Liontamer Posted April 19, 2023 Share Posted April 19, 2023 (edited) Your ReMixer name: Lucas Guimaraes Your real name: Lucas Guimaraes Your email address: Your website: https://twitter.com/Thirdkoopa - knew nothing better to link for this Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: http://ocremix.org/community/profile/33965-thirdkoopa/ Name of game(s) arranged: Paper Mario Name of arrangement: Tale of the Star Rod Name of individual song(s) arranged: Title Theme (https://youtu.be/ks-bSRNamR8) Collaborators: Lucas Guimaraes - Producer, Arranger Tim Rosko - Lead Ian Martyn - Tenor Chris Doughty - Baritone Nautilus T Party - Bass James C. Hoffman - Mixing Engineer My comments: This was a Barbershop Quartet I made a while ago for a project. Since this track has lyrics, it can't be put back on Spotify, so I figure OCR is one of the few places it'll have some legs left. I spent about a good 2(?) months on and off editing this arrangement? By the time I was done, I knew I was too close to it myself, so I enlisted the help of some amazing vocal talent - Tim Rosko, Ian Martyn, Chris Doughty, and Nautilus T Party, and James C. Hoffman to mix the track. The lyrics are mostly derived from the Intro to Paper Mario with almost all the lyrics from that intro. LT EDIT (4/19): Requested a source breakdown, which Lucas was happy to provide. Timestamped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH1a-QQhFdk Try half speed at 0:18. Focus on just the melody A section - 0:18-0:36 B section - 0:36-0:54 0:00-0:46 - A section 0:46-1:40 - B section 1:40-2:22 - A section 2:22-2:49 - B Section 2:49-3:05 - Original content 3:05-3:28 - A section 3:28-end - The intro of this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH1a-QQhFdk - Focus on that 0:01-0:03 part mostly) The reharmonizations + it slowing down is a biiit odd to anyone not familiar with the source material, I'll admit, BUT, once you get it, you go 'woah'. Plus I'm really hoping this mix can get new life. It was on Spotify. It got yanked from Materia Collective. It can't go back up due to original lyrics. Lyrics: We're here to tell you the story about the Star Spirits Way above the clouds they rest! They rest with the fabled treasure known as the Star Rod This rod grants you any wishes that you want With this great wand, the seven star spirits watched our world, Our world Care-ful-ly until one day King Bowser stole the star rod for himself! Whatever shall we do... He then kidnapped the seven star spirits And gave them to his loyal henchmen! They spread to hide in their own lairs all across The Mushroom Kingdom keeping them captive Now with king Bowser That wretched beast Having the star rod to himself (All to himself!) Now the Star Kids can not make their wishes come true. Whatever can they do about This predicament oh! With our story taking a dark turn He's the only man we can trust. Paper Mario (x3) Edited May 15, 2023 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted April 19, 2023 Share Posted April 19, 2023 (edited) Sounds great, just tiny performance mistakes that I'd be nitpicking, but I'm not hearing almost any direct source usage. If another judge can help make those connections, I'll happily give this a YES. Update 4/21: I went through section by section using the breakdown, and I sort of hear it, but I have to work really hard and use a bit of imagination. I don't doubt that it's there, on a theoretical level, and maybe if I saw the sheet music side by side I'd be able to see the common patterns. It's even less recognizable than the controversial Reflecting Pool. I NO'ed that one; I'm doing the same for this. NO Edited April 21, 2023 by MindWanderer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted April 19, 2023 Share Posted April 19, 2023 I hate to add a second ? to this thread, but I feel just as MW does. This is an amazing performance! But, of WHAT, I have literally no idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted April 21, 2023 Share Posted April 21, 2023 the breakdown from lucas is very helpful. this is a tough one because there's so much fun stuff in the original's background that draws my attention from the melodic content! it's just a great original lucas's suggestion to slow down the original by 50% makes a lot of sense - there's a lot more correlative material when you hear it at that speed. i don't have any concerns about adaptation of the original. it may be easier to consider it if you hear that he breaks up the a section into two 8-bar sections, and he often just repeats the first 8 rather than going to the second 8 with the resolution in the end. the other thing i heard a lot of is intentionally replacing the cadential chords with various predominant color chords, which is a barbershop trope but certainly makes it hard to hear where it's going. all that said, this is well over the bar in terms of content. in terms of the actual arrangements, there's certainly some high points for me (2:30's initial chord for example), and there's some parts that i felt were clumsy at best (the block chords right after it). but it's competent and executes barbershop tropes without issue. there's some fun references too, like ending on the maj7 chord before the outro as a reference to...essentially every mario soundtrack somewhere. the performance across the board is solid. i've got some personal nitpicks but it's not like it's getting re-recorded to fix timbral issues, so i won't bother writing them out. i do think that there is a lot of really obvious pitch adjustment used especially for unisons and perfect intervals, and it sounds pretty robo because there's too much pitch drift adjustment. but i get that you can't always just go punch in thirty takes of something, so i'm assuming that's what happened. i'm comfortable with lucas's breakdown and the original content in the track. the arrangement is solid and recorded well. the mastering is clear and never gets in the way of anything. there's probably complaints about the highly technical/synthetic nature of the arrangement, but i think this is absolutely meeting our guidelines. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted April 24, 2023 Share Posted April 24, 2023 I don't think enough of the arrangement here has enough recognizable and identifiable source usage. I appreciate the source breakdown but I think that overall the arrangement only hints at source usage at points. If you changed the lyrics to be about anything other than Paper Mario, I don't think I'd recognize this as a Paper Mario arrangement, and I feel like I shouldn't have to sit down with a source breakdown to make sure that this is actually covering music from the game. It's asking a lot of me, which is fine, because I'm a judge and that's my job, but it's also asking a lot of regular folks who are just listening on shuffle. Nice performance though, and I like the "PAPER MARIIIOOO" bit at the end, that was pretty good. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted April 24, 2023 Author Share Posted April 24, 2023 Thanks to Lucas for the source usage breakdown, which I appreciate. I pitched shifted this track to be twice as fast, I also slowed down the source to half-speed to focus on just the source's leads as suggested. All that said, I'd still argue that the transformation's not particularly recognizable, and that's gonna make this DOA. I'll come back to it as well though. ? EDIT (5/14): Sorry to Lucas, Tim, Ian, Chris, and Nautilus; I WANT to hear the source melody and be able to get behind this, and -- being 100% clear -- the OCR bar isn't about "would a casual listener be able to recognize the source?", but the judges do need to be able to do so when they compare things. Reharmonizing it, AND slowing it down, AND changing the rhythms... yeah, I'm in a similar boat to MindWanderer. I'm trying to recognize the source, but I'm only partially there and the breakdown still doesn't do enough to make me feel like I'm hearing the source melodies clearly when I compare things. As I said earlier, I even sped the track up to 2X speed so that the tempo would be closer to the original, hoping the speed would be the main confounding factor, but that unfortunately wasn't the case. Cerebral arrangements are just fine (we've got plenty), but I've tried to make the connections, and I definitely can't. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSim Posted May 2, 2023 Share Posted May 2, 2023 The rich harmonies and performances sound great! I hear the odd pitch-shifting artefact to tidy things up, but that's no big deal. Amazing vision to arrange something like this! The elephant in the room, though, is the source recognisability. From our standards: Quote 3. The source material must be identifiable and dominant. While interpretation and original additions are encouraged, arrangement must not modify the source material beyond recognition. Although the source is definitely in there somewhere, I'd argue the amount of effort taken to decipher it does indeed modify it beyond recognition. Speeding up the ReMix in my DAW I can hear snippets of the melody, but if the lyrics weren't explicitly saying 'Paper Mario', I'd have no clue what this was. Shame to have to reject this one on those grounds, but it's a NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XPRTNovice Posted May 14, 2023 Share Posted May 14, 2023 Uh, this is awesome?! Like, really, realyl, really good. It's mixed well, the performance is an easy ace, the production is great. The arrangement is fantastic. I...just don't hear the source. I don't think on OCR we should have to go and study it in order to make it recognizeable; I understand the remixers intent in slowing down the source and creating something new with it, I've done it myself, but in a case like this there's nothing that tells me on even multiple listens that we're dealing with the source material. But what a great song. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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