DarkeSword

This sounds so thin. Everything is squashed into the middle. This should sound bigger than it does. Performances are alright. The middle section gets messy with timing though. I'm getting some weird intonation issues at the end with the guitar too. Can't put my finger on it. This needs another pass on the mix and some cleaned up performances. It's a NO resub from me.

Arrangement is incredible but the production leaves a lot to be desired. Other Js have outlined it really well. The percussion sounds like it has timing issues because of how it's mixed. The choir at the start of the track sounds ill-defined and muddy. There's a lot of mud overall in the track. The middle is nice and the choir is okay there. There's a solo synth string that's just out of place; it's too quiet to convey the melodic line but noticeable enough that it distracts you. I like this track but it needs another pass. NO resub

Other Js have outlined the issues. I have no problem with the arrangement. Very fun, very creative. Let's get a fix on the issues. YES (CONDITIONAL)

I don't think enough of the arrangement here has enough recognizable and identifiable source usage. I appreciate the source breakdown but I think that overall the arrangement only hints at source usage at points. If you changed the lyrics to be about anything other than Paper Mario, I don't think I'd recognize this as a Paper Mario arrangement, and I feel like I shouldn't have to sit down with a source breakdown to make sure that this is actually covering music from the game. It's asking a lot of me, which is fine, because I'm a judge and that's my job, but it's also asking a lot of regular folks who are just listening on shuffle. Nice performance though, and I like the "PAPER MARIIIOOO" bit at the end, that was pretty good. NO

I agree that most advanced torrent users are accustomed to selecting what they want to download but I'd also suggest (and this is pure conjecture) that the average torrent user is just downloading everything. Like Larry said, OGG was a thing many years ago but ultimate it comes down to what file formats are ubiquitous amongst the larger listener base. I don't see any significant advantages to offering ALAC alongside FLAC aside from catering to the specific use case of iTunes/Music.app not supporting FLAC. MP3s are offered because MP3 is the ubiquitous, de facto standard when it comes to lossy compression. FLAC is offered for the same reason (ubiquity), and also because once someone has lossless files, they can do whatever they'd like, such as converting to other formats like OGG, AAC, or ALAC. My personal feeling is that having the one lossy set (MP3) and one lossless set (FLAC) covers all of the bases for our distribution channels. If we start offering more encodes based on the idea that people can just deselect what they don't want, we're going down the rabbit hole of providing more and more sets. This is extra work for everyone for very little return, IMO.

Beautiful track, right up my alley, that sort of dreamy big band sound, but after the initial treatment of the melody it just spiraled away. Source usage just isn't dominant here. NO

I love the wall of sound here. Detuned lead is great, actually. I agree with Larry; I think other judgements are skewed a bit high. This track sounds very good and it's well performed and well produced. The detuned lead is a stylistic choice that works, IMO. YES

Nice arrangement, sticks close to the original's energy but some nice performances. Love the callbacks to older Yoshi music. Bongos are great. Mixing is an issue though. What happened here? Other Js articulated it well. Needs anot pass on that. NO, resub

NO We absolutely should not post this track. I don't say that as a qualitative judgement on the track itself, but look: this is, as Joe said in the previous decision, an audio book with background music. The focal point of this work is the storytelling. I've often defended vocals in remixes we get but those are tracks that feature singing or rap. This is not a lyrical performance, it's a straight narration. The backing music is good. If feels loose and organically performed, which other Js might take issue with but I thought it sounded nice. There are some intonation issues with the singing at the end, and it feels very exposed when all of the accompaniment drops out. But back to my main point: the narration here completely pulls me out of listening to this as a piece of music. This is not, in its entirety, a musical work. There's too much focus being pulled by the non-musical storytelling performance. I don't see myself ever putting this in a playlist of music to listen to. I don't think OCR is the place for this.

Arrangement and energy is killer. Production is not killer. Other Js have outlined the problems already so I won't rehash. Needs a production pass and then we'll be in business. NO

Got it

Hey, this response is unnecessarily antagonistic. I also agree that this is a big ask and $170 a pop is actually a bargain, but you can express that without all of the bold text indignation. I mean it's not like he's not asking you personally to do it. Also weird to get all mad about a post from July. It's also not your concern if something is posted in the wrong forum or not. Recruit & Collaborate is probably a better fit, and I'll move this there, but it's a pretty honest mistake. -- @Zye84 I'm glad you understand that this is commission work that'll cost money, but you've gotta understand that this is a big ask. If you really want to see this done, you're gonna have to be realistic about costs.

Incredible soundscape. Fantastic production and solo. Great part-writing. But the structure of the arrangement is incomplete. You state the melody exactly one time, move into the incredible breakdown and solo section, but never return to the melody. I don't mind fade-outs. I use them all the time, and have even written up how to do good fade-outs in the past. I even understand shortening an arrangement because you don't want to overstay your welcome, so-to-speak. Perhaps you don't have more to say. But the fade-out here is premature. Something as simple as a copy+paste of the melody after the breakdown section would work. Shift it an octave or double it in another instrument if you're after some variety, or don't! But at the very least, bookend your breakdown section. This is perhaps a harsh judgement, but NO, resubmit. If we can get an updated version we can fast track. UPDATE: Checked out the updated version. Feels like a proper ending now. I'm good. YES

Nah you're good.

I mean, speaking as a professional web developer who's built many applications using Python/Django, it's definitely far beyond a "gateway language." xD

Calling you a "monster" is probably your friends just messing with you, but using your ring finger on the right-click (m2) is very uncommon. For most folks it's: M1 (Left-click): Index finger at rest. M3 (Wheel): Index finger as-needed. M2 (Right-click): Middle finger. Ring finger and pinky rest at the side. Incidentally, I use a G600, which has a third click button to the right of M2, which I click with my ring finger. It's a modifier button called that Logitech calls "G-shift" and used is to provide secondary functions to all mouse buttons, including the 12-button pad on the thumb-side of the mouse.

SynaMax's "remixes" were essentially re-creations of music from Metroid Prime, going as far as using the same hardware as Kenji Yamamoto. AFAIK, he wasn't doing the same type of interpretive, from-scratch arrangements that we do here. That may have factored into Nintendo's decision to contact him specifically. I haven't seen any instance of Nintendo contacting any other artist, so it's hard to agree with "Nintendo is going after remixes now." There's always the danger of a company like Nintendo coming down hard on fan communities. If Nintendo issues takedowns to us, then we'll have to figure out what to do when that happens. OCR very specifically doesn't allow submissions that sample the original game audio, but that might not mean much to Nintendo's legal team. There's an argument for Fair Use, but that's a legal defense that you present to a judge or jury, not a response you give to a Cease & Desist. As far as being concerned about being able to listen: once something is posted to the internet, it never truly leaves the internet. There are remixes that have been removed from this site that you can still download at various places. Nintendo has issued C&Ds against things like AM2R (the incredible Metroid 2 fan-remake) and you can absolutely still find those projects without too much effort. If Nintendo wants to play legal whack-a-mole, that's on them. When it comes to the music you'd like to remix and arrange: do what you want. Remix the hell out of Mario and Metroid and Zelda and Kirby if those are the soundtracks that inspire you. Even if the worst happens and we can't feature them on OCR anymore, that shouldn't stop you from making something.

Aureal Vortex cards are known to be used in the minting of Zircoin. There are no plans to support Zircoin, now or in the future.

I think that the most exciting thing about this is the technology behind it. NFTs and blockchain technologies have been rightfully dinged for driving up the prices of consumer-level graphics cards, making it prohibitively expensive for gamers to purchase things like 3080s and the like. But with OCR's pioneering work on RFTs, we've managed to pivot and repurpose older consumer-level sound cards to handle the bulk of the processing power required to a) initially funge, 2) refunge, and d) ultimately defunge the tokens in question (if needed). We have an absolutely massive array of Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigies in our VA-based data center faciilty. It's very impressive.

Yeah I'm gonna agree with Nase. Notation does not intrinsically convey more information, it's just an older and more established method of describing music that performers are trained to read. Piano rolls are actually very good at conveying information; everything sequenced in a piano roll is *discrete*. If you write a B♭ and a B♮ on a piano roll, you can very clearly and cleanly see that they're different notes and you can understand that one is higher or lower than the other. But if you want to write a B♭ and B♮ on a staff, you have to take into account both the clef and the key signature so that you put the notes on the correct line and also write or leave out the ♭ and ♮ signs, because they're on the same line; plus a staff only has 5 lines, so if you're writing higher or lower ones, you're messing around with ledger lines. On a piano roll, if you want a note to have a certain duration, you just make the note that duration. There's a numeric value associated with the note. On a staff, you don't have that. You can say this is a staccato eighth note, but what does that *mean*? How long is it, actually, in relation to the tempo? How is that different from legato? I'm not here to argue against a robust, notation-based input method for DAWs. It's definitely a gap that needs to be filled, and a lot of work to write something that can interpret and translate those instructions into something a sample engine or synthesizer can understand and execute. But keep in mind that sequencing in a DAW is not the same as engraving a score for live, human performers. Trained human performers can read detailed sheet music and still differ on the engraver's intent. The data you put into a piano roll can only really be read one way.

*shrug* I guess the exclusivity thing just doesn't seem all that bad to me. MS already puts all of their stuff out on both Xbox and PC, so there's options, at least. I guess if you've only got a Playstation and are interested in playing the latest from ABK, you're probably out of luck, but at a certain point you just buy the console that has the games you want or get into PC gaming. Online gaming is less fragmented these days with stuff like cross-play too, so that's less of an issue. It remains to be seen how hard MS goes on exclusivity; ABK made a lot of money on their Playstation games, so the value proposition of using exclusivity to push sales of consoles might not actually be all that high. MS might find it more profitable to keep publishing the games that have traditionally always been multi-platform on non-Xbox devices to keep that revenue stream going. I think Phil Spencer once said that he'd love to have Game Pass on all of the consoles; I think he understands the value of using multi-platform publishing in a strategic way. I know there's an argument against monolithic corporate consolidation in gaming, but there's still a lot of game devs around that are on their own (AAA, mid-tier, and indie). I think Microsoft buying up ABK and, fingers-crossed, cleaning up some of the really bad workplace environment stuff we've been hearing about can only be a good thing.

Why "nothing good?"

Kotick is staying on until close, after which everyone at ABK will report to Phil Spencer, who is the CEO of Xbox Games. Kotick will most likely not retain any kind of leadership role after that happens.

Got it.

Same. I wish FL had a way of communicating its piano roll slides to external VSTs and the like. Would be wild to link slides to mod-wheel control.