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Ah goddamn it, I'm really busy, but I can't waste an opportunity for training. Ok here goes: [“Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” - “Alucard” and “The Tragic Prince” - “Hero"]. I hope that's eligible, since this is not the "official" theme of Alucard [“Illusion of Gaia” - “Dark Gaia" and “The Clash of Light and Shadow” - “Villain”].

bluelighter has turned in a finished WAV for Slideshow part 1 and 2. It's very cool and interesting, an orchestration. He was very kind with listening to feedback and has submitted the song to the panel, with plenty of time to see what they think before the album is done. First WAV, it's a bit of a special thing. Thanks a ton! Let's see more music!! To people in the subforum, there are several WIPs -- you might be surprised by what you find! I'd recommend subscribing / following the subforum as well as this thread, so you will be notified of new posts when you visit OCR. It's a good thing to do!

Sorry to hear that Anorax. Your characters wouldn't have to be anyone even remotely obscure or anything you know. Surely you've had some experience with at least one Final Fantasy? If you're absolutely sure you're out, thank you for considering entering and I hope you follow along. So we've got two more days left for my intended sign-up period. Right now we've got five heroes (Garpocalypse, Touchstone, Ghetto Lee Lewis, Xenonetix, and alfredofreak), two villains (Timothy William and Ronald Poe), and two undecideds (Chernabogue and HoboKa). Over halfway to a full roster so I'm feeling pretty good about that. We'll see how things go over the weekend. Ideally we'll get enough last minute people to fill out the roster and everything can proceed as planned.

Quick reply, haven't listened to the update: Having effects doesn't mean using effects right. You have a very exposed sound. Some genres and styles can do this, and chiptune-y stuff generally doesn't need a lot of effects. But tracks still need their own place in the mix. Start with the levels, then push tracks into their own frequency ranges and give them the sense of space (with reverb) that they need. That's the order I recommend doing it in. Dunno how much you've already done. What I call expression is the feeling that there's an emotion behind the sound. A static waveform, which many simple synth patches have, generally doesn't have a lot of emotion. While that's fine for fast melodies where the expression comes from other things, slower melodies end up sounding robotic when the simple sound designed is exposed. That's when you want small things changing in the sound. A good analogy is the violin, because a violinist will vary the vibrato and the strength of the stroke all the time, and sometimes lag behind the beat slightly, or do other things based on what they feel the melody needs. Timaeus covered some of the tools and techniques to use for this. The tracker scene is about using old tools (trackers) to make music. A lot of chiptunes are made in trackers, but there are non-chip-based trackers as well. A lot of old game music was made in trackers. It's got its own sound because the tools lent themselves to certain techniques. I like that sound. It's part of what got me into music. Minor sources don't need to be sourced if the main source is dominant. If you want to mention them, that's fine. The overall impression I got was a good middle, a weak beginning and end, writing-wise. The sound was raw and exposed, and had some track level balance problems. Dunno how the new version sounds. Hopefully better.