Sir_NutS

Just like Chernabogue, I also did a remix for the FF3 project . Thought I'd share for your enjoyment, so here you are!
 
 

Just giving a heads up, I let John know about the volume adjustment a week or so ago, and he seemed willing to do it, so we might get the update on it soon (hopefully!).

(Art by Zeth)
The time has come: The definitive OCR Lufia project is officially online again (Again!)! The Lufia series has one of THE great soundtracks of the SNES era, and Bahamut wanted to honor it with an album project. This was at a time where MANY albums were being developed on OCR, and this one quietly trudged along. After some time I agree'd to help co-direct the project, but even with my help this project fell into a deep slumber of relative inactivity. Bahamut's life became too complicated to continue this in earnest, and I've had school and relative job insecurity that held me back.
While Bahamut still has other obligations in life that don't allow him to dedicate the time to finish something like this, my time has cleared up, which has allowed me to take this project 100% head on again. I will be the director of this album from this point on, with Bahamut's blessings. All of my thanks goes to him for starting and establishing this project, getting it to where it is today.
In addition, Theory of N has agree'd to co-direct this album. As the scope of the project expanded outside of my ability to control it when it... spirals to the nether, he is here to keep everything on track. So far he has done wonders behind the scenes, and I am sure he will continue to do so.
Any music from Lufia II and its DS remake will be accepted for this project. It's a compromise between the original vision (Lufia I & II's soundtrack) and the later vision (ONLY having Lufia II music); there are quite a few good Lufia I tracks that were rearranged for the DS remake, so some of those Lufia I tracks have become available again.
This is a list of the music that already has a prior claim: if you are not on this list then you don't have a claim to this music. Music that's considered a Prime Pick is music that the album really shouldn't be without - please pick one of those, if one is available, as that music is iconic. Solid picks are other great tracks from the soundtrack, though they're less iconic to the soundtrack. The tracks that would be Nice to have are tracks on the OST that are less known, and would likely not be missed if they're not on the album. However, please pick any track that suits your tastes - I will not reject a good WIP of even the lesser known tracks!
Claim (No WIP) Claim (with any WIP) Significant claim (50% WIP) Nearly finished (90-100%, without WAV) Finished (100%, WAV submitted) Reserved/Claimed:
Opening Theme (Evory) The Prophet (Daragan) Battle #2 (Gario) The Silent World (DjjD) Parcelyte Presidential Administration / Port City (Flexstyle) Mountain of No Return\Labrynth (bLiNd) Battle #3 (Prince uf Darkness & Snappleman) Tanbel Abandoned Mine (Rockos) The Earth (World Map) (P.M. Crockett) Priphea Flowers (Audio Fidelity) To the Future (XPRTNovice) The Last Decisive Battle (P.M. Crockett) Big Bridge (Gario) Soma Shrine (Above Ground) (Gario) To the Azure Skies (Cyril the Wolf) Tranquility (PabloComa) Parting (djpretzel) The One who will Save the Earth (Jorito) Cardia Shrine (Artem Bank) Door of the Journey (Rockos) Battle #1 (DaMonz) Rumbling (Jeremy Robson) Flute of Sleepwalk (Abadoss) Town of Abundance, Elcid (Antti Pylsy) The Time of Judgment (bLiNd) Logimos Shrine (Above Ground) / Towering Mountain (Vodou Queen) The Three Towers (Bunnylord) Music Available:
Prime picks:
Confrontation with a Great Enemy Solid picks:
Lexis Laboratory The Three Towers Water Capital, Parcelyte Castle of Stone, Bound Kingdom Town of Abundance, Elcid Ancient Caves Battle Despair and Destruction The Strongest! The Greatest Thieves in the World Throne Room Town of Abundance, Elcid Nice to have:
Fortress Town, Gratz Empire Forest Village, Eserikto Logimos Shrine (Above Ground) Mountain Path of Ice Fog Soma Shrine (Below Ground) Gratz Underground Factory Wedding Bells If it's not on the list, it's open to claim for yourself. Any track from Lufia II or the DS remake are fair game; while I will be posting a list of songs in the near future, you can make your claims now. If you're a posted (or to-be-posted) ReMixer, the claim will be held (until you miss a date). If you are not a posted ReMixer, please either PM me a sample of your work, or send a well produced WIP of the track you'd like to claim.
Here is a list of due dates for this album (2023):
No more submissions will be accepted at this time. This is the final, no exceptions submission date for the album. There have been a few folk on here that have wanted to contribute since the last album submission - which is greatly appreciated! However, hell or high water this is when this album will be submitted to the site again, so if the final product is not finished by this date, you are not going to be on the album.
Let's make a Lufia album that's truly worthy of the Gods!

Jorito contacted me about offering a new version of this song, without prompt.  Here's the new version he has provided: (removed) and he requested to use this one instead.
I've listened to both submissions and this second version is slightly less boomy, though a bit less warm too.  Elements are clearer, like the guitars, but the wubs are a bit subby in this version.  In any case, @DragonAvenger and @Chimpazilla should give it a quick look to see if it's still ok for them.

Anyways, As mentioned previously the low frequency balance is a bit off as it can get busy at times, but not so much to bring the mix down.  I think the mix of different elements like the hard bass wubs and guitars worked very well, something I find it's not that easy to pull off.  Sound design was interesting throughout, even though the mix could've been cleaner.
The arrangement is where this song shines, as usual from Jorito, we get a very fun and creative arrangement that takes the original to new places.  A very high-energy track that flows well and has some imaginative writing.  Jorito hasn't been around for long, but I'm looking forward to hearing what he'll be able to do in the future when he manages to get his production on point, as I'm pleased with his progress with each new song.

YES

Props for being inspired by Plasma3Music's take on the theme, but making yours different enough that it didn't seem like a mere copy of his approach.
Those strings were pretty dry, leaving the fake-sounding articulations pretty exposed in the 25-second intro, then again from 1:40-2:06, which hurt the close. The crux of the arrangement was original brass writing on top of the main backing pattern of the source tune (:34-1:21), which was a valid approach with the source tune ever-present. The placement of the piano cameo at 1:26 was odd and sounded muddy. Dunno why the last note of the music box at 2:05 was sour/flat, but that was a bad look, so watch those smaller details. The ~7 seconds of pregnant silence should have been trimmed off, just noting.
Gario had good feedback on humanizing your brass, so definitely take his advice into account and tweak the presentation. IMO, the orchestration sounded somewhat stiff, but was generally serviceable relative to our bar, but you'll need to smooth out stiff-sounding parts like the strings as well. With those touches, the production will sound as strong as the arrangement. Good stuff so far, and IMO this wasn't far off the mark at all. With some improvements to the detail work of the production, this already-creative arrangement would sound more realistically executed. Definitely touch this up and send it back, Konstantin, I'd love to hear this posted in some form, and you've got a great base here.
NO (resubmit)

I'm fine with the long intro, sticking to tropes is not a requirement around here.  I think your production is clear enough, though I would tone down the reverb just a tad.  The percussive lead and the full section at around 1:30 seem a bit too busy and in need of balancing as I can hear the elements trying to fight for space and stepping in each other's toes.  

I also agree with Jorito about having more elements from the original represented would be nice, though it this is your artistic vision, it's not really necessary.  I do think the track ends abruptly and could use some development towards the end.  Overall this sounds like a very good start to me, really nice soundscape though in need of further polishing and developing if you're planning for an OCR sub. Another 30 seconds of development of the source wouldn't hurt as this track is only 3 mins long.  Good luck!

As usual now with Jorito, we get a solid arrangement but with some production issues bringing it down.  In this case there's a lot of mud in the mix, obscuring the drums and bass, and instruments competing for space around the low-mids and mids.  The mix could've had more air and be crisper and brighter.  The wubs worked ok, but had a bit too much of a white noise quality to them.  I will agree with Deia that perhaps a slightly harder sidechaining could've helped clear up some bottom end.

As previously noted, the shining aspect of this remix is the arrangement, which is creative and flows well, while also going a lot of places in the song's duration.  I loved the lead solos.

I know Jorito has been working on getting his production game up lately, and when he does he'll get one easy pass after the other.  Right now that's not the case but regarding this song the non-ideal mix and master is not that big of a hurdle for the excellent arrangement to overcome.  Take our feedback to heart and keep improving!

YES

As usual now with Jorito, we get a solid arrangement but with some production issues bringing it down.  In this case there's a lot of mud in the mix, obscuring the drums and bass, and instruments competing for space around the low-mids and mids.  The mix could've had more air and be crisper and brighter.  The wubs worked ok, but had a bit too much of a white noise quality to them.  I will agree with Deia that perhaps a slightly harder sidechaining could've helped clear up some bottom end.

As previously noted, the shining aspect of this remix is the arrangement, which is creative and flows well, while also going a lot of places in the song's duration.  I loved the lead solos.

I know Jorito has been working on getting his production game up lately, and when he does he'll get one easy pass after the other.  Right now that's not the case but regarding this song the non-ideal mix and master is not that big of a hurdle for the excellent arrangement to overcome.  Take our feedback to heart and keep improving!

YES

Some good ideas here, but i think the execution isn't quite where it needs to be. The general production seems a little subdued and could stand to be brighter. A good example of this type of sound really clicking would be here:
Notice how the percussion and synths has a nice sheen to the high end? I think emulating that a little would have the song sounding cleaner.
 
I also think that a lot more modulation on the lead would improve things, as compared to the chords and rhythms that it feels slapped on. The lead needs to come alive more and have some personality.  There are some articulations Larry mentioned that should be addressed as well
 
No

Hi all!  You might know me from some of my previous remix albums and tracks on compilations (Chronicles of Time, Spectrum of Mana, Vampire Variations, etc).  For the past few years, I've put together a yearly Halloween horror music remix compilation featuring various musicians from the VGM scene.  We did another one this year, and all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders and ASPCA.  It's free to download/stream, but if you want to toss a few bucks towards a good cause, we'd appreciate it!  Thanks for listening, and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Viking Guitar Productions Presents DANSE MACABRE 5
 

I personally loved this approach, and also that the artist was very open to feedback and used it for the betterment of the song.  Hope we hear more from you and your banjo again.

So I hear where you're coming from here Gario, there was clipping but it was not caused by going over 0 db, as that would cause some pretty noticeable digital distortion.  There was a clipper device on the master so that's what was causing that effect on the peaks, it's not a bad thing, it's just preference.  With a clipper you can achieve more clarity in a mix than with a compressor/limiter at the price of completely chopping off some peaks and that can cause some undesirable results.  Nevertheless, it's a matter of preference as I've heard and seen many producers use them on their masters.   In this case, I do prefer the new version provided by Kris.

Not too many people try to approach these themes because they're so classic and a lot has been done with them already.  However I did like the approach Kris took here, which was a fun romp full of effects and quirkiness.  Some effects such as the fireballs are used melodically and they're a surprising good fit.  I can agree that the fx usage could've been toned down a bit, perhaps around the 2 min mark, to give the listener some rest from them for a while, but it's not as bad as to bring the whole thing down.

The production was clear, and the actual synth textures were rich.  Rolling bass was pumping and the drums were clear and kept the groove going without going on autopilot.

Fun stuff.
YES

I want a Konami Noah's Ark mixflood. Oh yeah, I went there. 

TBD

Not much to say here, solid mix, tons of personalty.  Fusion jazz adaptation works well for all the sources.  I liked the pacing changes throughout the song, specially towards the end.  The fretless bass is playful and supports the arrangement well.  Good blending of all the sources, easy pass.
YES

Personally I'm with Mirby on the statement that the involved artists should be asked about this.  We had experiences with Brandon to varying degrees around the site, though like djp stated in the FF8 thread post it's best to remain professional and make OCR solely about the music.  As I have a finished track on this album, I'd prefer to remain on the album regardless of who's running it or whether it would be an OC Remix album at all, though I can imagine for some that there'll be grief no matter what happens.

That piano is SUPER mechanical. Not sure how I feel about it. It doesn't sound like it's trying to be real but it's so exposed.
I like what you're trying to do here, but I think Larry and Kris are right. Guitar sounds great but there's weird balance issues. Some of the synths get a bit messy and piercing.
Needs another look.
NO

Sí señor. And for collabs, you got my portion of the YESes.

hmm interesting use of bitcrushing.  I'm usually not a fan of what seems a blanket usage of the effect (on the intro) but It definitely adds character here.  The bitcrushed triangle wave lead harmonics may be too much for some, I think they're cute.  The guitar lead is surprisingly fitting though, and a highlight for me.  The climax screams awesomeness and power.  I think you did a great job with the arrangement here.  Deftones is one of my favorite bands of all time (white pony is one of the best metal albums ever made, imo) and I loved the reference there.  Overall amazing work putting this together, these different elements could end in disaster on less experienced hands but you managed to craft this with expertise.
YES

Supporting the site that has fostered my favorite hobbie for years? sure.

Have to include some new stuff from Brandon that continues to assume the worst about how OCR is run, including the belief that mixes from popular games were posted in order to maximize YouTube revenue (ignoring all the less popular games we posted mixes from). I want to be sure people can see these accusations. My responses below:
Sagnewshreds, on 15 Aug 2016 - 01:46 AM, said:
Need to be clear that Brandon wasn't blamed for "misrepresenting" the situation, as if it were just a difference of opinion. Despite pages of discussion and details, he's continued with over-the-top conspiracy theories, fake claims of evidence, and conclusions in bad faith that were literally libel. We believe the Content Policy gives OCR the permission to republish the mixes on other sites and present advertising in the context of the submitted materials, that fair use allows us to do this without licensing the music, with the revenue going to OC ReMix as an organization and that all revenue is disallowed from being used for profit. He doesn't agree with that point of view, and that should have been the focus of his issues. But negative concerns weren't brushed aside as he claims, and Brandon wasn't the only person who shared them. He also claims there were no apologies and that no commitment was made to transparency and legality. People can read through this thread and see all of the back-and-forth. Everything brought up was addressed. I will say that Brandon is very good at projection, since demonizing people, being disrespectful, and displaying a lack of trust & goodwill are things he was great at in this discussion.
One thing not mentioned before is that enabling YouTube ads increases the search ranking of the content, the same way that enabling ratings does. Back when we started the YT channel, we actually disabled ratings for everything to match how we didn't do polling or ratings of the mixes. It turned out that disabling ratings made YouTube reduce the visibility of the videos. But enabling those things makes YouTube increase their visibility, so we're trying to get the mixes heard by more people. That may explain why the SM64 mix, which was the first one with monetization turned on, received greater views; YouTube actually gives more weight in discoverability to content that's monetized and allows ratings.
That said, I'm the sole person that decides mixpost order these days (because I'm tagging them up and staging them), and claiming that we were just posting popular mixes to maximize YouTube revenue is silly and needlessly overthinking things. Sagnewshreds called your suspicions "tinfoilly," and he's right. For posting your Chrono Cross mix out of cycle, sometimes I do that. I just noticed you hadn't had a mix posted in about a month and didn't know you had anything else waiting besides some tracks on the FF9 project that were going to be posted on 9/9.

We can't state enough how we're not actually motivated by money and don't profit, but in any case, in the 2 month period where ads were enabled on 43 out of 3,000+ videos, we also had mixes from Gradius Gaiden, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Yoshi Touch & Go, Skylanders, ilomilo, To the Moon (yours), Global Gladiators, Lufia II, Rollerball, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Tyrian, Vectorman, After Burner, and R-Type for the C64.

Have to say this over and over again: we don't care what game something is from. At all. It doesn't change how we evaluate anything. If the submission is creative and interpretive enough with the arrangement, and produced well enough, we'll post it. We don't post stuff from certain games to boost ad revenue or social media metrics or whatever. Also, all ads were off since the 14th, including when that Chrono Trigger album trailer went up (plus we had already decided not to monetize trailers (which is why you yourself noticed the Esther's Dreams trailer wasn't monetized). Brandon's also saying that even BEFORE YouTube monetization, we were ALREADY strategically weighting mixposts to heavily popular games. This is despite publishing an album from him for the super-obscure game Teen Agent.

As I've said many times, we don't pick what games are mixed, the ReMixers do. And it almost goes without saying that Chrono Trigger or Mega Man 2 or Final Fantasy VII is more of a nostalgia and popularity draw among the ReMixers themselves, which is why they arrange those games more than others. We don't control that or try to steer anything in that direction. If OCR could have 1,000+ more Tim Follin arrangements, that would be awesome.
The last thing I'd say is that I don't know why Brandon put up a poll on keeping his mixes up on OCR. It's very obvious that he assumes the worst about the staff, thinks we're pocketing the ad revenue, maybe buying cars or comics or anything & everything non-OCR related with it, that it's some money-making cabal, that all the staff are complicit in said cabal, and that we'd love to illegally and unethically generate YouTube revenue in the shadows and willingly anger hordes of artists. Since he's convinced it's run like that and unethical like he claims, why would a poll convince him to keep his ReMixes up?

Like I said before, no amount of transparency or actions can make Brandon believe that OCR is run honestly, ethically, above board, and without a profit motive. Weighing that, I can't imagine why or how he'd convince himself not to request removal of his mixes. Due to his overly suspicious, paranoid, and imaginative nature about all of this, I think that's inevitable.

So the last constructive part of the YT monetization thread was that mixers were letting djp/OCR that they were fine with OCR running ads on the YouTube videos with their mixes. This, so that OCR could gather more data on the effects of enabling ads. The thread was closed because the discussion got WAY out of hand, but since Dave said he would appreciate if we opted in, this thread is relevant in my eyes.
Just to make it clear: THIS THREAD IS NOT MEANT FOR DICSUSSION
Just state here if OCR can use your mixes for this test run. And obviously, I opt in

i have known nuts a loooong time, and he over and over again he amazes me with the way he writes his music. to write this song in this key and have it sound so good is just kinda funny i suppose. I usually hear WIPs of his tracks, but this one i didnt even know he was writing until i saw it on the front page. Nuts always out-does  anything he has previously done. i am not sure how he keep on going, but im sure glad that he does.
awesome job as always

I'm going to close this thread up. A spirited discussion to be sure, but @djpretzel indicated what the next steps are going to be for OCR with regards to shifting ads over to YouTube.
I don't think it's healthy for us to sit around and do a post-mortem of the arguments/discussion. Let's get back to talking about video games, music, and video game music.

The only thing embarrassing was how you handled yourself here.
You have a historical pattern of this, and I am personally done with it.