The Orichalcon

It's a running gag in South Park's world. They've long since maintained the in-joke that only Mormon's go to Heaven. Everyone else goes to hell. You even see people like Gandhi and Jesus down there at times. Except Saddam Hussein. Going to heaven is a punishment for anyone who isn't a Mormon. Satan didn't like Saddam because he bullied him and was not a kind lover. So he sent him to heaven, his eternal punishment being forced to make macaroni sculptures. So it's a good thing he went to hell. Exactly. So going to hell in South Park isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's a running gag in South Park's world. They've long since maintained the in-joke that only Mormon's go to Heaven. Everyone else goes to hell. You even see people like Gandhi and Jesus down there at times.

People keep getting offended over the Steve Irwin thing. Really irritates me. I'm arguing with someone on a forum who said the south park creators only put Steve Irwin in the episode to "boost their ratings". This person hasn't even watched the episode. How do you argue against an ignorant claim like that? Why can't people see that this was a tribute, not a mockery.

Not quite the mixing standard I'm after, Twiterror. Thanks for showing an interest. I've sent out a few requests to some OCR artists to join. If anyone currently on the project knows someone who might suit the project, feel free to let me know.

That's fine. This probably wouldn't be posted for a long time. He can have a look to see if it's still on the panel when he has some time spare to fix up the issues.

That's the thing about South Park; they are quick to jump on any part of pop culture. I remember the South Park movie actually having lines from Episode I...which was released the next year. Matt and Trey saw the line in a early trailer and revised the movie to have the line. Not surprising considering that it doesn't really take them long to create an episode. The WoW one took about a month to complete, and others have been done faster. AWESOM-O took 3 days apparently.

That's the thing about South Park; they are quick to jump on any part of pop culture. I remember the South Park movie actually having lines from Episode I...which was released the next year. Matt and Trey saw the line in a early trailer and revised the movie to have the line. Yeah, the Jarjar binks line. One of the people in "Operation Human Shield" in the South Park movie said "Is the people gonna die??" like JarJar says in Episode 1. Also, apparently the Steve Irwin reference offended a lot of people here. But God knows why. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20654302-2,00.html I sincerely hope they don't ban the episode.

Last night's episode, Hell on Earth 2006, was great. The Steve Irwin part might've been too soon, but it was a tribute in that South Park style.

A few issues become apparent on a proper listen through. The production is the main area where I have problems. The mix sounds rather dirty, which is expected for this style, but it's to the point where it's becoming a wall of sound. The compression over the track makes everything sound crammed together, especially when you compare it to the source which has more clarity. The strings are thick and fill up all the gaps in the mix, and the percussion is very heavy. The thickness of the drums works, but when it comes to the cymbals, the compression really breaks the sound apart, giving that wall of sound effect. Your synth-thing that you used in the first half of the mix is filtered well to give it a bit of diversity, but you pretty much used the same pattern over and over again, both with the filtering and composition. Kind of defeats the point. It sounds all right though, which is the important thing. I'm nitpicking. Arrangement isn't too daring to start with, even discarding the remix factor. The source isn't too melodically driven, relying on riffs to get through. Your remix is identical in the genre sense and adopts the same instrumentation to carry each part from the original, only adding the synths for a bit of development. Things build up melodically towards the end of the mix with that synth lead, which was a welcome change to the preset patterns. I think this mix could've been clearer, had a more daring arrangement and maybe switched a few things up so it wasn't so similar to the style of the source. But I think the remixer has made some creative choices in rearrangement, and the sound quality is above our bar. I think any further work on this mix will only damage it, since the problems are generally technicalities. Borderline YES

The arrangement is doing nice things to my groove thang. Gonna sprain something. Unfortunately, what's the deal with the production? This thing is all out of sound-balance. The percussion is thinner than a steamrolled Stanley. I like the set you're using, but get the fat lady off it and let them be heard. Balance the rest of the samples so everything is cohesive. The bassline needs a bit of phattening up to go with the beats. Tone down the rhythm synth thing you have going, and you should be fine. Also, I recommend not using the master channel to do a volume crescendo. I dunno about the other judges, but that beaf up at the end clipped something horrible in my humble headphones. Leave the bassline, percussion and rhythm synth off the peak and you should have something a little more "bear"able. No beefs with the arrangement, just fix up the production issues and we can catapult this one straight into the ears of the OCR Audience. NO Vegemite

beep beep beep. I used to have this memory game toy that made similar sounding beeps to this. It'd play a sequence of different toned beeps and you'd have to press the buttons for each tone in the same order. Very frustrating. Anyway, the beep sound stays the same right the way through, try some variations. Your percussion is quite clearly just a placeholder, try making it more interesting. Right now it's just there for the sake of having something there, when it should be something to make the song flow. Otherwise, the song is just sparse. There's very little going on at any given time. You have a strange warbly bass synth, as well as a pad, a synth and your beep things from the beginning. This'll need a lot more work before it's passable. I dunno what I can suggest to make it better, because there's nothing really here to comment on yet. Try working on it some more and see if something properly takes shape. NO

Thanks for providing the link to the source. One of the few Ultima V tunes that I can remember. This remix actually reminds me more of the song Fiona sings in Shrek, at least to start off with. I like what I'm hearing so far, even if it never really builds to anything full. You set out to make a gentle, enjoyable piece and that's what you accomplished. The arrangement is astoundingly simple, but never really becomes repetitive, even if it's repeating the same melody over and over, it's always with slight differences. However, I would've appreciated this more if you were a little more daring. Instead of staying with the same basic melody and only making small alterations, you could have easily built this piece up to a short climax while still keeping the same tone. You hear that sort of thing in Disney movies a lot. It allows you to truly show how gentle the majority of the piece is through dynamic contrast. If one part is loud/strong and clear, then the rest is easily recogniseable as gentle. The production was good, you balanced everything so it blended together well. The sparseness of the background makes one feel that you're in a quiet shady part of a meadow or something similar. I think maybe some ambient effects might have spruced up the over-all soundscape in this one. Some gentle bird calls, light wind and rustling-leaves would've given this one a beautiful tone. The rearrangement aspect is my main concern. I don't hear much of the source in this beyond the slightest similarities and adopted melodies. This is most likely a result of trying to adapt the source to the "Sweet little melody" you randomly came upon. I don't think this will pass as a result of the arrangement and sparseness of the overall sound. However I think this is creative and achieves what it set out to. There are no rules as to how full a piece has to sound. I've laid out my issues with the piece, and I'd be happy to have a resubmission. I fully understand if any judges want to reject it, in other words. But I'm going to pass this, if only because I want the ReMixer to know how much I appreciate this style, and how rare it's pulled off this well. YES

Bump. Gotta ensure this topic doesn't die.

The theme reminds me a lot of this old TV show's theme that used to be on called "Widget, the World Watcher" There's not much to say. Synths sound a little bland? Yeah, they're supposed to aren't they. Guitar is great. Drums carry the pieces. Violin is nifty. You know it,

I don't have too much of a problem with the arrangement here. I think it's pretty creative, if not a little repetitive. However, I'm with Vig when he says that the song sounds less impressive as it goes on. This thing is too long for the style of mix it is. You could squash this into a 4 minute mix with the same level of arrangement and it'd still probably sound a little sparse. That being said I think what we have here is an enjoyable mixture of sources, even given how sparse it is. I'm gonna go with a perfectly borderline pass on this one. It could be much better, but it's creative and enjoyable at the moment, while not tripping over our guidelines which is what counts. YES

All right Overcoat, come up with a WIP for me sometime in the near future and we can see if you're back on. Joker, send me the WIP for Map 30 too.

Bump. Strongly encouraging mixers to at least try out. You never know if your style is what I'm looking for.

Something in this mix sounds out of tune to the rest of the mix. I don't know if it's the sax or the guitar. The drums sound good, even if they are heavily reverbed, I could live with that. The bass is good. The sax playing is sloppy at best, I know you can play better than that, Koelsch. Things pick up from 2:30, but the parts prior are just bad. I didn't hear the original, so I don't know if you've changed anything. But if your playing was as it is after 2:30 right the way through, this would be a lot better. The stuff from 5:15 and on is good stuff, nice freestyle playing that you can just chill to. Fix up whatever it is that's out of tune, work on the timing in the mix so the sax and guitar aren't so sloppy, and maybe tone down the reverb on those drums so it sounds like it's not being played in another room. Then we should be swinging. NO

I'm not sure how I'm going to describe the problems I have with this mix. I don't know what that swirly sound effect is in the background of the mix, but it's dominating the whole thing and it becomes very annoying after a short amount of time. The other issues with the mix would be the lack of any significant direction in the style. Your samples sound all right but they're not mixed in a particularly interesting way. The beats are bland and don't really seem to add anything to the song. The piece just sort of wanders from here to there, never really building to anything substantial before just fizzling out at the end. It just sounds dysfunctional, and I think you need to sit down and decide what sort of mix this is supposed to be. Do you want it to build up to something? Then focus the second half of the mix and cut out the annoying sound fx in the background Do you want the piece to be ambient? Then mix down the volumes of the instruments and get rid of the bland drum beats dotted through the mix. Do you want a combination? Then get some decent beats, drop the sound fx so they're not as annoying, and work the melody into something that's actually interesting to listen to. NO One other thing. You stated in your email: "I have released this track on my album (which has yet to sell at all.)" I hope you aren't implying that you're trying to make money off someone elses arrangements. The reason we remix music is meant to be a tribute to the people that created the originals. These remixes are our own, but by basing them on other peoples arrangements, we're liable if we profit from them. I might have misunderstood what you typed, but I thought I should just throw that out there. If you're remixing in hopes of getting money, you should stop and just make original songs instead.

Many production issues present immediately. It started off pretty cool with the glockenspiel intro, but you went from having an interesting idea to following a plan almost too religiously. I understand the appeal of using nothing but live instruments, but if it starts to sound bad you need to change something. I like the idea behind the mix, but it isn't performed too well. You stick very close to the source in regards to the arrangement, perhaps hoping the variety in instrumentation will make up for that. I'd like to see a bit more rearrangement going on here and there. Make sure your instruments are all in-tune, some things sound just a few cents short of a dollar. Also make sure you balance the EQ, thicken up any thin recordings and such. Don't be afraid to properly master your recorded tracks, it doesn't take away any of the authenticity behind the recording. The important thing is to make it sound better. Either way, the arrangement is the downfall here. You repeat the source on note right the way through, even to the point where you used a fade-out at the end rather than bother to fashion a proper ending. You could take this one back and make it sound better, but all you'll really end up with is a very fancy sounding cover. A lot of people would find that enjoyable, but OCR is about more than simply upgrading the original. NO

Given your various nicknames, I removed you by mistake. It'd help if you kept the same name. You're readded.

Genre doesn't matter. The pieces have to be up to OCR-quality as a minimum standard with regards to production. The overall style of the music is just to keep the mood dark. Nothing happy. The rest is up to you.

They're both good in their own way. Too simplistic for the style I'm after though. Macavity: Replied. Your cover art ideas are your own though, I don't feel comfortable telling you what to do with that. Just make whatever you think looks best. Same goes for everyone else who wants to make cover art.

Rexy, hop on IRC when you get a chance and send me a message so we can start having a chat about the piece. If you have full access to your mixing programs and materials, it should be simple enough to address the problems I can see. Also, welcome Sixto to the project.

After speaking to a couple of mixers supposedly on the project, I kept getting this for some reason. The project is only ever done for if the mixers stop communicating. Overcoat and Rexy. If you want to get back on the project, show me either a final piece or a WIP that I can be confident you'll be able to bring up to par, otherwise I'll keep those tracks open. Guy In Rubber Suit: PM me these original recordings. IF you've never done any mixes, perhaps you could collaborate with someone to share some ideas.