Rexy

Well no offense, but... Amph's mix disappointed me. Sure, he did great with towing in Xenon Odyssey on the sax, which was cool but here's my biggest beef - he didn't even weave the sources together. To me it sounds like two separate mixes - a rhodes Emerald Hill in the beginning, and a smooth jazz Rusty Ruin right after. It just DOESN'T work on an arrangement front. That's been my biggest problem all the way through - treatment of Emerald Hill was really sketchy at best. And sure, I may have had some iffy issues with DusK early on, but... I have to say, he had the BEST treatment of the source throughout the entire competition in regards to my competitors. Seriously, no offense to anyone here, but I would LOVE to go up against either Brandon or Gario, to make sure I can REALLY go out with dignity. I want to see it being made HAPPEN - let's do it!!

You guys may think that it's more your kind of song, but in my defense, on last night's Saturday Night SEGA... Even SNS host Gavvie was behind me on the air - the support from Radio SEGA and Sonic Radio that night was really positive In addition, last night was also the Sonic Fan Music Festival over at Sonic Radio (in which SNS was broadcast there as well), and "Magma on the Dancefloor" was the third most popular track submitted for it! (First and second were occupied by .mp3"]a couple of .mp3"]TSS Music Album tracks.) The top 20 countdown only had 2 OCRemix based tracks in the list - that one of mine, and Ichitootah's Balloon Park track for Project Chaos. I was even told that "Hogtied" was suggested by 30 people but didn't quite make the top 20. Makes me wonder exactly how MANY asked for Magma, then

You got them right Pete... they're leeching the tartare sauce from the fish and chips. That's what makes it delicious x) Oh wait... these aren't pancake mixes?

Surely you can still vote in future matchups even when you're gone? And you really handled it like a champ. To think you were all "dang, I can't do this" when you found out about Sir Jordanius, it shows how much tenacity you had when going into it, and really fought hard to the end. That's very impressive of you, and I hope we get to see your skills keep growing over time I'll definitely be keeping a hold of your stuff on my iPod rotation.

Oh man Pixel... I knew you had a band going from what I read in the Cid project thread, but I didn't think it would be a Ska band! O_o This would be awesome if it's recorded clear enough

Haha... Brandon definitely isn't too easy to please. Shame that if he lost, he'd be all Alas, that's the nature of the beast. I'm sure you'll have fun with Sky Sanctuary... a theme I covered before

Man, that was one exciting matchup set from the pancakes! I regret not being able to send my 'cuisine inspired' criticisms, but who knows, I may still do it anyway. Good job, Brandon and Gario! This is going to be one exciting matchup between you in the bracket final - a repeat of the WCRG final round?

Track done and sent to Matt! Now for the next 2 hours, I aught to get a bloomin' move on with the music video... x)

If it was a sequenced piano, then I would've NEVER entered the Dwelling of Duels at all. I hope that answers your question And I do appreciate the gesture about 'nimble fingers', but I don't think I'm ever going to be at kLuTz level, or even Bladiator since you brought up Chopin. I do still enjoy doing these arrangements regardless of style taken

Thank you on both fronts As I said earlier, the general feedback behind Umaro surprised me especially since I spent a lot less time on it than my other entries, but was still fun to work on. It was also, may I say, the very last remix that I would EVER write in Cubase (have since migrated to Reaper), so what a high note that was. And I had been wanting to do a piano entry somewhere the minute the contest was announced. When I saw that the Empire was still unclaimed, I thought it would be good to work on something that I felt I have done best for the past few years. Can't say I was inspired by Rachmaninoff though as some of his ways of performance are considered INSANE, but I did want to see the Empire as this dominating political force that no one can seem to get away from, even with Terra breaking free from its grasp. It should also explain the cameos slipped in for Kefka, Devil's Lab, and even the - my first taste of the game in a physical form.I'm surprised it went down so well - usually if I do solo piano entries in the Dwelling of Duels they'd tend to get overlooked, but this was a very pleasant surprise

I love you Calum. Say, how many of those instruments in your Blackjack mix were actually live aside from Xarnax's vocal part? Outside from there, a lot of the realism feels really convincing

Yeah, you're right... the post office IS faster. Faster than your carrier pidgeons at growing out of date, that is.

Brad, this is NOT as bad as you're making it out to be. It's the same for any contest that has public votes. Let's take the latest MAGFest based Dwelling of Duels for example. They used a slider system, though ideally they used 7 tiers of judgment (Incredible / Good / Above Average / Average / Below Average / Bad / Terrible) to decide on what songs to go for. With the exception of Prince of Darkness's entry that month, the votes were still very compact between the others, with not one of the others also being considered close to 'Incredible' and not a single one being close to 'Bad' either. And even in a contest with as many participants as this, you can still expect the points to be generally tight no matter what. Seriously Brad, you should be glad you placed well, not complaining about how others vote. We all have differing opinions, and that is something you just need to accept.

In this thread... Brandon Strader is a complete and utter DERP. The VSTs are being sent digitally - all that Zirc wanted was my email address. But no big deal if it doesn't quite make it in time - any mixer worth its salt should be able to have a backup plan.

Hey, i can't help it if i thought i'd use those FF6 contest prizes this week, only for them to still not be here with two days left. Plus I may have had this new PC for a week, but I'm so used to the prospect of technical crap stirring up in the last minute. Whatever the outcome, this is going to be wild

I've got most of the writing done. Still waiting on something though (particularly, those FF6 prizes o_O) so made a head start on the mixing as well >_> It'll be good when all the pieces start coming together.

No, if anything my votes were anything OTHER than rash and random. I had set a clear criteria when I went on to cast my votes - arrangement values, production values, and homage to the source. For me, FF6 is the BEST entry in the entire series, so it had to do a lot to win over the homage part. Here's how I labelled my votes: 1 - Fitted none of the criteria 2 - Fitted some of the criteria, with some glaring flaws 3 - Fitted two or three of the criteria, again depending on the track's weakness - overall not bad 4 - Fitted all of the criteria and was an enjoyable listen 5 - Fitted all the criteria and COMPLETELY BLEW MY MIND Of course, people would have different opinions on how they feel about everything, and I stated my opinions on your track earlier Brad, but you just have to accept the loss and use it as motivation to get better. I was just like you once though - I was pissed at the Dwelling of Duels during 2005-2006 for similar reasons on me working hard with what I have but simply not scoring well enough, and feeling that I was simply being buried by more 'conservative arrangements' and weaker produced entries, hence for a long time I had no idea what I had to do to place well enough, and in the times I did they'd see me as 'not being true to myself'. I eventually took a break from competing in the following few years, and now I do compete every now and again, taking into account the general DoD following when participating. A long-winded statement, but the point is, it's not a good idea to complain if it means changing your style into something you're not happy with - instead, use it as a foundation to improve on what you have, and take every piece of valid criticism you can.

The main reason why Concrete Man worked was because of the HUGE Mega Man following here at OCR, especially within the competition sub-forums whose regulars contributed a fair chunk of the material. I'm not saying they'd give the same kind of treatment to Final Fantasy as well, but most likely due to the added complexity of the source material and that usually if anyone does an FF mix around here, it's usually for an over-covered source. Also, I'm pretty sure the spot for Locke will be filled up. I don't think it'll be quite as overlooked as Concrete Man on MM9. And let's not forget one more thing - the Mega Man fanbase in general tends to be a lot less rabid than FF, or so I think

In other words... with the exception of Fictionalhead's tracks, all of them are in alphabetical order for arrangement title. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

I'm not saying that people in general were considered harsh (in fact I was just using it to describe myself), but more like a few of us have had different outlooks on how to go through the votes. This is no different from the Dwelling of Duels and its slider system; some people would consider rating everything above average and going from there to see which songs they thought were better, while others could just put their favorites above the 'average' line and leave everything else with considerably lower marks. I've been around this community for years and even I've had to draw a middle line in regards to what I considered to be a 3 and above (most commonly associated with arrangement and feel if anything else), though all in all we're different people and have had differing standards on what we consider to be great works. Regarding your track Brad, I liked your feel in the intro and string writing, but the more 'heroic' nature when the melody came in, empty spacing later on, and general vanilla sounding melody synths were contributing factors as to why the track didn't score very high with me. Arrangement-wise it wasn't too bad; source is identifiable even if it was manipulated to fit the feel you went for, but even then there wasn't enough going to capture my interest. But still, take it with a grain of salt; people liked your work on Soundcloud, and I hope that over time you'll start to improve as a musician

At my desk at work, eating a chicken noodle salad. Hopefully some of those carbs would stimulate any arrangement ideas when i get home, which the structure has been worked out.

Hahaha... yeah, I see what you mean with my Umaro entry having stylistic similarities to the Return All Robots theme. Good thing you bumped it up, because I didn't state which entries actually tickled my interest during the voting. Aside from yours, XPRTNovice's and Sole Signal's Phantom Train track as I stated earlier, I also got some enjoyment out of: * Anti-Syne's entry for the sheer amount of fun given to a lesser-known source * Brandon's Mog entry for making me laugh with the quirky direction (!!) * Radiowar's Blackjack track (which I apparently mistook for Anti-Syne when I first heard it) * Chernabogue's Gogo track (not Umaro as it was erroneously stated in the ZIP; what happened? ) * Zas's Blackjack entry (again, the Star Trek homages were really cool, just was hoping for more substance if anything) * Callum and Xarnax's Blackjack vocal song (Jesse, I say now's a good time to start investing on a better vocal microphone, because you've got skill and dedication in that field from what I saw of you in the past 6 months ) * Gallen Wolf's Rest in Peace entry (amazes me to see what ANYONE can do with such a short and meandering source, and I believe you nailed the feel right on while still making it personal) * Mikeaudio's Empire track (by far my favorite of my rivals for this source tune; made me think of Dr Manhattan's arrangement style going darker, and fits the impending ominousness of the source tune ) * Gario's New Continent track (shame you didn't finish it properly because you could've easily given me and Brandon a run for our money ) * J Blom's Empire track (I told WillRock through IRC that you would probably out-rank me due to the sheer emotion there; almost reminiscent of the Desian cues from Tales of Symphonia; nice going!). * Fictionalhead's Gogo track (cleaner than Chernabogue's, though not quite as creative, but still pretty neat; I'm still laughing at the fact that both your songs got the same score xD) It was great listening to them back, though all in all a difficult vote. I may have been harsh with my rankings for it, but all in all I definitely got a kick out of the whole procedure, and I hope that some of you guys will be brought onto the project

Mental note - complain about voting during voting, and you'll get a lead. Should probably remember that for when the voting phase starts for round 4.

I don't know, Amphibious is one SLIPPERY lizard, and I know that it's going to be a tough match. But if there's anything I've learnt, it's that I just got to sit back and have as much fun as I can. And that's exactly what I'm going to do in round 4, in spite of the trickiness of Rusty Ruin xD I'll get onto the pancake tasting after Saturday Night SEGA is over. But for now, it's been a good serving in spite of fewer competitors

Oh don't say that; if it's something you really, REALLY like doing, you shouldn't really give up. Maybe take a breather, but not really give it up completely - it's a passion at the end of the day, and it's indeed what you make of it. Heck, you and I both are in similar situations in regards to close family understanding what you're doing. 7 years ago my own mother thought OCR was just giving me too much grief for its own good. Alas, she was the first person who congratulated me when "The Feather's Reflection" passed the judges panel. So if you keep going, perhaps your S.O. will soon see your work in a similar positive light in the near future