Posted 2012-02-17, evaluated by djpretzel

ALRIGHT! EPIC MIXPOST IS EPIC - we've got a LOT to cover with this one, so bullet points are called for:

First off, congrats to Prince of Darkness (Tony) for winning the EARTHBOUND PAPAS Arrange/Remix Contest!! This means he'll be a guest performer on their next album, making it even MORE badass! This ReMix features explicit lyrics . They're not really a focal point, but the warning is nonetheless provided, because knowing... is half the battle. FYI, we've slowed down with mixposts a bit lately since I'm on a much-needed vacation in Miami. Don't be alarmed, there's still much to come, and we'll get back on schedule next week... In the meantime, we've got an epic Final Fantasy VI 'Dancing Mad' mix from Tony that's almost twelve minutes long and clocks in at about 22MB. This mix more or less forced us to revise our submission standards; effective immediately, there are only two encoding options, 192kbps or VBR1, and no explicit file size limit. We are STRONGLY recommending mixes between two and seven minutes in length, for a bunch of REALLY good reasons, but obviously this mix (and others in the past) have proven to be "exceptional exceptions" to this suggestion.

SURGEON PRETZEL'S WARNING: First off, I want to emphasize again, submitting a 7+ minute long mix is probably going to HURT the chances of it being approved. This isn't intended as a "challenge" to see if artists are "capable" of accomplishing this "feat," but rather a firm suggestion to trim things down, focus your arrangements, and send us your best, most thought-out stuff. Far more often than not, that's going to be something shorter, and judges WILL hold endless spirals of meandering wankery, schizophrenic displays of medleyitis, or four-minute long ambient trance intros AGAINST arrangements, to be sure.

Tony's epic take on Uematsu's epic source tune definitely has some noodling/wankery going on, but it mostly remains cogent throughout its lengthy runtime. It was scheduled for direct posting a good while back, but Tony had to drop the bitrate down to around 88kbps (yuck) to get it to fit within our previous standards and their 8MB file size limit. When I saw that it was approved, and what the encoding rate was, I knew we had a problem... posting it like that was essentially saying "This song deserves to be on OCR... so here's a pretty crappy encoding of it that happens to fit within our standards!" Obviously, that wasn't going to work - we either had to reject it based on length (which corresponded with sound quality, based on the 8MB limit), or we needed to post it in a way that didn't chop off its balls. So we chose the latter.

Now of course, some folk won't be happy until we allow 24-bit, 96khz, Dolby 7.1 WAV files, but with this change we've set what we believe is a practical but more accommodating & flexible standard. It allows for some longer mixes, when the arrangement truly calls for it, without resulting in encodes that are audibly lossy even without scrutiny. Previously, our MAXIMUM encoding limit was 192kbps, and we didn't have a minimum, which created that type of situation. Now our MINIMUM bitrate is 192kbps, and there's VBR1 as a higher-quality option as well. By presenting just two encoding options, things are also hopefully a little simpler. You can't please all of the people, all of the time, but you can please MORE of them, more of the time, and that's what we're trying to do.

But enough of that, let's see what Tony says:

"Alright, I’m going to be taking a kind of shot in the dark here. I really think this song could do well on OCR, there are only a few problems: - I’m a wanker

- The song is 11:42

- I had to jam it into a sardine can to fit the requirements (and I’m like 4KB over the limit FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-) Currently I have it on VBR around 88kbps, which quite honestly, doesn’t sound THAT bad, and with a metal song like this, not a whole lot is lost, but there is an audible difference ...So as I was working my Dancing Mad arrangement, I had a thought. I’ve wanted to do a good One Winged Angel arrangement for 4+ years, but between the Advent Children version being amazing and Black Winged Metamorphosis being likewise awesome, I figured I’d never be able to come up with an original idea. Therefore, I snuck it into this arrangement. The styles of the songs are pretty similar and complement each other very well, so it worked out. By the way, this is the “PuD’s DuDs” mix, which isn’t too much different from the original DoD track, other than some minor tweaks, like a new lead synth during the solo sections and louder lead instruments overall. PuD’s DuDs includes my first 12 DoD tracks (From Zero Light to this song, including Feb. 2010’s SnappleMann is an Asshole). PuD’s DuDs has updated versions of ALL of those songs, including the 3 DoD tracks (Sonic Gargles, THPOB, Hell March) currently on OCR. Pimp it if you could! More info on PuD’s DuDs here: http://www.tonydickinson.net/music/albums/puds-duds"

So you can IGNORE that bit about the encoding, obviously - it's preserved here as an historical artifact to commemorate the mix that helped us (again) reevaluate & revise our standards. Very cool that two epic sources - DM & OWA - come together in this cataclysmic opus. This is an intense, long piece of metal that requires some commitment, but rewards with energy and shreddage that not only melts the face, but the underlying skeletal structure too, just like that Nazi dude at the end of Lost Ark. It's late, I've got a vacation to get back to, and I've already written a ton, but I'd like to not only congratulate Tony on his awesome EARTHBOUND PAPAS win, but also thank him for giving us an epic mix that helped us change OCR for the better!