Digital Coma

Dude, you got that far?

I"M GOING BLIND

I don't like screwing with peoples work too much if it's already beautiful as I've pretty much made it a policy not to dwarf the original intent music I arrange. Instead, I enjoy molding arrangements to fit what I feel. That, of course, being good example of how I imagined the composers original intent would be expressed to the listener while still adding my own artistic touches to satisfy myself. in short, I like pretty, shiny things and don't like it when people jump down your throat for not having utterly destroyed it like a good portion of other "artists" do when they "remix" music. The ideals of rearranging videogame music at its most general are not to, even if we could, "dwarf" the original compositions, but to creatively offer a compelling interpretation that honors them, regardless of artistic intent. Objectively speaking, this remix does not. It is not different enough from the original so as to illustrate the modifications made, as encouraged by this site's FAQ. And while a FEW new chords, transitions, and bridges - minor building block arrangement - may be enough of an artistic touch to satisfy Kaijin, this mix is otherwise literally the original Xenogears song with a drumloop, notwithstanding excessive bass levels and lack of development. It's Kaijin's intention whether or not to "screw with peoples' work", but he should know that such an attitude is incompatible with the ideals and policies of OCR, and a submission created with this attitude would and should receive a NO on the panel.

So how is the bitrate of the background noise lower than that of the piano if this was all recorded live? The world may never know. Actually, it does. This is a sequenced soundfont, and it sounds suspiciously like this midi. NO

Sugar content Code Magenta I think I told Iggy not to submit this; it's a technically sound but very boring arrangement of the most remixed tune from Duck Tales. Still way too many reverse cymbal transitions and not enough original interpretation. What's original sounds flat and forced, like the flute and piano parts. Sound quality is good, although there's not enough mid-low tone for my liking. Ending cuts off. NO

Basically the original melody played by poor acoustic samples washed out by reverb, awkward percussion, some new chords and breaks and attempts at prog-rock, and a Retentions of Conflict quality synth guitar patch. NO

Uh-oh... So, this is extremely campy vocoderized lyrics awkwardly stretched to rhythmically fit the original music with clipping and bad mixing, making an unfunny one minute long mix. Well, I guess the humor is subjective... maybe. NO

Yep. I also was not feeling the lyrics/rapping/flow; the mix is not very interesting for being five and a half minutes long. The musical repetitiveness is an issue too. Cut your ICO mix to 6 mb and submit that, bro! NO

OSHIT

Droning is right. These two themes are pretty much covered with rough guitar and poor drumwork. Good enough for an almost-cover maybe, but not for a rearrangement. EQ to improve the sound of your percussion and guitar tone and vary the originals more the next time you make a six minute long mix. NO

NO Regardless of anything else, that high-pitch flute lead is painful, end of story. I have no issue with the repeating bell loop, which is pretty clearly chromatic, but the overall repetition in this arrangement and the excessive reverb on annoying instruments kills whatever feel this was going for.

Very not impressive. This arrangement is composed of several drumloops, sfx, and simple synth leads. That's about it. The original melody is played by grittily filtered and distorted synths while the percussion ricochets back and forth without change or dynamics. The bulk of the track is literally sfx and recycled drumloops. Cut-off ending. Clearly a NO in my mind.

That plucked synth instrument really gets old after a while, especially when you've heard the same preset in a hundred different submissions. Here we have an arrangement of progressive layering; instrument 1 on, instrument 2 on, instrument 1 off, instrument 3 on, etc. That's a very lazy way to arrange. The sound is dull without much equalization and production, and barely half of the Robo theme is even used in this mix. You could probably achieve the same effect by taking a midi of the theme and chopping off the latter half, plugging in some default samples, and turning on layers alternatively. Got a long way to go. NO

Poor recording, little rearrangement, and zero transitions between different themes. No production of any kind. Very messy. NO

I'm still not a fan of Nigel's fluff and stuff generic orchestral composing, but I recognize a solid rearrangement and an expensive soundbank when I hear one. Usually a good combination. At least he's moved beyond transcribing the originals mostly note for note. Moving. YES

Can't pass in good conscience a submission with such an audio glitch as at 1:05. Besides that, there are several detractors to this decent arrangement; namely, weird pitch bends on random notes, dirty upfront shakers/claps, messy bass, and a cut-off ending. The feel is there, the instrumentation is there, the synth accompaniment is cool, but there's a lot left to fix. Like the cut-off ending. Sorry, but this can't pass like this. Fix it up. NO

Other than... whatever that comment was, Dan is right. Shoddy mixing and piercingly EQ'd samples do not complement a supposedly chill mix. Very repetitious and dull. I would have preferred this to end much sooner. NO

First thought that comes to mind is how bad the violin playing is in the beginning. When it runs in full harmony with other instruments it's better, but by itself without backing tracks it's quite the sore. The string section in the middle grates on my headphones, probably due to loudness and the dry mixing, and a lot of the cymbal hits sound misplaced. The arrangement is okay, but I can't get past the poor violin and dry pitch guitar. NO

I don't need to know the original if I know it doesn't sound anything like this 'remix'; a bunch of neat DSP effects on random instruments piled on with colossal reverb, playing single-instrument notation without any melody or harmony. Bizarre, in a bad way. NO

That's not an excuse for using poor untweaked samples. Read through the FruityLoops 101 thread at our Remixing forum. This mix has got a couple good things going for it; style and feel. The execution fails. Some of these sounds are awful, like that distorted bass drum/snare, some like the finger snaps are cool, but they're all mostly untweaked and unprocessed. They reek of presets and lack of effort. The string pad does some weird things and ends up off-key (1:18), the bass is rhythmically awkward, and some chord changes (2:32) do not work. This is the mark of amateurish arrangement. Learn to incorporate and custom-fit your own sounds and place them into a more graceful composition. NO By the way Wingless, there's a reason why we have an HTTP judge space. If you can't use the submitter's link, download it from djp's computer.

Dave, you didn't give us the submitter's contact info, so none of us can find out about Zoltan ourselves. Mind doing that and clearing this out?

I don't know the original, but I can already pronounce this unacceptable due to all these encoding buffer underrun/skipping errors interspersed throughout the mix, starting at 1:20. I see in the ID3s you mentioned you use something called 'MP3 To Wave Converter PLUS 2.341.' Don't. First of all, don't make a WAV out of an MP3 and then make an MP3 from the WAV. Such a faulty process is very noticeable in how dull this mix sounds. RazorLame (lame build) is free and reliable, and won't turn what sounds like a decent arrangement into a glitch-haven flat sounding MP3. When a mix gets on OCR, it's final, over, and done with. You don't want such easily amendable defects to plague it ever afterwards. Present your work at its finest. I'd contact you directly with this information and try to get the original Viewtiful Joe song from you, but there's no contact info mentioned. So next time, supply us with the original song, and don't use crappy encoders. NO OVERRIDE

Note: the panel decided not to use YES OVERRIDE.

Okay, low-fi sound. This is probably a prologue that'll segue into crisp, bright piano. One minute passed. Two minutes passed. Three minutes passed. Four minutes passed. Guess not. This arrangement excels, but the recording is much too low-fi and distorted; with clipping like at 1:12, I can't pass this. The dirty production works stylistically to a degree, but not throughout the entire piece. NO

Dudes, what's the point of YES OVERRIDING this? Just let it get the four yesses if deserved. There's no rush to close the decision.