oakthielbar

It's actually kinda funny. The more I listen to this, the less seriously I take it. The less seriously I take it, the more I enjoy it. EDIT: This was still a very rude way to express my thoughts. I'm sorry.

Mehhh. I don't really like it, but I'm not gonna say it was poorly done. Because it wasn't. It's well done.

I'm not going to refrain from being honest just because it might upset some people. No one's going to grow if they don't get real opinions, and while it may not be the highest quality critique, I certainly won't pad my comments to make them child-safe. As to the other parts of your comments, I understand your instrument choice - I love these kinds of synths too, but... I mean, they're funny. It's particularly that high synth that comes in near the beginning, though not exclusively that synth. I would expect to hear it in an extremely light-hearted, kiddish setting. The xylophone evokes images of skeletons dancing in a Saturday morning Tom & Jerry cartoon thing, particularly how it's used. Plus an accordion at the end? It's really easy to get the impression of utter ridiculousness from this. It also doesn't help that you chose a rather somber original song to arrange - changing the style so much with the above mentioned things kind of sounds like a joke tune to me. A very skillfully done one, mind you, but a joke tune nonetheless. I just got the impression that this was being taken very seriously as an arrangement, when it seems to be that this is more like a, "Hahaha, let's do something wacky and fun with this!" That is what I expect from a joke tune. I probably wasn't being terribly clear, but I don't mean an ounce of this as an insult. I think it's slightly detrimental to the piece, but that's a personal taste thing and not a lack-of-skill thing. I want it to be perfectly clear that this is a very well-produced and skillfully arranged piece. I was just completely thrown off guard by the silliness, and I don't really like it. Edit: I was a complete asshole. There are much better ways to provide feedback than this. Sorry.

What RoeTaKa said. It's not the arrangement so much - I mean, I don't like the arrangement, but I don't find it to be ridiculous or anything. He clearly has a good understanding of melody and knows how to improvise with it fairly skillfully. But his choice of sounds are just... goofy. The synths, a xylophone (or marimba)... it just sounds silly!

Is this supposed to sound utterly ridiculous? Really, this sounds like a joke. Edit: I'm sorry for being such an ass. Neither you nor this piece of music deserved this.

This parodies its genres really well EDIT: Not sure what I was going for with this comment, but I'm pretty sure it was mean-spirited. I'm sorry..

Ack! This is so cheesy! This is like an 80's prom version with hints of Chariots of Fire. The production is pretty good, but that's about all I'm enjoying here. That's probably more a fault of the style this was arranged in than anything else. EDIT: Sorry for what I said. This is actually an excellent piece of music.

A fine arrangement and performance. Really captures the spirit of the original while taking it somewhere it never went before.

I could have sworn I'd written a review for this piece before. It's not terrible, but it's bad. Horribly bland - which is a disappointment because I think Jeremy Soule is a fine composer. His work on Morrowind was exceptional, and Oblivion takes a close third (Secret of Evermore being his best). But here it's just so uninspired! We have Terra's theme placed over generic filmy sounding crap. The piece never goes anywhere interesting or new. Heck, some of the chord choices just seem to clash, and that's sad. And it seriously makes me sick to see the hero worship that goes on in this thread. Some of these posts in praise of the work are decent and well thought out, but good lord, some people are just trying to get in Jeremy's lap if you know what I mean. Edit: I don't think I can offer sufficient enough an apology for my hateful words here, but for what it's worth, I'm really sorry. I've listened again, and I can't even figure out why I didn't like it in the first place. It's good, full stop.

You'll probably never hear this from me again, but I actually kind of enjoyed this arrangement. I am so opposed to dramatic, over the top, super epic Hans Zimmer/Jerry Goldsmith arrangements that it's ridiculous, but you somehow pulled it off. The ending didn't work as well as the rest, but that's fine. The rest of it makes up for that.

Fair enough! This is an exceptionally well produced track and the female voice is very well controlled - I don't really like the male voice, though. The lyrics are much too cheesy for me, as well. Also not a fan of the spoken word section. I'm mostly just impressed with how well this track was produced. Sounds nearly professional - the MIDIish piano was a bit eh, but that's probably the only thing I can comment on.

I am floored by how enjoyable this is while being so minimalist. Normally when I hear songs around here with almost no instruments and a seemingly simple arrangement, it just sounds weak and uninspired. But this works very, very well. Plus your synths sound excellent and I really like the drums. This is one of the best things I've heard on this site.

Looks to me like he may have been out of line here, but I wouldn't say that ALL of his reviews were out of line. I'm sad to see one of the few people willing to say negative things about songs here banned, but then again, I haven't read all of his reviews and he may have been the negative nancy that everyone's accusing him of being. EDIT: Okay, I just looked through most of his first page of reviews and the vast majority were very positive. I'm not saying he didn't deserve to be banned (I mean, he said some pretty stupid stuff in this topic), but...

Hm. "You're entitled to think what you want, I'm just going to insult you over it." As to your full comment - I've actually given this another listen all the way through just for you. No joke. And my verdict remains the same. They keep building up to something at the end of each phrase for the first and last quarters of the song, but each time it lands somewhere uninteresting. The surf rock part was completely random and unnecessary, ultimately hurting the whole song. I didn't like the hip hop section, either - and really, I think I could have enjoyed either of those parts if any of the other sections had been developed thoroughly at all and taken their time to lead into the less related genres. But unfortunately, everything was extremely rushed and it jumped from one idea to the next before a single one of those ideas had time to be fully expressed. The production, on the other hand, is meticulous and well done. The guitar parts are well played (as you might expect since everyone here has a boner for guitars (which isn't necessarily a bad thing)) and the MUCH too short synth solo about a quarter of the way through is killer. And I do listen to the music for the music - when I feel there are problems, I say so. Simple as that. I would imagine so. EDIT: This was still unproductive, and my attempts to hide behind crap like "when I feel there are problems, I say so" were disingenuous and inflammatory. I'm sorry.

Yes, it does suck. Lots of good ideas, poor execution. It was more like a "ta da! Here's a weird blend of genres that we are hoping will make this song good!" sort of thing instead of a "ta da! Here's a really good track that just so happens to combine a bunch of genres!" sort of thing. Not that the song was terrible or anything. It just sounds like an experiment in genre combining that didn't really work out. EDIT: I apologize again, but also I want to acknowledge that @Liontamer was incredibly correct in calling me out on my frankly stupid comments.

It felt like there were a lot of really good ideas, and yet it just didn't happen. The whole piece felt... eh. It's just good ideas. EDIT: I'm sorry for not offering more constructive feedback. You deserved more than the useless crap I said above.

I couldn't care less that this is good (which it is). I'm just glad to see someone like McVaffe back.

I couldn't even hear the melody (or much of anything pitch-wise) over the drums. The levels on everything need to be totally revamped. As is, this is just a drum track.

Oh, JigginJonT... please have my babies.

I was quite pleasantly surprised with this. Not my sort of thing, but it was done well enough that I didn't quite care. The synth part is killer. Besides, it's refreshing to hear something FF7 on this website that's NOT from Voices of the Lifestream.

I can't speak for the song, but I'm starting to think that OCR should just be renamed to Voices of the Lifestream - a Final Fantasy VII remix website.

Holy fucking shit. I might dare to say that this is the best remix on this whole site. I can honestly say that I never expected to hear such crazy experimenting here - seriously. Drone doom makes my heart get all warm and fuzzy.

Pardon me while I go vomit from all of the cheese my ears just ingested. EDIT: This was incredibly mean-spirited of me. I'm really sorry.

Well, he tried to make it sound like a film score and that's what it sounds like. That sums it up. EDIT: I'm really sorry for being so flippant. This was skillfully done.

It's just too cheesy. The voice isn't bad and the arrangement is kind of interesting, but the lyrics are like I'm listening to some sort of F-Zero musical - and not in a good way. EDIT: I'm sorry for being an asshole about this. And besides me being mean, I was full of shit - this is actually good stuff.