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ASK A JUDGE: While we're busy NOT voting - your questions, we want 'em


Liontamer
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I dunno what I'd say my all time favorite sub letter was, but a couple of examples from recently judged mixes stick out: CHIPP Damage's epic story for his epic, epic mix "[thread=13632]The Shining Blue Armor Descends[/thread]," and Written Pages calling out BGC in his intro to his Axelay sub, "[thread=12258]Dancing Colonist[/thread]." Something about quoting "big giant circles" and following it up with an all-caps "OCREMIX" makes me chuckle every time.

hahaha, yes, that was classic. And I guess it answers the question of "Do I read every submission email?" The answer is NO, I don't. I read some of them. Depends on how I feel at that moment. At any rate, yeah, that was a funny rejection. I guess I should "do my homework" more often, because heaven knows, real pianos and virtual pianos sound nothing alike these days[/sarcasm].

Also, DA is correct. A NO OVERRIDE is if a mix is in clear violation of site policy, but maybe it slipped past Larry. It doesn't happen often, and there's nothing we love more than slapping a big fat NO OVERRIDE vote down, but Larry is pretty dang good at catching that stuff.

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Do you all have a job that has something to do with mixing or music in general ? Or is music just a hobby for you ?

As Jon said, both Jill and myself are studying music at school and earn money from it part-time (as our primary income source.) When we graduate, we both intend to be full-time musicians (Jill as a composer/performer, me as a composer/producer.) We've both done a fair amount of commercial/professional projects already.

Vigilante is at Berklee College of Music, so I imagine he'll probably want to be a musician full time as well, but I could be wrong on that.

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As for me, no I don't have a music related job. I do reliability testing for high-power laser diodes. Before that I worked at a nuclear power plant.

You worked at a nuke plant? Wow man, I can only imagine what that was like. A friend of mine used to work for the local nuclear power station nearby, but he quit that after his dad died. His dad, for reference, was an officer at a prison, which by the way, is Graterford. (I'm sure you've heard of it, it's local to Philadelphia)

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This question is specifically for Israfel: What happened to that OWA remix you had A WHILE ago. It wasn't posted on OCR, but was on your site a while back. And I downloaded it, and lost the CD it was burned to.

To all of the judges: I know that as a newb to meetups, I was really excited to go to one (DC VGL!). I've only attended 2 so far, counting MAGFest, and I feel every bit as excited about going to the next one. As judges, and somewhat community moderators, you see and hear the best and worst from most everybody. Does this change how you feel about meeting up? Do you, as established, prominent jdgfgts feel the same sort of anticipation before meetups that you used to feel?

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Do you all have a job that has something to do with mixing or music in general ? Or is music just a hobby for you ?

I have a job assembling, programming and shipping military radios and products. As with most other judges, I'd one day like to be able to make music a fulltime career, or at least an area to profit from, but for now a job outside music is necessary to earn a living.

Also out of interest, since I live in Perth, it's both a blessing and a difficulty in that there are a lot of small jobs for musicians here, but no room to really expand into the main industry.

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Probably my biggest pet peeve is when first time submitters write a fuggin' novel about the remix they threw together in FL in 6 hours. They write 4 paragraphs about playing the game for the first time at age 7. They mention the names of everyone who listened to earlier drafts. They thank God, and their parents. And after all of this they suck profusely. There's nothing that calls down the fire (as far as my votes are concerned) like a longass pretentious submission email.

Terra Darko was the best submission ever.

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That would be the first time I've seen a non-judge make a decision on a ReMix before. How often does that happen? Who do you go to, and why, for those situations?

GrayLightning had the idea for the feature, as far as I know. He gave spots to EdgeCrusher, Xelebes, Noir, Suzumebachi, and Xelebes again. Liontamer also gave 60 seconds of fame to Kaleb Grace and The Lady. These were all in 2005. I don't remember any other guest judging, but Larry would be in a better position to say, since he Knows and Remembers All.

It's worth pointing out that the guests didn't actually make decisions, but just registered an additional opinion on the mix at hand. You'll notice that Gray chose his guest judges based on their familiarity with the genres or instruments of the mixes.

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Do you all have a job that has something to do with mixing or music in general ? Or is music just a hobby for you ?

I do software stuff, and music is just a hobby. Unlike a lot of others here, I don't have any strong aspirations of making it into a full-time career. I do work on music in a lot of my spare time, making my own ReMixes, and songs with my band Flickerfall, but I don't actively seek out work. If the right opportunity came along, I'd definitely take it though.

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What are some of your pet peeves that submitters do?

Like JJT, I'm gonna say writing long-winded submissions emails, especially when they don't deliver the goods. I don't need a dissertation, just a few thoughts about your approach.

Another thing I really hate is when someone sends us a mix and tries to use some self-deprecating-reverse-psychology bullshit on us by saying "This probably won't get accepted anyway, but I figured I'd send it your way to get some feedback." Sorry, but we're not the WIP forum. We evaluate remixes for the site, not for your personal improvement. If you don't honestlybelieve that your remix is going to get accepted to the site, don't submit it. Every time I've been rejected from OCR (something that hasn't happened in years, but that's beside the point), I've been surprised. I have confidence in every submission I make, and if I make a remix that I don't believe would be posted to OCR, I don't submit it. It doesn't make me any less of an artist.

One last pet peeve: if you submit a song to OCR, don't use your submission email to editorialize about how you think the submissions process is full of shit, or how certain judges lack "credentials." That's just rude, and while we always strive to judge the music and not the person, that kind of bullshit is a quick ticket to a glib vote.

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It appears that the popularity of the site and number of submissions is always steadily increasing; correct me if I'm wrong on either of those two counts. How will the submission process continue to accommodate? Will you keep adding more judges? Will you find ways to limit submissions? Will you somehow add further emphasis to the wip section?

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It appears that the popularity of the site and number of submissions is always steadily increasing; correct me if I'm wrong on either of those two counts. How will the submission process continue to accommodate? Will you keep adding more judges? Will you find ways to limit submissions? Will you somehow add further emphasis to the wip section?

We aim to add 20 new judges in the next 6-8 weeks or so. If any of you think you have what it takes, write a 100-200 word essay explaining why you would be a good judge and send to darkesword at ocremix dot org. :<

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There's definitely no numerical or quantifiable method of determining what level of interpretation is solid enough. You can't JUST add new notes. They have to make sense within the context of the track. You might have a piece that's generally close to the source tune, but has a decent amount of melodic embellishment, some new fills and transitions, a couple new chords, and a solo section, and that might be enough to pass. On the other end of the spectrum, you might be taking a 2 second source like Pac Man and turn it into a 5 minute avante garde track.

The only numerical rule IN GENERAL, that isn't really a "rule" so much as it is a personal guideline for many of the judges, is that the track must relate to the source at LEAST 50% of the time. In other words, if more than 50% of the track is original material, that new stuff might be great, but it's not an OCR standards-complaint arrangement anymore; the majority of the material is now unrelated to the source.

In terms of what constitutes as interpretation, just about anything, really. We've written about this in our guidelines. The things we are LEAST impressed by would be simple changes of the instrumentation. That's easy to do and doesn't require much thought. Even if you took a chiptune and made it into a 4/4 dance track, if you just did a "genre adaptation" (so to speak) it probably won't pass. You need to do more than that.

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How often do you get submissions that are a sure NO, but you keep them on your iTunes/Winamps/mp3whatevers anyway and play them 100 times non-stop? Like, give a rough percentage of such. There's gotta be some remixes that you enjoy for personal tastes and reasons.

And wow, 20 new judges in 6-8 weeks! I'm pretty sure they're not all going to be active, or will they be rotating/retiring out some judges in lieu of the new ones?

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This question is specifically for Israfel: What happened to that OWA remix you had A WHILE ago.

I still have it. :P I don't have a webpage (and I can't be arsed to put one up) so I'll just upload it to rapidshare--hopefully that'll work okay for you.

http://rapidshare.com/files/92512178/Israfel_-_Deep_Velvet_Scherzo.mp3

On the other end of the spectrum, you might be taking a 2 second source like Pac Man and turn it into a 5 minute avante garde track.

That'd just be silly.

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