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So I've been wondering about something. When I joined OCR in around 2008, seemed like there was a quite an interest in new mixposts. Mixes would get 10-20 reviews, 30-40 if you were lucky. And i'm talking quite in depth reviews, people actually took the time to post honest positive feedback. Fast forward to 2015! - Now, seems like you're lucky to get 5-10 reviews. So my question is this - what happened? Now... sure, YouTube is a new means of getting feedback, but its hardly the same in terms of the quality of the responses you'd get. Getting a "WOW THIS SOUNDS AMAZING" is a lot more common than getting an in-depth response on there, plus many of the comments lack that personal touch you'd get from people on OCR. The mass of comments, for me, made the long wait to get on OCR worth it, whereas now... you wait for about a year, and get a writeup from DJP and about 2 comments on the site. Seems a little anticlimactic compared to how it used to be. I'm just wondering why because personally, I never really looked at many new mixposts ever. I've always just looked at the stuff I wanted to after the fact and ignored the front page generally, so I can't really say what changed. So... 2 questions: 1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR? 2: How do you suggest the number of reviews is brought back up again?

Hey guys! I posted about this aaaaages ago, but now finally my anime-inspired soundtrack album is almost ready for release! Influenced by composers like Yoko Kanno, Joe Hisaishi, and Yasunori Mitsuda, the 44-minute album features live orchestra, three live choirs (including a Nigerian vocal ensemble and a Slavic women's chorus), vocal performances by Jillian Aversa (Pixietricks), Raj Ramayya (from Cowboy Bebop and Wolf's Rain), Brandon Bush (Harmony) and others, and instrumental performances by Sixto, Drumultima, JeffBall, AeroZ, Audiofidelity, Chuck Simpson (Finbeard), and many more! EDIT: Our kickstarter is now live!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rogetmusic/beyond-libra-an-anime-inspired-soundtrack

I think I used a MIDI only once or twice. I mostly do things by ear, and use the same trick as timaeus for the very fast passages. Transcribing by ear takes practice though. So if you can find a MIDI it can give you a good start. Another trick is using an emulator that allows you to write down the channels to individual channels, so you can listen to them individually. Very helpful for older games that use non Redbook stuff. Think NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA, that kind of stuff, basically any system that didn't come with a CD/DVD drive.

Song link: https://soundcloud.com/move-every-mountain/town-theme-shining-force-2 Hey guys! I'm a longtime listener of OCR stuff, first time maker, haha. I've been producing electronic music for a few years now and I wanted to give video game music a try so I did a modern re-imagining of maybe my favorite video game song ever. It might seem a little abstract but Shining Force 2 is a GREAT RPG (early 90s Sega Genesis) and its full of great music, the "Town Theme" being my favorite. I used Xfer SERUM for most of the sounds in this song, except for one of the synths in the turnaround, which is Logic's native Retro Synth. I've just submitted this song to OCR, I'm really really hoping it gets accepted and I'd love to see what people here think of it. I've titled my remake "Hometown Hero", if only because it was in the submission requirements here on OCR. Structurally speaking its a pretty literal remake of "Town Theme". Thanks a lot! PS Free download on soundcloud, if you want it. Move Every Mountain

Another huge Shining Force 2 fan here! We did a little tribute a year ago on the forums & on Sega Mixer Drive on Radio Sega, you might want to check that out! The sound of synths is actually very Mega Drive-y to me, many of the sounds seem very reminiscent of the original. Listening to the source & this arrangement back-to-back reveals more difference, but the palette isn't that far off. That's neither good or bad, it was just something that seemed like an interesting thing to me. The drumbeat adds a new element, since the original doesn't have any drums. It's not a very dominant element, but it does add something of a steady drive to the feel of the track. There's some subtle changes to bass line, and the rhythm of the sequencing, that also has this "steady drive" feel, whereas the original is kind of skipping and hopping a bit. As far as OCR submission, two things stick out: first, this is very close to the original structurally, compositionally and even the genre and tone, apart from having drums, so I doubt it'll satisfy the "arrangement must be substantial and original" part of the submission standards. Second, structurally, he piece loops verbatim, or very close to it. It makes it feel less like a standalone track. (The fadeout at the end is also unsatisfying. I don't have an allergy to fadeouts, but it didn't feel like a good conclusion to the piece. But it's kinda moot point since the structure would need work anyhow.) Luckily, you can solve both these problems in one go by creatively rearranging the second go of the source material; original soloing, changeups of instrumentation & structure.. get creative with it, see what the composition inspires you to do. One very specific feedback would be to make the intro bass notes longer, to give some more impact to the intro. I thought that this was pretty well mixed: nothing seemed too quiet or loud to me, everything was audible and pleasant to listen to. I also liked the swooshing, reverby percussive/sfx sounds, they added a great deal of sense of space to the mix.

Welcome to OCR! Always great to see fresh faces, in here. Ah, Bomberman 64, quite the underrated soundtrack, I'd have to say, and this is a great track from that game. I do hear the source in here, so that's good. Sounds like you're going for some hip-hop or pop style sounds in here, but it sounds like it's missing something. I swear, it's like you just need the solid male pop singer to give it life above what you've already got going in here. In the section past 1:52, there are a few parts that clash with that harmonization in the theme, so be careful with either the melody or harmonization. Hope this gets more love on here, and I hope you find the WIP boards helpful!

I like how "Remembering Satoru Iwata" sounds Also in regards to the quote, it makes the album title a bit redundant since the title is inspired by the quote itself.

If I'm hearing this correctly, you're saying it's cool for folks like me to continue typing those huge ass dissertations with 47 paragraphs about how dat filter sweep had me feelin some type of way, yeah? hoooly shit, the forums are upgraded as fuck.

Howdy everyone, just wanted to drop the new album here About an hour and a half of Chrono Trigger music, which is my follow up project after Metroid Cinematica. It's currently available via PayPal and Loudr, also CD Special Edition albums with fancy digipaks exist as well though I am sorting inventory at the moment to see how many there are left before putting them back up for grabs again. Same goes for Metroid CDs which is a two-disc set. If you're interested, feel free to stop by my site and pick up your own copy, and thanks for listening. http://www.samostudios.com

I think one problem, and this might be addressed in V6, I don't know, is that right now if you go to a mixpost, you download the song or listen on YouTube on the mixpost page. Then if you want to leave a review, you have to click on the review link. Then you have to be logged into the forum. What if you're not registered? Well then now you have to register for the forum and create an account. But after that, you have to wait until your forum account is manually activated. At this point, you don't really care about leaving a review anymore. Commenting on remixes on the mixpost page just needs to be easier. There are too many clicks, even if you already have an active forum account. You should be able to just hit play and write a review all on the same page. This is why people comment on YouTube videos. They don't have to jump through hoops to leave their 2 cents. These things might be taken care of with IPS4 and V6; IPS has a commenting system that could be used on mixpost pages (maybe, I don't know, I don't really know IPS's system that well yet). I know we talked about Disqus in the past too, but I also know that it's preferable to keep everything under one software umbrella (in this case, IPS). Regardless, I think the gating that's happening when trying to leave a review needs to be addressed.

It'd be great if more people responding actually focused on those two questions My personal answer to the first question is that I do a writeup for every single mix I've VERY interested in ideas for enhancing feedback & number of reviews.... but here's my current thinking: We upgrade our forums to IPS 4.X We build the workshop out to integrate with the rest of the site We thus allow content creation & promotion on two tracks - the instant gratification, "look what I made" track for anything posted on the workshop AND the featured, canonized track for accepted mixes We automate the submissions process via the forums All of these changes serve to reinforce the forums and the benefits of registering & participating We consider some form of trackable reputation points or awards or whatever for the most active/helpful members who are reviewing content and offering feedback in the workshop forums as well So we WILL be modernizing, quite a bit, and hopefully that WILL help... I sense some defeatism, here, and I can see where it might stem from, but this is when we need people stepping up, not stepping back, because big changes are in store and we'll need all the help we can get to implement them. In the meantime, every review helps!

Well, by my calculations, after searching for new members by Join Date (between Jan 1 2015 and Oct 27, 2015 inclusive, and the same for 2014, 2013, etc), 20 members per page, we've had: 2015 --- 4 + 20*(1626 - 1586 + 1) + 7 = 831 2014 --- 9 + 20*(1574 - 1526 + 1) + 1 = 990 2013 --- 16 + 20*(1515 - 1456 + 1) + 7 = 1223 2012 --- 5 + 20*(1440 - 1368 + 1) + 10 = 1475 2011 --- 15 + 20*(1350 - 1243 + 1) + 17 = 2192 2010 --- 18 + 20*(1220 - 1100 + 1) + 7 = 2445 2009 --- 19 + 20*(1072 - 995 + 1) + 7 = 1586 2008 --- 16 + 20*(978 - 913 + 1) + 5 = 1341 2007 --- 12 + 20*(896 - 834 + 1) + 11 = 1283 So yeah, it looks to me like there's a lack of new members. It's not to say that the more members we have, the more activity we'll have (depends on what these members want to do with us), but statistically, less people are joining the OCR forums per year, at least since 2010. :/