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Introduction Past and future collide as two factions clash in the greatest musical battle the world has ever seen. Armored heroes meet metal warriors on the battlefield of wailing guitars, dirty drops, and soaring strings. Get ready, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for Robots vs. Knights! Current News MUSIC FOR THE FINAL BATTLE IS UP! Round 9: One vs. One Final Battle Team Robot Team Knight Squad Artist Source vs Source Artist Squad Rush Squad Gario Ballade vs Wandering Travelers JohnStacy Armor Squad Rush Squad Starpheonix Enker vs Shield Knight GCJ Armor Squad Rush Squad Thirdkoopa Mercury vs Shovel Knight Jorito Relic Squad Tango Squad Chiwalker Uranus vs Polar Knight theshaggyfreak Shovel Squad Tango Squad Yami Pluto vs Plague Knight akalink Armor Squad Tango Squad Ronald Poe Mars vs Propeller Knight Anorax Shovel Squad Beat Squad Trism Saturn vs Spectre Knight PlanarianHugger Shovel Squad Beat Squad Xenonetix Punk vs King Knight Dewey Newt Relic Squad Beat Squad MegaDrive Venus vs Mole Knight Arrow Relic Squad Remixes are due Sunday, June 18th at 9 PM EDT. All competitors will compose and produce remixes that combine both sources into one, cohesive piece of music. Collaboration with teammates is allowed, but the primary artists should be the competitors listed in the table above. All competitors are encouraged (but not required) to share WIPs with teammates in order to get constructive feedback. Good luck and happy mixing. A lot of team discussion is happening on the OC ReMix Discord, be sure to make yourselves available. As always, all participants (competitors and voters) are expected to adhere to the Competitions Code of Conduct. Scoreboard Battle Team Knight Team Robot Ballade vs Shovel Knight 2 0 Uranus vs Propeller Knight 0 2 Saturn vs Plague Knight 2 0 Enker vs Polar Knight 0 2 Pluto vs King Knight 0 2 Punk vs Shield Knight 2 0 Mercury vs Spectre Knight 0 2 Mars vs Mole Knight 0 0 Venus vs Wandering Travelers 0 2 Boss Battle vs Tinker Knight 0 9 Total 6 19 Teams Team Knight Artist Source Squad Anorax Propeller Knight Shovel Squad theshaggyfreak Polar Knight Shovel Squad PlanarianHugger Spectre Knight Shovel Squad akalink Plague Knight Armor Squad GCJ Shield Knight Armor Squad JohnStacy Wandering Travelers Armor Squad Jorito Shovel Knight Relic Squad Dewey Newt King Knight Relic Squad Arrow Mole Knight Relic Squad Team Robot Artist Source Squad Gario Ballade Rush Squad Starpheonix Enker Rush Squad Thirdkoopa Mercury Rush Squad Chiwalker Uranus Tango Squad Yami Pluto Tango Squad Ronald Poe Mars Tango Squad Trism Saturn Beat Squad Xenonetix Punk Beat Squad MegaDrive Venus Beat Squad Releases Round 1: Squad vs. Squad Block 1 Round 2: Squad vs. Squad Block 1 Round 3: Squad vs. Squad Block 1 Round 4: Boss Battle 1 Rounds 5-8: Block 2 Round 9: One vs. One Final Battle About Robots vs. Knights (RvK) is a Team vs. Team competition. It’s a new format that I’ve been developing for a couple of months now, combining elements of the head-to-head battles of the Remix Battle tournaments (GRMRB, etc.) with the teamwork aspect of Gauntlet tournaments (WCRG, etc.). Here’s the full breakdown of how it’s going to work. Sign-ups 18 people sign up. I’ll divide everyone into 2 teams of 9. I’ll be assigning people to their respective teams in order to ensure a balanced competition. Each team will be given a pool of sources to select from. Team members will decide how to assign sources themselves. I won’t be running a draft. Team Robots will be given a selection of sources from the Mega Man Game Boy games. Team Knights will be given a selection of sources from Shovel Knight. Each team will form 3 squads of 3 members each. The squad will be your group that you’ll rotate with throughout the competition, similar to the teams from gauntlet competitions. Squad-vs-Squad Battle 1 The first 3 rounds are squad-vs-squad battles. Each squad will decide their remixing order for the first three rounds and provide that to me. Each round, I’ll post 3 match-ups between squads on opposing teams. Each squad’s artist will submit a remix that uses their selected source and the opposing squad’s selected source. At the end of each round, artists send their remixes to me, I’ll put the tracks up, and people will vote. Each victory will earn points for the team. Boss Battle 1 The 4th round is a boss battle. I’ll post a boss theme source. All 6 squads will submit a remix that combines the boss theme with one of the squad’s sources. Any member of the squad can be the primary artist. The primary artist is not required to use their own personal source; they can use any of their squad’s 3 sources. At the end of the round, voters will select their 3 favorite remixes, unranked. The team that has the most selections at the end of the voting period will choose between two rewards: a chunk of points, or the right to counterpick in the next block of squad-vs-squad battles. Break 1 While votes are being collected for Boss Battle 1, we will take a week-long break, using the time to review remixes from past rounds. Squad-vs-Squad Battle 2 The next 3 rounds are squad-vs-squad battles. If a team has the right to counterpick, they’ll be provided the opposing team’s remixing orders first before determining their remixing orders. I will still determine the actual match-ups based on the updated remixing orders. The 3 rounds of squad-vs-squad battles are conducted as before. Boss Battle 2 The 8th round is another boss battle, conducted in the same way as the previous boss battle round. Break 2 While votes are being collected for Boss Battle 2, we will take a week-long break, using the time to review remixes from past rounds. One-vs-One Battle The 9th and final round is comprised of 9 one-on-one battles. If a team has earned the right to counterpick from the previous round, they’ll be allowed to determine the 9 match-ups; rematches of previous battles from the squad-vs-squad blocks are not allowed. If no team has counterpick, I’ll determine the match-ups. Each artist will be responsible for writing a remix that uses their selected source and their opponent’s source. At the end of the round, remixes will be submitted and voted on. The team with the most victories will earn a large chunk of points. The team with the most points at the end of the competition wins. Submissions and File Name Rules Submission All entries must be sent to me (DarkeSword) via PM on the forums. Please include your team name, squad name, and the round number in the subject line of your PM. I encode all MP3s myself, so please send me your submissions in 16bit, 44.1KHz WAV format. Don’t send MP3s. Please do not use MediaFire, RapidShare, or any other ad-ridden public sharing site as a host for your entry. There are many better options you can and should be using to host your music. I recommend Dropbox or SoundCloud. Make sure your files are downloadable. File Names If you worked on the remix without the help of your teammates: Team Robots - DarkeSword - Be Cool, Man (Ice Man vs. Polar Knight).wav If one team member helps you with your entry in a significant way and you want to give them credit, add their name as follows: Team Robots - DarkeSword feat. Neblix - Be Cool, Man (Ice Man vs. Polar Knight).wav If more than one team members help you with your entry in a significant way and you want to give them credit, add their names as follows: Team Robots - DarkeSword feat. Neblix, Liontamer - Be Cool, Man (Ice Man vs. Polar Knight).wav Notes Make sure you’re using proper capitalization for team names and character names. Put spaces on both sides of the hyphens between Team Name, Artist, and Title. If your remix’s title has special punctuation that you can’t include in the file name (e.g. \ / : \* ? " < > |), please let me know in your submission PM so I can include the correct title in the tags. Please follow the file name format exactly; I use the file names to make sure that all the metadata is correct when I tag the MP3s. It’s a massive pain sitting there renaming, re-spacing, and reformatting so that everything works properly with mp3tag’s file-name-to-tag tools, and ultimately it means that when you all do it right, I can get the music up for voting way faster. Voting Rules and Guidelines Voting is conducted publicly in the Public Voting forum. Every week, a thread will be created for the most recently completed round of remixing. Because RvK has two different types of rounds (squad-vs-squad and boss battle), please make sure you read and follow the instructions in the voting thread. Things to keep in mind when voting: The most important thing to consider when voting is how well the remix incorporates and arranges both themes. Production and enjoyability should also be considered, but this is primarily an arrangement competition. Everyone is allowed (and encouraged) to vote, including competitors. Everyone must adhere to the Competitions Code of Conduct. FAQ This is pretty interesting, but why are you doing this instead of just another Tournament or Gauntlet? The philosophy behind RvK is to create an environment where more artists will be working together to help and learn from each other. I want to tap into the spirit of teamwork and collaboration in a bigger way this tournament. Rather than just having two friends working on tracks with you week to week, you’ll have eight other teammates that you can use as resources. What do you mean by resources? In the past, I’ve tried to limit the amount of collaboration allowed in competitions because I wanted to make sure that people were putting forth a concerted effort to grow as artists on their own. While we’ll still be adhering to the idea of a Primary Artist for each remix in RvK, some of the limitations will be relaxed. Artists will be able to get help from all 8 of their teammates. This includes production help, session instruments, and arrangement feedback. The Primary Artist will still be responsible for the bulk of the work that goes into a remix, but they’ll have a lot more help in getting that remix polished up. How many remixes do I have to write? You will be responsible for at least 3 remixes: 2 remixes from the squad-vs-squad battles, and 1 remix in the final battle. You may also be responsible for any of the boss battle remixes, but that will be up to your team. Why can’t we choose our own teams? I’m going to determine the teams based on skill level in order to ensure fairness across the board. I want both teams to have a healthy balance between novices and veterans. Do we get to pick team names or squad names? No. The two teams will be known as Team Robots and Team Knights. I will also be setting the squad names which will be revealed once we get the competition started. I really want to be on Team Robots/Team Knights! Can you put me on that team? I’ll consider your preference but I can’t guarantee anything. Notes Stardroid sprites used in Team Robot sigs were colorized by onyx801.

First of all I'd like to apologise. I never wanted to even insinuate that you guys aren't doing a great job. Because you guys _are_ doing a great job. I probably should have formulated that differently. (Or not at all.) I also realise that you're all volunteers, and I respect the effort that you're putting into this (or the fact that you're even taking the time to read and respond to my posts, since I'm a relative outsider). What really gets to me, though, is the apparent "all or nothing" mentality of these responses, as Liontamer mentions. (Thanks Liontamer!) It's been stupid of me to not point this out specifically, but I never intended for _all_ of the OC Remix catalogue to be put on streaming services. Maybe some day, if possible, yes. But surely not initially. I was mostly considering the album projects. I mean, albums like Voices of the Lifestream would be pretty safe bets as they are easily licensed through, for example, Loudr (only one game per album for most of them), and from what I've seen Square Enix doesn't really make a big fuss about fan arrangements. I mean, OC ReMix could start out posting just the albums on streaming services every week or month or [insert random timeframe here]. Starting with either Kong in Concert, which, from what I gather, would be easily licensable, or Relics of the Chozo if it's possible to license it. Or, of course, if you're feeling adventurous, just upload it rogue. (There are plenty of Super Metroid fan arrangements on Spotify already, so either they got successfully licensed or Nintendo just doesn't seem to care. But I assume OC ReMix respects the original copyright holders sufficiently to not post unlicensed songs.) From there you just continue on, trying to get as many albums on there as possible. That _would_ constitute a moderate amount of effort. So yeah, baby steps. Just having a handful of OC ReMix albums on there would already be awesome. I would never expect anyone to undertake a complete "get all OC ReMix songs on streaming services"-project in one go. That's would be an insane amount of work. But I can't stand it when people just write of an idea all together without exploring all the options. There is almost always room for concessions. Just keep in mind this is not a black or white situation. I still believe OC ReMix could and should extend their songs to Spotify. Also, let me make this clear: this has nothing to do with convenience for me personally. I have both an iTunes Match and Apple Music subscription. So every time new songs or abums come out on OC ReMix I just download them and drag them into iTunes and I'm set. I have all OC ReMix songs available to me where ever I go and I can listen them alongside all the songs on Apple Music, so I don't even need to switch app to listen to one or the other. The colleagues, friends and loved ones that I wish to share music with, however, aren't all as proficient with their computer or smartphone as I am. Neither can I expect them to pay for an iTunes Match subscription, or set up a Plex Media Server, etc. Practically all of them use Spotify, however, so if I just send them a link to an album on Spotify the barrier for getting them to listen to these songs is greatly reduced. Also for a lot of fans like me it serves as additional confirmation of their music tastes not being just this obscure underground thing. This may sound ridiculous to some of you, but I am sure others can understand. Anyway, I really think we're getting off on the wrong foot and that is too bad. Part of this is obviously my fault because, frankly, yeah I have a big mouth and I can come across as quite arrogant when talking about subjects I'm passionate about. But I always try to push my vision of the best solution for a problem, until someone corrects me, then I re-evaluate, and push forward again. Being passionate like this works better when in personal conversation because people can better judge my reactions and I can quickly correct myself, but on forums I tend to get a hard time. So _please_ take my comments with a grain of salt. I'm not really as arrogant as I seem to be. And I really admire the artists and volunteers that put their free time into this community. So keep up the awesome work.

Just so this doesn't turn into a total dogpile due to the initial tone of the complaint... To defend Yogarine's overall intent, I don't react to his suggestion as if it's an all or nothing scenario required; if there were some way that could work out to get some OC ReMixes on Spotify, that would be great, and we've thought about it. However, like DarkeSword said, it's still time and energy we collectively don't have. Also, I believe that many VGM arrangements available on music services are actually unlicensed and there just isn't enough oversight.

If you wanted to manually fix those loud peaks at 0:57 - 0:58, try looking at your kick and snare, and maybe the toms; I think it's their sum that's getting that loud. ----- Anyways, I agree that the instruments overall sound subdued. I'm not sure how that's happening, but you might want to check these things: Did you lower the Dry Mix on any digitally-applied reverb for any instrument? If so, try resetting the Dry Mix. For example, if it's at 0%, your instruments would sound distant, since only the results of the reverb can then be heard, but not what's going into it. Are you scooping the midrange (specifically, 500~2000 Hz, though the midrange extends higher than that) on the lead and rhythm guitar? It seems like that frequency content is particularly missing. It's what I would call "hollow". If so, try bringing those EQ bands up to 'neutral' and seeing if that makes your leads more upfront than they are now.

Gario, That is amazing work! This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to find on OCRemix. Audacity really did bring out the volume on my mix that I couldn't find on StudioOne. So with that, I attempted the same process on another piece with similar instruments and mixing. I don't want to get too off-topic or merge posts but I had some questions about what you did. So for one, if you see a large spike in audio only for a brief millisecond, is there an easier way of tracking the source down other than importing the mix with a suspect instrument muted to see if the spike is still there, and repeating this process until you find the culprit? Also, would it ever be beneficial to use both soft and hard limiting in between amplifications, or is it always cleaner to just choose one? I wasn't aware Audacity had these extra tools available, so this is a whole new world opened up for me. For that I'm deeply appreciative.

Mmm, the balancing of the leads does help quite a bit. Glad to see you makin' progress. Just for shits and giggles, I'mma going to punch this thing up, and I'm going to go through every step it takes to get there. It's pretty much 100% on a whim, so lucky you! Long ass post for a single production tip ('cause it has pictures), so GET READY TO RUMBLE!! Alright, so first off here's a picture of your current mix - the waveform in all of it's glory. It's pretty cool, since it doesn't have any clipping, nor does it seem to have any compression or limiting artifacts (more on that in a bit). Look at all of that sound space, just sitting there unused! When there's silence for a solid majority of the track, it often means you need to work on making the track louder. With a little amplification, we can get a little bit of sound out of it, but not too much. That's because there are a few tiny peaks that cause clipping if you raise the volume too high. Clipping is almost always a bad thing, so we do want to avoid that as much as we can, but there's still so much space that we want to fill... Upon closer inspection, one can see that this particular point just touches the top - any louder and it'll cause the clipping. We don't want that! So, what to do? Why not tell the track that there's a limit to how high the maximum volume is, and force the peaks to hit that ceiling? Yeah, hard limit that sucker, using whatever limiter you have! (Audacity comes with a basic limiter in it's "Effects" drop down - that's all I utilized in this picture) Sweet, no more peaks! We can now amplify this considerably more without actually causing clipping, thus gaining the space that we've wanted all along. How does this look up close? Well, it depends on how you decided to limit it. There are generally two ways to limit a track - one can either give it a "soft" ceiling, which means the program does what it can to retain the original shape (which simply "softens" the sound at certain points), or one can give it a "hard" ceiling, which doesn't shape the track at all, instead "slicing" the sound file once it hits the ceiling. Both have their advantages, and both have their particular ways of introducing artifacts when you rely on them too much, but with practice it becomes easier to hear what an acceptable level of limiting is. This is a nice example of soft limiting - it retains the shape, softens the sound at those points so nothing goes above the ceiling This is a solid example of hard limiting - the peaks become flat once they hit the ceiling. The music doesn't soften, but the artifacts sound like clipping if they become too prominent. Once the peaks are out of the way, amplifying the sound to its limits gives you a greater deal of sound, filling the spaces almost entirely. The moments that peaked once before now don't have nearly the difference between parts as it once did. While this can create a homogeneous sound which lacks some of the clarity of an untouched track, often those few peaks contribute little to the track, and instead make the rest of the track quiet, by comparison. In this case, one can easily hear how much can be gained by utilizing limiting and amplification. That being said, even with soft limiting it's easy to go too far with it, ruining a once solid track. Take a good, hard look at what happens when you have too much of a good thing. There are no peaks, and everything ends up sounding like a homogenized mess. While following one's ears is always best, there's a good rule of thumb to follow as far as figuring out when you've gone too far. "When your waveform looks like a sausage, it's cook'd". When you limit, don't start a sausage party. Limit responsibly, take a few peaks down a notch and magic can really happen. Hope this helps! (All pictures are from Audacity, printscreen'd and saved using Bitmap)

Okay, so I've pushed the leads up a bit further so they cut through the rhythm guitars, and made a few eq cuts all around like you said. I've also uploaded it as a WAV file in case anyone wanted to take a stab at raising the level. I downloaded Audacity to try it myself later, but I haven't used the program in ages so it won't be beneficial until I read up on it a bit. I'm going to be posting another project shortly that I reworked with these tips, but I think I'm on the right track now, so thank you!

Hey man! I think the arrangement is pretty solid, but as said before, i think this mix lacks a bit of presence. I've read a bit of the other comments in this thread, and i think your problem might have been while recording. If you don't have enough headroom to add gain without clipping, you need to look back at your recording levels - i try to aim for -12-15 dB recording levels on most DAWs, giving you plenty of room for gain staging, compression and EQ. If you feel your guitars are too sharp and might cut off your head, i'd normally make cuts around 4Khz and manage that box-like sound with cuts on 300 and 200 hz You could also benefit from focusing on mastering, too. Leave your master levels on your mix around -3 and -6 dB, and then export a WAV and compare it on a new project against mixes from the same genre you like. Then, you can adjust your general gain levels and EQ using these as direct reference! Keep up the good work. StudioOne is a solid tool, and you can only get better if you work hard :)!

Mmm, Megalovania metaaaaaal, and it's absolutely solid metal, to boot. I'm quite surprised it didn't get any love the first time around, as it's pretty damn good... Might be Undertale burnout, as that soundtrack gets a lot of attention on here, lately. There are a few things that catch my ear on this, most prominent is that the volume levels on this are quite low, especially in comparison to other metal tracks that are produced on here. I'd normally import this into the Audacity (or similar) program and check on how you can raise levels without causing other issues in the production, but the WMA format limits what I can do with it to nearly nothing. Thus, all I can say on that front is that the levels need to be higher on it, and that you should probably either use WAV or Mp3 with VBR or 192 encoding rates in order to allow others to have an easier time opening the file. Some of the instruments are mixed in such a way that they don't quite punch through as they should. 0:42 uses a lead that gets lost behind the rhythm guitars, for example. The leads at 0:59 are another great example of this - they sound like background elements, not something that's carrying the leads. Overall, I like how rich and heavy the rhythm is, but sometimes the leads need the spotlight at the front of the mix, too - it gives the listener something to grab hold to. Overall though, I don't have much else to say on it, as the performances are pretty tight. It's a really fun cover of the source. Do pay attention to the format of the file you offer to the internets, and pay attention to your mixing and your upcoming music should be pretty solid. Hope it helps, and sorry the track didn't get much attention the first go around with it.