big giant circles

Gah, why do people always try to remix this theme? Out of all the stellar music that this game has to offer, this isn't even one of the coolest tracks. I mean, it's a catchy riff, but it's just not really one that lends itself well to remixing as a stand alone piece. Vinnie's right, this is a really cool track, but I'm afraid it's just not going to sit in line well with our guidelines. The original song is basically just a 6-5-4-5-6 chord progression arpeggiated with some 7ths here and there (or 1-7-5-7-1 if you prefer to think of the song in a minor key). The only place that was really prominent in your mix was after about 4:03. And while it was pretty rockin', the prior 4 minutes may as well have been entirely original. Definitely an awesome track, and it could probably use some vocals in there at some point and I'd call this one a success. But unfortunately, it feels more like the "Open the Door" theme is a cameo, and not actually what the song is rearranging.

Congrats guys!

No JP reference this week. I laughed a lot. One of his better reviews I thought. Demon's SSsssSSs Souls

I can't say I heard it, but I wasn't paying attention either. That's awesome man, where did you hear your stuff was in here? That's the spirit.

Foreal. This is not SERIOUS BUSINESS. It's a show about some good games that came out this year, that's all. People find all kinds of crazy ways to take stuff so personally.

FYI this is happening at 8:00pm EST tonight. You can watch it on Spike, or on their site, which is kinda cool. http://www.spike.com/event/vga2009/page/live-camera

Ah, cool. I wondered what happened after Pandemic went south. Congrats! (And by that, I of course mean I anticipate your immediate and foul demise) /SHIFTY EYES

Now you know how I felt in "World of Decisions" vote IKNOWRITE???

If there's one remix that I will vote YES on EVERY SINGLE TIME, it would have to be ICE CAP. I don't even listen to them half the time. I just look and see that it's an Ice Cap remix, and I just YES it with complete confidence.

I hear the eyesight starts to go first. For your benefit: HAPPY B-DAY YOU OLD FART

I would absolutely say they make more money. Selling a thousand or more copies at $15 is better than selling a small handful of copies at $189. I mean, you're right in the sense that they're *kind of* like the doorbuster deals you see on like Black Friday, but the difference is that they aren't running out of inventory since it's all digital. So while the idea is definitely to increase site traffic and expand their customer base, they have the means to draw a nice little bit of raw profit from sales like that. It's kind of like when NI had that sale on Komplete 5 for $399. Think how quickly that sucker sold out at like EVERY retailer. Now imagine if they hadn't sold it for crazy cheap. They probably wouldn't have had 1/10th the amount of sales that they did. I suppose it's the whole low sales x high profet vs high sales x low profit thing. Seems like the latter is the way to go, these days. People LOVE to get a bargain. Heck, I didn't even need VA-1 when it went on sale, but I bought it anyway. That's $15 of profit that they were GUARANTEED to not get otherwise. But I couldn't resist the thought of saving $185. (BTW, Now it sells for like $89, so technically, I only saved $75)

Yes and no. Generally, most of it probably is overpriced, but the crappy marked has a little bit to do with it too. It used to be that $499+ was acceptable for lots of synths/soundware to sell for. As more and more were developed, prices dropped to be more competitive. For a while, $199 was generally the average price for most of this stuff. Then when the market went poop, $199 was still a little too much, and sales went way down. So to combat that, now we're seeing a lot more of these "WOW!" deals. Take Native Instruments for example. Komplete used to be like $999. Now it sells for about $500. Same thing with Logic. I believe Logic 7 was $1000, but then Logic Studio came out which included Logic 8, Main Stage, and Soundtrack Pro, for half the price. So really, even if $100-200 is pretty fair and affordable, it doesn't mean squat if the product is not moving. I think audio-midi has figured it out and though they're not making nearly as much profit per single sale, the sheer quantity sold easily make up for that and then some, I'm sure. It's a double-edged sword to a degree--making elite software affordable to EVERYONE can eventually lower the value of it to where it might not be considered really great software anymore. But at the same time, it's of course nice for us poor folks to have access to nice toys.

But we haven't hosted child porn since like April. I don't see what the big deal is. DISCLAIMER TO STUPID PEOPLE: That was a joke.

rofl pretty much, yeah.

Well, I actually like the fact that losing one round won't completely screw you out of winning the game now, but I agree that if both teams reach the safe room one gets a wimpy 25 point bonus. Instead, what I think they should do is tally up the difference in damage and give those points to the winning team. So that way if you as infected got all 4 survivors black and white when they reached the safe room but your team reached it with half health left, then it should give you like the extra 400 points of damage that you did to their team instead of just 25.

My "In Your Prime" remix references MP title music. Thought that name would give it away

2nd JP reference in a row! Woo!

1) I thought we already did agree to start notifying people when their song was passed. I'm not sure if we're actually doing it now or not. But then again, a sub is never a sure-thing until it's actually on the front page. And not to sound unconcerned or anything, but if someone submits a song to OCR and then just never ever checks back, then ya know, that's just kind of weird. 2) Pretty much as many as Dave feels like There's no set limit how many project tracks can be submitted/posted to OCR. 3) Fortunately (and in some cases unfortunately) no. Anyone is free to submit their song 2 times or 200 times. 4) I used to do the same thing. I would write a freaking book every time I submitted. Now that I'm a judge though, I realize how impractical it is for us to read every singe submission email. So I usually just skim them. I enjoy interesting facts/trivia about remixers and remixes, but I honestly don't really care to read 2,000 words of the evolution of music and how it had an impact on a submission. I mean, it's no crime to have long emails, because other people will have the chance to read them once it gets moved to "Judges Decisions", but ya know, be as concise as possible, and be practical. Actually, this gives me an opportunity to spell out and example of the IDEAL submission email. ***************************** So that's the general idea. Obviously this is not a requirement, but you see in the case of receiving a submission that is either of a really obscure game that nobody is familiar with, or a remix that is drastically different than the source tune, providing a link to the source music and a reasonable breakdown of which parts of the remix are citing which parts of the source, it tends to speed up judging in a pretty huge way. We're still gonna listen and confirm, just to make sure, but still, having the general guide from the get-go is generally tremendously helpful. At the very least, people should always specifically cite what they are remixing. "Here's a remix from the Legend of Zelda" is just ridiculous. (That's happened before) That's a huge series, and it's stupid to expect us to dig through hours of music just to find the one tune that your mix is based on.

Naming and tagging the mix properly, and making sure all the info is in the database - Remixer, game, which song(s) the ReMix is of, composer, etc etc etc.

Generally, we try to post songs in order (or at least fairly close to it) however, we have been known to deviate depending on certain circumstances. Like if a project is released, Dave usually floods the front page with songs from that project/game for a bit. Or say it's the anniversary of a particular game we have a remix waiting in line for, Dave might post that remix so he can blurb about it in his write up. There's still a bit of work to getting a remix prepped for OCR, and Larry usually handles that, so every so often we make mistakes and post out of order because once that's taken care of, it's usually queued up for Dave to post. Aside from all that, I'd say the simple answer is "Whenever Dave finds the time" Also, I would like it to be noted that the title of this thread should now be changed to "Ask A Judge: While we're busy actually voting - your questions, we want 'em" because in case anyone has noticed, we've actually been clearing out the queue pretty faithfully the past couple months.

Anyway, yeah, slowing down a loop that drastically is pretty noticeable, and produced all those tinny-sounding artifacts. It's a rare thing that I hear a loop stretch well-beyond it's practical range that it actually sounds good. I recommend putting your own loops together in the future and using some creative processing FX to get 'em to sound less artifact-y. Beyond that, Larry pretty much covered everything else I'd have to offer. Not a bad start, keep at it! NO

lol. I enjoyed the article

Not a bad sub at all, nice hip hop groove going on, and while the textures weren't anything epic, they weren't bad for the most part. The biggest gripe I have with this one is the level of repetition. I felt like after a minute, this should have developed a little more, but it basically sounds like a groove track that's missing vocals. Not a bad first submission at all, just try to change it up a little bit, let the music go somewhere. Don't rely so much on just the beat and rhythm to carry a song for more than a minute or two. NO

I have prereg'd. I'd say go ahead and put me down as definite. *edit* As for transportation, normally I'd offer to carpool, but I'll be leaving straight from DC to WV to go snowboarding this year, so I won't be returning right home after MAG. I'm up for a caravan thing, though. Nashville and Atlanta people should pass right through here.

lol, J00 F4iLz I do it all the time