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Just chiming in to say: great album name!

Hmmm, so much options... Democratically speaking, logic sounds like the best pick, but since I also still have to buy Sibelius, new speakers, clothes and pay €400 of service costs for my new room I think it'll have to wait a few months. In the meantime I'll try some of those free trial versions. Thanks for the dawesome advice, people!!

Is Kirby moving or am I having a stroke?

Clive Barker's Undying is easily one of the most under-rated horror games ever made. If you've never played it...you just need to. I'd crowdfund the hell out of a remake of that game.

That Aria Di Mezzo cover though...

Hey everybody! A new album that I contributed to was released today. It also includes some other OC remixers, such as Wilbert "bustatunez" Roget II, Laura "Flute Link" Intravia, Haroon "FFMusicDJ" Piracha, Jordan "bLiNd" Aguirre, and more! I'm extremely lazy so I'll just post the link to the loudr page: https://loudr.fm/release/materia-final-fantasy-vii-remixed/VxYsz Yay!

It's funny that you chose this one as an example of a typical town theme, especially since it contains some elements like synthesized drum beats that usually are not found in town themes in JRPGs. Especially the beginning part gives me more of a "Save Screen" vibe than a town. Later on, the peaceful melody and selection of harmonies and melodic lines clearly is more "peaceful town", but still I think for example Kakariko Village from Zelda: A Link to the Past is a better example of stereotypical "town themes". I think the main aspect of JRPG town themes is that there is no sense of threat audible in the music. The songs are usually downtempo, have some beautiful melodies played on serene, soothing instruments. They often have some kind of strings/pads for the chords to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere, and the chords are predominantly major ones. When there are too many minor chords in there it mutates more into a love/sadness theme, so the major chords play a major role here (no pun intended Instrumentation is also a very important aspect, as town themes usually have little to no percussion in them. If anything, it's some light stuff like shakers or tambourines. There are of course examples like Secret of Mana's town theme, but that one also has a very happy vibe to it because of its jumpy melody and cute instrumentation. Generally the instruments are non-threatening in nature. Harsh sounds like electric guitars, heavy drums or deep basses/brass are usually left out to create a more natural, soft mood that doesn't feel too dramatic. The song structure is also usually more predictable, so the player gets the feeling they know the place and there will be no surprises, and they can feel right at home without fearing any threatening dangers or battles. I think those are the main ingredients to create a typical JRPG town theme that fits into all those classic games.

Yeah, I'm not getting "town theme" from this. To me it seems like it could function as a theme of reminiscence, being fairly sad, or a love theme, suggestive of remembrance. When I think "town theme", I imagine something that evokes the idea that it's supposed to be memorable---chimes, flutes, guitar(?), a catchy melody (I know, catchiness might be subjective), etc.---because you'll be coming back to or going through the town pretty often. Another way to say it is that perhaps, you would want to keep coming back to the town in-game just to listen to it. Some of the people above have said that it "makes you feel at home," which, yeah, it should IMO, if it's specifically a "home town" theme. If it feels too "lovey-dovey" though, like what I think this is, it almost but doesn't quite register for me as a town theme, but rather, as a piece about someone missing a loved one or something like that.

I think maybe instrumentation plays into it too. You generally don't hear a lot of brass in town themes unless the town is very specifically a regal kind of castle town. I think that what you've got in Prontera and a lot of Final Fantasy and Tales of town themes is a focus on woodwinds as leads. Maybe oboes, flutes, and clarinets evoke a kind of idyllic feeling?

My take on this is that it doesn't sound like town music. To me, these kind of songs evoke the feeling of "home". They evoke a calm, welcoming feeling of coziness which make people think of a homely place. Since there aren't many games which have themes exclusively for indoor homes or houses, and rather have the town theme playing whether you are inside or outside, then people respond with "town" instead of "house" or "home" when asked where this theme belongs. To me, this same type of arrangement is used a lot in old sitcoms that were family-friendly. You could easily put this at the start of a "Growing Pains"-style of sitcom and it would fit right in. These sitcoms also revolve around being in a house, which most of the time have a welcoming and cozy appearance for the audience. In trying to identify the musical characteristics that evoke this kind of image in people's mind from this themes we could also analyze the themes used by this kind of sitcoms as well.

if you have to message the creator of a level for help it's probably not the best level

Based on the NES version or not you can totally feel the C64 roots in here, and that's always a good thing. I'd agree that this is a bit basic and repetitive, but if you beefed up the production a little this wouldn't be out of place as one of those Kavinsky type modern-80s-throwback Hotline Blood Dragon groove songs. Definitely feels like skating through an 80s version of the future.

1) Will submissions and the remix judging/posting queues ever be moved to a live database driven application with forms and appropriate functionality (like storing judge decisions, keeping live statistics of the judge decision types like YES vs. resub vs. NO, custom functions for DJP/Larry like overrides, maybe) rather than driven by email inboxes and forum decision threads/lists? 2) If so, when can we expect the shift? 3) If so, will the dev(s) make sure to put in a notification system for telling people their remix has been judged and also for when they're posted or need revisions? I think not being told about judge decisions is a really big problem. It requires people to follow the judge threads everyday, and since the queue is almost a year behind right now, people are very likely to forget. I'm all for giving higher musical precedence to musical writing than verbal writing, but this seems kind of wrong to me. If a ReMix uses the same lyrics, that should count as source usage. It's NOT the same at all as comparing it to a flute, since the flute doesn't have the unique range of inflections and words the human voice has. If something is using the same lyrics with a different melody, it is the same song, just a different piece of music under it. It is recognizable, and a direct tie to the source.