DarkeSword   Administrators 🎮

I agree with Vig and Prot. This is almost there. Almost. I really like that triplet feel you kept from the original; the drum beat is pretty hot, although a bit busy at times. The timpani's are cool and make a nice addition to the texture of the song. Pretty good development there too. Like Vig said though, it's pretty in your face most of the time. It needs a bit more subtlety to it. Take a look at your levels and try to balance things out a bit more. What really struck me about this mix was that the percussion was king of loud. It's also a bit sparse, consider some nice smooth pads or something to add harmonic support and balance out the harsher sounds of the mix. I like what you've got here, but I think that this mix could be a lot better with a little more work. NO, for now.

I'm pretty borderline on this one. On one hand, the piano arrangement is pretty nice; like Prot said, things change and evolve throughout the whole mix. However, I'm inclined to agree with Israfel. The piece is very mechanical sounding. Attention needs to be paid to dynamics and velocities on the piano. It comes off sounding quite mechanical and quantized. There are good ideas here, but the execution leaves something to be desired. I'd suggest getting in contact with a piano player to play this for you. OCR has a few of them that frequent the boards, shouldn't be hard to find one that's willing. NO, for now, but I strongly urge you to work on making this piece more organic and humanized, and then trying for a resubmit.

Actually...that wasn't Suteki da Ne from FFX. That was some completely different Japanese song, probably with the same name. I still thought it was decent, though. :/ Goddamit! Oh yeah I forgot to mention to Paige: GIRL, YOU NEED SOME FUCKIn' TASTE!!! Succubus laid the smackdown. O_O

Yeah, I agree with Coma. Seems to just build stuff around the original. Sounds nice, but try actually rearranging the song, instead of just putting your own stuff around it. NO

Great show Larry. I think everyone had a lot of fun, despite technical difficulties. Also: <3 Succubus Looking forward to originals show. Should be hot.

Actually I haven't done it again. This was my first mix with FL, and my first mix posted to OC. XD

http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/nintendo/n64/wocDK64JMC.mid MIDI RIP NO

Wow. Whiteboy. Very whiteboy. Pretty unoriginal. Not much arrangement going on in terms of the Prelude theme. You've got that bassline Vanilla Ice ripped off that other song, and the percussion's weak and boring. Lyrics are also VERY corny, and performed pretty badly. The voice just doesn't sound very much like a hip-hop voice should. I'm gonna say NO.

Coma has the original from SA on his FTP . We're still trying to track down the SA2 original the guy used.

I agree with the other judges. Pretty much a straight cover of the original. Some more interpretation would be nice. Bring some new rhythmic ideas to the piece; trade off, change up styles, something. You guys are guitar players rocking out, let's hear some solos! In fact this is only a minute long, and leaves me wanting more. I like what you have, it's a nice cover of the song, but it needs more rearrangement and more length. NO

Those drums are so loopy. Nice effects on the drums. Like analoq said, triggering and filter automation is nice. It seems to me though, that the drumwork is the focus of this mix, with little arrangement on the source tune. A melodic breakdown would have been nice; some more exploration and interpretation of the source tune could have made this mix really sweet. Work more on arrangement. NO

Wow, pretty boring. The melodic parts are sparse and unsupported, and the mix continues in the same vein for about 4:00. Drumbeats change it up a bit, but not enough. Nice ambience, yeah, but I'm gonna say that this was pretty boring. A lot of the mix is just the low ambient wooshy beepmap sounds; similar to Prot's gripe, I think that the melodic aspects of this song are very weak. The song is gimmicky. There's not much to this. NO

Great interpretation. Really high quality stuff here. Synths are pleasing and mesh well together. Great texture. YES

I swear I'm also hearing just a tiny bit of influence from Ice Cap Zone from Sonic 3. Mabey it's just my imagination. *listens again* I think you may be right, but its only for a few seconds, so I don't think he intended that. There is no 'IceCap influence' in this song, although I know what you're talking about. I used some similar chords for when the latin styled bass comes in; that's what you're hearing. It's not IceCap Zone. It's just vi, V, VI, V.

Blind was kind enough to provide the original. He also wanted me to mention that this track he submitted is NOT the version that will be on the PMM album, but a preview track. I'll vote later or something.

I agree with the others. Also, it seems like there's little attention paid to balance and levels here. Everything is vying for my attention. When you're writing music, make sure you put the idea you want the listener to focus on at the forefront, and try to keep everything else slightly farther back, so that it doesn't get in the way. NO

Sounds pretty empty in the first half; in fact it sounds a lot like an NES song with some new instruments. The sounds are alright, but they don't seem to mesh well together. A lot of things are at the same volume level; they seem to be vying for my attention all at the same time. A pretty boring arrangement, with little development. NO

Oh snap. This is GENIUS. No issues here. Sounds great, and a good interpretaton of the source tunes' musical aspects. The real trick to this remix is that the original songs are professionally produced rap tunes, and this song really takes those songs and makes them, as the remixer indicated, 100% hip-hop. By rewriting the lyrics, he's added his own spin on a very integral part of the source music; they're tighter, flow better, sound less corny, and are performed quite well. The rearrangement and interpretation of the lyrical part of the song is what makes it a winner. Very professional. YES

Intro is pretty cool, but once we get into the meat of the mix, it sounds pretty sparse. The melody has no highs or lows; its meandering, it's boring. I can hear where you could have a lot of cool stuff going on, but instead you just let the melody play on that lone synth by itself. The strings in the beginning just seem to disappear for the rest of the mix. Nice beats though. My advice: use some more instruments, and actually try to develop the material, rather than dropping it by itself on a cool synth and some nice beats. NO

It is pretty solid, as far as trance goes, but damned if it's not repetitive. That drumline doesn't change up much throughout most of the song. Neither does that arpeggiating line. Sure it filters and defilters at points, but it just keeps going and going and going. The scratching bit is pretty neat too, but it comes far too late in the mix to have a substantial effect on the overall song. Your sounds are good, but you need to work more on your arrangement. Vary up things more; take a break from the typical arpeggiated line and four-on-the-floor percussion and do something new. This is not a bad piece, but I think you could do a lot more. NO

NO OVERRIDE Wow. That felt good.

Original GYM with loud, jarring mechanical percussion overlaid. NO (somebody wanna 'no override' this? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that yet)

Not familiar with the original but what I hear here is excellent. This is a beautiful orchestral work with great attention paid to dynamics and development. Samples get the job done and the mix is clean enough. YES

I was kinda getting into this until that piano came in. After that, the mix really starts to get messy. The gated rhythm sounds cliché and doesn't work at this tempo. I also think you're a bit too liberal in your interpretation of Frog's Theme. I don't hear his theme in most of this; it's very hard to pick out the first half of his theme, and the second half, which is easily recognizable, is covered sparingly. The interpretation you DO have of the first half seems less like Frog's Theme and more like your own melody with its own chords that happens to have the same rhythm as Frog's Theme. To me, I just don't see any understanding of the source material going into this. NO