prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

Hey everyone! It has been a while. I hope all is well. Due to some big changes in my career, my focus shifted a bit from making music for the past a couple of years, so I have been relatively quiet on the forums. I wanted to return with a new and improved style, so I took some time to read over comments and feedback from previous WIPs and posted songs, and really tried to figure out what I'm lacking in comparison to other remixers (A LOT). I also wanted to learn more about FL Studio, mixing and mastering, and how to use my Native Instruments samples better. I'm still struggling a bit, but I think I am making good progress. Now, as far as my remix is concerned, I have been having trouble trying to decide exactly what genre this mix would fall under. Maybe, chillhop(ish)? I really don't know... I just make music that feels right, ya know? I made 3 different versions of this particular remix, and I think this version is my favorite one. Though, this is a remix of a Sonic Frontiers song, it was actually inspired by the "Rusty Ruins" track from Sonic 3D Blast (Sega Saturn ver.) and one of my older remixes that was posted waaaaay back in the day, "Day & Night." In previous remixes, I struggled making my music sound natural and non-robotic, so this time around, I focused on adding more variation to note velocities and timing. I still suck at playing my midi keyboard, but I decided to keep some of the minor mistakes and imperfections in the mix, and move away from grid-based composing. I hope you all enjoy the song! Thanks. Games & Sources Sonic Frontiers - Theme of Koko: proph note: this is the same thing for almost 2min and then has a B section at 1:54 that i almost missed

track has at least 4.5db of overhead, probably more if compression is used. opening chords are beautifully voiced. the G# there is certainly a choice. i really like the playing with time that you're doing around the 20s mark, but it becomes tough to hang your hat on a rhythm initially as it's too out of time. i like the 3v2 idea though and when you're more specific about the timing (like closer to the 1:00 mark) it's a lot easier to understand what's going on in the left hand. bar 16 feels really nice after the uncertainty of the opening section. that left hand voicing at bar 19 in beat two sounds weird even with the break you put in with the pedal - i think the G# and D next to each other with no E until halfway through the broken chord makes it hard to catch the chord structure initially. bar 20 though is worth the price of admission - that's straight out of an Uematsu FF piano arrangement, just beautiful. and repeating it at a lower dynamic really gives two perspectives on the same section, i really like that. at 27, nice job in the performance emphasizing the sustains over the noodles getting cooked underneath. we get a recap at 33, some really nice descending elements for a bit, and a heavily embellished broken chord to finish it. this is a beautiful arrangement! full of character, just like the original. there's a few points where academically i see what you did that don't quite sound right to me, but overall i love the concept and perspective. and the performance is very moving with a lot of patience. excellent job. YES

Sheet music for reference: 10 years ago my first OcRemix was posted - it was a piano solo arrangement of the love theme from Earthbound - I thought I'd mark the occasion by submitting an arrangement of the love theme from Earthbound's sequel! It's another personal favourite and something I'm glad I finally got around to covering. The source usage is pretty straight forward - I'll consider the original material to be made up of 2 sections, and A theme (starting from 0:00 in the source) and B theme (starting from 0:50). My remix has a short introduction, with the A theme coming in at about 0:30 (bar 8 in the score). It's a fairly straightforward, unembellished statement of the theme, but set over a bed of quiet descending triplets in the left hand (I'm sort of emulating the start of Mahler's famous adagietto here). There are some minor reharmonizations and twists on the melody here, which transitions to the B theme at bar 16. The texture is a bit thicker here with chords in the right hand and a busier 16th note rhythm in the left, with some ornamental high notes filling the spaces between the melody. It builds back up to the a repeat of the A theme in bar 20. After this climax, it breaks down for a couple measures with some soft 4/6 polyrhythms that continue to weave in and around the repeat of the B theme. After revisiting the original setting of the A theme briefly from bar 33, the piece ends with a quiet arpeggio. Also a small note, in terms of the mix you might notice some low end fuzz and some warbling - there is a vinyl filter on the track that can be removed if it's an issue. Games & Sources Mother 3 - Love Theme

opens with similar orchestra and flourishes. vocals have probably a bit too much reverb and not enough formant boost, so they're hard to make out. the backing elements are frenetic and intense, which is fun. the guitars lead at about 0:39, and there's some violin in there as well. the lead into 1:02 is great, big and intense. there's an extended solo section followed by a section that's just vocals, drums, and strings. the mix overall is really hot (there's a ton of clipping identified) but it's extra loud here, and the cymbals make it so i can't really hear a lot of the vocals. there's another tonal shift at 2:00 - i really liked the shift to the persian scale as a way to mix it up, as it's been fairly straightforward throughout. 2:34's the first real dynamic shift we've had the whole track. the step back here is nice, but again when the crash starts going it's irritating and over-loud. we get a half-time section at 3:33 - would have been nice to hear the drums step back earlier, but i liked a lot when they did so that other stuff could take the fore. percs are back in at 4:17, and everything doesn't sound quite synced right away. crunchy note at 4:58. everything's back in at 5:02, and then suddenly we're in a chorale section! the layering of the parts make it hard to tell what part is what - a bit of panning and varying formant reinforcement and levels of verb would help make the individual parts clearer. this is a cool idea though. coming out of that section at 5:35, we get what's clearly an extended build section for the Final Destination. 6:29's payoff chorus is exactly as intense as you'd expect, although the synth riffing that was really wide in the ears wasn't my favorite. it gets really loud and hard to pick stuff out by the very end, but that's a bit to be expected given the scope of the track. it ends with a phase shift to some audio from a match, which is a bit of a letdown but i get the nostalgia concept. overall i found the cymbals to be super notched sounding and a bit shrill, especially when they were by themselves. additionally, in general, the voices had a lot of fundamental and needed a formant boost around 2.5khz to get them to pop out of the texture more. overall though i loved the arrangement - there's a lot of breadth to an original that's actually pretty straightforward. i appreciate the various ways that you keep it fresh over a 7:30+ long track. and overall i think the mix is pretty solid, it's just a few specific things i wish were different. definitely not enough to keep this back. YES

opens with a really big distorted bassline. there's a huge fat kick that comes in right away as well, and then we get down with the phatness at 0:20 when the backing elements come in. it gets pretty dense and messy quickly - i love the opening riff and the bassline once the track gets moving individually, but they're in the same register so it gets hard to hear everything clearly. it stays dense and progresses through the chord structure for a bit until we get to 1:21 and there's a bit of a break from the bassline. at 1:42 there's some stabs and the timing on several of them is off - it's notable right away with how regimented everything else has been. this is clearly in a pattern because the same timing issues come back several times. the mix gets very over-dense again around the 2:10 mark and it's hard to really hear anything by the end of it. 2:32 is the first real break we've had, and this is really needed as the track is so oppressively mixed (honestly fitting for a doom track!). 3:02 brings in another completely sick bass tone (seriously, you've got like four in this track that are so great), and then we get a recap of the opening section (not copypasta but fairly close). the track trucks along for over a minute doing mostly the same thing, and then suddenly drops off with no beat and meanders a bit before ending suddenly without any prep. i'm honestly pretty torn about this. on one hand, it's very over-dense and cluttered in several sections, and the timing thing at 1:42 is offputting immediately when you hear it. on the other hand, it's got some absolutely dynamite synth choices and i actually like how oppressively heavy the mixing is, as it fits the game without sounding bad - it's just super heavy, the kick especially. i'd like to hear from someone else before i call this one as i'm really on the fence about it. ? edit 3/20: i want more things to happen in this track, like kris said. there's a very static, blocky quality to it, and it's hard to judge this without seeing all of the crazy automation and fun things each of these big synths could do. but we don't judge on potential or how close we are to attaining that potential, we just judge on what we have in front of us. this is an aggressive, forward mix with unique synths and a punchy approach. what's here is over the bar. it ain't perfect, but that's ok. YES

opens with what i think is ~30 of a joke, and then gets into the actual arrangement, so i'll start from there. opens with an expanded version of the dark world dungeon. there's some nice passing of the initial four-note pattern initially, and then a highly interpretive version of the dark world dungeon theme. this more outlines the chord structure and references the main riffs than it does directly arrange it - there's a lot of the original in the cello for example, but not a lot in the leading voices. there's a rhythmic and dynamic resolution around 1:57, and it starts referencing the ascending arpeggio riff from the NES dungeon. the melodic line here is roughly the same shape as the original's melody line that eventually comes in, but it's certainly more inspired by than it is the original's material. there's some octaves here that i didn't really care for in the scoring, actually - i would have much preferred more fleshed-out chords, at least partially because it wasn't obvious to me why those notes were being emphasized with octaves. the third section starts at 3:12 with some really fun disjointed and differently-timed ascending patterns. the cello here is overpoweringly loud for at least the first 20s or so. there's some resolution elements and it's done. there is what i think is some unintentional phasing going on throughout. later edit: this is apparently endemic to the samples used per the remixer, so it isn't something that we can correct easily. i also don't really get the first 35s and wouldn't mind if it was just from the true start of the piece that we posted. that said, what's here is a really interpretive and interesting take on several dungeon themes. there's a lot of complex arrangement going on here, and it's well-performed. what's here is still over my bar for execution as it's enjoyable and has a lot of depth in the performance and arrangement. YES

wild original. it really goes all over the place. opens with some water sfx, and then we get the chips to get it moving. there's a lot of long-tail verb on this to my ear and it sounds pretty spacey as a result. as far as i can tell, the opening two minutes or so are mostly the same notes as the original, with new instruments and a few extra backing elements put in there. it isn't until the two minute mark that we get something that'd be considered to be really arrangement and not just instrumental replacement. there's some exploration of the arpeggio section that the original ends on at 2:30, and then it fades out. unfortunately i don't think there's near enough arrangement to consider this. i actually like a lot of the choices you made (admittedly not all of them) for instrumental replacements, and i think what you've got here is a lot more listenable than the original. however the vast majority of this is dave rogers's arrangement and the synths are pretty close to his choices too, which really doesn't get this past the 'cover' stage. i'd love to hear this with more intentionality in the arrangement throughout - instead of switching between sections because the original did, make it more of a musical approach where you're choosing what to emphasize and what to stick with. separately, i'd say that there's a lot of fleshing out of the backing elements throughout that this needs. since you're not limited to a few channels, i'd suggest you expand a lot more! there's a lot of meat on that bone in my opinion. i think what's here would be something that the cpc fan community would be into. unfortunately it just doesn't meet the arrangement requirements for our site. some changes could definitely raise it to that bar, but may move it further away from your artistic concept. so it's up to you how you'd want to proceed. i certainly hope though that you'd consider revising it to meet the submission standards though! NO

classic original. opens with some sfx and a screaming guitar riff. lots of verb on everything. bass has a really weird tone - the fundamental isn't the loudest element, so i'm guessing it's been layered with something to make it fuller (the distorted tone somehow isn't the only bass tone there?), or else a super-notched EQ. that opening section sounds very strange as a result. the petrucci-esque guitar that comes in right after is fun, and it's also super loud but the bass sounds better with it. it sounds like none of the instruments are in the same room - lead has a ton of verb on it, rhythm and bass don't, and drums have some arena long-tail verb on them. lead guitar riffs at 1:00 sound great. tom groove going into 1:29 sounds like a fill pattern that got reused a lot - doesn't really feel like a tom groove, although i like the idea. 1:29's drums are the same as the opening - guessing the chips are as well. i like the addition of strings that happens partway through this section. it adds a lot to the feel. 2:27's section is the same as 1:00 (backing is the same, lead is up an octave initially). that said, i love the escalating elements of this section, and it's easily the best part of the piece. the opening in the bass is enough for me to say no on this, and the subsequent reuse of drums throughout isn't a great thing either (although i do like most of your fills, they really feel nice and keep it rolling forward a lot). i'd love to hear some more variety in the drums and fills in the first half, so that the second half (which currently has a lot of repeated parts) can stay the way it is now. you may also want to consider unifying your verb throughout so that the instruments sound like they're more in the same area. this is a fun track! i don't think these tweaks would really take a long time to execute on, so hopefully we see you back soon. NO

when this came up ~18 months ago, i voted on this with primary criticisms being the balancing, frequency overload in the low mids, and the arrangement feeling meandering due to lack of dynamics. opens with the ghost castle arp and a ton of really fun sfx work. some very industrial stuff is going on pretty far away, and the title screen's surprisingly chromatic melodic line comes in at 0:29. it's neat how well that works among a very spare background. the riff at 0:47 goes on for a long time and gets a little tiresome fairly quickly (that synth's delay effect was cool in small doses but is irritating with longer lines, especially since it's in one ear hard). percussion drops a bit going into the textural shift at 1:16 - there's some new drums here as well, which are pretty hard to hear (especially the kick). the aquaduct arpeggio with the delay effect is back in the right ear and it's way louder than everything else. it gets toned back later which is good. this continues to wander around with the aquaduct theme in the front for a while. i found this section to be lacking in direction still. there's a simplification at 2:07 alongside a time signature shift, and we're back to just the kitchen sink effects alongside the ghost castle theme for a bit. this section is neat with some of the counterpoint between the melody and counterpoint, but it feels underbaked both because of how thin it is here as compared to the drums chiming merrily along, as well as because it's the same synths as most of the rest of the song at roughly the same volume. it's hard to pull out that this is more or less important than other sections. i still find the transition at 2:37 confusing as well - it really sounds like the song suddenly ends, and there's no real prep or anything set up to come out of it either. the synth work immediately following that break featured a few shifts that i found made it easier to pick out what was the most important. the texture here also feels more fleshed out. i didn't like that the lead instruments for this section were mostly in the right ear instead of centered. there's some fun stutter effects on the leads later on also that i liked. i don't think my opinion on this has changed yet. i still don't like the weird cut at 2:37, i still think the middle third drags, and i still think the lack of dynamics is a negative throughout. i don't remember the panned lead instruments before, but i find that to be irritating as well (i found myself turning my head regularly to the right to 'hear' the lead better) - in fact i think the piece is over-panned throughout. from an arrangement standpoint, i think that you would be well-served by being more intentional bringing out the melodic lines you're trying to have us trace. you've got three sources, and tbh i think they work really well next to each other, but with that comes an imperative to be very intentional about how you emphasize and define what's where without losing the general song-form structure that you're using. the story here isn't as clear as it should be, and a big part of that is that the natural ebb and flow of a track isn't here due to there being little dynamics. i'm fine with a track that doesn't have a clear melody, but what is melody should be cohesive and readily apparent, and that's not happening here right now. i do think you've fixed the mix a lot - i remember before the bass being totally overwhelming above everything else, and then all your instruments were very tightly mashed against each other. i think the bass is probably a bit overcorrected, but overall i found the mix to be passable aside from the panning stuff. my concerns are mainly with the song form and arrangement elements. i have a lot to say here and it probably sounds like i hate it. i don't! i think there's some really neat concepts here, and a lot of overlapping back-and-forth stuff that reminds me a lot of old-school remixes that i loved. i just...i got done with the full listen a few times and just didn't remember a thing that happened in the middle of the piece outside of that panned synth being so annoying. that's not a good thing given the interconnected nature of this remix. the track doesn't go anywhere for an extended period of time. i actually think this is a fairly straightforward fix - just cutting some cruft out of the middle and emphasizing your melody more via non-delayed leads is probably enough. NO

hemo, emu, and myself were involved with this. i was specifically only involved with the lining up and processing of the vocal parts and one fifteen-second section on sax, so it's not like i was doing a lot of arranging or mastering myself. i'm comfortable approaching this from a critic's perspective and not as a contributor given that i came into the project as late as i did. i'll note that almost every element was performed live. opens with a very cinematic pop, then we get some beautifully performed harp. the choir parts are imo too quiet and don't come through the mix well (this is partially on the performers not having developed formants and partially due to mix imo). 0:50 gives us the 'impending doom' section from the original, and the build into 1:25 is super exciting and intense. the horn riff right after is really great too, but is a bit overused in several other areas of the song immediately following that rhythmic pattern. 1:49's recap of the chorus section is nice and intense, but i felt this section didn't have enough beef in the bass to really feel as powerful as it could have. there's a transition to the bridge section at 2:19, and this is nice and light as a contrast. it gets a little messy from an auditory standpoint at about 2:47 (i think the guitars aren't quite as light on their feet as they could be here, and the distortion hangs a bit). there's an even lighter section with some oboe at 3:03 - the vibrato on the oboe isn't super clear and would have been great if it could have been wider and have some more body to it. some rising action at 3:18 that eventually includes some voices. this section was a little earth kid-heavy and that's actually probably my fault for not reining in her power notes a bit. i really liked the section at 4:02 - both the voices and in the very charismatic background elements throughout. we get some guitars at 4:33 - this entrance sounds super dope. i wish that the choir behind this was fuller as well, especially in the lower voices, to support it more. there's some insanity right after this in the backing parts, and the choir here sounds really full so that's great. we also finally get the big sephiroth chant that we've all wanted! aeroprism's voice really pops here imo and sounds fantastic. there's some really nice flute flourishes in this section too. this is, like, 90 seconds solid of just incredible stuff. easily my favorite section. there's a big build starting at 6:45. most of the men's voices here are hard to hear (this is again a formant thing), which is a bummer as that section took a while to line up. i believe aeroprism's voice here relative to the other men is too loud (or maybe they're all too quiet?), but again that's on me as the guy that handled the vox blend. there's a huge orchestral build through here and that feels great. we get one last big chord and it's done, outside of some sfx at the very end. this is outrageous and enormous and a wild undertaking. i get that some people are fatigued with the theme being The Video Game Orchestra Track, but the execution here is tremendous. for the most part, each section in this track is represented in a similar way that other arrangements of this original have used, but the technical proficiency, performance scope, and the way everything fits together isn't like any other representation of this theme i've ever heard. it's truly impressive. easily the best arrangement of this track i've heard since the FF7 project and Black Wing Metamorphosis (17.5 years ago!!!). i have nitpicks but nothing of substance. excellent work. YES

Distinct list of musicians involved: Zack Parrish, colorado weeks, Pixels & Paradiddles, Ridley Snipes, prophetik music, Shea's Violin, KestrelGirl, Chromatic Apparatus, Travis Kindred, TSori, JohnStacy, Xaleph, GameroftheWinds, pearlpixel, Andrew Gossett, Nicole Chang, Mel Decision, Jabo, Earth Kid, Linnea Burr, Aeroprism, Lucas Guimaraes, Cyril the Wolf, Hemophiliac, Sirenstar, Emunator Comments from colorado weeks: It was a fun challenge to arrange for SATB choir for the first time instead of noodling into a mic. so grateful for everyone's help with getting these out, especially Hemo for proofreading the sheets and proph for mixing/editing the chorus. I'm so proud of our one-winged choir for singing my meme lyrics. Sorry about that tritone, by the way, Hemo. I made sure to give it to us altos ;) ( Comments from Zack Parrish: When I first set out to work on this project I had no ambitions to make it the size and scope that it became. I originally reached out to the dynamic duo, Pixels and Paradiddles and was going to just do your typical rock opera, less the vocals, with the three of us. We were going to tick off doing OWA on our bucketlists and that was that. Over the course of about... 2 days the team for the track grew to about 10 as I maxed out the group chat limit very quickly by adding people. Why? Emunator and I decided to have a direct competition with each other(which he ended up beating me on but we were also on each other's tracks at the end so it didn't really make any difference at that point). Essentially once we challenged each other to a duel for Dwelling of Duels I tapped on every person I considered a great asset at the time. People I regularly use for cases where I need the best. There were of course a couple of new faces involved early on as well that I had never collabed with, namely Hemophiliac and Kirina. But the rest of the crew was familiar with my shenanigans and knew the assignment right out of the gate. Go big or go home. And thus it ... multiplied how many people were involved because I realized having a handful of vocalists wasn't going to cut it, and if I'm doing orchestra... why not find any entire orchestra? So I had to create an entire Discord server to dedicate to this project. I sketched out the gist of the structure of the piece and started working on a rough draft with orchestral samples, without any guitars, vocals, etc. I decided this time around I'm going to spread the responsbility of the different components to people that I feel were much stronger in these respective areas than I... so I tapped ParadiddlesJosh for all things percussion(writing, coordination, programming, performance, etc), pixelseph for all things guitar / bass related, colorado weeks for all things vocals, and then RidleySnipes was a late addition to handle the mixing / mastering of the stems for everything. With that, we set on our way over a few weeks of throwing ideas out there in a slew of channels on the server dedicated to each section. Meanwhile I kept adding more and more people, some of which were referred to me by others that had joined already... to increase not only the size of our choir but the size of our orchestra. At one point we started jesting about trying to recruit all of the judges at OCR at the time. It was a brief thought at the time but we clearly didn't go through with it. It was later revealed by prophetik that the rule doesn't actually exist and that it is more of a principle of theirs not to vote on their own tracks. Honorable to say the least. Eventually I had... I don't even know how many people anymore signed up to perform parts covering almost the entirety of the wind and string portions of the ensemble, 2 guitarists(also covering electric bass), 2 drummers(one programmed the other performed), full on chamber choir that proph took the helm on syncing up the stems and pre-mixing so Ridley didn't have as much of an undertaking, and well... that's that. I tried to have Emunator more involved but he was tied up on his own track pretty heavily so his involvement was mostly around sound design. As the parts rolled in for each respective section the track started to come alive and doing test renders of everything were more and more exciting. Was this a bad idea to try and do something so ambitious while also in the 2nd month of my new job? Absolutely. I am still recovering from it mentally but the journey to completion was a fun one. Witnessing everybody that was involved getting so excited to be a part of the project, have fun crafting the end result, and then experience the joy of hearing the final mix as we launched it into the DoD sun... had its own rewards. They all brought their A-game and despite some comments that would suggest otherwise, I truly feel like they all came together to create a great rendition of the theme. It's a theme I've wanted to tackle for over a decade and they gave me the opportunity to do it with gusto. It was an honor to work with all of them and even though I may never do something to this scale again, they are all on my radar to work with again in the future. Arrangement & Production: Zack Parrish Vocal Arrangement: colorado weeks Percussion Arrangement: paradiddlesjosh Guitar Arrangement: pixelseph Mixing & Mastering: Ridley Snipes Editing: Ridley Snipes, Zack Parrish, prophetik music(vocals) Lyrics: colorado weeks Sound Design: Emunator Orchestra Violin: Shea's Violin(Lead), KestrelGirl Viola: KestrelGirl Cello: Chromatic Apparatus Contrabass: Travis Kindred Trumpet: TSori French Horn: JohnStacy Trombone: Xaleph Flute: GameroftheWinds Oboe: pearlpixel Bassoon: Andrew Gossett Saxophones: prophetik music Harp: Nicole Chang Percussion: paradiddlesjosh(programmed), Mel Decision(performed) Band Lead Guitar: pixelseph Rhythm Guitar: pixelseph, Jabo Bass: Jabo Drums: paradiddlesjosh(programmed) Choir Soprano: colorado weeks, Earth Kid, Kestrel Girl, Linnea Burr, Nicole Chang Alto: colorado weeks, Earth Kid, Kestrel Girl, Sirenstar Tenor: Aeroprism, Andrew Gossett, Lucas Guimaraes, paradiddlesjosh, pixelseph, Xaleph Bass: Andrew Gossett, Cyril the Wolf, Hemophiliac, Lucas Guimaraes, paradiddlesjosh, prophetik music Lyrics(Latin): sortes qui facit, vexa et inveni sortes qui facit, vexa et inveni sephiroth sephiroth nemo, nemo me impune lacessit nemo, nemo me impune lacessit sephiroth sephiroth plus musici, plus victoriae plus musici, plus victoriae sortes qui facit, vexa et inveni sortes qui facit, vexa et inveni sephiroth sephiroth nemo, nemo me impune lacessit nemo, nemo me impune lacessit sephiroth sephiroth veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus (non plus aeris, non argentum) veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus (si vis pacem, para bellum) veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus (non plus aeris, non argentum) veni, veni, venias veni facere iocus (si vis pacem, para bellum) sephiroth sephiroth sephiroth Lyrics (very loose translation): you have sealed your fate, mess around and find out. you have sealed your fate, mess around and find out. sephiroth sephiroth nobody, nobody provokes me with impunity. nobody, nobody provokes me with impunity. sephiroth sephiroth more musicians, more victories more musicians, more victories you have sealed your fate, mess around and find out. you have sealed your fate, mess around and find out. sephiroth sephiroth nobody, nobody provokes me with impunity nobody, nobody provokes me with impunity sephiroth sephiroth come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" (no more bronze, no silver) come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" (if you want peace, prepare for war) come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" (no more bronze, no silver) come, come, oh come, come make "the joke" (if you want peace, prepare for war) sephiroth sephiroth sephiroth

30 something years ago I spent many hours having fun with trackers on my Amiga 500, and last year I re-discovered the remix scene (mostly thanks to Allister Brimble and Matt Gray) and, searching for my old favorite game tunes, I couldn't find any Nebulus remix so I thought I'd give the original Dave Rogers music some love. This is the first 8bit VGM version I make and share. Even though I ran the original game in an emulator to rescue a few in-game sound FX, I got the WAV outputs of the three channels in the main tune using the Amstrad CPC Musics Ultimate Compilation by Megachur/Paradox ( https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=11166 ). Some original segments were split and processed on Audacity, and others directly on Renoise, where I did the composition, effects (principally stereo work, reverbs, compressors, some phasers and distortion) and mix. Around 60% of processed original tune sounds were incorporated, along with several percussion, bass and synth instruments to make harmony and beat more complex, and a few library elements for transitions and atmosphere. The original tune barely exceeds two minutes. Most of the additional minute in the remix happened just jamming, trying to develop a bit the fun-yet-relentless melody Rogers made for climbing those spinning towers against time. Games & Sources Nebulus was a well known game for both C64 and Amstrad CPC but the likely original, full main tune was composed by Dave Rogers for the CPC. The C64 tune was not credited, and a rather dull conversion sorted out by the Commodore lead dev himself, so the fun original track hasn't received much love in the remix scene. Here's a profile of composer Dave Rogers - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/credit/36495-dave-rogers And an Amstrad longplay video that starts with the full original tune I worked with.

This is my take on the track with a metal/guitar-driven focus. I recreated the chiptune elements myself from scratch to accompany the more modern guitar/bass/drum sound to blend the two eras. All guitars are performed by myself and I used the Neural Petrucci amp sim to transpose the rhythm guitars down by 10 steps to create a more 7/8-string guitar vibe, although everything was tracked on my 6-string. I felt as though that prominent bassline was crying out for a super low-tuned guitar sound and I think it came together nicely. I tweaked the timing a little to give it a bit more of a punchy staccato vibe which also lent itself well to guitar. I threw in some ad-libs to the arrangement, referencing the main theme of the game on guitar at times, with another cheeky reference at the end of the track that foreshadows the melody of the syndicate headquarters in the sequel to the game. Games & Sources Original track: "The Last Soul" (Round 8) from Streets of Rage 1, by Yuzo Koshiro.

opens with some filtered stutter synths. we get a lot more instruments at 0:14 - it gets pretty dense really quickly. a quick freq analysis sees a lot of sub-40hz content that's really clogging up the bottom of the mix. it also sounds like the hats are filtered alongside the arp - which means there's not much high content at all. so it sounds pretty condensed. dropping a significant highpass on the stuff below 40hz would be a big help. beyond that, the track is so compressed. it's very dense and oppressive. turning everything down a lot, getting volumes roughly where you want them before your compression and limiting, would be a big positive. there's a bit of a break with sfx at the 1:00 mark, and then we're back to a repeat of the first 30s of the full band sound. this is followed by another sfx break with some electro guitar in there to mix it up a bit (but the backing elements just repeat twice in a row), and then we're back to another repetition of 0:30-1:00...and, well, you get the picture. there's a lot of wholesale repetition that just gets tiring. something to change it up each time - even changing synths would help! - is really needed to avoid it just being repeated over and over again. better to repeat something once too few times than once too many. the same 30s of full band repeats like five or six times with various sfx around it until around 3:45 when the arp finally stops. the next several 16-bar sections involve the full band section repeating with various instruments added in or out, but it's the same thing overall. it repeats a few more time and then it's done with a kind of weird pitch as a final note. there's some audible static as well that just drops after a few seconds. overall i like the concept - 90s house is a specific vibe and i think that SoR would fit that a lot. what's here though is maybe one minute of material stretched over five. i know that house can be repetitious, but there's loads of examples of keeping the overall feel moving consistently by using instruments that have natural change over time. this just sounds like the same 30s repeated at least ten times, with a few breaks for sfx that also have similar backing elements. i'd suggest trimming the length way back and finding ways to never say the same thing twice the same way. add a new instrument, change a synth, use a different drum fill, etc. - it's going to add a ton to the overall package. NO

as always, thank you for a clear source breakdown. opening starts with the title theme with a variety of transitional sweeps layered in. we start to get a beat at 0:36 and it picks up from there. this entire opening section feels pretty dull with the instrument choices - there's not much sparkle in any of them for them all being EP-like, and the kick is kind of blah - but we get some pop at 0:54 when the melody comes in. i love the time signature goofiness - the 7/8 section is absolutely the right choice there. 1:27 tones it back down again. there's a surprising amount of sustains that kind of just sit there (really expected to hear some blurbs to keep it moving through that), and the overall texture is still pretty dull outside of the sweeps. i felt like that past the 2 minute mark until about 2:10 when we started getting more percussive elements coming in and more brighter synths, and then again was in a happy place at 2:25 with the melodic material back in. this trucks through the melody of both tracks, and then it's done. the ending is a little abrupt but fits the style. this track does a fantastic job of saying "wait just a bit longer for the part you want", and then it's there and it's great, and then the track's done and i'm putting it on again. this is a great compositional technique - always repeat one less time rather than one extra time! - and when the track pops, it really pops. i think you do a great job taking a track that's kind of already in your style and making it unique and yours without copying what made it good originally. nice work. YES

if this is a brand-new project, i don't know if it counts as a resubmission. opens with some organ outlining the chords and the opening melodic line. there's a stutter synth here that doesn't really fit the organ and voices, but then an edm beat comes in so it makes more sense. beat feels pretty cluttered - the snare has a lot of low content, kick feels unfocused, there's several low synths in this section, and the fills feel like they're layered on top instead of being different things the drums are doing. 0:27 has the melodic content come in for the first time in full. i really don't care for this lead as it's very occluded and hard to hear what it's doing. i do like the call and response concept that's going on there though! there's a break right after this for a bit, and then we get a new lead at 0:55. and then another new synth bass at 1:09, and another new lead at 1:23! it's a lot of change in a short period of time. it's ok to lean on one tone to help to tie sections together - this feels a little too bouncy between ideas (although i like the ascending arp a lot, and the 404 bassline that's right after it). there also continues to be a lot of drum fills that are complex and dense, and a little less there might be ok - a few well-timed tom hits are better than the same complex fill over and over. there's a break at 1:47 - and then a bigger break at 2:02, with some sound design on the transition. this goes into an outro that repeats the opening idea, and it's done. after hearing it, i'm remembering this one from when i voted on it in 2022 (and several times before). i think you've got a lot better overall sound quality than you did last submission! i'd like to see more cohesiveness from section to section, a few of the more complex leads reined in, and a lot more work on the drums - less of the same big complex fills and more intentionality about what it's doing. NO

all five previous submissions most recent rejection It has been some time since I have taken a crack at this track. This one is a brand new project, and I tried to use some of what I learned on my Twisted Systerz submission. It's the first walkabout theme from Dragon Warrior 2. I give thanks for the time and consideration ahead of time:) Games & Sources

i wasn't sure about the instrumentation initially (maybe i'm still not?), but this has some funky ideas to it. opens with some noodling around the opening riff, and gets to the melodic material at 0:19. it's not 100% the original melody, but has some stuff modified in it while outlining the skeleton of the original. i am not a huge fan of the changes, actually, but the implementation (beat, bass, lead) are actually pretty fun and unique. i don't know what 0:49's referencing, because it doesn't sound like the B theme and doesn't use the same chord progression. 1:16 is a solo with a...floppy drive? it's got some fun stuff to say, so maybe physical media wasn't a mistake. 1:45's a little more goofy and explores some alternative stuff. we get the melody back at 2:22 after that exploratory section for one more time through, and then it's done in kind of an unexpected way without as much prep as i'd have hoped. i'm going to check with the remixer, because what's here doesn't seem to have enough source ultimately. i don't recognize what's going on at 0:49, and from 1:10-2:22 doesn't seem to have any source in it at all since it's using the altered chord progression and i don't hear melodic material. so i'll check, but right now i only hear about 65s of source (0:00-0:15, 0:20-0:42, 1:07-1:10, 2:22-2:47) if i'm being generous. ? edit 12/23: update from the op: Thanks for the detailed feedback! At :49 the stutter style lead melody is the same notes of the B section of Marble Zone, though I admit it’s not as recognizable as the lead section in my remix. At 1:47 however, while it again is using the lead notes from the B-section, it is in fact less recognizable. If it’s overall not close enough for OC Remix standards I totally understand. Either way thanks for giving it a listen! the notes aren't quite the same - the original is Am/G/F, and there's no G# (would be an A# in the key of the remix) in the original, but i catch the outlining of the B theme now without the extra repeated notes that the original has. adding in those two sections is enough to get it well over the 50% line. and i like the track overall - while i wish there'd been some different choices around the ending and the adaptation of the melody, i think what's here is unique and fun, and it's a really neat vibe. YES

This track was completely remade from scratch using modern drum samples along with the vst "Chipsynth MD". The very beginning of the orignal Marble Zone track is sampled along with some sound effects from the Marble Zone level in Sonic The Hedgehog. A caterkiller is a common enemy in that level that can only be defeated if you manage to hit it's head. This is the music I picture the caterkiller listening to as they slink along the grassy hills. I enjoy making tight playful tracks like these that use very little reverb. It gives the mix a very clean feel and really compliments that Genesis/Megadrive sound. Games & Sources Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) - Marble Zone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXukwNQG0uA , Orginally composed by Masato Nakamura.

opens with a kick-heavy beat and pads. there's a lot going on in the bottom 100hz and it doesn't have a ton of punch like i'd expect, and is somewhat dull. a synth bass comes in (in the same octave as the pad), and this progresses towards a break at 0:39 that adds some arps. there's some nice automation on the autopanned arp that works towards the front, although the panning is so wide it's a little confusing on headphones. this section drags a touch as it goes on as not a lot is going on during it, and there's not a lot to bring it back to the original outside that descending bassline (which isn't super unique). the remixer puts the screws in at 1:16 and we get a lot more going on and a big beat right there. again there's not a lot used from the original outside that initial descending lick (no arp, none of the actual melody line). there's another break with some guitar at 1:55 - that was pretty fast getting back to the build - and again this section feels like it drags a bit as it kind of just is a repeated pattern over and over, and there's no crescendo or anything to build energy, just adding new instruments after a few bars. i'd love to hear some more automation like what you had the first time around, adding in additional elements and building energy towards your big payoff chorus at 2:33. 2:33 hits and we get the solo that was called out in the writeup. there's some fun licks in here but overall i'd want to hear more movement and leaning into the chords themselves some more. there's some repetition in here too which is a bummer - this is your time to shine creatively! there's not really an ending, it just hits a note and it's done. there's a loud blap at the end that i think is the result of your volume automation not going to the end of the track. this is a neat idea! i like the synth-rock vibe - so many people just make lavender town creepy (or totally blasted-out EDM), so the darkwave/synth rock feel is a neat one that definitely has legs. and i like a lot of your choices for instrumentation. i feel like right now this is a great framework, and what's needed next is some more glam. i'd love to hear more from the actual lavender town original (there's only really one synth line used throughout the track - i think there's room to use more!), and i'd love to hear a lot more ear candy in each section - especially the transitions. lastly i think that the track sounds a bit dull throughout, and finding a way to keep the kick meaty without having it walk all over some of your other synth elements would really help the mix pop. i'm sure @Chimpazilla can give some suggestions about the mix. this isn't there yet! but it's a great start. the workshop discord can definitely help this get moving. NO

I recreated the production of the track from scratch, based mainly on the main melody of Lavender Town, a melody that could make us uncomfortable as children, and that currently has been the main course of most Pokémon Creepypastas. Having those two things, I started with the creation of the remix, where you can appreciate the dark and gloomy atmosphere that takes us back to that town. The remix is of the Synth Rock genre, so we can notice the characteristic Synthwave basses, synthesizers of the genre, chorus, Cubone's scream and some distorted electric guitars (although relaxed at the beginning of the song), but in the middle of the track around minute 1: 57 you can notice a change to a more aggressive guitar, accompanied by a Screamo voice that I myself had the pleasure of recording to use it in the track as accompaniment and finally around 2:34 thus entering a synth and guitar solo that would give end to the track. Games & Sources "Lavender Town", in this case named: "Ghost Town" is my remixed version of the song that we can hear in our adventure through the Kanto region within the first installments of the renowned collectible monster video game, "Pokémon", released on the Game Boy portable console in 1996 in Japan... Developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo itself. Originally composed by Junichi Masuda. Pokémon accompanied me during my childhood with its anime and video games, and motivated by those beautiful memories, I ventured to create my own Remix, reimagining the original track from scratch and in a completely different musical genre, called, Synth Rock. I would like to share the original song: (Excuse me for publishing a channel that is not directed by Junichi himself, but it is the only area where I found the original version in better quality)

sfx opening, and then we get some chips and foley for the opening out of machine gun. there's a neat vibe that comes in once the beat and everything's active, and then we get the filters dropped and the 'real' vibe hits at 0:34. this is a really head-bobbing feel, and i really like the variety of sounds used. lot of sidechain on the lead at 0:57 when the melodic line comes in. there's tons of stuff changing and coming in every few bars which is neat, and it doesn't ever lose the core of the feel. there's a big drop at 1"59, and we get the driving feel still but it's all in the bass synth. there's some noodling around with the MwtMG theme, and it builds up to a big hit at 2:56 that's a chopped up version of the upbeat section from The Landing to my ears. i like the chord changes here as well - simple patterns but really updates the feel. there's a bit of a beat change right before the ending, and then it's done. ending isn't really prepped but what's here works fine. mix on this is great, it's loud and in your face and never feels squeezed. the kick's this huge boomy roomy sound and i think it works perfectly. what an enjoyable track. love the energy and love the style. excellent work. YES

Oh it's been a long time OCRemix! I was going through old computer files and found this track I apparently made in 2016, and just never uploaded....sorry about that. Anyway, here's a track that mostly remixes "The Man With The Machine Gun", which itself is a 1980s sounding track. My remix mostly takes that and dials it all up to 11. Keep doing what you do OCR team! Sorry it's been so long, life just got in the way, but here's to another 25 years of OCR! Games & Sources FFVIII - Man with the Machine Gun FFVIII - The Landing

my original vote loved the arrangement but had concerns over the instrumentation effectiveness. my second vote called out some execution elements but really liked the improvement in the instrumentation. piano opens with some sustained strings. cello is a new tone but has a lot more personalization to it, which is neat. there's a flip in the first line that's a little unnatural, but what's here is fine. if you've got the ability to vary vibrato, consider doing that more on the start of sustained lines or in moving sections. you vary rhythm a lot to make it feel more real and less quantized, and i think it's a little on the far side of that now to where the rhythm seems a touch off. the note at 1:16 sounds wrong (second descending tone). i really like the choir entrance. it's spooky and has a cool sound to the vocals. cello here sounds great too, really rough and mean. the string drops sound a little weird but aren't wrong, just don't sound real. there's some clipping in this section, notably at 2:23 and 2:55 - this just needs an actual limiter put on it. i think you're not EQing what's going to your reverb and that might be what's causing some of the boominess, alongside the bodhran or whatever the main drum that's in this section being very fundamental-focused and right in the front left (so it's very loud). consider backing it off a bit. 2:55 feels better than before, i think, but the lightness of the strings themselves shows here as compared to the cello part. the brass coming in at 3:22 is a big help and gives the partwriting some balls which it really needed. this is a triumphant section and i like it a lot, just needs to not clip. there's one more recap and it's done. i think what's here would be enough to pass if that middle section didn't clip like mad. the main issue is, i think, the bodhan you're using. it sounds dull and lifeless, and it occupies a lot of frequency range down low. you've got a few ways to address that: scoop the heck out of everything else in that frequency range so it speaks through easier without having to crank the volume choose a different percussion instrument to that speaks higher to let it cut through easier turn it down and live with it not being so far forward either way you need a limiter that's going to prevent clipping implemented at the end of your mastering chain so that it's not hitting 0.0. i think, for me, if you did that, this'd be enough. if you wanted to go farther, i think that making the section at 2:55 shorter (maybe only running through half the theme) and then fleshing it out sooner will help with the depth of that section from a part-writing perspective, and i think that reining in the overly-dynamic rhythms on the solo cello would be a good choice. but this is real close, zanezooked! we just had an accepted track go through eight revisions, and i certainly don't see this needing that many changes to make it. NO

original vote second vote there's a story in the submission notes of past votes, i recommend reading them since this is kind of a story piece but they're very long so i didn't copy them here - proph Third times a charm? :) Thank you all for your feedback on the first two drafts of this piece. This is an interesting hobby because you need to be competent in both the creative skills of writing music and in the very technical skills of mixing, mastering, and otherwise massaging the sound. I appreciate the help you’ve given me on both aspects, especially the technical side, which is a brand new world to me. I was a bit confused about the feedback on the solo cello. Some praised the tone, others criticized it. Chipzilla seemed to think that the cello used only a single articulation. In fact it used no articulations. It was a SWAM instrument, and entirely procedural, based on how I played it on the EWI. I honestly thought that was a strength of the piece, a really expressive solo cello that you don’t usually get with samples. But I guess that didn’t come across, perhaps because I played it with a wind instrument, ha. Anyway, rather than try to massage what was already there, I tossed it out and brought in the Apocalyptica solo cello from Musio instead. This turned out to be a perfect match for this piece, as the samples are performed by the Finnish cello metal group (!) Apocalyptica, and it has both a wonderfully expressive legato patch and an aggressive, grinding rhythm patch. So although I had to throw out my own performance, once I reworked the solo cello parts to “write to the samples,” I ended up much happier with the result. Other things I did: Remixed and remastered everything. Pretty sure the volume should be good now. Removed the master volume automation tweaking identified by Prophetik. Seeing that in the waveform was illuminating. Evened out the balance of octaves at the 2:57 mark, in response to Prophetik. Did this by: Doubling the strings with their common woodwind pairings at 2:57, to thicken the melody and harmony lines Tweaked which lines were played in which octaves. Adding the full cello section in unison with the solo cello, thickening the low end Added more humanization to the piano I hope this is finally up to par! Games & Sources Myth: The Fallen Lords The Siege of Madrigal, by Michael Salvatori The Fallen Lords, by Marty O'Donnell Myth II: Soulblighter The Great Library, by Marty O'Donnell