big giant circles

I'm not really feeling this one so much. It's not terrible, but I feel like there's plenty of room for improvement. The violin is definitely an issue, as I mentioned in IRC, it sounds very keyboard-ish, and it's flaws are very out and in the open during several parts, like the intro and 1:41 to name a couple places. The mixing is also a little weak. There's tons of reverb, and it muddies up the piano. Plus, between the piano and the violin, most of the rest of the instrumentation is drowned out pretty throughly. As for the arrangement itself, I felt like it was fairly conservative. Would have been nice to see a BIT more deviation than I did. At any rate, clean up the mud, fix the violin, adjust the levels, bring out the other instruments a little more, and last and least, tweak the arrangement itself. NO

Larry, if you and Anso are cool with it, should we just close it out and ask Dennis to PM one of us when he's fixed it?

I don't believe you. Also, congrats

Also, for those that voted COND, I mentioned in IRC that this might be more than a super quick fix, seeing as he'll likely have to redo the instrument and then tweak it and fix the mixing as well (and hopefully the ending) So you sure it wouldn't be quicker for us to just have him fix it and then fast track it back to the panel via one of us?

Yeah, Audix, nice work!

So long, guys, I'm getting out while I can. For all we know it could be a C&D. Catch those of y'all who know me on Steam.

RMX is awesome Great mix man! I especially love all the blippy cool synth stuff! Super energetic and rad!

No, but both Alec Holowka (Aquaria's composer) and I contributing to Josh Whelchel's album to raise money for the Relay for Life Thanks everyone for the kind comments!

I hate the melee timer. Absolutely loathe it. I don't understand why it's so popular. I think the game was fine just before they released it. Tank is plenty powerful, smoker is effective, boomer's bile works well, even though the hunter got nerfed a bit it's still effective, so really, it just seemed unnecessary. Totally screwed up my gameplay. And I don't see how it's spam ever since they fixed the rapid-melee. And considering how you can be halted in your tracks by one single zombie, much less a crowd that is on all sides of you, the fatigue just annoys me.

Pretty solid stuff. Seems pretty par for GO's course. I thought the drums were a bit quiet at times, and there were a couple places where it seemed like the timing of the snare was off. But what the hell, this is Castlevania. It's grungy, it's dirty, it's energetic, it's got cool vocals, and it makes me want to go beat undead creatures with a metal chain. MMKAY

For what it's worth, I'm listening to this with "fresh" ears, neither having heard the original nor bothering to read the original decision thread. The intro is quite pretty, very smooth. Not a LOT of gripes yet, the snare is definitely a little bit wonky, IMHO. It's too metallic, and tends to resemble banging on a tin can rather than an actual snaredrum. I would say the snare in and of itself is no dealbreaker--it's not the greatest choice, but far from the worst. Moving on. The strings are pretty awful. Seems like that's been covered. They're a bit too forward in the mix as well. Had they been toned back, they wouldn't have come off nearly as offensively, I think. It makes the rest of the mixing seem that much weaker when they're done. Gotta level out those... well, levels a bit more The ending was also a hair on the weak side, seemed rather sudden, and cut off. I felt like perhaps a single snare hit combined with the seemingly-too-rapidly-decaying pad just screamed out "I was in a hurry to wrap this thing up and submit it!" I'd like to see that fixed. All in all, I'm cool if this passes conditionally re: the strings since that's the one absolutely fatal factor. The other things are all secondary to that issue. The arrangement is pretty nifty IMO, because you've given a very interpretive funky-smooth twist on a theme that is not at all funky in it's original form, so nice work there. Go for the resubmit, you're at the doorstep. NO

Yep, pretty cool ideas, but again, even for a groove track, you need to bring more than a 1 bar drum loop to the table. All the melodic stuff is pretty cool, no beef with that. The mood and vibe of the track are groovy otherwise, but don't take 4 beats and put it on cruise control. NO

That is some crazy phasing. My ears are on the verge of exploding. So, I'm with Vinnie in that the instrumentation here seems fine to me. I can see where Larry is coming from, but what's here is fine. The level of interpretation here is a little weak, IMHO, but only because as Larry said, the key and tempo are so close that it just doesn't seem all that progressive. HOWEVER It's loaded with all kinds of nifty little sonic experiments that are lots of fun to listen to, and I think that kept it above the water well enough. I thought I heard a couple clicks in there, but it's hard to say with the naturally glitchy drum palette. This mix is nothing epic or groundbreaking, but it's lots of fun otherwise. SURE

FL's Parametric EQ2 ftw My gut impulse is that this is fine. I realize the level of source-to-remix is the issue that's going to bear all the weight, and ultimately, I don't think it was the *strongest* arrangement I've heard by Nick or anyone else--I didn't feel like the melodies themselves progressed to any fantastic degree. But what's here is still solid. The instrumentation is good. The production is a bit on the quiet end, but there's still a decent amount of dynamic contrast, and I think the darkness fits the sources respectably well. And I did like the textures, and all the airy, sweeping pads. Not going to change our universe or anything, but welcome aboard, I say. YES

effin awesome man! You ought to get some sick royalties off dat yo

Great idea bro. I don't want to promise anything at this point, but I'll do my best to contribute if I can!

Watched it, dug it, commented on it.

Also, Harmony and Destiny have songs that fit both categories.

that is awesome! thanks for the good news!

lolol, I never realized there were any flamewars going on for this mix until just now. I realize they were a couple years ago, but like, LOL music snobbery at it's finest! Over-analyst 1: Huff! Over-analyst 2: Huff Puff! Over-analyst 1: Huff Puff??! Huff, sir, huff! Over-analyst 2: ???! Puffity Huff Puff! Braaaaawr! Over-analyst 1: Bweee?? Huff huff huff! Pwaaaaaaaaf! BTW, Sam is awesome

I'll be honest, I much prefer using VST instrument tones to hardware. Try out something like Sampletank. It has some pretty solid sounding pianos. Just use your keyboard as a midi controller--it's much easier, and you *usually* get better sound out of vst instruments anyway. Or shoot, even using free soundfonts aren't a bad way to go. Check Darkesword's soundfont page for some good ones.

Yeah, the drawback to a lot of digital pianos (as opposed to "workstation keyboards" or "stage pianos" is that there's no separate audio outs. It's perfectly fine to use the headphones, which you'll notice says "headphones/line out", but naturally, it'll kill your built-in speakers when you do that. Since that's what it was intended for anyway, you *shouldn't* actually experience any funky noise or poor sound quality, unless you're just using crappy cables. Don't use crappy cables. Ever. Your sound is only as good as the weakest link in your signal chain. Ask ANY pro. They'll all say the same thing. I highly recommend getting an audio interface, though. What you're trying to do is not hard. Basically, you're wanting to use the actual AUDIO from the keyboard, but have the possibility of recording/programming/use existing midi data as well via recording software such as FL Studio/Acid/Sonar/etc, right? This isn't that tough to do. You'll need to connect your keyboard to your computer via the USB cable (make sure you install the drivers that came with it). Your keyboard should now serve as a midi controller (to disable the audio if you'd rather use a virtual instrument, hit the function key and somewhere in your categories there should be something that says something along the lines of "local on". You'll want to set it to "local off", which will disable the audio from playing when you press the keys. You'll also want to go ahead and plug in your piano via the headphone output into your audio interface/soundcard, preferably with a TRS (single stereo 1/4") to two 1/4" TS cable. (A "Y" cable, some call it.) In the recording software, there should be an option to set up sending midi output to your computer. In FL, it's under the MIDI options (hit F10) and you can set the port for FL to send the signal to your keyboard from. This will basically allow you to program/record any midi data (or use an existing midi file) and have it send that to the keyboard. Since you want to use the audio from the keyboard, make sure the "local" is set to "on" (naturally). Then, set up a track to record to, and let it do it's thang. This is a very common thing, and most people I've talked with commonly refer to it as "digitizing" a track. It's basically the only way to do it if you're using any external audio source such as a keyboard or sound module or anything else that produces audio but can be controlled with midi. Hope this helps.

Now, in our own defense, this particular wait was NOT the fault of the OCR staff. There must have been a half a dozen times where I said "Guys, screw the 'project hold' rule. That thing is NEVER going to get done, let's just post this awesomeness!" Man though, it's so good to see this one free to bask in the good light it deserves. For real man, please continue to submit remixes here!

awwww hugz and kissez

This. Also, the occasional (heck, or frequent) use of transitional fx (swishes, scrapes, buildups, drops, rises, booms, bangs, swells, chimes, rev cymbals) all that good stuff can really polish all the sharp edges down to something a little smoother and less mechanical. I liked the synth pad textures, and the overall sound at ~4:15 or so, but all in all, go back to larry's comment. still sounds a little WIP-ish at this point. Not bad, though, just needs more elbow grease. NO