Something I hadn't thought of is the reason many OCRs tend to blow, especially recent ones. And really, it's because the OCR community generally maintains the same attitude as was taken with the RM9 AST, which is they think that staying too faithful to the original is some kind of sin.
Nope. I think everyone on the staff loves a good, faithful cover of old video game music. I listen to a lot of stuff like Remastered Tracks Rockman Zero, which is basically just originals+better samples/live guitar. Nobody views it as a "sin" to make that kind of arrangement. But OCR's goal is to show that video game music is really strong melodically and harmonically, that it can be adapted in a number of ways. Just because we reject something for being "too similar" to the source track doesn't mean we're saying "this is bad music." We're saying "we're not going to offer you free hosting and exposure for just performing the original composition; you have to do some work yourself." That means looking at the song, analyzing it, understanding it, really
appreciating its core, and turning that into something new.
And believe me, I'm not fond of their "quality control" either. Nobody who rejects Darkesword's Beamsabre Beat can be trusted in my book.
Except that after the first version of the track was rejected, I went back and fixed it up based on suggestions I got and resubmitted it, after which it was posted to the site.
And let's be serious: the first version of Beamsabre Beat ZERO sounds
terrible. Bad sound choices, no SFX; it's just a bad texture all around. I never should have submitted version 1 in the first place. You know what I do when version 1 comes up on my MP3 player? I skip it. I'd take it down from my website, but it's been out for such a long time that it'd do no good. Plus it's kind of nice to illustrate the evolution of a track.