DarkeSword

It's odd that this piece is pretty much the same four note pattern repeating over and over again. I guess that counts as the melody? In any case, it's arranged surprisingly well. Lots of embellishements and a changing soundscape really help this piece along, especially the amazingly groovy bassline and brass countermelody that comes in after the initial brass lead-in. i liek it YES

The lead really lacks definition; it's got a really weak attack and bounces back and forth between the stereo field for no apparent reason in the beginning. Everything sounds like some permutation of a detuned saw something-or-other. I realize that this is probably the case for most electronic music (), but it's VERY apparent here; what I'm really trying to say is that the sounds all have that same buzzy quality to them which makes the texture of the song really uninteresting. This song is also, aside from the short slow middle section, lacking in dynamics. From beginning to end, its pretty much the same feel. Needs more variation in that respect. NO

I'm in agreement. The synths are generic and boring, and the percussion sticks out poorly with its incessant "bump, tsh, bump, tsh." Like zircon said, you need more practice in getting the right "wall of sound" texture going. This piece feels stratified. The arrangement is also pretty repetitive. NO

I like the progression throughout the piece. It's a very delicate arrangement that shows a lot of attention to balance. The production on this piece is excellent. I love the quick section around 2:20. Top-notch. YES

Gonna have to agree with Larry in that this is essentially an upgrade of the original tune. Groovy, yes, and I happen to like the texture, but its really similar to the original piece, not only in arrangement, but in texture. Percussion could be spiced up too. I like where this is going, but you need to bring more originality to the piece if you want to have it on OCR. NO resub

Ease up on the reverb please. :\ I like the synths and piano, really groovy. Nice arrangement too, I just think you need to balance your instruments out a little more with EQ and levels. Also, the piano is only there for a little part of the song, why? The entire piece would benefit from a stronger, continued presence. NO but please resub, this piece has a tons of potential to be more awesome.

Yeah. This is hardly orchestra. Lots of synthy sounds and a repetitive snare drum does not orchestra make. No arrangement either. Needs actual arrangement and more effort on a believable soundscape. NO

I'm in agreement with TO on this one. While I like the production on the piece, the arrangement is seriously cookie-cutter and the source takes a long time to come in. Like Vig said, this could really be any melody. NO

Golden Rain:

Strings still need a better attack; sounds like you're using slow strings on a moving line. Big no-no there, as everything ends up sounding a 32nd to a 16th note behind. Rest of the mix is fine; the part in the middle before the rocking guitar part still sounds like its meandering though, but it's not as bad as before. i liek it YES

Ending sucks. The rest of it is fine; I'm in agreement with Malcos. Everything fits together; not too separated, not too sparse. Nice guitar work and the piano is pretty flowy. Good percussion too. Good job. YES

Yeah Larry pretty much summed it up for me. The ideas here aren't as expansive as they could be. Vig mentioned bringing more complex harmonic ideas to the piece; I agree with that. This interpretation is really straighforward. A lot of the rhythmic variation here wasn't really all that different from the original. This needs more embellishment here and there, more complexity. There were some timing issues with the passing tones you added in. It sounds like you weren't sure of those notes when you played them; there's hesitation. More practice and a deeper arrangement will help. Hope to hear more from you. NO

Tip on reverb: don't make it sound like it's being played in a large concert hall. Make it sound like a recording you could play in a concert hall, and allow the concert hall to make the song sound cavernous. In other words, use just enough reverb to keep the instruments from sounding "dry" instead of trying to fill out your soundfield with residual sound. As for the arrangement, pretty nice stuff throughout, but I think that some of the brass samples are so-so, and that the percussion in that section around 2:07 sounds horribly thin and out of place. Also, your basslines don't have enough definition. This makes the song sound top-heavy. The low strings sound like a big blur of sound; they're detache, they shouldn't sound like a long "whooommooommmooomm." You need to make those low strings sound marcato. Don't rely on the sample alone; tweak the sound and work with the reverb and EQ to give it a sharper, more defined sound. Definitely a lot of skill here, but you need to work on production and presentation. NO

Please don't say off-key. It's in the key, it's just the wrong note.

Yeah, this sounds kind of muffled. Needs a better recording. I like the weird stuff you do with the meter; interesting phrasing choices. This is too short and repetitive though; I think some other FF6 material brought into the arrangement would help. More variation overall in the dynamics of the piece, really. NO

There's clipping in the guitar. Will vote later.

First of all, the second note of the Green Hill melody is wrong, and no, it's not something you can chalk upto melodic interpretation, because there's nothing going on in the background harmonically to support the note change, and this remix is extremely straightforward in its interpretation anyway. The melody goes down a minor third, not a minor second. You're off by a step. The rest of the remix is kind of boring and follows the progression of the source very closely. Not enough variation. The part where everything drops out and it's just percussion and bass could have been a lot better if you'd made the effort to break down the rhythms, but it just ends up being the bassline and drumpart (sans snare) going through a phrase of the music. Not a bad remix, but it needs a lot more originality and interpretation than a dance beat and arpeggiators. NO

Gotta have more varying patterns on a hand percussion line than that. I'm guilty of it myself sometimes, but it always pays to go the extra mile. Percussion isn't bad overall though. Piano is really mechanical. Come on, at least play with the velocities. The development of the piece is pretty boring for the first half; a lot of the same stuff over and over again. Guitars sound bunched together and lack definition. They also feel tacked on, and you pretty much said they were in your email. I don't think that the guitars really work in this arrangement as well as you'd hoped. They don't feel integral at all. I think that if you're going to have that kind of guitar in this piece, you really need to make it more of a focal point of the piece and bring it in earlier. NO

If you're on the piano roll, place a pitch bend directly on top of the note you want to crescendo with a higher velocity.

Squidfont for strings, Florestan soundfonts for the horn and oboe, and some Timpani font (I forget the name) for the timpani.

I use FLStudio for everything I have posted on this site. http://www.ocremix.org/remixer/darkesword/ I mostly use soundfonts that are posted on my soundfont site. http://soundfonts.darkesword.com/

Awesome samples and production, but I'm inclined to agree with Larry, Jon, and Jesse. This feels like three different songs strung together with minimal attention paid to transitioning between them. Dynamics in this piece are really good too, but in the end, I'd rather see a more cohesive piece of music, rather than three short and rather conservative movements. NO (borderline)

Not me. DS Lite is nice and all, but I actually like my DS, and I'm not interested in spending money again for something that's not really going to provide much of a benefit. I'll save my money for a Wii and possibly a 360 or something. Or maybe just some more DS games (PHOENIX WRIGHT 2 OMG)

The vocal part is totally extraneous to Zelda's Theme, but at the same time, so integral to this piece, that in the end it feels completely tacked on. It has nothing to do with Zelda at all, regardless of what you feel. The melody sung isn't inspired by Zelda, hell you never even have Zelda's theme play over it at the same time for long. The interpretation of Zelda's theme really leaves something to be desired. Some nice sounds and texture, but this piece is just too dependant on unrelated material to pass. NO

It's pretty much the original with default sounding synths. Extremely repetitive and it follows the basic arrangement of the original much too closely. NO