking about what they're actually doing. It's a lesson that I think a lot of people in the world today could learn from. I'm a fairly religious person and I'd have to say while I rolled my eyes at a few of the atheist pontifications in the later books, His Dark Materials is definitely a great sci-fi/fantasy series.

I'm working on one actually.

Since this is essentially part two of a larger work, I'm going to copy and paste my vote from part one, as all my issues with this part are pretty much the same. I will say however, there was more of an attempt in this part to have a stronger presence in the bassline, but I still think it wasn't enough. NO

I realize that 'Ending' is basically a medly of the songs from Final Fantasy 6, but that doesn't excuse you basically sending us a medly-mix. This piece doesn't have any real structure; it just goes through all of the different themes from FF6 with some quick and dirty transitions in between. The guitar is great, but everything else, no so much. The drums are pretty repetitive throughout the piece, though there are some nice fills. The cymbal crash and swells are too loud though, and sound jarring when they come in. Your percussion sounds so exposed with the lack of a strong bassline; the heavy stuff around 3:10 is too little too late. Thin synth strings don't add much except a general sense of the chord progression. I don't really know what to tell you; I think that your medly approach is just incongruous with what we're looking for here at OCR and coupled with an arrangement that basically relies far too much on the guitar to do the heavy lifting, it comes off as unsuccessful. :\ NO

Not feeling the production on this. Stuff sounds overcompressed, particularly the piano and percussion. I'm not really hot on your sound choices either; that synth is way too buzzy and strong on the high frequencies. Your strings/pads also get way too loud at points. They're not doing much man, don't let them dominate the field of sound. 3:55 just sound messy. As for the arrangement, I really appreciate the source breakdown, but ultimately I feel like that the end product is dominated by original material. True, there's not much to the source, but a lot of the piece is based on your altered chord progression, and less on the source tune itself. Perhaps other Js will disagree with me on this one, but I just feel like its too liberal. NO

I agree with Larry on this one. It's not really a bad interpretation of the source tune, but it's quite repetitive in terms of dynamics, that is to say, it doesn't go anywhere. You hit the peak early on and coast the whole way. Perhaps I'm not familiar with the workings of the dub genre, but surely there's more room for dynamic contrast? I think you could try to interpret the melody in a different way to change things up, alter the percussive patterns, etc etc. A good start, but needs more. NO resub

How many people should it take?

QFE REVEIWZ PLZ

I think this is a more general question about ear-training. Suzu is right, piano helps, but the heart of the matter is learning how to recognize intervals in songs; basically, the 'distance' between two notes. This means that yes, you should learn a little theory so that you know what a 'perfect fifth' or a 'minor third' means. When you can go from one note to the next and understand the interval, that makes it easier to put it 'down on paper.' For example, the first two notes in the main theme from Star Wars is how I remember what a perfect fifth sounds like. The first two notes in Taps (the bugle tune that plays during military funerals) starts off with a perfect fourth. The two-note theme from Jaws is a minor second. The list goes on. When I'm trying to figure out a song by ear, I listen for these relationships note-by-note, and I'm able to sequence a melody properly. Another thing that helps is being able to identify what key you're in and what kind of key you're in. When you can say, "I'm in a minor key," it's easier to know what notes are 'right.' And if you can say, "I'm in the key of C Minor," now you're really in business, because you've got a tonic/root that you can work off of, which gives you a better idea of what actual notes to use. So practice your intervals and learn just enough theory so that you understand the approach.

Uh, please don't do that. He's joking with you. There's a lot more to making a video game remix than that.

I think that'd make a lot of people happy. MAKE IT HAPPEN, CAP'N

note: this vote was edited after other Js voted, which is why it might reference later posts Not a bad arrangement; it's groovy and all the different themes fit together nicely without succumbing to the deadly medlyitis. I do have some concerns as to how conservative it is, particularly the section with Secret of the Forest. There are some nice harp and piano bits though, so I'll give you that. On the other hand, I'm not feeling too hot on these samples, especially the brass that comes in around :25, and then the strings that join in; there's really unnatural release there. Seems to be a lot of high-end throughout the mix; not a big deal. I think your layering of samples around 3:50 really hurts the texture of the piece; you've got violin with a buzzy synth and the mid-range gets crowded. After listening to this more though, I feel like this piece is really lacking in direction. It sounds a lot like some kind of long jam session going through the themes; it's not a medly issue, as the transitions work, but things sort of just plod along and coast. I can see what Andy is saying about the percussion plodding; although it's varied in terms of fills, the energy level throughout most of the mix stays the same. The real highlights are when you bring in the larger drums and step away from the kit. This is such a tough call for me, but I have to say that this piece doesn't seem to come together cohesively. Sure, the transitions get the job done, and the themes fit together stylistically, but from start to finish, it doesn't feel like it goes anywhere. NO (borderline)

Yeah. Also, go into your Quicktime settings (or browser settings) and kill that stupid streaming crap. I'll never understand why Quicktime does that stupid crap by default.

Bender's Big Score was hilarious.