big giant circles

I don't know about anyone else, since neither Larry nor Vig mentioned it, but the drums + bass + lead guitar made the mix sound really hollow to me. Ok, I take that back, looking back at Larry's vote Plus, I'll echo the concern about the level of rearrangement here. You've taken a few riffs and inserted them here or there, but nothing is really expanded upon. Fun little diddy, but unfortunately not geared for the final cut. Better luck next time. I like your approach, just bring more to the table in future submissions. NO

Such a classic, beautiful source tune. Mix has some interesting ideas, some of which are pulled off okay, and some, well, walking the plank. This song is really devoid of much ebb or flow. The percussion never really morphed into anything tangible or accentual. Haha, the "Gill_metal" sample (don't remember the exact name) is the same one I used in my Metroid II mix, haha, good times. Interesting gating and slicing applied throughout, for example, the section from 1:55 to 2:27, but the section is overall still pretty hollow and the texture very thin. The cymbals suffer some loss due to overcompression and volume issues. I always hate that. Cymbal crashes are always the first thing to get the sonic shaft, so to speak, when every instrument is trying to be heard. The mix seems to lack development at this point. It kind of presents a few ideas, and then just, changes to another idea without the first idea truly realizing it's potential and fulfilling it. The piano ending was kind of weak... The final chord did not fit, I repeat, DID NOT FIT AT ALL. Not a bad sub, I've heard far worse, but this could also be better. Keep at it, and good luck, Mike. NO

Despite whatever quirks one may have with this mix, you've taken the original theme and turned it into something very pretty. This is total "feel good" music. I really like this kind of sound. As far as the mix falls in relation to the bar, it unfortunatly does fall a little short. Mostly in terms of orchestration, and partwriting. As the resident "Sample-whore" of the panel, I'm usually the first one to critique lower-quality samples, but surprisingly, the samples you used didn't really phase me that much. The mix is a little too quiet, and the sequencing needs more attention than the samples, as far as I'm concerned. The overall structure, despite the beautiful mood the song conveys came across as very rigid. Granted the style you're aiming for, I'd like to hear a little more dynamic flow. If you're using FL, then maybe humanize the velocities a little more. Some nice reverb automation would be a cool effect, too (Check the violin on Cave Story Moon Rhapsody for a good example). The textures do get a little sparse at times, so perhaps some additional partwriting could help that out. Larry pretty well covered all the bases as far as the level of reinterpreted music per original additions goes, so I won't expand too much on what he's already covered. (Thanks, Larry. You make us all that much lazier) but perhaps some good advice would be to incorporate another theme from the game into the track somewhere. Not exactly a medley, but a reference to another theme so that you don't get too carried away adding to the source. Believe me, I've walked that line, and it always sucks to get rejected for "too much original stuff" in a remix I'll be keeping this remix, as it's very pretty and moving, but I hope you tweak this one up and resubmit it further on down the road, Jeff. NO

YES Confession #1: I YES'd this mix without hearing it. Confession #2: I only did so because I was have Japanese doujin bias. Confession #3: The previous confessions are all a farce. Confession #4: I liked the MIDI guitar. I thought it was well used and had no inhibiting effect on the rest of the mix. I love the sitar. I also dig the rhythm and percussion. Highly interpretive and moving take on the CT theme. Great stuff! I echo Larry's hopes that our friends from afar off in the east will somehow find a way to get more involved in the OCR scene here. Keep 'em coming!

Yeah, my first impulse was "hmm, crud. Gonna be a cover..." Not so! This is really awesome to listen to! Very enjoyable! I'm an acoustic guitar man, and you've put this one together very nicely. I love the crystal clean production. The ending definitely needs to be fixed. This track is way too enjoyable to be scarred by that unfortunate blemish. Conditionally so... YES

Would have been great if I didn't have to go on a hunt within the OST to find all the sources...[/rant] Well, after hunting and listening for some 15 - 20 minutes, I got tired and impatient, so I just dove right into the remix. LT's right - these samples just won't fly here. Back in the day (waaaay before OCR, back when I was using a 486 33Mhz computer) I used to compose/arrange stuff in a program called Midisoft Studio 2.0 on our SoundBlaster old-as-hell-something card. This is exactly how it sounded. Basically, here's the deal. Your writing isn't really too bad; I found many parts of your track enjoyable to listen to, and I personally don' mind all the "really super busy" parts that much, really, for the most part. The section at 3:19 was pretty cool, I thought. Piano at :26 had an Ace of Bass Seriously though, the brass, electric guitar, strings, drums, bass, EVERYTHING sounds like general MIDI. Is that what you used? It'd be hard to convince me otherwise at this point. As far as the arrangement goes, from the themes I did find to associate with your medly, Vig is right about the "medlyitis". That is, too much source is crammed into a track that needs to be under 6MB (which 160kbps wouldn't have hurt this one bit, IMO) and therefore doesn't really get reinterpreted in a substantially solid manner, except for the instrument upgrades. Sorry bro, not a bad piece, but I advise you to seek out better software and samples to construct your piece with in the future. Best of luck in your works in the future, Rob. NO totally unrelated, my wife (huge Disney fan) thought your comic project was pretty cool

hey Ravi, how ya been, bro? A program like Soundforge can do all that. You are going to have some quality issues, but again, you should be able to find something to doctor up the audio in the same program... Not the easiest task, nor will it likely yield an optimal outcome, but it's worth a shot.

Waaaaaay too much reverb on the snare/clap... I think it's a snare, but the reverb makes it hard to tell. Overall "hip hop beat" is really really dull, dry, boring, simplistic; pick one. Not trying to sound negative, just being honest. There's absolutely no groove, funk, or motion. There's really not much about your loop sequencing that makes it really stand out or qualify as hip hop. Granted, I don't listen to that much hip hop. But I'm just trying to picture rap lyrics, or perhaps imagine this theme being played at a club... and it's... just... not... working... There's also a substantial amount of clipping--that's gotta go. Pretty careless production at this point. Need to address that. The main thing I would suggest are completely rebuilding your drum loops from the ground up. Kill the reverb. Pay attention to the volume on individual one-shots. Good luck.

I'm not sure if this is a conceptually unique approach, or if it is just the fact that you "didn't have much to work with" as you said. Either way, this definitely sounds rather WIPish for OCR. We hope we don't come across as snobby music elitists, but I'm quite certain we'd never live it down if we passed this song in the form it's in right now. Definitely gonna reiterate the suggestion that you put more backing behind your work thus far. It's actually pretty fun to listen to, but simply lacks the luster and shine we're looking for in a completed track, both in terms of production and also rearrangement/reinterpretation of the source theme. You've sort of done that, in that you're playing a dark, melancholy strings melody on an electric guitar, but beyond the rhythmic strumming, there's not much deviation from the original theme. Better luck down the road, Evahn. NO

hope i'm not jumping the gun here, but i was chatting with brian this morning, and talked to him about taking the reverb and volume down a notch on just the strings and bass drum. will post his response shortly. he's going to talk to sephfire about it.

rofl you make me laugh

Hmm, I thought there was talk of a DP here? This is a solid piece. Great adaptation of the title/bombing mission. Converted fairly well into 4/4 from 6/8 without too much loss in translation, so to speak. The main setback this track has, deals with the volume and compression. The mix tends to get very cluttered at times because of this. Particularly with the marc strings, and bass drum. Lot's of reverb + certain frequencies, + loud noises = sonic clutter. Particular examples are bass kick that comes in at :58, strings from 1:21 - 1:27, again at 1:43 - 1:48, the crash cymbal there is struggling for air big time. So here's the deal. This is still a pretty darn easy call. But I'm going to make it on the condition that you turn down the reverb just a smidgen (mainly on the kick and strings) and drop the master volume a hair. Otherwise, this is really great stuff. Nice work! YES *EDIT* Brian tweaked the reverb and toned the volume on the strings down a notch. I feel like the clutter isn't as apparent, and the cymbal crashes and other instruments aren't fighting for air. (compare 1:43 - 1:49 of the older and newer versions to see what I mean) -BGC

Took me a second to recognize the melody, because the rhythm and emphasis was changed and it gave the source a whole new feel. This is pretty decent stuff, but I feel it lacks achieving it's full potential at this point. It's fairly short, and at just over two minutes, I felt like there could have been a little more crazy-go-nuts in the arrangement and beat-work. The claps just got a little too boring and outstayed their welcome. The ending was one of the weakest points of the track. I'd like you to work out something with a little more resolution there. Not a bad attempt, and it shows some promise, but needs a little more work yet. NO

well, as I said, it may be an outdated call, and I was half-asleep when I voted, but I still stand by my vote. It's a borderline call, and there's tones of ways I can think the mix could be better, but I really find myself liking what he's got here. Production is fine, as far as I can tell, and despite his minimalistic soundscape and arrangement, this is passable on a good day. Not arguing my point, just clarifying my vote, off as it may seem

/me wipes TO's bias off mix Ewwwww... what the hell did you eat, Lee? Anyway, good stuff. Distortion on the guitar was really really dirty, and it made it a little too thin, IMO. Should have brought out the low and low-mid on that channel. However, it doesn't "doom" the track... hehe, get it? doom? hehehe heh heh..... *sigh* Sorry about that... Back on track, the only other quirk I had is when the double-bass kick came in, it was a little overbearing and intrusive to the rest of the instruments. Nothing worth crying over, though. YES

Can we hold off on judging this for a bit? I sent Bounte an email asking about the stems he used. As soon as he gets back to me, I'll pass the info along. *EDIT* Got an email back from him today btw, on a separate note, check out his site. he's got some cool songs you can listen to!

Never heard the original sub. A couple dealbreaking issues I have: The volume of the vocals (of course). Also, Jill approached me on this one, and I went back for another listen, and another, and another. My original vote was to PASS, but this does have a major quirk in that the verbatim lyrics and melody (masked by the volume of the vox IMO) are a little too much of a cop-out for me to feel comfortable in my previous vote. I'm not going to get into the habit of changing my votes on a regular basis, or hopefully ever, but Jill did point out a valid flaw that I just somehow didn't take into account the first time around. All in all, bring out the vox, and perhaps alter the lyrics and melody just a bit to include more re-interpretation. The added harmonies are nice, but you could take this one a little bit farther than it is right now. NO Otherwise, this is a pretty song.

This is a fairly easy call. And I must give props for the choice of sources. I'm unfamiliar with both, and it was a delight to become acquainted with them. It did set up high expectations for the mix, and I think those expectations were met. Beautiful textures throughout, I liked the movement in the bassline. Intro was a hair too long, but the track compensated for that with the thoughtful vibe. Piano at 2:00 was really pretty. That was live, eh? Nice work! Guitar was spot on, IMO, from effects to performance, to mixing. I can list a handful of things that could benefit the piece from minor tweaking, but this is already really solid, so I'm not in the mood to bother YES Oh, yes. and ok, so I had no idea what that was referring to until I asked Jill. And just in case there are others like me who had no idea what she was referring to, it's a lick progression - 3,4,5,1,8 I was told. Do what you will with this information

I gotta say, this is the closest I'll ever come to passing such a short mix. However, in it's current form, NO hope your resub this, Shael

i missed this post. that's exactly what i'm referring to. and i'm sure someone probably revered that as brilliant and expressive. "Now THAT is TRUE art". lawlz. It may by definition be art, but it's definitely no more so than any video game.

what an intelligent thing to say. well spoken![/sarcasm] I think a lot of people are using involuntary word association when using the word "ART". As far as I can tell, we're referring to "the ARTS", not just painting and drawing and such. As far as my brutal opinion goes, I'm effin sick of people who require that "real" art be something that must meet any of the following criteria: -> it cannot be perceived as "popular" by the bulk of society -> it must have some "deep" or underlying meaning -> it must be something unusual, or innovative -> (typically) it's usually created by someone with mental or social problems (somehow, they always get justified as being "brilliant" and/or "misunderstood", no matter how effed up their work is. -> it has to be created with blood and sweat (unassisted, that is), and technology is generally frowned upon -> the whole commercially created thing we're talking about That's really all I can think of right now. So, basically, if I were to paint a picture of a rock with 3 sets of eyes and a leg sticking out one side rolling down a hill towards a naked woman who is standing on a mound of insects with a sad look on her face, and a beating heart in her hand, someone who follows the previously stated standards would probably analyze my f***ed up work, find some deep and brilliant meaning (which I never had) and hail it as "true" and probably "inspiring" art. Now, I'm not saying that all strange art doesnt have underlying and even intelligent meaning, nor am I implying that things I find strange are not art. Only that sometimes people find meaning that is not intended, or otherwise doesn't exist. As far as video games, there is no plausible argument why video games cannot be art. Either because of ignorance and misconception (such as the example our friend megadave gave) or because of spite and resent for anything popular, or created with the intent of turning a profit. A small rant on that note, what the hell, people? You think we're just walking around in the garden of eden? It's not like we can just get by not doing a damn thing and eat the fruit off of any damn tree whenever we get hungry. People have to work to live. Work and craft are what makes this world go round. There is nothing wrong with taking a talent and using it to make money. I'm sick of people screaming "SELL OUT!" all the livelong damn day. Get a dang job. Anyway, here's the dictionary.com definition of "art" That pretty much smashes down anyone who has a misconstrued perspective of what actually qualifies as art. /me eagerly awaits the counterargument.

i have also never heard the prior submissions, so i'm hearing this with fresh ears. That being said, I've never played nor heard the GGXX OST, so I had to aquaint myself with the source. You definitely get props for the interpretive direction you took your mix. There's a lot of great part-writing in the piece for the most part. The "Bwat"ish brass at the beginning was a little bit of a setback to the overall quality of the piece - the samples aren't great, but they're not terrible either. They probably could have just been tweaked and used a little better so as to not come across as so fakey and GM-ish. Heh, from 3:06 to 3:16 reminds me of a darker version of the music to Bookworm. Ahem. Back on track. This is definitely teetering on the bar, or at least somewhere close. I went ahead and normalized the track so I could have a better listen, and I think the song inherently picks up *more* energy with louder mastering, so the lack of energy wasn't really an issue for me. Some great ideas were displayed in this track, and despite some moments where weak sample usage brought down the quality slightly, but I think the orchestrations here were fairly solid otherwise. Obviously, this is ridiculously ridiculously quite, so that needs to be fixed without question. It makes it hard to pick up on the energy of the piece, and it's going to blow someones speakers (or eardrums) when they have to crank up the volume to hear this, and then after it's done, it goes to the next track which has normal volume levels. On the condition the levels are first fixed, this is about as borderline as my calls can get. YES

Less than 90 seconds = fresh meat for BGC!!! No seriously, I know I've griped and moaned about tracks that are ~2 minutes or so, but seriously, anything less than 90 seconds is gonna get an automatic NO from me, regardless of how awesome those <90 seconds are. I'm almost tempted to not listen, but Vig and LT have piqued my curiosity. /me listens Yeah, it's cool. Please bonerize, sir. I'd like a little more. Yarg

Yikes, I'm glad I don't have to spend $21 everytime I need to compare a track to the source. [cynical]Thank goodness for subtle luxuries... Or in this case, a world wide network full of pirated video game music[/cynical] [confirm Larry's N.O.]Now then, this is a cool mix, and a decent cover. But unfortunately, we do not accept covers here, only "reinterpretations" of the original themes, not simply the same theme verbatim with upgraded instruments. Best of luck in future submissions and music, Ms. Hadju.[/confirm Larry's N.O.]

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman2.zip - Track 12 ("Heatman Stage") Bass progression at :30 is reminiscent of the Halo theme in a way. I really like this mix. It's fairly simple and straightforward, but what's here is arguably pretty solid. I can tell the main beefs people are going to have with it is the level of rearrangement, and the level of repetition in an already fairly short track. Neither really bother me that much, and I think this is still as pleasant in my ears as 2 HAWT 4 H3@TM@N!!11, despite the lack of detail and embellishments that AeroZ's mix had. This is probably an outdated call, as this would have definitely been ushered in on the red carpet 4 years ago or so, but despite the arrangement being fairly straightforward, it's not exactly a cover, and the production is keen enough by our standards. It's 2:45 in the AM, and I'm pulling out the YES and I'm not looking back.