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Fantastic round 1. Very impressed with what came out. Looking forward to the future rounds.

Ha, thanks! I got more cooking 😁

So I'm a little ahead of the game on this, as I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about 20 years now. The good news is that switching to Linux has never been easier. There's never been more options for user-friendly distros, and almost everything just works now. For general Linux advice, almost any beginner distro will do. I would personally avoid Ubuntu (and its flavors, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc). Ubuntu derivatives are fine, but Ubuntu itself has a new package format (snap) that only it uses, and I've found it to be a bit janky. I would also avoid Arch and its derivatives because first of all Arch is not user friendly at all, and second, Arch updates tend to be pretty unstable. Updates are frequent and pretty bleeding edge and you can expect stuff to be janky or stop working over time. I think the current best beginner distros are PopOS, Mint, and MXLinux. Honorable mention for ElementaryOS. As for DAWs, for obvious reasons I only ever considered DAWs that run on Linux. I found Ardour to have too much of a learning curve and not enough documentation to surmount it. Audacity is easy enough to use, but pretty clunky and not really intended as a full DAW so much as feature-heavy audio file editing. Someone (I think Argle) brought Reaper to my attention. I tried it out, fell deeply, madly in love with it, and have been using it ever since. That said, I'm only using it to do podcast editing. The closest I get to actual music production is Furnace Tracker, which does run flawlessly in Linux. I'm sticking with Linux for the foreseeable future, but I do have a couple of caveats and quibbles with the modern state of Linux. I don't mean this as a discouragement, but just to temper expectations. Things are improving but not perfect in Linux right now. We are somewhere in the middle of a major infrastructure transition. Everything still works, but you might notice more little inconsistencies and bugs and jank than you would have even five years ago. Distros and desktop environments are moving towards making the newer Wayland windowing system the default instead of ye olde X11. Wayland is a much cleaner design than X11, but it is less mature and rougher around the edges. My experience using Wayland has been a desktop with annoying little bugs and bits of jank everywhere. Because of this, I still run X11, but I know someday I'll have to make the switch. Linux audio infrastructure is also a bit complex these days. Something called PipeWire has largely replaced the older PulseAudio and is backwards compatible with it. There is a similar story with PulseAudio and JACK. But if you need to do anything off the beaten path with audio at the moment, which I suspect a lot of us might, you will probably find yourself having to wrestle configs that have to mess with pulse and pipewire and JACK all at the same time. As for what made me switch? Windows Vista was waaaaaay too slow on the laptop I had 20 years ago.

Kakariko Village with blast beats and reverb for days was not on my bingo card, but I'm glad someone's doing it! I'm on board with the arrangement of this one; there's a nice energy curve from the open and reverb-drenched intro into the heavy groove of the first pass or two of the source material. The parts as written are a great fit for the styles you've chosen. The accompaniment falling out for the lead guitar at 1:18 leading back into more riffage at 1:30 is tasty as hell as are the aforementioned blast beats and double-bass patterns that follow. The post-rock ending with the returning wash of reverb works (though a fade rather than a clipped-off tail would be fantastic; this should be an easy fix). Ultimately, though, I have to side with my fellow Js on the NO side of the fence for the production quality. The snare is overcompressed and the rhythm guitars are oppressively loud in the mix, not to mention the lack of bass frequencies outside of the sub hit. This track is really close to the bar IMO and those tweaks are worth it for the best presentation of this track. Please get this one back to us as soon as you can because this is an idea with legs! NO (resubmit)

Man, it took me a long time to finally break away from Windows. Coming from a graphic design background, I was deep in Adobe’s ecosystem, so it wasn’t easy to let go. I eventually gave up on Windows 10 when support was ending — I was just completely fed up with the whole experience. I decided to try Ubuntu, which sent me down the rabbit hole of hopping from distro to distro until I finally landed on Debian 12. Since I’m on a budget, I’ve always used older, inexpensive hardware — stuff that often had no real support on Windows. But on Debian? Everything just worked! Sure, a few things needed extra drivers, but the community support for aging hardware was incredible. It’s honestly a beautiful thing. Plus, not having to support a mega-corporation that’s pushing spyware into its latest version feels even better. Finding a new DAW was the real struggle. I came from FL Studio and was slowly transitioning to Ableton, so switching to Linux was pretty jarring. At first, all I could find were Reaper, Ardour, and LMMS — none of which really clicked with me. I just wanted something that felt like Ableton, with an attractive, intuitive interface that was easy to navigate. After a while, I stumbled upon Bitwig Studio. One of the main reasons I chose it is because it runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so I’m not locked into a single operating system. I often see people say they can’t switch OSs because their DAWs, VSTs, and other tools are tied to one platform — and I totally get that. But for me, I want the freedom to go wherever I want. VSTs are still the one area I haven’t fully figured out yet, but for now I’m using CLAP plugins and plan to explore Winboat for running VSTs in the future. Other than that, I’m really glad I finally made the switch to Linux. It took some time to learn, but with the help of ChatGPT and the online community, the transition was so much smoother. Sidenote, this was the video that convinced me to make the switch.

This and https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04936 this download are not working unfortunately

We love a little Licc every now and again 😂

Still proud for contributing to that song via bell synths hehe Also I may have put... too many Lickitungs in the MIDI...

Amen. Highlight of the round for me :)

This is definitely "..oops! All Bangers" In particular shout outs to Dyluck and CW for doing what I love to do and do cheesy vocals over Mega Man Music.

Hi, there appears to be a 404-error with that great "Do Re Dedede" remix by Lucas Guimaraes: https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04936 All download links redirect to this page instead of the actual MP3 file: https://ocremix.org/controller_xsl.php?view=404 Thanks for solving it! Best regards, Dustin

Hello, a couple of days ago I polished up an old piece that I wrote almost 15 years ago. My source of inspiration was Schloss Burg an der Wupper, a medieval castle complex originally built in the 12th century near Solingen (Western Germany). Strictly speaking, a medieval piano piece is a paradox in itself, simply because of the instrument. Nevertheless, I tried to incorporate stylistic elements that are perceived as typically medieval today: parallel fifths and fourths, use of church modes (especially Phrygian), 6/8 time, dotted rhythms, constant pulse of quarter and eighth notes, stepwise progression, root-heavy harmonies, etc. From a music history perspective, very little of this is actually authentic, but that wasn't my intention. The main focus was on the effect. I'd be interested to hear what you think about it. :) https://youtu.be/uuqujiGUywM Best regards, Dustin PS: You can find the sheet music at IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Nightfall_at_the_Old_Castle_(Naegel%2C_Dustin_Sebastian)

I wanted to ask everyone how you plan to handle your DAW in the future. Microsoft, with its “too big to fail” mentality, seems to be becoming increasingly bold with each new Windows version, and you sometimes get the feeling that Microsoft is more and more becoming the owner of your PC, while you yourself are increasingly being relegated to the role of a fool who, in a world of increasingly powerful and opaque corporate structures, is simply allowed to agree to become an increasingly transparent citizen. Windows 11 in particular seems to be taking things to extremes, while powerful computers that may only be a few years too old are being dismissed as obsolete and, in true capitalist fashion, according to Microsoft's rules, should be scrapped today in order to buy a completely new computer with an uncertain expiration date. This is what it looks like when unelected, filthy rich billionaires with their money-is-no-object aura decide to play world politics. I'm getting increasingly fed up with how Microsoft handles our data, personal rights, and finances, and how it is developing an increasingly resource-hungry version of Windows that seems to be turning into a dysfunctional data octopus full of changes for the worse, and which is becoming less and less capable of fulfilling its function as a stable, powerful and long-lasting operating system for user applications. I'm currently still living in the happy Windows 7 Pro era with an eye on Windows 10 Pro (which most of you probably have at the moment), just for being able to get some newer VSTis. But I'm increasingly considering switching to a Linux version such as Linux Mint, as the increasing user-friendliness of Linux means that more and more musicians and DAW users are switching to this system, or at least, with Windows "The Eye of Sauron" 11 looming in the near future, more and more people are toying with the idea of cutting ties with Microsoft after Windows 10: So I would like to ask the DAW users among you in particular how you plan to handle this in the future. Are any of you already using Linux for music production - or has anyone even managed to get their DAW or DAWs (including additional VSTis and plug-ins), which were developed exclusively for Windows, to run completely on a modern version of Linux?

WHY ARE ALL OF THESE SONGS GOOD??? I really had to hesitate and decide for a long moment for all of them...

My favorite thing about GSM is listening to the different takes on the sources that each team comes up, and how unique those takes are between each team. We’ve got a great spread of styles here - classic rock, electronica, emo, psytrance chiptune, doom metal, and funk!! Excellent work from both teams! 6 bangers off the rip, as is the standard 😆

Kakariko Village as post-rock and death metal? Interesting pick! We begin with some guitars with a ton of reverb and quickly introduce the iconic arpeggios of Kakariko Village. I enjoyed the panning there. At 0:12 this turns into standard metal with the addition of drums and guitar chugs. At the risk of simply repeating what the rest said, the lack of presence of the bass here is a shame, as it's pretty much a must for any metal adjacent genre to have strong bass presence. It seems rather weird at first but cutting lower frequencies out of the guitar is a good technique for this, so consider a high-pass or using a shelf to give the bass some space. The kick is definitely more present in the general mix but also fairly weak in the lower frequencies. The main Kakariko melody is handled by a piano with a ton of reverb. At 0:34 we have guitar arpeggios for the B section and there's some shy appearances of the bass here. Section C at 0:57, as noted by seph, features a nice drive from the bass. There's a small break around 1:18 with guitar doing the main melody and some fun riffs introduced around 1:30. We move back into metal at 1:40 (with a very loud bass slide or something of the sort first). At 1:52 we start getting into crazy drums territory, first with crazy quick double kicks and then with a blast beat section. I won't lie, I rarely appreciate blast beats and this wasn't the exception, but that's a me thing. After the blast beats comes peace with the arpeggios being played on a clean guitar with a ridiculous amount of reverb, eventually joined by a lead with an even sillier amount of reverb. Track ends a little after as I almost feel absorved by the reverb. On arrangement this is fun, there's a lot of different takes on an iconic theme and most of them are cool. Transitions are generally well handled and everything flows well despite the big changes. Source usage is clear across the entire thing so no issues there. Production is, sadly holding this back. Main culprit is the unbalanced and uneven bass. Most of the track feels very weak on the lowend, with most of it being simply guitars. I didn't mention them earlier but drums are also fairly unbalanced, I think they could be compressed and pushed louder in the mix, while also making the guitars generally quieter. Finally, and this may be personal choice, the reverb is too much at times, especially on the section after the blastbeats. Overall, while this is a fun arrangement with ton of cool ideas, I think the mix needs a second pass. Focus on balancing the low-end and then doing some smaller balance changes so that the guitars aren't taking over the entire mix. I hope you submit an updated version! NO

Can agree this one is also broken!

These are so wonderful to hear, and honestly? I have no tangible notes. Already went through the playlist THREE TIMES, and am enjoying every Goddamned second. Six bangers. Huzzah! Everyone did such lovely work, and I am proud to have helped and been a part of this already. ♥ Good luck with the votes! See ya'll in Round 2. :3

Voting Guidelines Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Mega Man game and the other from a Mega Man Successor game. In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance): The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 1 Remix Pack (MP3). For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 1. Mega Man 4 vs. Mighty Gunvolt Burst Cossack Fortress 1 Joule's Wish Mega Man X4 vs. 30XX Volcano At Her Doorstep (Aspera 1) Mega Man Zero 4 vs. Gravity Circuit Fate - Theme of Weil Theme of Medley (Wave Circuit)

Thanks for this 8Track. Most of these remixes I've been listening to for years, but a few of these (especially the older ones) I either forgot about, or overlooked when I first heard them. But I have a new appreciation for them now that I listened to them in the context of this list, so I've downloaded them all!

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.