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Fixes The MP3s for two recent remixes had some unintented skipping due to an error in the upload process. Those files have been updated and redistributed across our mirrors. Please update your local collections accordingly. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket "At the Drop of a Coin Flip" Silent Hill 4: The Room "Dreamy Ring Around the Forest" News Final Fantasy V: The Fabled Warriors is spinning up again with auditions open for Volume 3: Fire. Head to the audition event for details. Speaking of Projects, we've setup a new Project Comms forum that offers a direct channel to OCR's Project Staff (lead by @Kit Vivid) for all of your coordination needs. The threads you make are private, so only you and staff will see it. If you're currently running any album projects, head over there and setup a dedicated thread for each one. This will help Kit and the rest of the staff keep up with questions and communications about files, consent forms, album art, etc. Coming off rebuilding the Submissions system as a forum module and building the 8Tracks feature, I'm experimenting more with creating some tools for album project directors to play with in conjunction with the forum's Clubs feature. If you're an album project director and you're interested, head over to the OCR Discord and ask me about it. We'll see if we can get you set up. That's all for now. Stay tuned for more fun stuff on the horizon! -- DarkeSword

Inspired by the old playlisting site, I dove into Invision's database tool and built out a fun new feature I like to call 8Tracks! Create a playlist of exactly 8 OC ReMixes by entering their OCR IDs (e.g. OCR01235) in the form and generate a player that you can listen to and share. We've put together a couple of 8Tracks already, which you can find at the 8Tracks Index, but feel free to make your own! The link is also available at the top of the forum page in the main navigation next to ReMix Submissions. To premptively answer a few questions: Why can't I do more than 8? The forum software I'm using to build out these kinds of features is very limited, so I need to lean into these types of restrictions to make them work. Wouldn't it be easier to have an "Add to playlist" button on the actual ReMix pages? The main site and the forums are actually far more separated than it seems. It's almost impossible to develop user-specific features for the non-forum part of the site. Is this the playlist function you've been talking about for a long time? No. Eventually I want to build a proper, robust playlist function that hooks into the remix database and also ties to user accounts with no restrictions on playlist length; that will come as part of the full site rewrite that will happen eventually. However, building this feature (especially the JS stuff and how it interacts with the YouTube player API) has taught me a lot and I'll be able to apply these lessons to the eventual rewrite. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy. Looking forward to queueing up some 8Tracks from you. :) -- DarkeSword

It'll be a link to the server itself, but I hadn't made the channel + threads yet. D: I'll be doing so when I return home in a couple days. Defo by this Sunday / next Monday. ♡ And I'll post the link to the server here! :)

Welp, good news everyone!! Finally managed to get in contact, and have access! I'll make the channel / threads in a jiffy! :D

And to those thinking about it but haven't yet. . . COME ON IN, AND JOIN THE FUN! :3

I'm surprised how few tracks we have tagged with "lang-latin". Great track overall, this is now my preferred way to hear this theme.

I haven't seen the 11/8 time sig, proof that it's well done and fluidity. Hope we'll hear a new version:) Sounds good!

Nice list! It's great to be able to make a big stack of things you've learned and realize how far you've come.

I second mmpneosync, all three mirrors have this strange skip.

You know how it is, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Oh yeah the track I'm doing is Donkey Kong 64 - Frantic Factory I can't promise I'll actually have it done on time, but if I do that's going to be the one

Okay, I'm back for one more comment! I've been listening to this track a bunch for the past day and there's just so much to love. I think what's really clicking with me is the Led Zeppelin off it all, especially something like The Rain Song. Forgive my lack of musical theory terms but the whole "soft-to-loud" journey this mix goes on just gives it so many layers. "Like The Rain Song" or "Stairway to Heaven" or "In the Light", this track tells a story just by changing up the volume in meaningful ways. And the use of "classical" instruments with the flute and strings, meshed with some ripping guitar work and drums that definitely get to shine throughout, it just gives this whole mix a saga-vibe that, again, I keep comparing to Zeppelin. Like, if Jimmy Page did a version of "In the Pines". It's creepy, like something out of those Norwegian-crime novels but it also rocks so hard, I ended up blaring my car speakers during those solos. Okay, I'm done gushing. Thanks so much for this mix! *gah, I love video game remixes so much*

New all-timer alert! This is so hypnotic, I can't stop listening to it. Tracks like this make me wish I wasn't such a chicken and could play Silent Hill games.

IT IS JUNE 1ST, MY DUDES AND DUDETTES!! That means...this has officially started! :D Yay! ~ Excitement!! I'll be looking to make a Discord server for this today, and will post an invite to the CRAC server here for those who aren't there, but wish to participate and communicate via Discord. But your time starts now, and you have until October to get stuff in!! The earlier, the better!--but take your time (you've got plenty of it) to get your tracks done, get feedback on them, and send me those pre-mastered WAVs! I very much look forward to everyone's spooktacular contributions. ♡♡♡

i enjoy listening to it in certain moments. it makes me feel relaxed, especial because of the whispered parts, which are my favored. the whole track is great though

lmaooo great use of the 8-tracks feature

Like we wouldn't have them... :-D https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kbxL0oM6xsneNMq5fwCkAqKWgI93IIz5/view?usp=sharing

Then I'll get started on my eerie pixel idea and see where it goes. As for poems, Twas actually has nothing to do with AOCC. The Twas series was started by me back in 2002 as something goofy to post for Christmas in the old UnMod forum that year. It became a yearly thing after that, focusing on various UnMod and OCR happenings until around the seventh year, when it became about original stories that had nothing to do with the forums. Each one's been written entirely by me, and as one can imagine, they take some time to flesh out and write nowadays (20-plus pages of stanzas do be like that). Doing a second one each year just isn't something I have the time for, so if someone else wants to write up a poem specifically for the Halloween project, they can do it. I gotta save up my ideas for the rhyming novellas I write once a year 😄

Up to you! If you feel like you can do more to work on them, by all means, either take the time to work on them more, or workshop them either here on the forums or via the OCR Discord server. :) Otherwise, if you feel they're ready to go, just send me: a WAV of your mix, in 44.1kHz, in Stereo, 16 or 24-bit, -6.0 dB, triangle dithered (if necessary). This is a pre-master, WITH NO HEAVY COMPRESSION OR A LIMITER ON THE MASTER BUS, except for any very soft compression and EQ, for warmth and tone and gluing the full track together. If that all sounds like gobbledygook, just sending me the thing at -6dB, unmastered, is cool. :D Can send it to me on here as an attachment or GDrive / Dropbox link through private messaging, or on Discord if you add me. There's some other submission criteria, but the TL;DR is -- as long as your mix doesn't have any weird glitches or artifacts that'll mess up mastering the track, and you give me the source name and game (or movie or whatever) you remixed it from, and give it a unique name (something that isn't the original name of the song), that's fine.

Not really listening with a super critical ear right now, but in case I forget to come back to this, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this! It started off feeling like a pretty straightforward cover but there was a lot of depth in the harmonies and buildup as things went along, I really enjoyed what you did with a theme that is very near and dear to my heart. Good to see you around again and I hope this one comes through the Judges Panel when you're ready for it :)

I need to better understand how the melody of the source is used here, because it's not standing out to me here. Doesn't quite feel like the original melody's being followed. There's 1:55 of the source at 1:53 of the arrangement, something that's a more overt connection. I'd say try to hit the source's melody more closely, but if I'm just deaf and not recognizing very straightforward melodic or rhythmic arranging, let a brother know. In any case, opens up with some bread and butter synths, but also a guitar line; interesting build, though I'm not optimistic on the genericness of the lead, which also has too much of a stiff sound. New lead at :43 that has a good tone, but sounds really blocky/mechanical. Same with the running line at 1:18; paired with the relatively simplistic beats, the whole thing feels too locked to grid, which undermines the energy and makes the groove feels very plodding, even though there are a number of textural changes going on that would potentially help this feel dynamic. Still needs more beat variation, textural complexity, and a less plodding feel. The boring beats drag this down, and there's too much repetition, but I like the potential. Something like Eino Keskitalo's Deus Ex arrangement "Sadevakio" is a good example of using "mechanical" sounds and fixed/steady timing yet still coming off more vibrant. Maybe another J can explain why that one has more energy to it compared to this and what techniques that entails. NO

will need a new name if it passes. the file name implies the name is "Surfacing Again", maybe that's it. opens with a filtered synth that opens up over time as guitar and choir elements are added over time. the guitar initially sounds really sketchy but i like the tone once it opens up a bit. the beat drops at 0:44 and the feel is much different at this point - the transition here is very surprising. the snare sounds overly filtered, like it's in another room, and the kit as a whole doesn't sound like it's in the same room as the melodic elements. i like how tight the kit is though, especially with a funkier feel from the lead synth. there's a transitional section with the drums on autopilot, and we get some interestingly modified chant elements before we get a new melodic section at 1:53 with a 404 bass doing some fun things. this section is pretty empty - there's not a lot going on in the background behind the lead for most of it, and it makes it hard to focus on the melody since the other elements are in the foreground as a result. separately, at this point the drums have been doing the same pattern for nearly two minutes, and it becomes painfully obvious when there's nothing else there to distract. there's another chant break before we get a recap of 0:43 at 3:05. this sounds very similar to the first time around - it's not quite copypasta, but it's pretty close outside of a few tertiary elements. by around 3:23 i assumed it was going to start wrapping, but it went through the A melodic theme a second time (this is straight copy from 3:05), then did it two more times with a rising synth added each time. that's a lot of repetition. the build at the end of the fourth time through was nice though, i liked the guitar element coming in. there's a hard drop after the fourth time through and a bit of bass element as an outro. i think this is a fun track overall! i really like the vibe of the main chorus that you initially show at 0:43. i think it could definitely use some more variation in how that's presented each time, since you're using it so often, and i think also having fewer choruses at the end would help prevent it from feeling samey. speaking of samey - the drums need a lot of variation added. what's here now is obviously a loop very quickly. some attention to ensure that they're in the 'same' airspace as the rest of the instruments would help too - right now the reverbs are very different and it makes it clear they're not in the same place. lastly, i think that identifying a way to make some of the sections called out above to be less empty would help too. i think this definitely has legs! i think the workshop on the forums or discord would be a great way to dress up some more elements here. NO