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Nice integration of the percussion with what was going on in the song. Always nice to hear someone take the percussion out of that background timekeeper role effectively. Texture is great all around, I love the chip stuff with the guitars. Pads are appropriately quiet; any louder and it'd be messy. i liek it YES

Right after that first pitch bend in the harpsichord, where the kick drops in, I actually smiled and went "oooh!" Nice. I like the variation and builds in this piece; you don't fall into the trap of repeating stuff over and over and over again just to establish a groove. Things are there just long enough and we switch gears. That's not to say I wouldn't like to hear like a 15 minute extended mix of this where I could just veg out to the beats. XD Anyway, nice work dude. The beats are hot and the synths are cool. WUT WUT

Echoing Larry and Andy here; the texture is thin and weak. Where's the bass? This needs more meat on it. Andy said big chord motions; I'm gonna agree with that. Arrangement is not bad though; I don't think it's too spastic, but some more variation aside from simply passing the melody around would be nice. Percussion isn't bad; that drumkit sounds familiar. You've got a ways to go with this one. One more time. For the bass. NO

Just wanna address this, as I have no time for vote at the moment. We don't judge your effort, or the "shear [sic] amount of work" you put into the song. All we judge is the end product, and if we collectively feel the end product suffers from medlyitis and doesn't jive with our standards and criteria, then we'll reject it.

First half is kind of messy. The samples are drowned in reverb and the articulations are weak. Not enough definition or balance between your sounds. It's a mish-mash. I actually liked the second half of the song with the samples and percussion and stuff, but the orchestral stuff still suffers from the problems in the first half. Also, the percussion has no bassline working with it to establish the kind of groove you're looking for. Low end sounds empty. NO

Agreed. There's a sparseness in the beginning; you could have done better with a deeper texture, even as we go through the song proper. Not sure about the clarinet countermelody in the first verse, especially at 2:02; something weird going on there harmonically with the voice and clarinet. As for the vocals, I'm ambivalent. The voice is nice, but I'm neither a fan of the lyrics or how they fit in with the melody; phrases seem to end earlier than expected. The performance does have kind of a disjointed quality as well. Perhaps that's a stylistic decision? I can't say for sure, but I think something less rigid would contrast better over the stiffer backing track. NO resub (is that terrible of me to say, considering this is the 3rd time this is on the panel? In my defense, this is the first time I've voted on this piece. :\ )

Tricky decision here for me. I think that I'm in agreement with Larry here though. I don't really have qualms about the production--Vinnie nails it with his comment about it being "consistently lo-fi,"--it gives the piece a more intimate sound. But I'm not really feeling the medlyitis; the transitions were more or less "stop-and-start." This could have been broken down into three or four standalone songs. There were also a lot of tempo issues; sounded like the drummer was speeding up and slowing down at times, and the guitars didn't lock-in right away. Overall though, good performances, and not a bad interpretation. I just feel like this piece needs to be more cohesive, with some more attention paid to locking in on the tempo and not trying to cram too many ideas in. NO resub

The whole thing has a really groovy vibe to it, and I like the texture. Production is clean, and the instruments sit where they should. My problem is the repetition. The percussion simply does not let up at all, and continues throughout the song with out any real change, save for adding some 8th note hi-hat work. No rhythmic variation, no cuts, nothing. There should be a little more interaction there, more integration. NO resub plz

I think this is great. I like how you mixed NES style sounds with acoustic elements. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because the soundscape isn't completely dependent on the NES sounds, and they are processed, to a certain extent. As for the arrangement, it's not the most liberal thing I've heard, but there's some nice embellishments with the guitar, and I dig the woodwind stuff. This piece has a really folksy, intimate kind of quality to it. I think the percussion is appropriately subdued as well. YES

Mario Kart 64 - Party in the Snowland!

The articulations on your moving lines are very weak, which lends the piece an anemic quality. No pun intended. Samples just don't seem to be balanced right; there are a lot of sections where the strings seem too loud, or the percussion is too quiet, or the bells stick out too much, etc etc. Not really sure about the adaptation, to be honest. The instrumentation is really similar to the original, but the samples aren't as good. The melody never really catches my attention, and this piece just feels like it's going through the motions. It's interpretive, no doubt, but not really all that interesting. There are also some harmonic ideas that I don't think really work, like the transition at 2:24. Not really sure what you could do with this one. NO

Yeah, even Winamp does it. I use MP3BookHelper for mass tagging. Pretty much anything that allows you to tag with ID3v2 lets you type in any genre you want.

chumble spuzz wins at the universe. edit: I can't stop laughing at "Big Giant Mills"

Pretty neat actually! It's got a nice rockin' sound to it. I like. However, we cannot ignore the fact that it doesn't really use the source; it's another song that's extremely similar to the source. An admirable acheivement, but ultimately not what we're looking for. I'm keeping this. NO

This song really reminds me of Moby's "Porcelain," particularly the bit with the filtered vocals. That's a good thing, because I really love that song. In any case, your vocals are actually pretty well performed, which is interesting considering they're not part of your original vision for this mix. However, I'm not really fan of the rest of your soundscape. The percussion is sitting in a weird place in this mix; too far back and it's got some weird reverb on it. Percussion in a song like this should be your anchor; centered, with presence without overpowering, and just a touch of reverb, no more. I think that the sustained strings could be better written too. They're mid-range, occupying the same range and your vocals; you might be better served bring them down or up in octave, quieting them a little. Try writing your chords at greater intervals; span two octaves with just four notes, and again, keep it quieter. Those sustained chords aren't interesting enough as is to be as loud as they are. Also, use a better string sample. The one you have sounds really phasy. I think other judges can speak more towards production issues, so I'll let them take care of that. All in all though, a great first effort. Hope to hear more. NO resub plz

This mix feels like a lot of initial statements without further developemen. "Here's an idea. Okay here's another one. Try this one." There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but they don't get the attention or development the deserve. The piano in particular really disappoints me; you comes in with that, you could really layer in a nice non-gating bassline, something funky to fit with the percussion and syncopation of the chords. It's so lo-fi, and it builds and stutters out nicely, but it really feels like it could come in NOT lo-fi along with some other accompniment. This could take on a house feel. There's a sparseness that pervades this mix. So many sections are just lacking in a meaty bassline. The arrangement is also kind of repetitive; you could have utilized more of the source. Not a bad sub, but a NO nonetheless.

So yeah, to sum up a bit.This is a weird mix for me. I like the raw, angry, chippy sound to it (and unlike a pure chiptune, this has a lot of processing and effects that bring it up), but I'm not really keen on how the source was used. I like the gating effects, but I would have loved to hear more of the first part of the Mysterious Woods theme, as opposed to the climbing notes from the second half. In any case, nice job. YES

Trying to figure out the Zelda timeline has always seemed like a waste of time to me. All I know is that Ocarina of Time is the first one. After that, whatever, it's just the same legend told over and over again, but differently each time. As far as Majora's Mask goes, from a game design standpoint, it's a brilliant piece of work and very fun. My only problem with the game was that I felt "punished" for doing complete saves, and I hated having to go back and redo things just because I restarted the three-day cycle. That's pretty much the reason I never finished the game; my own fault, really. I think that out of all the Zelda games, it's the handheld ones that have always held a special place in my (piece of) heart; my first Zelda game was Link's Awakening, and the Oracle games, Minish Cap, and the recent Phantom Hourglass have all been incredible experiences. Four Swords Adventures for Gamecube was also a sorely underrated game; the single-player experience and its emphasis on formations is incredibly fun.

Dunno if we have a policy concerning redistribution of OCR albums. Let me check with djpretzel.

I really dig the groove in the beginning; there's a wicked vibe going on. I agree though, that it sort of gets killed with messiness when we get the detuned piano. I can kind of see what you're going for with that in the minor section at the start, but here are some suggestions, mostly fror the right hand part: I think you'd be better served with a drier sound in the piano, so less reverb for one; keep the detuned sound, but bring it up an octave or two and add a delay effect; and for a little fun, put a high-pass filter on it along with a little distortion. You'll get a nice eerie high piano sound. The synth strings playing the prelude melody lack definition and end up bleeding together a bit on the moving lines; be careful of that. As for the arpeggiating line, it gets old fast, so try to change that up a little by automating the duration of the individual notes to change over time (i.e. legato to staccato and back again). Might get some interesting results with a chance to fill things in with some more beatwork. So yeah, less reverb would be good all around I think; go for a cleaner sound and tighten up the percussion. Not a bad sub, but a long ways to go. Good luck. NO

Feel like all I ever do these days is echo Larry and Andy. Your acoustic guitar sample sounds horribly fake and needs to be sequenced with humanization in mind. I don't understand the point in using such a warbly background pad when you could do so much better other things like sustained strings, choir, etc. The reverb on the percussion is just too much; there's a horrible echo effect on the clap; sound like the reverb was compressed. The overdrive guitar just doesn't work. Everything around 4:30 starts sounding ridiculously messy. One of the biggest problems with this piece is just too much reverb on everything. The piece is soaking in it in a very bad way. The acoustic guitar has these low strums that bleed together and cause a lot of destructive, dissonant interference in the low frequencies that end up sounding jarring. You need to think a lot more about balance between your instruments, get some better samples, and not use reverb so much. And believe me that's something coming from me, because I abuse reverb like no man should. NO

This feels...anemic. Those kick hits need to be really deep, and the bassline really needs to be prevalent here to establish a solid groove. Andy's right with the comment about it sounding thin. There's a sparseness here; you need to fill out your midrange way more. The sustained pads you have are far too quiet compared to everything else. You did what you could with the source; there's not much there to mix. The dynamics are pretty flatline; might want to think more about development and buildups. There's a lot of repetition. :\ NO

I'm pretty familiar with the source; I've got the game and play as Luigi for the sole reason of listening to his theme; it really is the best song in the game. This is pretty much the same as the in-game song. It's not different enough, and the fact that the original has better brass makes this a hard sell. Not bad for a recreation, but we're looking for more than just a recreation. You really gotta make the piece your own, not just riff on the original. NO

SM64 has one thing over Galaxy, imo: controlling Mario. Maybe I just played way too much SM64 back in the day, but it's annoying in Galaxy when I slam the stick in a direction and Mario takes a second or two to get started. Can't do turn-around jumps as easily either (run one direction, slam the stick in the other direction and jump). Maybe I just need to get used to it, but so far Galaxy's Mario isn't nearly as acrobatic 64's Mario.