Once upon a time, a long time ago, my co-workers and I submitted Leaded Mario Brothers to ocremix.org twice, and both times were rejected. They said it was too much like the original, the production was bad, and that we should get a real drummer. All I can say is:
- Did they not hear the guitar solo that takes up half the song?
- There are plenty of songs on ocremix.org with worse production
- Half of the songs on ocremix.org use sampled drums and electronic kits.
Everyone I have had listen to the song loves it, including a guy who
plays in a band professionally. The ocremix.org people are stupid.
#1 by Larry "Liontamer" Oji on January 30, 2010 - 1:23 am
Haha! Definitely fun stumbling onto this post years later. I re-read through the 2nd decision on the latest version of “Leaded Mario Brothers”, and everyone was pretty spot on with their criticism. Hopefully you got over the rejection, because at the time you seem to have mentally blocked out the times where the judges praised your track overall.
zircon: “This is an enjoyable ReMix overall, let me say that at first. … I thought the guitar playing was excellent on all fronts, and the bass playing was good too. Arrangement seemed good overall – lots of variation and the original additions were sensible too. … this is a cool song.”
Me: “Certainly an improvement from the first version. … the arrangement is where it needs to be.”
The Orichalcon: “Okay, let’s start by saying this is by no means a bad mix. … The guitar playing is impressive to me. … The arrangement of the piece is pretty good. It’s very close to being a cover of the original, however it breaks away from that Overworld theme to do its own little solo’s often enough to please me. Mixing together the 5 themes given as the source pieces is pretty impressive too.”
Just because there were praiseworthy aspects didn’t mean it would pass if the overall execution wasn’t cohesive and strong. Unfortunately, the main killers were that the mixing was imbalanced (your drums were louder than the lead guitar, which doesn’t make sense), the drum writing (particularly during the verses) was too looped/repetitive and too soft-sounding. The rest of the track had many good things going for it.
1. “Did they not hear the guitar solo that takes up half the song?”
Obviously we heard it.
2. “There are plenty of songs on ocremix.org with worse production.”
Absolutely agreed. But those were made in 1999-2002 when the site was in its early stages, and the collective talent pool wasn’t as skilled by a long shot. The acceptance bar had significantly risen since by 2004 & 2005 when you sent your stuff in. The bar has generally been about what been posted in the last year.
3. “Half of the songs on ocremix.org use sampled drums and electronic kits.”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using sampled instruments/kits and no one said anything like that. We love ‘em and don’t expect anyone to automatically have access to real drums. The issues were that the drum writing was very bland/basic/repetitive for some portions, and that the volume of certain instruments compared to others wasn’t properly balanced, issues also apparent in the Mega Man and Dr. Mario mixes that weren’t accepted. Also, no one insisted you had to have a live drummer, but that was mentioned as one of two ways to improve the drums, the other being sequencing them better.
Hopefully you’ve kept at it with your music and improved since then, Inanis, if that was still a personal goal. If being angry at OCR was a driving factor toward self-improvement, that’s cool and fine as long as you’ve got something to show for it.
Larry “Liontamer” Oji
Head Submissions Evaluator, OverClocked ReMix – http://ocremix.org
Assistant Soundtrack Director, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
#2 by inanis on January 31, 2010 - 11:47 am
Salutations.
Thank you for the replay of the criticism with the music we submitted ages ago. Let me start off with saying I completely agree with the MegaMan and Dr. Mario judgments. I did those for fun just to see what would happen.
The Mario tune was conceived by me and written by me and guitarist named Dorian. Dorian has been playing and writing music for years. I just have music in my head and a knack for rhythm. I took the first judgment to heart, didn’t get down about it and truly tried my best to make it better. When the second judgment came around I took it somewhat personally, because all of the negative comments centered on items over which I had direct control (drums, mixing). The items over which Dorian had direct control received the highest praise (guitar, bass). It was a huge hit to my ego – basically like the world was telling me, “Uh, you don’t really have any talent, so go away.”
I have gotten over the judgment and took something away from it – “don’t write music anymore, you’re no good at it”. I haven’t written a thing since that judgment. Your decision did help me improve – it helped me by teaching me that I should use my energies for more important things, like supporting my family and building my IT company to provide better service than anyone else – two things that I -can- do well.
What I have not gotten over is the “holier than thou” attitude that came about when OCRemix became “popular”. It changed from something where people could have fun into a “professionals only” or “people with access to professional tools” type elitist club. I apologize if we didn’t have access to Pro-Tools, a mixing board or professional studio monitors. Not everyone with “music in the head” has access to the tools to put the “music in the air” like your group would like them to, i.e. in a professional and properly mixed and produced manner.
Because of this attitude – I don’t listen to music from there. I would much rather listen to the originals ripped from ROMs – and I still do. You have dropped support for those who want to remix and have fun, but just aren’t “professional” enough. That changes the “fun” into “work”, and honestly, I’d rather not have to “work” to do something that is just a hobby. I have not visited the site since then – there is nothing there for me anymore.
I am glad you found stumbling onto this post “fun”. I don’t think I would use the same word to describe the experience.
Good luck with OCRemix. I wish your organization a long and fruitful existence.
-I-