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I have to comment on this now that I got namedropped. THANKS WILL. WHY ARE WE YELLING? I think it's all about pace. Back when I was active here, there were more of the big names around. When they posed, whether on a wip, on a posted remix, or in the community overall, people saw that these big names weren't celebrities in their ivory towers, but regular forum folks like us lowly unposted wannabes. And it inspired us. The wip board specifically became a place for me to help others get past the hurdles I had gotten past, and in the process develop a more critical ear and improve my own work. So the place became important to me. Still is, but running the sd3 project has eaten a lot of the enthusiasm over the years, so I've had less energy for the wip board, and now just do my duties as a workshop mod, and not much else there. I'm hoping I can make a comeback and fill a couple of pages with predominantly "last post by Rozovian". I think the wip board's current slow pace is because it's become less of a community. There's not the wip crew of the old days. There's evktalo and timaeus222 and others who are active and do a great job at giving people feedback. There's the whole mod review thing. But I think we're missing the community we had back then. Everyone has their own circles now, whether Facebook or YouTube or SoundCloud or something else, so the comments are spread all over the place, and they don't show on the forum, so forumites don't engage with them, Facebook folks don't engage with Soundcloud comments, and the whole thing gets spread too thin. I like Soundcloud. But I don't like their comments system, specifically because it draws the comments away from the thread on the wip board. On that note, back to reviews. pu_freak's completely right about how remixes appear on social media and get a lot of their responses from there instead of in reviews. That's a big part of it. I think the ability to drop a brief "nice work" comment on Facebook gives people a reason to not bother giving something more in-depth, no matter where that comment would end up. We can encourage reviews. OA and DA had a reviews month back when, and gave out a little badge to everyone who made it to 500 reviews. And there's been those initiatives to get every remix at least one page of reviews (we need a new one, with the new forum having more posts per page). Maybe it's a bandaid. Or maybe it'd create a feedback loop, where people can piggy-back on other people's reviews. Will had questions for us. 1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR? Back when, it was that I spent so much time posting on wips. Then it was that I didn't have time or energy for it. Now it's that it's not a habit for me to hang out here. I drop by to check for new things to mod review, but that's about it. I don't think I was ever the one reviewing the new mixposts. Rather, I'd make playlists, listen, and comment on the ones I really liked. Which reminds me, I need to review April Rain, if I haven't already, because it's spectacular. What just happened to the formatting? 2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again? Just start reviewing. Find someone to agree or disagree with, and create a discussion about the mix. Make a list of your favorite tracks and review them. Just get more activity going overall. I think there'll be a feedback effect from this. I would also like to be able to read all comments an artist has received on their posted mixes. It's a convenient way for the remixer to find comments on their most recent works, which might lead them to reply, thus posting more in reviews and getting the activity up. I'd also like to see the design of the forum posts get a trim so there's less whitespace, making threads easier to read when there's not row after row of whitespace. I posted about this somewhere before. I think it's detrimental to forum activity that you often can't see more than one post at a time on a laptop screen. That would make it feel more like a conversation than disparate posts. I think the no-favorites policy could be revised to allow for "here are my favorite collabs from the past 3 years, check them out, give them a review; what are your favorite collabs?"-type threads, probably monthly themes and very specifically crafted by staff so as to not flood the community with various favorite threads. "Remixers having made their debut here over the past year", "remixes of games released in the past 5 years", anything that reminds listeners to drop a line on any remix is good, and once there's more of a culture of reviewing, I think we'd see more reviews on new mixposts as well. We could do a monthly podcast, talking about the remixes posted that month. We could make awesome music videos to get more YouTube presence and maybe draw people here. We could raise ocr's profile on reddit. We could do lots of things. But I think it all comes down to a few people leading the charge, and building a community out of the people who follow. ...which makes me wonder what actually happened back in whenever I allegedly single-handedly kicked the wip board into high gear. Now that I'm staff, I feel I have to get permission to do stuff, so that dampens my initiative. Not maybe for reviews or posting on the wip board, but for doing more overall. Speaking of which, I'm apparently not a workshop mod, just a music boards mod. Is that intentional?

I personally think that when you make music, especially for a non-profit kind of thing like ocr, it's actually really important to see as much reviews as possible to your remix. Not necessarily to improve, but because it can be really motivational to see people like your music. And then not just some "wow, I really like this", but at least a "wow, I really like this, because..." kind of response. My mum says she likes my music, but she can't give as fine a reason as a fellow vgm lover that actually knows what I'm remixing. Seeing people liking your stuff, and besides that also knowing what you're actually doing, is so much cooler than just hearing some random bloke saying he/she likes your mix. And I think that the review panel is a really good place for that kind of thing. As I'm relatively new to this place I don't know how it was in its days of supposed glory, but I do know that right now it isn't really as nice as it could be. But, since I've never left a review myself, I don't really have any right to speak... Although, I think that after reading this topic I just might start doing it.

OMG, I did the calculation reversed! Damn dyscalculia! XD But better in this time, because I can listen with speakers in higher volume without annoying my neighbours

Is there a way to integrate comments on remixes posted to Youtube into the equivalent comment thread here? The issue I see is that in the past, the forum thread was the only direct way to comment on a mix. Now the comments are split up amongst different media, thinning out the numbers.

Tallies are complete. Check the first post for results. Congratulations to everyone on a great competition. You guys can change your sigs back now. XD

The only experience I have with SMS is hearing djp gush about it endlessly, hence making ReMixes for it, thus eventually inspiring me play the first Phantasy Star back in 2002 (on emulator, and once more in 2015 [on the same emulator for the most part, until I realized there are way better ones after more than a decade passing, somehow successfully transferring the save files over despite them being a different file type, by simply renaming it to them, with no guides on how to do that that I'm aware of]). I think it's equal to, or better (this, personally), than FF1 for the NES. I have not thought about listening to the rest of the system's library of music even once, though, despite really liking the music to Phantasy Star. Then I ran across this video with fully mysterious to me music, making it a nice treasure trove. The music is really bright, less gritty than NES perhaps, making it relieving to hear, as a contrast I suppose. Maybe the NES has better variability, and sometimes layers, even smoothness (however, Galaxy Force is sounding really smooth right now!), though, and maybe some better musicians, overall, too. Maybe the atmosphere given as initial influence for the console's creation was primarily being overly happy-type music (also true since the samples bring that out), so that's the line artists went with, for a larger portion for its library. Yet there are still tense tracks, like the one at 25:35. Like the NES, it seems to require taking a break before listening to too much; but maybe a more refined or thought-out list could prevent that.

If you are thinking about VV IV somewhen, I would love to join the project with fan art contributions by the Game-Art-HQ Community similar as it was done for the Final Fantasy IX Album. We did a Castlevania Tribute back in 2013 already and I know a good couple artists that would probably like to draw Castlevania Fan Art for these Albums.

Third spot ain't too bad, especially as the competition for it was so close. Wow! Thanks for running a cool compo, Shariq. I hope to work some more on all of the tracks I headed, not before long. It was so cool to team up with Jorito & Tuberz again!

Awws, I should've gotten myself posted earlier. 1. It takes me a lot of time to give thought-out comments, and I rarely have that lately. I can usually think of something more to say than "hey I like this cool" but processing that into actual sentences takes a ton of time for me. 2. I wonder if reviews could be made more profilic than just forum posts.. maybe counting them separately (not just posts count, but also review count, why not also "workshop comment" count.. would raise their profile). Not as much to reward people who do the reviews, but highlight the importance of the comments. I often find a lot to criticize or comment on that the panel or writeup didn't cover, and I'm sure there's a lot that can be said about my posted pieces that hasn't been said already. This probably isn't what you mean with "what is happening in the piece", but I really like to read "readings" of pieces, what they say or seem to mean to a particular listener. You don't have to understand music in a technical/theory level to do this, which is nice (though you have to be able to write about what you think or feel) Of course, constructive feedback for a specific piece is most useful when the piece is in progress, but I find feedback after the song has been released very useful in a more general sense, where I can apply it to current work, or just get my bearings where I am going. Maybe it matters that my rhythm when making things is very slow. I take a lot of time to finish a piece and finished pieces stay long with me, I like to listen to them a lot. So they're still within my "active knowledge" so to speak, and I can apply feedback on them to my current work too (this is also why I don't mind the long wait on the panel etc that much, personally). Man, you should definitely not stop from commenting. You're not pushing your views to anyone. You're making your view available to them. It's their responsibility to handle that. And if you said something controversial perhaps, more people would hopefully join in on the discussion. It should only be a good thing, right? Self-discovery in a vacuum sounds like a bad idea! I never get that. O_o Haha, "evktalo" and "active", I've fooled you somehow. Now this timaeus222 guy, always posts good, helpful and thought-provoking stuff whenever I post a wip myself. The mindset I've had when posting reviews (to finished or WIP pieces) is that it's an opportunity for me to learn. If I can articulate my thoughts and feelings about a piece, it'll improve my own music making. I'll also learn to listen better and closer, and I'll learn more about e.g. mixing, about which I definitely didn't have a clue about before coming to OCR and I've improved a lot in that regard. But I try to review other people's work so that I could improve myself, it's a selfish motive which I think makes it more honest - I'm not aiming to influence others (as much) but make making music clearer to myself. I've been thinking that we should definitely have that December reviews thing, especially noticing that the newer mixposts need to catch up with the number of reviews. Let's do it!

I really think a big part of it is the rise of social media and YouTube. Forums - in general - are way less popular than they used to be. Facebook and Twitter have supplanted forums as a way to have discussions. Not to say that all forums are dead, but any younger remixers are going to be from a generation where forums just aren't really a thing. From what I've seen, the forums that are still thriving tend to have an older audience and are not frequented by young adults, teenagers, etc. (which is what many of us were when we came here.) What has also changed is how people listen to music. There's been a dramatic shift away from downloading MP3s and having a music library, to just streaming your music. YouTube is one of the top, if not THE top, places where people discover and listen to music. OCR's presence on YouTube is very significant with over 100k subscribers and 40m views. If you're consuming your music on YouTube, you're going to leave a comment there and not bother to register on a forum. There's nothing wrong with that, though the nature of YouTube does not lend itself well to in-depth reviews. In short, OCR isn't dying. The decline in activity on the forums can be seen across many forums as people move to social media for discussions. Also, people aren't leaving as many reviews here because many more people are discovering and listening to ReMixes on YouTube.

Include the Facebook comments and Twitter replies too, in that case. Effectively you'd centralize the discussion on the site. Technically feasible because all these platforms have APIs, but if it's a desirable functionality is debatable.

ooooooook. I'm going to be brutally honest. I couldn't get beyond 1:05... so I can't really comment too much on source usage, for the sole reason being the insanely overprocessed guitar entrance was deafeningly shrill even at low volumes. I'm guessing you significantly boosted the highs or it has something to do with your setup which sounds live. If you're not already I would strongly recommend running your guitar stems through an amp sim. Yes, it's a kicker to have to do that when you already spent money on hardware but the flexibility it provides makes it worth it. You can get a relatively cheap amp sim with tons of cab emulations for 50 bucks from Recabinet or for free with Le Pou Plugins and TSE. The most common argument against this is that amp sims lack the correct physics of recording through a live cab through a mic. While it's true for the most part (recabinet is getting closest to solving the issue) 98% of your audience isn't going to know the difference. The Alberti bass harmony in the piano is ok. An acoustic/clean metal intro should carry the energy into the guitar entrance. The guitar entrance itself should be jarring but not unexpected if you get me. You might want to rework the intro once you feel good about the rest of the remix. Correct organization of a remix like this means you would have to make a choice from the start of what you want it to be. Do you want the guitar/bass/drums to be the dominating force in this mix? Or is it more of a piano remix with some distorted guitars/bass and drums playing with the pianist? All of your mixing decisions from then on will have to stem from this choice. In either case it would be a good idea to have double tracked/hardpanned rhythm guitars with the bass just lightly squeezed under them and the drums audible but not overly audible. People know a kick/snare pattern when they hear it so you can get away with keeping them quieter than you would expect and the listener not even noticing the difference. However, before I can really comment further that lead guitar NEEDS to be taken down several notches. Lower the volume, Reduce the gain, Reorganize your effects chain, Reset your EQ, Dip 2khz and 4khz, ANYTHING to get it listenable. Good luck!

1) For me, it's not applicable. I don't follow or listen to much if anything that's getting posted on OCR anymore sorry! 2) To avoid answering this question with another question, why are the number of reviews relevant? Or even why are reviews themselves relevant? If posted mixes already got judged and approved by individuals, then there really isn't much more someone else can say about it. I'm not sure what one person could even say about a mix other than they like the style of the mix, or the game / original song being mixed, otherwise they're just talking about what is happening in the song which I've always found incredibly redundant. Reviews kinda just serve to stroke the ego of the artist (which don't get me wrong, LOVE it when that happens to me), and places like YouTube and Facebook have made using the review forum obsolete. Reviews really only matter before the mix is submitted for approval, where it can help an up-and-comer out with mixing or writing, or give a vet some advice if they're going through sound fatigue. Any criticism can be used to improve or alter the mix, and people can go more in depth with their review. To be critical of a mix after it's been posted is a bit of a waste because the mix isn't going to be touched up, altered, and resubmitted. However, to actually try and answer your question, you can't just focus on lack of reviews and you have to look at the forum system as a whole. The forums themselves have gotten very slow, very boring, very dead and dying, and so the question should be "How do you suggest bring the overall forum activity back up again?". I think back to the VGMix days are how they had a RPG-esque system in place for people when they rate, review, post, etc. You got HP, you got coins, you could buy stuff, and that made using their system fun and exciting. Currently there's only a post count standing where you can go from Goomba to Ness to Wario to whatever inbetween that's kind of a fun thing with posting here. I think what djp has lined up can certainly rejuvenate life back into these forum, but as it currently stands I don't think asking or having one person try and lead a march in improving reviews will have any long lasting effects around here.

Thanks a lot @ everyone who was /is involved in this project.

Just finished a short interview for "Remix ta Console", a Quebec-based radio emission, and we talked about VV3 and OC ReMix. I'll post a link once it's out (should be out on Monday). And sorry, it's in French

Something I'd like to point out here... Yeah, I'm DEF seeing some defeatism here, and while yes I 100% agree that people are busier, complaining about it isn't going to help the problem. My thought process and what it needs is as follows... When I joined, one thing I think people don't remember is that the WIP forum was in a similar state to how it is now. The odd comment but yeah... nothing huge happening. Enter ROZOVIAN - who pretty much single handedly managed to spark some motivation from others because he was so on the ball with wanting to help people. Eventually, the WIP forum had a load of other people critting along with him, and he basically spearheaded a few good years of WIP feedback. He wasn't a mod, he wasn't a judge, he didn't even have a posted mix, but you know, that stuff doesn't matter - all it takes is ONE person to put in the effort and others will follow. Its not me, i'm too busy with other stuff, but this whole "OCR is dead" mentality is probably contributing to this current situation, because "why bother flogging a dead horse", which is what i'm fearing a lot of people are thinking based on some of these responses. All it takes is one person to start doing some reviews and it might kick things up a gear.

Fair use is basically an affirmative defense to copyright infringement. Whether something is fair use or not depends on four factors which are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. These factors include how much of the original work you used, whether the new work is transformative, whether it's a commercial use, etc. You can read more about the factors here. Therefore, whether or not a cover is fair use can't really be said with 100% certainty, but we can make an educated guess as to whether a use would be 'fair' or not based on those four factors. *Generally* speaking, the more transformative a new work is, the more likely it is that the use would be considered 'fair', but again, it really depends. I'd argue that almost any cover of a song is inherently transformative. Before I get into licenses, it's important to understand that there are two copyrights in music: the copyright for the song, and for the sound recording. These are treated differently. When you produce or record a cover or arrangement of a song, provided you didn't use any material from the original sound recording, you're making use of the SONG copyright but not the SOUND RECORDING (SR) copyright. The new sound recording is yours. With that in mind, a mechanical license is necessary to distribute a cover or arrangement because while you have the SR copyright, you don't have the SONG copyright. The term 'mechanical' in this context refers to the distribution of the work via digital / physical media. If you've created a COVER song of a work that has been made available to the public via an album or single release, you can obtain a *compulsory* mechanical license without permission of the copyright holder, as long as royalties are paid. Sites like Loudr.fm can help you with that. But let me pause for a second to say that if you're distributing a cover or arrangement for free, chances are, you'd be covered under fair use. That's how we look at it with OCR. On the other hand, as soon as you start trying to sell that arrangement, you'd better get a mechanical license. Now, "derivative work" is a very specific term. By and large, in this context, it generally refers to the creation of a new work that directly takes from an existing work. The most common usage when talking about music licensing would be creating a sound recording based on an existing sound recording. For example, making a hip hop track using samples from existing songs. There is NO compulsory mechanical license for derivative works. Doing a basic cover is not actually creating a derivative work, but drastically changing a song (changing the "fundamental character", as the law says) might qualify. However, just because something is a DW doesn't mean that it can't also be fair use. Then there's the topic of sync licensing. OK. The right to synchronize a musical work to an audio/visual medium (film, TV, video..) is an exclusive right of the copyright holder. So technically, even if you made a licensed cover song, you would need a separate license to actually sync that cover song to video. BUT, think about the following: Fair use can cover the entire scope of copyright usage. This includes sync. For example, playing clips of a movie while adding critical, educational, or satirical commentary is something done very commonly, and is often considered to be fair use. If you're making a free cover on YouTube, chances are that your use is indeed fair. Also consider that there's a bit of a grey area that most copyright holders don't seem to be sticklers about. By the strictest letter of the law, even a mechanically licensed cover requires a sync license if you were to then create a video and upload it to YouTube. However, I'm not familiar with any cases offhand where a copyright holder - who is being paid mechanical royalties - has taken issue with anyone doing this, provided the video itself is original. The idea of sync licensing tends to be of more concern with for-profit TV shows, movies, ads, and video games, not YouTube, which generates minimal if any profit even for commercial videos. Bottom line: I'd say don't worry about it at all if there's no money involved.

TRAILER!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKBHKD4uwio