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Sup everyone! Super happy to announce that my Kickstarter-doublefunded anime soundtrack album, "Beyond Libra", has been released AND we're having a listening party tonight!! For those unfamiliar, this was an album of original music I wrote over the last 8 years, with lots of stylistic references to composers such as Yoko Kanno, Jo Hisaishi, and Yasunori Mitsuda. I collaborated with several OCR artists on this one, including Jeff Ball, DrumUltima, Jillian "Pixietricks" Aversa, Sixto, Finbeard, Harmony, Audiofidelity, XPRTNovice, Shrack, Snappleman, and Jose the Bronx Rican. We also had three different live choirs (The Philadelphia Boys Choir, The Yale Slavic Chorus, and a Nigerian vocal ensemble) and live orchestra, along with artwork by Keiiii and Star Wars artist Stephen Chang, so it was a gargantuan production across three continents. Kickstarter backers who opted for the digital release should have already received their copy via an emailed bandcamp code; Physical copies will be mailed off later today and tomorrow. The album is available at https://rogetmusic.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-libra for the full release with all our gorgeous disc art, and it'll be available on iTunes, Spotify, and several others soon as well. Listening party will be on Wednesday, March 9th (ie. today) at 10pm EST (7pm PST), courtesy of 8bitX: www.twitch.tv/8bitx Scott Porter (SeattleOvercoat) will host the show, and I'll answer questions and give behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the album's production. Sorry for the short notice, but I hope you guys can make it!

Dunno when OCR got a reputation for being anti-repetition, when we have a lot of mixes with some manner of it. We're just against lazy and excessive repetition, usually when it involves minimal changes or (worse), the dreaded cut-and-paste.

Whaaaat da fuuuuuck??! Oh, wait, it's a timaeus & Sir J collab. No complaints here then. It's just beyond any level of awesomeness. You've simply outdone yourself, guys. I can't stop listening to this track. Definitely the highlight of BadAss 3, IMO.

Everyone knows OCR has nothing but techno shit EDIT: More seriously, to answer the original question, OCR is basically the main reason why I know how to make music.

If this happens, you know where to find me. <3

This album is amazing! It was a pleasure and honor to work on it with such awesome people and I learned a lot from it. Awesome work guys! We made the bad guys proud! xD

OCR HAS RUINED MY MUSIC DREAMS. There I fixed it. Seriously though, working within some basic & flexible artistic boundaries is what brought us some of the best art the world has ever known... including a massive swath of the most iconic VGM ever written. To complain about the limitations of (comparatively) flexible guidelines such as our own when arranging music that was itself composed with (comparatively) far more specific/restrictive technical boundaries seems... odd. And by "odd" I mean "OMG WTF"... But I wouldn't use those tactless words, because I represent the site in an official capacity...

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

Yup that's pretty dang true. There's a lot of stuff that gets passed even with cut and paste. (looking at Trance type stuff!) But the key word here is "lazy and excessive repetition" -- if it's not enjoyable then that's not a good thing. And making stuff less repetitious is as easy as changing up a drum beat for the second repetition. Why copy/paste the drum track when it's so easy to play the drums in,or heck, even click them in? /shrug I do have mixes with some repetition. But I repeat parts I think are enjoyable. Too much is too much, if people really want to hear something again, they can listen to the song again. That's how I keep out of excessively-long mixes, tho it depends on genre too. So I dunno I think I disagree with the ideas put forth about OCR, or the accusations? Whatever you'd call it As for whether my stuff sounds samey, you try making 80 songs and having them all sound completely different. Besides, I make music that I want to hear. I could make the same song over and over if it's what I like.

Hah, a rematch against WarMachine! I'm game

Results are in! OA moves on to the hero finals, along with Gario and Wildfire. The hero finals will again be a simple 3-way matchup, where each remixer needs to use all three sources. Jorito achieves a clean sweep of the Dracula Bracket, earning 4 points. PlanarianHugger and TheShaggyFreak tie for last place and earn one point each. The source for the Dracula Bracket, Round 2 is Sorrow's Distortion from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia! Again, anyone who wants to participate should submit a remix using that source and their own. Both deadlines are 2 weeks from now, March 23. Get remixing!

I think this soundtrack is one of the best around, yet it has so few remixes. Why is that? Is it the difficulty of producing quality tracks based on the original arrangement? Any of the awesome tracks from the game would be great, but I do have a few favorites among them: Who is up for it? :3

I was about to say HEY NOW I'M ON MUSICBRAINZ TOO but apparently I already was with Lime of the Season lol

Hey guys! Stargazers is my latest release and a really experimental dive into some retro musical motifs and apocalyptic settings. I had an awful lot of fun making it, and I hope some of you enjoy checking it out! The genre is New Wave/Alternative, and the album is always free to listen to on my Bandcamp. Hopefully on a few days it'll be up on various music sites as well, so I can post those in an edit if anyone's interested. Feedback is always appreciated, I'm definitely doing more like this so I'll keep any tips in mind for next time. For fans of rock, I recommend checking out Acid Rain and Chaos Theory. For fans of more electronic songs, check out Meet You at the End and Oblivion. Aviators - Stargazers

Please listen to the rest of the soundtrack to A Realm Reborn (and some of the carry-overs from the original release), as well as Heavensward. Then form a full opinion. The majority of the soundtrack is strongly instrumental with this more metal style only being used in choice scenarios, usually for Primal fights: the classic summons are used in this world as godlike defenders of the world's beast races, and starting with Titan, there are a lot of lyrical metal or electronica songs based around the primal's theme and that of their patron race. Take, for example, the theme to one of the Alexander fights released recently. Or, perhaps, try out the first theme I know of in the game that had this tone shift, the five-stage theme to the primal Titan's fight: All that detail to say: yes, it's a change, but I think it's one that's been implemented tastefully and to excellent tonal effect in the game itself. Even if you dislike those tracks, the rest of the soundtrack may be more fitting to personal taste. Or not. Just don't take a couple of samples and assume it represents the whole, especially when a wide variety is represented in the source. As to the original topic at hand... yeah, I understand the theft argument. There is certainly strong similarity in tone, perhaps a nod to the 'Worlds Collide' opening verses, but it diverges fairly strongly after that that. A tribute, perhaps - and one that should probably be affirmed and recognized by Soken, not denied - but at most just that, a tribute and not outright theft.

A few people have mentioned it here and it seems to always come up with the subject of OCR being anti-repetition. I really don't get it, a lot of dance music isn't excessively repetitive and there's no reason you can't have a solid groove and musical variety, as a lot of artists on this site have done. You can do a trance track that isn't 10 minutes of copy pasted unts and 4 bars of basic arps and that bassline we've all heard 1000x, you're better than that. In my own musical philosophy I don't even see that as being very dancey, high repetition is more meditative, you need variation so the energy of the track is dynamic. Just my opinion and admittedly it's not really my area of specialization, but OCR having it's own vision is totally ok, if you want to make different stuff there are many other avenues for that

Welcome to the Voting Stage! There are 5 entries this round. There are 2 Bonus entries this round There is a voter bonus this round Hipnotyk has a vote worth 2x Don't vote for Bonus entries please Participants may not vote for themselves Vote ends 11pm Thursday March 10th

When trying to recruit for CastleMania, Slimy went over some sample pro wrestling theme songs I sent him and replied, "It sounds like I'll need to get some worse orchestral samples." And he was absolutely right, and not just about the orchestral themes. These are professional songs, and, while I'm not a judge, I would be grossly surprised if anything on their level of quality passed the OCR bar. They're largely pretty awful from both an arrangement and a production standpoint, and mostly from a creative standpoint as well. When CastleMania is completed, I'm confident that the main thing that will make it unrealistic as a pro wrestling music album is that the quality will be way too high. Unrelated: I think we're geared towards being OK with repetition because the objectives of an OC ReMix are very different from what we'd expect in other music. Music with lyrics, which is what we're mostly familiar with, all but demands a repeating structure, where only the words change, except for a bridge. OC ReMixes with lyrics often follow that pattern as well, and don't get dinged for it by the panel. EDM is, obviously, intentionally repetitive. Orchestral (including film scores) actually comes pretty close to OCR expectations, since it's largely about variations on a theme, but using an orchestral arrangement style for rock or electronic music is counterintuitive. It makes sense, though.

Honestly, the most satisfying mindset IMO when it comes to writing what becomes an OC ReMix is to write for yourself, and then choose to submit something to OCR after-the-fact. I don't write to conform to OCR standards; the OCR standards helped elevate my own personal standards. I find that once you assume that you have to adhere to the OCR standards before-the-fact, it doesn't feel right. Now, I integrate the basic framework into how I write music: be interpretive, be creative, and flesh out the piece until it can't get any better for the amount of skill I have at that moment in time.

Well, tbh, not all dance music is repetitive to the extent that I find it excessive. Everything needs repetition so that it doesn't progress too much too quickly, and for that welcome familiarity you get when you hear a reprise. I find that the less repetition there is, the less memorable something becomes. So of course, I'm not inherently against repetition; I'm against excessive repetition.

If this progresses nicely you should try contacting the VGCW (Forums and Wikia). It's a videogame character wrestling league and features Dracula as one of the main wrestlers (he's actually the champion now). Last episode also teased Alucard. I think you could make a nice collaboration with them!

Nice to see it back! Maybe I'll claim something once I'm done with my current load of projects (something more obscure like from a Digimon RPG game).

Let's do this. This is my transcription of the two verses. The actual tempo of Worlds Collide is 144 and Sephirot is 140 but I didn't bother with the sheet music. As you can see, the two riffs are essentially the same. The sephirot theme lacks the E note and augments the tonic's eighth note rhythm into complete quarter notes. It is basically the exact same riff and it's already in the same key too. The vocal style and lyrics are extremely similar, same 4 on the floor kick pattern and the synths and bass are both effected in similar ways. Here are the two verses together. I couldn't decide if I wanted to have them panned or left alone, so I did both in the same render. https://app.box.com/s/gd9c1k119kaqrdlduwytf3pxjknu6qbk If it were just the simple guitars, I wouldn't be so sold, but I believe that Soken knowingly copied the verses of a platinum-selling song. Same key, same riff, same vocal approach, same drums, etc. Let me guess, Robert Cop was a mistake too?

It's almost as if Zangief's theme traveled back to the 80s, did a workout to an exercise tape, then did a training montage, and then came back to the 90s to kick everyone's ass. That's what I get out of this addictive ear worm of an arrangement. Not only is it a great arrangement, but it does a great job capturing the feel of the Street Fighter series.

Zangief space dance party