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(Project Track for the Lufia 2 Album) It's been a while, no time like the present to submit this track (along with one other contribution to the Lufia project of mine). This is one of my oldest arrangements to post on OCR (with only the Bionic Commando track I contributed being older by a few months), having started work on it in... 2009. Yes, this is an old one, but it's still to this day one of my favorites, and honestly I can hardly wait to finally show this one off to folk. Got the idea from one of Tyler Heath & Zircon's old Chrono Trigger arrangements (When All Hope has Faded), thought the blend of Orchestra and synths was an idea worth expanding on. Today that's not exactly novel, but back then I didn't hear too many folk blending it like that so I wanted to take a crack at it myself, using synth mixing techniques like gating to samples folk more often try to make as realistic as they can. The arrangement was finished well over a decade ago, but it took a long time for my production skills to catch up with the idea. Samples probably didn't age all that well (Reason heads may recognize Orkester's supremacy in this arrangement), but they work plenty well enough for this arrangement's purpose. In fact outside of the Triangle wave being pulled from Super Audio Kart and the kick being created in Vital most of the instruments are from what was freely available in Reason 5, just remixed (in the traditional sense of the word) and polished to a shine over a decade. There really is something lost when someone gains experience, learning what works and what doesn't, since this arrangement goes places that I probably wouldn't go today that I still really enjoy. I do hope to unlearn some of my tendancies to play it safe someday to get back to some of my weirder, more experimental roots, but in the meantime we've got this ReMix to enjoy! Games & Sources Game: Lufia 2 Source: Theme of Tower

This one is just a straight cover on slightly different instrumentation. Percussion is different, but midi covers with percussion is not what we're looking for. The track is also very loud and clipping throughout the track with audible artifacts. Sample quality is not ideal as well as they are low quality and unrealistic. We're really wanting to hear your own take on the source with your interpretation, not just a cover. For example, you could consider adding countermelodies, embellishment on the source melody, or 100% brand new sections. Those and more are all valid ways to show us your own take on the track. NO

This is a neat little dance track. Fairly well produced and the source usage is clearly dominant. You do a good job of varying the feel up so it doesn't get too static. I like the genre transformation as well. However, the major issue is that the second half of this track is basically the same as the first half if not an identical copy. I'm not noticing anything different to distinguish it from the first half. While not bad, the beat could use more variation within a section as well. Fills do a great job in this regard and also help with transitions (outside of having to rely on a cymbal crash every time). The second half repeat is really the singular major issue that should be addressed. With either the introduction of new material or removing the repetition/reuse I could see this passing. For now, it's not ready yet. NO

Prophetik did an incredible job articulating the issues on this. So I won't rehash the same points I had as well. I agree with him. I have to start out by mentioning that I liked the idea of doing a reharmonization. I especially like the changes for the chorus, the bass motion (the walk-up) in particular really works for me. However, the chord choices themselves don't really seem to work and fully support what's going on melodically in the voices. Solo was creative but needs work on the rigidity of the sequencing to feel more human. It feels fake in performance, but the tone could be considered to be more convincing and real sounding. When the final chorus starts we get a huge step up in terms of energy in the drums. While I agree this is the right time to step up the energy, the blasting of the kick is not working for me here, and I think that's purely a mixing/production issue (not part writing). The drums are much too loud and forward in the mix here. The production on this is very messy and does need to be addressed. The parts don't sound like they're in the same room with each other, and the vocalists sound unsupported. Their performances sound ok, but just don't sit in the mix with everything else. When all of the parts are playing together they're fighting with each other for space rather than working together to create a single whole. Decide what should be foreground, middle-ground, and background and use the mix to inform the listener what we should be focusing on. Some good ideas here, but the execution of the mix and sequencing did not work out. NO

Heavily suspect AI usage. If not, this heavily samples and relies on source audio. That alone is cause for rejection. There's also audible clipping throughout and is pushed super loud. 5.3 peak! NO

The sequencing of the orchestral elements is not half bad here. In particular, the brass short articulations were executed well. Strings sound like they really could use greater variation in round robins, and the solo violin was heavily exposed. But really not the worst I've heard before. The overall arrangement is fairly conservative structurally sticking very close to the original with a few melodic embellishments. The choice of embellishments was good, but more expansion on structure would have been nice as well. More of your own ideas would be welcome and less Wily 2 is what I'm saying. More variation and development of your ideas, and less repetition and similarity to the source. The major problem is that the track then crossfades into the source in the final 1/3 of the track. Now, there's nothing wrong with, crossfading into another genre that you had created or using a simple chiptune sound to solo or improvise over the orchestra; for example. But utilizing the original source audio directly (or recreated nearly identically) is not acceptable. NO

Strongly suspect this entire track is actually generative AI and no arrangement/ownership was done by it's "creator". That alone gives this a NO WAY IN HELL vote. Really don't care for this track at all, the whole thing is over-compressed. Every kick drum sounds like a trash can filled with the carcasses of actual music fed into a trash compactor. This sounds like clipping and artifacting to me without actually clipping because the peak of the track is -1.9db. Tons of headroom, but this extremely loud kick is exhausting to listen to. High end of the percussion has the over-compressed slosh sound. Also there's an extremely hard cut at 15kHz because the AI stuff was trained on lossy material and lacks high end fidelity. Source usage is questionable to me. There's a similar pattern to the rhythm from the source but I barely make the connection. NO

Arrangement aspects of this are in a good place. I applaud the changes made to the original to make this your own, there's a lot of really interesting things going on. With that in mind I would like to see some more development of the melody some as well as variation in the percussion within any given section. The fade out ending isn't great, but not a deal breaker by itself. The improvised soloing in the 1:36 is nice, I'm not 100% sold on a few of the phrases here but it gets the job done. The guys already laid this out pretty well. So I'm not going to rehash a ton of it. The major downfall of this is the production. From sound/sample choices and mixing are low quality. I don't even know why there's a dip in the 2kHz range either. There's a ton of mud in the low end and overall a general lack of clarity. Establish clarity between the parts and a more fullness of sound. Neat ideas, but very much lacking on the production side. NO

Clearly there is not enough source usage in this track, it's an original track with a couple quotes from Zelda. Liontamer's breakdown is accurate. By itself that is no. Even if you are being truthful that the vocals are Ace Studio, they fall into the uncanny valley and are not realistic. It took time to add in breath sounds, but there's a few times where a word will blend right into the next word without a break. No time was taken to craft them into a believable performance. The vocals sound over-processed and super pitch corrected into an inhuman perfection. The percussion sounds over compressed and cymbals are sloshy. NO Now, I want to address the question I had previously asked you in the submission thread. At that time you said that the vocals were generated by Ace Studio. This is a non-generative AI virtual instrument. Our policy does allow for that. However, on your YouTube upload you state that they were Suno AI. Suno IS generative AI, and is not allowed. So either you've willfully lied to us and were disingenuous, or you really don't care about what you're doing and don't care about AI theft. Both avenues are not a good look. I personally think you're not being truthful and did not perform anything in this, it sounds entirely generated to me. From vocals, drums, bass, guitars, everything. If I'm wrong, and if that's the case I'll be glad to eat crow. However, they all still sound unreal and inhuman as well as poorly produced. Please rethink your approach to music if you consider submitting to OCR. This is not the place for AI content.

As my fellow judges have already stated, there's not much going on here other than the original source with some different synth choices going on. This is not something we're looking for here, we want to see more of your own ideas developed rather than just the source with new instrument choices. Variation of drums, adding embellishment to the melody, or completely new original material...anything at all to call it your own with your own spin on it is good. This feels incomplete and unfinished. The ending just suddenly cuts off as well. Doesn't seem intentional The production is lacking clarity as well. The samples/synths are filling up so much space it's difficult to make out what's going on behind them. Wither that's due to reverb, long releases, or just pool level balancing between parts it's all contributing to a large wash of sound that adds mud and dilutes the clarity of the track. The style is interesting and I could see this being a early 2000s trance-vibe, but as it is right now this is not ready. NO

This feels and sounds like a more modernized version of the original source. The ability to recreate all of that from scratch is impressive. However, there is a lot of similarity to the original source making this very conservative. Well, that's not what we're looking for in arrangements. I'd like to see more development of the source into more of your own interpretation. Right now this is very close to a cover. Even stepping away for a contrasting section that changes up the texture for a bit would be a good way to vary it up some. Give us more things like the synth guitar at 1:43 and the final 15 seconds of the piece. This is where I see sigtau coming through and less of the original, give us more sigtau! The production is mostly fine as I didn't catch anything egregious standing out to me. On that front I felt like the synth bass was weak and could support the piece more, but this by itself was not a dealbreaker. The drop at 1:57 into the transition was cool! The main issue is the similarity of arrangement to the source and how conservative it is. I could see this developing into more, but as of right now it's not ready. NO

Initially got worried by this intro because these opening vocals are delicate and don't seem to be landing directly on the note (the pitch, but you do immediately correct yourself). Fortunately this is just an understated intro to set the mood. Once we get past that, we're launched into the stratosphere in the Epoch. Gotta say, production on this one is fantastic. The balance of parts is especially well done and the drums are killer. Overall the structure is mostly the same as the original, which is fine. The devil's in the details on this one. The countermelodies and embellishments are highlights for me, such as at 1:18-1:20 (sounds like a synth panned right). Adding an extra few bars for transition at 1:01-1:04 was great. The 3:03-3:21 new material was excellent, that's the kind of stuff we love to see here. I'd like to see some more of that in the future. This is a semi-conservative but fun arrangement with some personalization. The instrumental performances are strong and the production is excellent with some of the best drum mixing I've heard in a while (live drums do wonders!). Great work Triple B and crew! YES

First off I wanted to say that I think there's a cool idea here. Translating this to piano and cello to start feels like a no-brainer, but the idea works very well. When the other parts come in (bass, drums, strings, and guitar) at 1:15 this feels more fleshed out as a potential idea for a track. The guitar in particular is the best sounding element in this track with reverb and delay on it, and has a fitting tone for the track. Where this falls is the execution of production and the closeness to the original source tune. Adding the additional band parts is a step in the right direction, but it's still just the same melody and structure around that. More expansion and development of that idea and with more of your own ideas is the way to go. Production/sequencing leaves us with something much to be desired. We're really lacking the human feel here. It's all ice-cold perfectly sequenced with repeated velocities in the piano with line-locked rigid timing early in the piece. Humans don't play the exact same dynamic/velocity from note to note. There will always be miniscule differences between them. The timing won't fall exactly on the beat every single time. The cello sample in particular sounds very low quality and cuts off suddenly when it's done at 0:41. Almost feels like there's no reverb on the piano or cello to help with realism. Drum fill on the toms at 1:41 is awkwardly out of time. There's over a minute of silence at the end. Please double check your submission before sending it in next time. Once again, would love to see further development of your own ideas and expansion upon the source and not just a conservative arrangement on new instruments. The production should also be looked at for more realism with attention paid to humanization of the parts. It's a cool vibe, but not ready for OCR. NO

Very emotive performance here. Absolutely fitting in with the rest of the "Reflections" series that you have been doing. This is a nostalgia of positive feelings. There's some interesting decision making here that was unexpected. The first is at 1:01, the chord change here is unexpected but in a good way. Deceptive cadence that extends the phrase out just a little bit more before giving a more stable resolution at 1:04. The second is the direct modulation at 2:58. This was unexpected and unprepared, but handled well. The modulation catches your ear as it signals a new section and gives a contrasting feel. Bold choices like this can be rewarding when handled well, and you absolutely handled it well. Dramatic rubato and syncopation late into the piece really energize and uplift of the climax just before the key change as well. I understand your concern for this being conservative but this does not feel that way to me at all. There's a lot of personalization in the performance and expression that's not present in the original. Not to mention the lack of orchestration around it, this is a piano reduction after all. Great evolution and storytelling over the course of the piece backs up the strong performance. YES

I do remember this track and from what I can recall this is a much better execution of the articulations and sample usage. The string arpeggios in particular are much better now, and while not perfect; are much more convincing. Still could have some greater dynamic range through the piece, but what's here is fine. Nitpick for this version: the triangle sounds very forward mixed and should be pushed to the back with the rest of the percussion so it sits behind the orchestra. Just like how the percussion is normally positioned on a stage. Arrangement is still really cool. Nice work on making improvements and giving attention to the fine details. YES

Sweet approach to this classic source. Piano focused rock is nice. I'm digging the arrangement as there's a lot of melodic personalization with embellishment and improvisation. Kudos there, this is the kind of melodic personalization I'd like to see more of in other submissions. The overall structure is pretty much the same as the source, but with the amount of improvisation and embellishment on the melody that can excuse the closeness to the source structure. As the others have pointed out, there is almost 6db of headroom available. 0:28 this guitar transition was really cool. The guitar soloing late into the track is awesome and really puts your own spin on it while not getting too far away from the source. This is the highlight of the track to me. The mix and production are the major issues here. There's a lofi or lossy quality to this piano sample used. The whole track sounds like it has a gentle high pass and low pass applied to the whole track. I think that's a contributing factor to making this sound muffled and lossy. There's also clutter in the 100-300Hz range that is contributing to an unclarity of sound overall. You've got low drums here, bass, and the left hand of the piano (and rhythm guitars somewhere?) fighting for space. When they're all going together it just clutters the soundscape and contributes to muddiness. It's awesome that you've spent so much time working on this over the years. There's some really sweet spots to this, but the production just isn't at the level we're looking for. If you need feedback or extra ears on mixing passes, I would highly encourage you to check out the discord workshop. NO

There's some atmosphere here that I do like. The upper FM synth bell, pads, and choir pad sound lovely. The vocal chops/sampling at 1:00 were a nice addition as well. I'm however not sold on the dnb elements to the piece. They feel pasted underneath everything else and don't have a cohesion to them. It's like there's two different soundscapes going on with a large divide between them. The ethereal and bright upper elements, and then the harsh and gritty bass and drums. These things don't really feel like they belong together. The b I have to bring up the repetition of the loops next. The overuse of the same loop is very repetitive and loses interest quickly. You do at least change the pattern to something else when the sections change, but within a given section it stays the same. You could slice it up or write microvariation within it to spice it up more. 2:36-2:55 is an example of this. Halfway through you add claps on top to build the energy but the rest of the pattern stays the same throughout. 3:06-3:07 has a note here that sounds out of place. 3:19 is a very spicy harmony choice and it doesn't feel fitting. So to recap, FM bells intro and outro sounded nice along with the upper elements (aside from a few dissonant harmonic choices). However, not digging the divide between upper parts and the dnb lower parts, these don't feel cohesive with each other. Too repetitive could use more variation, this would really keep the interest going on a 5 minute long track. NO

When you say that Good Charlotte and Blink 182 were possibly influences, I agree they definitely had some factor here. This does sound like that early 2000s semi-emo rock style. I think you nailed that. It's a super fun arrangement that highlights all of the parts from the source at one time or another, and the performances are very solid. I have no issues with them. My problem is with the mix/balance. I can't understand the lyrics without following along with the written word because they are buried by the other parts. Their performance is good, no problems with any accent or enunciation issues. It's strictly balance and maybe some EQ'ing. The other parts are standing more forward to me and they cover up the vocals (except the short bit at the beginning when no guitars are playing). If the vocals were more forward featured in the mix I would likely be able to understand what is being said. Everything else in this is awesome and I wish I could give that a pass, but because the balance on the vocals effects the listening experience the whole way through I can't give it the nod. NO (resubmit)

I'm starting to think you're like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you seem to like the pump as much as he does. The pump here though is good, not too overpowering and adds to the fun and forward momentum of the track. The melodic embellishment is great, especially after 0:32. There's a lot of personalization and changing up of sound design which really makes this your own. I too, like Liontamer; really appreciated the chip inclusion as it fits in like gold. The return of the "full band" sound at 2:20 was great after the contrasting quieter section. My nitpick is the same as prophetik's, the sampled vocal clips are too loud for the rest of the track and could be reduced to fit in better. The piano at the end is slightly mechanical but it's mostly covered up by the voice clip so it didn't bother me. It could have just added to further emotional value with some more exaggerated humanization. I love that you chose to come back and revise this one after some time. Bring the pump Treyt! YES

The subtle changes and execution here are awesome, Guillaume. The variation in the left hand was done to perfection, changing up the part right when it needed to happen. As you said, it has the "religious sonority" you were talking about with the parallel intervals with An Irrevocable Past. Dynamic and evoking of divinity. I also have to mention the time sig adaption, great choice to change it up. This alone contributes so much to both feeling like the original and new at the same time. So expressive, great work. YES

Whoa whoa whoa, who let the crazy CV clone out into the wild? This source is awesome, and this arrangement is equally awesome. It was not hard to imagine it in this rock/metal style at all, and you pulled it off very well. Some of the part writing does get pretty close and dense, but the mix managed to keep them separate enough to still be clear. Tip-toe that fine line of heavy without being muddy. The drums sound great. My only complaint is the bass feeling on the weaker side, it's just missing some "oomph". But frankly it's still fine where it's at. The drop at 4:05 was excellent. Perfect time to bring the energy down and provided a much needed contrast to the frenetic pace we were on thusfar. I'll take my demons shredded with a side of drums, thank you for serving it up. YES

Later on.mp3 This would be kinda the opening bit, and then have some development and build up more to a bigger feeling later on. Definitely a small group sound to start and then expanding out to full band sound. Haven't spent much time with dynamics/humanization yet. First bit.mp3 edit: the upload put them backwards for some reason. The second audio is the beginning and the first is what would be later into the track. I have a title in mind already for the track which seems fitting for the disc as well: "Four Hearts of Fire"

Volume reduction on saxes helped quite a lot. Would've liked to see some alteration of wet/dry level on reverb to push them back in the soundscape instead of them being so "downstage", but this was definitely a step in the right direction. Nice work

Well this one has come a long way since it's initial rough sketches I heard in the workshop. The arrangement is great and follows the typical "head > solos > head/tag" jazz form. The source was adapted to that well, I do like the reharmonization in places and color added to the chords. Lampie's additions on the piano are excellent, keeps it in the right vibe the whole way through. Production could be sharper, particularly with the tenor sax being so forward and close. Pushing it back with the wet/dry blend on reverb to give it some distance would probably help that. I think the alto would probably benefit from that as well, but doesn't need it as much as the tenor. During the tenor solo, there's a few notes that don't sit within the chord perfectly. When those dissonant notes sit held out for longer values and aren't passing they stand out and feel wrong. If improvising isn't something April is very comfortable with, I would recommend writing out the solo or at least putting some "guidepost notes" in there to help. I felt the vibe and phrasing of the sax solo was fitting, just a couple notes that didn't agree. Is this perfect? It isn't, but that shouldn't stop it from being good enough. YES

My complain with the first version was that the balance between parts was off and the humanization of the samples was not ideal. The flute has been improved some by removing some of the chromatic runs, but it still needs improvement on it's humanization. The same goes for the new trumpet lead. Individual notes are static and don't have movement, as well as the line being detached and not legato. Legato samples are not a requirement to get passed, but more attention to their humanization will go a long way in improving the realism. The balance between parts is much better this time around. At 1:04 there's a piano supporting underneath, I don't recall it being in the first version. The part sounds ok, but the piano sample itself does not feel fitting for the style. This version is closer, but still not there as it's being held back by the uncanny valley. Some improvements made, but now other issues have appeared in their place. NO