DarkeSword

I'm not really impressed with this one TBH. I hear what Brad is pointing out with the shape of the 3-note motif being used in the cello in the intro, but I think that this deviates too much from its expression in the source. The contour is there but some of these intervals are changed up. This is not as much of a dealbreaker for me as the rest of the piece, however. What I'm finding is that once the actual pulsing line from the source is showcased here, it's largely just used as an ostinato underneath some original vocal writing on top. This feels more like "here is my very fancy choir sample library." It doesn't feel like the choir is actually arranging or engaging with the source. Just layering a lot of premade phrases. The end result is a haunting soundscape for sure, but it feels like the source is the seasoning instead of the meat. I understand the YES votes from other Js and I'm not here to change anyone's mind, but it's a NO from me.

I have no real issues with this and I'm not gonna nitpick. I mentioned to you on Discord that this slaps hard. Great performances, love the arrangement. Really enjoyed this one. YES

Yeah still a NO from me. Look: I love this arrangement and these performances. This is an all-timer! The energy shifts and changes, you change things up rhythmically in really cool ways. It honestly sounds like something you'd hear off of a really great official arrange album. I want this track to be on OCR, it's something people would love, especially Monster Hunter fans. But this needs to shine in terms of sound quality. I'm also hearing the distortion artifacts. The drums and guitar are not playing nice with each other. We desperately need to get some eyes and ears on this.

Matchups are UP in the first post. GO GO GO!!

First post updated with NEW INFO.

Preference-based with some enforced balancing at the end. Y'all can start posting your preferences now.

Social groups got obliterated in a forum software migration. I don't have them.

I'd like to allow people to form the teams themselves but I'm going to enforce some team balancing. If we have 10 people participating, it needs to be 5 people on each team. If it's 11, 6 and 5. I would ask people to volunteer to switch, but if nobody does, I'd move people myself.

Welcome to the first ever Game Set Mash!!, a new team-based longform competition format for the OC ReMix community! Current Status Game Set Mash!! 1 has come to an end, with both teams earning 27 points by the end of the competition. Congratulations to everyone on such a close competition. Fantastic work. Music Round 1 Remix Pack Round 2 Remix Pack Round 3 Remix Pack Scoring Each submission is worth 2 points, and each victory is worth 2 point. A tie results in 1 point for each participant. The scores for Round 1 are as follows Team SNES - 3 submissions + 2 victories = 10 points. Team PSX - 3 submissions + 1 victory = 8 points. The scores for Round 2 are as follows Team SNES - 3 submissions + 1 victory + 1 tie = 9 points. Team PSX - 3 submissions + 1 victory + 1 tie = 9 points. The scores for Round 3 are as follows Team SNES - 3 submissions + 1 victory = 8 points Team PSX - 3 submissions + 2 victories = 10 points The total scores are as follows Team SNES - 27 points Team PSX - 27 points Team Rosters Team SNES: Yami, The Vodoú Queen, colorado weeks, Aeroprism, ZackParrish, Xaleph Team PSX: pixelseph, H36T, paradiddlesjosh, Emunator, Hemophiliac How does the competition work? Participating remixers will form 2 teams of at least 3 members each. Each team will be assigned a set of 3 games. The competition lasts 6 weeks, with week-long mixing rounds alternating with week-long voting periods. At the start of the mixing round, each team will choose and reveal 1 source tune from each of their 3 games. Each source will be paired with another source from the opposing team, for a total of 3 pairs. Each team will be responsible for writing 3 remixes for the week that combine (or mash) both source tunes in each pair. At the end of the mixing round, we'll upload the remixes and have a community vote. Voters will vote on the 3 remixes that did the best job of mashing the two source tunes together. Teams will accumulate a score based on how many of the community votes they win. In the next mixing round, we'll rotate which games get paired up with opposing games. What are the rules about teams? I want to make things easy and accessible for people to participate, so there's no maximum on team size, but I will be asking people to do their best to even out the teams once we have all of our participants signed up. Unlike previous competitions I've run, there's no rules about who has to be a primary arranger for a track from week to week. Teams will be free to organize and determine how each of the three remixes gets covered. Using your teammates for collaboration and feedback is highly encouraged. What are the games we're remixing? For the first GSM, one team will be SNES Final Fantasy games (FF4, FF5, and FF6) going up against a team for PSX Final Fantasy games (FF7, FF8, FF9). Almost any song from these expansive, legendary soundtracks is allowed, save for a few exceptions: specifically, songs that show up in both SNES and PSX games, like the Prelude or any variation of the Chocobo and Moogle themes. When your team is picking sources at the start of the remixing rounds, pick something unique to each game. This seems like it'll take a long time, when does it start? I'm aiming to gather interest here on the forums and in our Discord and I'd like to start in August, depending on if we can get some sizable teams. I would love to have around 6-7 people on each team to really get the spirit of collaboration going. I'm happy to answer any more questions. It's been about 4-5 years since we've done one of our bigger multi-round competitions. I'm hoping to see some new faces in the mix.

I think this sounds great. Good arrangement, nice combo of both sources. I hear what Js are discussing when talking about 3:20 but I think in the context of the genre it sounds fine. Only issue I had was the strings sounded a bit fakey in that section, but it's nowhere near a dealbreaker. Killer stuff. YES

Well here's the thing. You can stop-watch and splice all you like to indicate that this meets a 50% source usage standard, but I'm not going to sit here and stop-watch this track, because let's be very clear: the 50% guideline was established primarily because we got a Chrono Trigger submission many years ago where the entire latter half was almost entirely original, and a majority of judges (myself included) were just deaf to this because of how good the former half was. Prot pointed it out and we had a pretty lengthy discussion that ended up establishing a 50% guideline for judges to informally follow. And let's also be clear about another thing because over the years I have seen this guideline turned into a hard-and-fast rule that's been applied in a lot of judgements: 50% source usage is not in our Submission Standards. I really need to stress this. You can't just look at a track and say "well I counted the seconds and exactly 57.46% of the track arranges Terra's Theme so I'm okay on source usage." What kind of vote is that? Point forty-six? Really? And I brought this up many, many years ago but backed off because it didn't really seem like you were going to change your methodology when it came to stop-watching, but I really need to stress this as an artist who has 30+ ReMixes released on this site: silence is a part of music, and it's wrong to only count the fractions of a second when a note is playing and not count the fractions of a second when it isn't. All of this sounds like I'm actually going to bat for this arrangement, but quite the contrary. Terra's Theme is burned into my brain. I listened to the opening to FF6 constantly in my teens and early-20s. I used to play it on a keyboard in my room, I figured it out on trumpet in HS when goofing off with band friends. I know this piece. And this arrangement, as I said in my vote, is clever. But, I don't think the source usage is dominant and identifiable, which are two words that are in our Submissions Standards. There are passages where we get a modulated references to Terra followed by a long sustains where the other instrument fills in the space with whatever is mirrored from the other side of the arrangement. This is fine and clever in a vaccuum but it sounds like and feels like a lot of meandering fluff that's filling in the spaces. That's what I hear. I don't hear Terra in enough of this. It doesn't feel dominant. That's the site's standard and that's my standard; it's a nebulous and qualitative standard, as opposed to a discrete and quantitative one, but that's why we have a panel of experienced, human judges evaluating the music they hear. I'm going to judge what I hear. One last thing, Larry: you're calling the performance issues here "low-hanging" as if they are easily fixed by taking things back to the DAW and just doing a little production work. Your initial vote on this track is almost entirely stop-watching for source usage and then calling out "one weird goose honk" on the part of the saxophone performance. This is a miss on your part; there are major issues with this sax performance which Brad very helpfully diagnosed and broke down. Now I don't know if this discussion is going to be publicized but if I can address Lucas directly, I will right now: Lucas, I don't think that you're proficient enough on saxophone to be sending us tracks where you perform. As I said in my vote, the performance sounds like someone who is relatively new to the instrument, and you need more practice and development as a saxophone player before you can send us more of these. I said privately in our judge chat that I appreciate that you swing for the fences in your arrangements, but I think that these performance and execution issues are doing your arrangements a disservice. All that said, to address Larry's last point: I think that if the performances were impeccable they would make the vote harder, but ultimately I would still say NO to this track because I, as one judge evaluating this track, don't feel that the source usage hits an acceptable level of dominant and identifiable. And unlike "The Little Girl and the Star," this is not a case where I am categorically against this track going up on the site because of very specific reasons. If I was the sole judge voting NO and every other judge voted YES, I'd say "OK" and move on.

The sax performance is killing this for me. It sounds very inexperienced, like someone new to the instrument. The arrangement is clever but like other J's I'm just not hearing enough source connection. MW and proph sum up my thoughts perfectly, so I'm not going to retread here. It's a NO from me.

Some interesting harmonic choices. but overall it works. I like the synthy vibe though I hear what other Js are saying when they mention the shrillness. A lot of these sounds are piercing. I could see some improvements but also nothing is dealbreaking for me. I like it. YES

There's writing a song with ABA song structure or using codas to reiterate ideas, and then there's straight up just looping your track twice. You can't just loop your sub-2:00 track twice and send that to us. Come on. You clearly have the arrangement and production chops, but this is just not it. You don't even end after the second loop, you go for a third one and do a fade. That's no good. NO. Needs a lot more material here.

This general MIDI crystal + saw sound you're using for the lead is killing me. It's so splashy and distracting. I agree with Larry, the sound quality on this feels very 15-years-ago OCR. I can't quite put my finger on it but there's a weird thinness to this piece. The percussion is written well with a lot of detail but it sounds thin. The lead bouncing back and forth in the stereo field is distracting. The bassline is an octave too high. Everything has this sheen of default General MIDI soundfont to it. I like the breakdown around 3:30, but that saw lead comes back a minute later and takes me right out. Not a fan of the extra endings. The keys get super exposed there and they don't sound good. NO

This is a really nice sound upgrade of the original track and would fit right in with a Xenogears remake. I like the more interpretive bit from 2:15 to 3:15. But it's not enough. The choir section at the end feels tacked on and honestly isn't doing ANYTHING interesting; just some sustained chords, which don't even feel like they relate to the source in any way. Joe was right in that it's going for that Mitsuda Ladies sound. Anyone who's listened to CREID will immediately recognize that vocal quality. But unlike CREID, nothing is happening here. Would like some more originality and an axe taken to the choir practice at the end. NO, resub

That's not a wrong note. It's intentional and it works once it gets contextualized by the chord hits. It's great. Really like this. Fantastic soundscape. Lots of energy and very groovy. YES

The performances here are too good to post with this kind of wall-slammy, overdriven distortion. I'm with Larry, this needs a production pass beyond what a Conditional YES would warrant. I mean, listen to 2:09. That's doing the performer a disservice. Please take this back to the DAW and take a hard look at the levels. NO, resub

This is incredible. I for one love these drums. Fantastic arrangement. Great soundscape. The meld between the two sources is great. YES!

At first I was like, "Is this too much reverb?" Then I was like, "No, this is not too much reverb." YES

I think prophetik's vote articulates everything I think about this track. You're working with a short source. That's fine. I don't think your efforts in expanding it are enough. That ostinato just dominates too much of this track. This is barely past 2:18 and I still felt worn out by the end. When you're expanding a short source tune like this, there are a few ways to approach it: just add an additional source tune for variation, i.e.get a melody from another Castlevania track and adapt it to work with the chord progression here. focus hard on an evolving soundcape with lots of automation on your synths so that you're manipulating the texture and energy levels of the piece. In either case your piece needs to have more of a contour. I appreciate the switch up where it's the bassline for a while but it's not enough. I think you're relying too much on the thunder SFX at the end too. NO

This whole track feels like an extended intro. I'm waiting for the B-section to hit and it never does. Gario nails it: this arrangement is static. Larry's correct in pointing out the slight variations throughout the track but overall this piece establishes one idea right at the start and coasts on it for not-even-3-minutes. Hop around the track and it's basically doing the same thing at any given point. I'm not as critical of copy-paste issues as other judges are (dal segno is a thing) but this is not a return to and reestablishment of a previous passage; this is just one passage. My honest evaluation is this: where's *the rest* of this track? Needs more. NO.

Incredible performance. That solo slays. I'm in agreement with the Js calling out the mixing issues. Anything non-guitar is getting buried. Do not touch the arrangement, it's perfect. The mixing needs a another pass though. NO, resub

Arrangement is great. Lots of variation and change-ups. Where you're losing me though is this sound design. The whole thing sounds thin as heck; whole swaths where we've got maybe 3 voices playing together, which makes for an incredibly sparse sound, which in turn kills the energy. Larry used the word "plod" and that's the word to use. Percussion is sizzling and not in a good way. Other Js have articulated the issues well, so I don't need to rehash further. As it is, it's a NO, resub from me.