Leaderboard

I just realized something: BA is OCRA-30, BA2 is OCRA-43, and BA3 is OCRA-56. There's exactly 13 albums between the BA ones ^^

Apparently, I'm part of this now.

Hey, YoungProdigy here. I've recently been working "The Battle Goes On", an orchestral battle theme. You can check it out here: Critique is welcome as always.

Going by my previous eval post, I should be on the lookout for piano humanization issues. Timaeus covered it well, and better than I could have. I don't think it's to an extent where it'd be NO'd on that alone, but worth looking into regardless. For your own development, if not for the remix'. There's some overall dynamics things that could be smoothed out, or emphasized, or otherwise changed around, but any specifics would go into personal preference. Still, e.g.: The stuff around 0:08 are significantly louder than the preceding stuff. Not individual notes, but a set of them. Around 0:25 things get rather soft, while picking up around at 0:30. How intentional is this? It feels a bit directionless. How do you want it? The ending is extremely soft, probably too much. Dynamics on the micro level, dynamics on the macro level. That's still there to work on. Consider looking at the track waveform to get some idea of the overall dynamics of it. it might help you identify where things are weird. If necessary, run a high pass filter over it before exporting the version you're going to look at, just to make sure some bright attacks aren't messing up the waveform view. Just figure out how loud you want different parts to be, and make it sound more deliberate. I don't think you need another eval for this track. Unless you're going to introduce any new problems, it's just dynamics left. Good luck, and nice work.

Still waiting on the final WIP01s to come in from the remaining remixers who signed on. Anyone who comes on after this for the remaining 7 tracks, their due dates will be negotiated on an individual basis. However, the firm deadline for the second, more substantial (we're talking nearly finished) WIP02 will be a hard date - June 1st. This goes for everybody who signed on thus far. Depending on life circumstances we can wiggle the date a bit for folks but everyone who is currently signed on needs to submit a completed or near completed track by June 1st. From there, I'll send them to the three volunteer OCR judges who generously offered their time to the project and they'll go over each track to ensure each one would get in on OCRemix on their own merits. I'll relay the feedback back to you, make the necessary changes and I'd be happy calling the track good unless an issue crops up with it during the final album evaluation. Looking forward to the fully realized tracks in a few months! That's not to say you can't finish the track sooner and hand it in for judge eval early! I'll accept that too! For the remaining 7 tracks, we're still looking for remixers to tackle them. We've almost got a fully stocked album, we just need to push a bit further! Great job all around so far everyone! From what I'm hearing, this will be a great treat for both fans and non-fans of the game!

Ça rappelle des souvenirs ça ! Good job dude !

The biggest effect OCR has had on me is that I barely make original songs anymore. When I saw the difference between the outreach/love I'd get for my remixes vs. my original music, I opted to put my energy into remixes. Maybe sad, but definitely true. On a related note I kinda hate the trend of everyone and their mother covering the Game of Thrones theme or whatever song is popular and having it get more attention than their original songs, but it seems inevitable given how much music there is out there. Something familiar is going to get more attention. Can't blame anyone for doing it either, since I have basically done the same thing by foregoing original music for remixes, and have likely clicked on a 100 "'Uptown Funk' played on a pinball machine!" Facebook links myself.

Good god, when I listened to the FF14 track linked in the article, I thought they had overlaid the two songs at first. There's no way two people come up with that amount of similarity independently, though it doesn't have to have been an intentional copy. I know there are times that a song comes to me and it takes me a while to realize that it's an existing song, not something I came up with. But I'm surprised this song went through recording, QA, everything, and nobody noticed (or cared). If "Blurred Lines" was infringement, this would certainly be called that.

Two tracks basically opened up today. Kingdom of Nasrad is now back up for grabs. So if any remixers were interested in it but couldn't claim it because someone else had it, its now for the taking. Please go back through and take another listen to see if its something you'd like to remix. It's got more of an arabic flair to it. The other track is a bit more unique. I actually removed Town of Ice after some discussion with Modus and I'm replacing it with Remote Town. So this is a brand new core track listing, so everyone take a listen to this one and see if you can get some ideas for it. I'm almost thinking Western style but I like to be surprised! Come on folks! We got just a few more tracks to claim!

The louder notes still seem fairly hard-toned; I'm guessing it's still from that velocity response (last I checked, you had it set to "Convex - 50" or something like that). Here's something you could try. It might be kind of a pain, but try holding Ctrl and left-click-drag to select all the notes with velocities of, say, 100~127, and lower them all at once using Alt+Mouse Wheel roll. If you don't have a mouse wheel, try Alt+X and set it so the new velocity magnitudes are a bit lower. Then compare back to the previous version to see if the "playing" sounds softer. Currently it sounds like the "pianist" is sporadically pressing down fairly hard on the keys when playing the louder notes, rather than having the dynamics come naturally from the flow of the other notes. As a result, it doesn't quite feel realistic to me.

I will see what I can come up with.

Cool to see a SRA mix. It sounds "lossy" (like a low kpbs MP3). Youtube is possibly hurting your audio quality. Some of the percussion could be humanized more, varied in velocity and could use alternate samples (several samples for the "same" drum hits). The hand percussion in the beginning (and the same part used later) could use some velocity variation and some snare rolls and especially crash cymbals suffer from hearing the same sample played the same way many times. (Some of the percussion sounds just right with the drum machine feel though). The same humanization/variation criticism goes for the synth riff that is played first in the very beginning. It actually sounds all right in the intro itself, but when it repeats throughout the track it sounds stiffly sequenced, doesn't sit as well in the mix and I get the feeling I'm hearing the same thing as before. Listen to the riff in the original, it is much more lively. The production is better in the original track. Your mix (though again Youtube may be hurting it) sounds a bit thin, like the different instruments weren't filling up the sound spectrum enjoyably. Try to perhaps EQ your tracks or change some of your sounds to better fill up the mix. (Also, you have room to add some subtle atmospheric sounds etc to fill up the mix). The original also employs panning heavily (bit too heavily, but perhaps it's because of DS' speakers), which you could do more too. Arrangement-wise I like the long stretch at 1:34-2:13, I like how the bass is let go for a good while, and it's a good feeling when it comes back. The voice samples from the game fit very well.

Yes, if you attempt to score anything how you would write a track that meets OCR standards, it would seldom work. There's only a simple principal behind this, it's nothing very nuanced or complicated. It's that in media, music is meant to augment something that is the focal point. For songs you release on an album, for songs you release on OCR, etc. it's not augmenting or filling the gaps of anything; it is the main point of itself, and so it is okay for it to do whatever it wants without ruining or derailing something it's supposed to support. In scoring, something as simple as a chord change can re-contextualize a scene, and can make a director very angry if you seem like you don't understand why. It's not about your vision, it's about his; granted, it's not as if this is a rule, and sometimes directors choose to heed a composer's ideas.

- Gameplay of V at the Capcom Cup for those out of the loop. The Revenge meters offer some definite potential, IMO.

I'm a lifelong fan of this franchise, but I've gotta say....it's gonna take a lot to get me to buy another SF game at this point. I wish I could say I'm excited, but honestly the game needs to evolve as do all of the major fighting games. It needs to be more than just a fighting game - it's been more or less the exact same for 20 years. I poured hundreds of hours into SFIV since it came out and from what little gameplay this trailer shows, and the series so far, there is little doubt it will be hardly any different from SFIV and that is not enough anymore for Capcom to get my money. I know I'm not alone at all in this thinking. Hell, Maximilian even made a similar statement in a recent video on his YouTube channel. So I hope it turns out great, but currently sitting at a "meh" for me.