The Orichalcon

I just started replaying X, and the crappy low quality forced me to stop. It is a game that relies heavily on its graphics being top notch. I welcome a remake of the internetional version, which is what I played originally.

Terrific gentle piece, which segued perfectly in zircon and C-GPO's track on the album. I had no issues with this on the album and I have no issue with it passing here. Well done, 3P. YES

This is the sort of groove-based music that I really enjoy. I can see where Tuned Logic has gone with this, and I have to say he seems to really have a knack for this kind of music. The piano may come across as dry, but it's to give it that crisp staccato-esque sound and keep the groove nice and clean. Now my problem here are the lead synths (I think there are two, it might just be the one?) it doesn't do the song justice and you can really improve it. The backing can be dry, but in this type of track you need to give the lead a LOT of attention and make sure it's absolutely perfect, since it's the diamond on the pedestal of the soundscape you've made. Consider lengthening and blending the notes. Play with filtering, pitch wavering on long notes, delay, reverb, etc. Really experiment with that lead and get it sounding as good as you can. I don't want you to touch anything else in the mix. I know the other judges have their issues, but I think you could potentially ruin it by playing around with it too much. I'm gonna reject it for now, but only because I want to hear that lead synth brought out and made absolutely perfect. I can see this one going on my next chillout compilation CD for my car. NO for now (Resubmit)

I disagree with OA on the highend, I'm feeling like it's ballooning and bit too much in the midlevels, mainly due to that main rhythm synth, which I feel should've been an octave lower. The bass also feels a little too 'high' so to speak. Nitpicky issues though. When I saw lyrics, I was kind of waiting for something cringe-worthy, but they fit in really well, more to support the music than to be the focus of it. My only problem is the slight mastering issues I have, but it's not enough to reject this. A really clever mixture of the two credit themes. It's a shame you couldn't find a way to include the Credits track as well. YES

Cool source. Never heard it before. A lot of the Zelda music is pretty kewl. Got some good remixes out of it. Awesome song. Let me say that first. The guitar is mixed just the way I like it. Nice and grungy, reminds me of Fear Factory. I have the same issue as my fellow judges: Where be the source? This is a really cool original piece mostly, with some cameos from that boss theme in it. I can't really pass it as a remix because most of it isn't actually a remix. I don't think you should bother with trying to get this to pass, honestly. You've already got a perfect song here. Take it as your own, man. You can consider this an original that borrows some melody from an old game track. I know it's nice to get things to pass on OCR, but in this case, wouldn't you prefer to say this is your own original work? NO due to awesome originality.

Oh man, this sounds like a mashup rather than an actual metal mix. Like the vocals have been taken from a folksong and mixed with a metal song. I want to list the little problems I have with the song that aren't the vocals, I think people have said enough about that. The drums. Just because it's a metal song, it doesn't mean your kick has to be dry and flat. A lot of people have a problem with the kick drum in metal and rock pieces. The problem is that you end up with a nice full song due to the guitar, and a really dry popping noise in the background from the kickdrum. I'm not sure how to explain what you can do to improve it, but listen to some pro-bands and compare your kick to theirs. I know yours is scripted rather than played live, but it can still sound realistic. The other thing is the toms. Beef them up. Toms are the power behind a drumtrack. Make them sound nice and full so those breakdowns come out and really catch your attention. I don't want to reject this, because everything in the mix that I have issue with comes down to personal taste. The source was apparent enough for me, I'm not going to go into percentages like Larry does. I know it's going to cause a tie-up in the votes, but I think it's good enough to pass. YES

I'm still not a big fan of the track, but I think it has more to do with the source than the way it's been remixed. The drums are better. The transition is better. The issues I had have been addressed and I see nothing technical to stop this from being posted now. YES

Isn't it pretty? It looks like someone went mad with a paintball gun.

The source is a cover of a , so unfortunately the remix is ineligible to pass. I don't know if Larry and co. still want this to be voted on in any case?

Agreed. Mozz's tracks are among the top on the album for terrific arrangement. I'm not sure what software to recommend as I've only ever used Adobe Audition and FL Studio to do my mastering. The only advice I can give is that (for an album track at least) you want to try and keep everything to a certain dB level. The trouble I had with desperation was that it started so quietly and ended up being so loud towards the end that there was no way I could really edit it to fit the master volume of the whole album. Darren would tell me it sounded too quiet at the beginning, but then point out that later on in the track stuff was clipping due to the boosts I made to the track. Darkesword or zircon would probably be able to give you a better idea of how to master your mixes well. Of the tracks on the album, theirs were mastered the best and required no work on my behalf. Even though Darke's tracks for example had quieter and louder parts, they balanced well and nothing ever got too loud or too quiet. That's the key. The other important thing is EQ. Getting your highs, mids and lows balanced right. Especially for orchestral tracks, boosting the highs can be the difference between a good track and an outstanding track. I always recommend playing with an Equaliser when you're finalising your mix to get it to sound its best.

Nope. That's been there for a long time though. Had a portal in it as far as I can remember.

I found your tracks didnt require any work at all really, Pyro. It was pure luck that Melting Sun worked so well before zircon and C-GPO's track on the second disc. By far my favourite transition on the albums. There's nothing wrong with the way your tracks sound.

I did the OCREMIX sign and the spiral waterslide.

Ok, here are my reviews for Disc 1. I'll do disk 2 and the bonus tracks another time. I know some of the sources from this album, but I've never played metroid, so the majority of these mixes are fresh to my ears. So let's go! In the Beginning As an intro track, I can't really judge it individually. It sets up the whole album the way you'd expect a curtain-show to be set up. Simple, yet enjoyable piano and pads. I think Mercury Adept did exactly the job required for the album opener, and maybe even a bit more. Lovely track. 9/10 Danger in Old Tourian The calm before the storm, so to speak. I put this track second because it worked well as an intro to Earthroot, and came slightly unexpected after such an uplifting intro. The actualy track is unfortunately, not the most interesting piece to listen to. I think it was made well enough, and works as a mood shifter, but if I was casually listening to music, I'd probably skip this. (Don't get me wrong, I still like it a lot.) 7/10 Earthroot BAM! There's the guitar. Launching the album proper. Darren originally asked me to remix brinstar red, and I'm so glad I turned it down due to time constraints. VikingGuitar makes one of the most enjoyable tracks on the album come alive with haunting leads, crunchy powerchords, and just the right amount of breaks throughout the track. The acoustic outro is my favourite part of the track, I love how the main melody is dropped an octave to make it sound darker. Definitely a keeper. 9.5/10 Bioluminescence The first track I'm not really familiar with on this album. Theophany did a wonderful job mastering this. Bio sounds like the sort of thing I'd expect to hear when stumbling across an ice temple, Indianna Jones style. If you want atmosphere, this is the track to listen to. The harp, strings, synths and beats all come together to make an enjoyable track. If I had to fault it, it'd probably be that the beats get repetative and sort of bland as the track lingers on. It almost gets away with it because of the style, but the track probably goes on for just a tad too long to not switch it up. 8.5/10 Infectious Fear An intense track to listen to. The horn blares got on my nerves the more I listened to it. But the beat keeps bring me back, I love the groove that this one has going on. I picture this as the battle music for an evil mastermind of some kind. I love the speedups and slowdowns. It works out really well. I just don't know if the horn was enough to carry the lead for most of the track. 8.5/10 Desperation Ah, this track gave me so much trouble during mastering. Mozzaratti, if you read this, you need to sit down and work on your mastering, the track was really quiet in places, and overbearingly loud in others, to the point where it turned into a wall of sound. The actual track is written really well, and sounded terrific when I boosted the EQ a bit. I really recommend working on mastering of your music to make the most of the talent you obviously have when it comes to arrangement. full marks for the arrangement, but I have to express how critical I am of the way the track sounded. 7/10 Into the Green World Orchestral track, potentially one of the most, if not THE most popular tracks on the album. Sam has a great talent with writing out music. I will admit I had no idea who he was before working on this album, and I was blown away by what I heard. I bow to his superiority in this field and will simply say I enjoyed this track completely. 9/10 Leader's Lair The whistling lead from this track was probably from the source, I'm not familiar with it after all. But it grates my ears how irritating that whistling is. The actual music underneath it is a gorgeous example of how to properly make ambient music which would fit any post-apocalyptic scene in a FPS. The throat singing in the middle of the track is terrific and I'm curious as to whether or not Prophetik literally recorded himself performing it! If Proph was willing to render a version of this without the whistling lead all over it, I'd jump on that in a heartbeat. 7.5/10 The Caves of Brinstar The first of four AriesT tracks. The dryness of the intro swell made it very hard to incorporate with other tracks. AriesT appears to know how to write music well, but seems to lack the experience required to add finness to his (her?) tracks. The synths, swells and drums are all very loud, dry and almost overbearing at times. I'd love to have heard this one worked on some more to make it all mix a bit better. Otherwise I'm not a huge fan of the dance-style version of this theme. 6.5/10 Ashes to Ashes Andy's first track on the album. I'm glad he had time to spend on making some music for this album, as the themes from Metroid seem to really suit his style. If you love your WUBWUBWUB, you'll love this track, because it's done to perfection. Andy utilises all his knowledge to ensure there are no boring moments in this epic track. From drums to synths, stutters to bells, this is a contender for best track on the album. I bestow upon it the first 10/10 Kraid's Campfire Ballad When I received this one for mastering, it was inexplicably rendered in surround sound. When asked, Sebastian said he had no idea how it ended up that way. Either way, I had to mix it down to stereo for an mp3 release. This is a really pretty remix which I'll admit I probably EQ'd a bit heavy on the bass (Anyone else find it too sub-heavy?) Either way, the piano, accoustic guitar, pads and percussion make for an almost inevitably pristine version of this track. 9/10 Cave Dweller A memorable track for its weird and funky twists and turns. It does become repetative unfortunately. Still, I love this one. It manages to sound heavy and light at the same time. Grunge-style chords and drums dominate the bottom of the mix, the light synths and bells providing most of the melody. A really unique and interesting track. Don't skip past it! 8/10 The Mission's Briefing Same as AriesT's last track, this one is written well, but sounds like it needs more finness in the way it's mixed and mastered as it tends to stay one-level-loud throughout the mix. It's an all right track, but nothing to write home about. 6.5/10 Metroid Legacy Another enjoyable heavy-set mix. Powerful toms carry most of the mix. The lead instrument that pops in on occasion (sounds like a heavily mixed pan-flute?) makes this mix sound almost tribal at times. Only a short track, this one does its job well. The scratchy scribbly noises in the background are a little strange though. 8/10 MQ2 And we arrive at my favourite track of the album. Stemage & Chunkstyle tear it up with a wickedly evil boss mix for the Metroid Queen (I'm assuming that's what MQ stands for.) Offset chords start the mix by gradually speeding up into the main beat and tempo for the remainder of the journey. The little break at 0:34 gives you a few seconds to get your shit together so you can have it ruined by the awesomeness of what comes. Epic powerchords, stunning leads, corpulant drums (I'm running out of adjectives.) Just sit back and enjoy the majority of the mix as this duo work their magic. But get ready for the best part at 3:02 when that accousticly mixed guitar comes in, followed by the most awesome shredding at about 3:25. I can't describe how amazed I am by this track. It's so dysfunctionally awesome. The only bad thing about it is that it had to end at all! 10/10

I wanted to extend my congratulations to everyone on the project. Mastering the tracks was a joy, because the quality of the work was so high on the album. I dare say it's one of the highest quality remix albums I've heard, which is hard to achieve in such a large scale. Since I'm quite familiar with all the tracks now, I'd love to review them at some point so everyone has some good feedback. Otherwise, congrats to everyone for a fine result.

For some reason that one added itself to the album and I couldn't figure out how to remove it. So yeah, disregard.

Hey everyone, I felt like taking a few pictures of my spawn area on my solo world I've been building since October last year. This is just the spawn area, but you might like the images: Click here to see the album!

Half of the site staff are involved in this project one way or another. This thread gets a free ride because we say so. Besides the project's nearly finished so whinging about it now is going to amount to diddly squat.

TO'S NOTE: I couldn't see this up here, so I don't know what the deal is with this track. But I kinda promised Rexy to get it fasttracked to a revote, so I'm taking the liberty of posting it up. -------------------------------- Remixer 1 Name: Rexy (real name: Bev Wooff) Webpage: http://www.studiorex.co.uk (yes, that's been revived recently!) OCRemix user ID: 7528 Remixer 2 Name: Brandon Strader last time >_>) Webpage: http://www.bstrader.net OCRemix user ID: 3123 Remix info:- Remix title: "Hogtied" Game covered: Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (both the Genesis and Master System versions) Individual songs covered: Boss (Genesis) [main], Scrap Brain Zone (MS), Boss (MS) --- Rexy here again. Thank you for the feedback on the original Sound of Speed version; we've taken it to heart (well, at least I did) and have come together with a polished up mixdown. All information in regards to the arrangement process can be seen in the original decision thread. I admit, I was annoyed to see the track get pulled from the TBP list the first time around but the general feedback issued from the original submission was definitely a good foundation to improve on. Here I improved on the drum programming and humanised the organ part on the intro, while it was up to Brandon to take all the production concerns and address them here. We've received good feedback from CHz, TO and OA for this one, and I hope what we've done is enough to get it ready for primetime. In its original form, I noticed that it became one of the project favorites among fans (most common reason being the SMS cameos), and that alone spurred me to encourage Brandon to co-operate with this resub. In both cases, he was a pleasure to work with, we DID do a second arrangement together since the project's release, and we were glad to be part of the overall process. I hope you receive this track well, and thank you in advance for your considerations Peace out, -Rexy- ------------------------------------ The mixdown is better, things don't feel quite as crushed together this time around. The drums are still a little muddy for me, I would've liked some more powerful highs to bring them out of the dry background. The guitar is the same as before, so any judges who had issue with the timing will find the same problem. I don't mind the timing on the guitar. This is polished enough to pass for me, although I think it could be slightly more polished, there's no real need to do it if the artists are happy with it. YES

Hey Guys, just sayin' you can do what you want with spawn. I have my memories. Just don't fuck it up and make something ugly.

Grand Cross. My favourite track from FF9. Best final boss theme from any Final Fantasy. (Yes that includes One Winged Angel.) First up, thankyou for showing The Black Mages how to make a rock remix of Grand Cross. It's pretty awesome when you can honestly say you've beaten the guy who wrote the original song at covering it. I guess I'll list the issues: The vocals at the beginning and end were a little too quiet. I would've boosted them dramatically, deepened the voice a little bit, made it sound as evil and powerful as possible. The middle portion of the remix is almost verbatim from the original. I personally wouldn't have it any other way, since I love it the way it is, but you know, ReMix not cover. Cool little bits like the mixup around 5:00 are reason enough to let the straight cover parts pass. I love the ideas that come out as the remix progresses. Kuja's theme makes an appearance around 5:30, one of my favourite recycled themes from Nobuo (it's in Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 5 as well.) Some nice shredding after 6:00 just enjoying the way the guitarist is playing around with the theme. The break that follows works great and then even more audio sweetness follows. God damn, just a terrific remix. I'm tempted to ask Fishy to make the vocals at the beginning a little more prominent, as it's really the only issue I have with the remix. Just pump them up a little bit, and lower the pitch a little bit to make them that much more evil. I can't wait to pump this at top volume in my car. FUCK YEAH

Wow, it's like The Sims: Professor Layton style (or at least the beginning is.) I love it. Sources are easily recogniseable, cleverly mixed together. Great production. Respectful use of each instrument. People are going to love this one. YES

Unique idea. I like the haunting acapella. My biggest problem with this is that it follows the original so closely. It's hard to call a vocal recording a 'midi rip', it's more of a cover or a parody than a remix. Don't get me wrong, I love the track and the idea, you've done it well. The bells work well. It almost sounds like a middle-eastern or african wedding chant. All that's missing is the occasional drum tap. Everything works fine for me, including the quality. It's just that the arrangement is identical to the source, so I can't in good essence pass it. If you're willing to give a go at mixing it up a little more. Maybe incorporate some other themes with it? Junction is an eerie track that might work well. Either way, I'll keep this on my playlist. NO for now.

I didn't hear the original, so I'm judging afresh. OA and I were chatting about this one last night. I didn't share his initial concerns on my first few listens. I've given it some time to see if I ended up hearing similar problems. First up I'll say I love the track. It's a funky, weird and cool sound with lots of interesting things going on. Rather than hearing lots of individual things doing their own thing, I thought it all came together to make a very interesting combination. One area I do agree is that the drums aren't really doing anything but keeping a beat, at least for the first 2:30. When things kicked up a bit at the end, it got better. But I still feel like it's quite barren and boring in the drums department, in spite of the occasional breakbeat. I still think it's cool enough and ingenious enough to pass. Sure, it could be better. But I'd like to encourage the artist by passing this. Yes

Very muddy. I don't mind the timing on the rhythm guitar. It's actually not an uncommon thing to hear in some heavier rock songs to be a little sloppy on the rhythm, so long as it comes back into time, which is what happens here. I want to hear thing balanced better. Broaden the EQ on the percussion/drums. It's very flat. I'm going to trust the others on the ties with the source. The arrangement sounds fine to me. It's fun and interesting to listen to. Just touch up the balance and anything else the other judges had issue with. NO