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Ok, but what's the bad news? Honestly, I was considering pulling my track from the project just because of how much of a jackass Strader was being (not that it was in any way out of character for him). Now I'll actually do my best to finish it.

i'm just here for the musik.

Well, yeah - before hyper-realistic samples were available(even to professional composers) a composer who wanted it to sound realistic would, if necessary, spend hours and hours doing what they could with the tools available. It was either that or hire actual musicians. As timaeus says, though, humanization is usually done as the song is written and as necessary rather than as an afterthought. I would venture to say that it's an integral part of the song writing process, whether you aim for realism or just what sounds good to you. It should never "hold up song writing" because it is a part of the writing process. Even working with realistic samples you'll still often have to put in hours of work to make them sound realistic. I'd hardly say 2 years of piano playing is necessary. Anyone with a little time can pick up a MIDI keyboard(even a cheap one) and with a little practice have enough of an understanding to translate basic ideas into actual sounds. There are portable MIDI keyboards for $30-$40(or cheaper even) that connect via USB and do the job just fine. It's not huge investment but as Neifion put it, it's an essential one.

Pretty much exactly what Timaeus said. Also, a keyboard is pretty much essential in this avenue. You don't need anything super fancy if cost is an issue. As for the "2 years of piano playing", most composers I know, professional and amateur, are mediocre at best, pretty crappy at worst. They're good enough to find chords, play basic melodies and arpeggios, but that's really all. If you just practice a little each day, you can get proficient enough to make your work quicker without having to edit too much or re-record. But look, this is an art. It takes dedication and, most of all, patience. If you don't have either, you're not going to get far. You want a pass because you're bad at playing an instrument, you don't have the equipment, or you're slow in the editing. You remark about "2 years" as if that's ridiculous. Well, everyone else spent those "two years" (and many more), so why do you think you shouldn't have to? Practice. Learn. Realize that it takes time to get better as a musician and don't expect to automatically get to where it has taken years for others to get. Make your music better rather than telling people to evaluate music differently.

i don't think any good composer wants something to sound completely mechanical (100% perfectly-quantized rhythm, zero variation in velocities), because it sounds stiff and lifeless. It's not an "obsession"; it's the product of a trained ear. Mechanical notes are the equivalent of a real person playing with zero emotion, and evidently, a person cannot have 100% perfectly-quantized rhythm, nor can they have perfectly even note intensities in real life - that would be extremely unusual. For pianists as an example, a real person does not plunk down notes at the exact robotic intensity or rhythm on every single note (unless they truly try to play badly by slamming a finger onto a piano for every single note, which is not how anyone is supposed to play piano, even beginners who don't have experience using all their fingers on a piano). When we on the forums ask for humanization for a track to be submitted to OCR, we usually aren't saying, "go make it so no one, not even the best digital music composer in the world, can tell it's a sample." We're often saying, "make it so it's not so stiff in rhythm and intensity, so that there are actual dynamics in the song." The point of humanization is to give a sensation of dynamics, and that doesn't always require realistic rhythms and intensities. As long as the rhythm is not 100% quantized, and as long as the note intensities are varied, that's a step towards humanization - at that point, you should ask yourself, "is this how a human being would play it [approximately]?", and adjust further until at the time, you think it sounds good. It doesn't have to be convincing to everyone, but the "general audience" shouldn't be able to tell that much. Sometimes the rhythm and intensity adjustments are subtle, or sometimes they're kind of obvious, depending on your experience in rhythm. For example: Mechanical rhythm + intensity Mechanical rhythm Mechanical intensity Fairly realistic You should also consider the context - is the instrument in question exposed, or mixed down pretty well that it becomes harder to hear the qualities that tell you it needs humanization? So, for a solo piano performance, humanization is absolutely crucial; for something that features a piano but not at the forefront, probably not as necessary to be uber-realistic... With certain OSTs, people don't necessarily shoot for "man, I can't tell if this is a real band or not." As long as it fits the mood, era, etc. for the game, and the composer and other participants are happy with it, I think it's fine. It's what they were going for, probably. But I would say those standards are associated with the fact that the relevant OSTs are probably pretty old, like 8-bit, 16-bit, stuff that's pre-2000s - early 2000s. Or, it's based on dated styles. I don't think anyone expects something crazy-realistic from, say, Pokemon Sapphire's OST, but it fits for a GBA game. If it "holds up song writing", then it just means you need more practice working faster. It honestly doesn't make me slower, because I'm used to it, and I adjust velocities and rhythm as I go, instead of putting it off until the end. That way it doesn't feel like a lot of work left to do later. You don't want to grade 48 lab reports the day before they're due; you want to grade a few every day until you have to turn them in later, so that it's not such a pain for you.

Ok. I'll do my best. Forgot to comment earlier, but it's a shame how things ended with Brandon. Oh well, as zyko said, I'm here for da muzak.

My thoughts resonate with Jays. I only known a bit of the situation from what I've read and it seems to bad that some sort of middle ground could not be reached. Brandon was a HUGE contributor to this website, and although sometimes controversial, he did bring a lot to this community. I've voted in the sub-forum.

Okay folks, we're one month away from the second check-in deadline, so here's the obligatory reminder. We've been making good progress with the album, but you know what would be awesome? A new update from @Jorito, @GaMeBoX, @evktalo, @zykO, @Audiocolor, @Chernabogue, @DusK, @Lucasonic, @Tuberz McGee, @~Faseeh~, @generaloffensive, @Bowlerhat and @Unknown Alias! You know what would even be more awesomer? A WIP from @KingTiger, @WillRock, @wildfire and @jnWake! Eager to see what they come up with, I bet it's gonna be fab Me and Black Doom are happy to give you feedback on your tracks and help you remove any roadblocks. Since this is the last check-in before the final deadline on October 30, this check-in would be a good opportunity for you to catch up with your friendly album directors and make the album the best it can be! Oh... and we may or may not have some other progress to share with you in the near future

Even if it's not technically a thing, that deadline should still hold. It'll probably be the thing to finally push me to get something going, at any rate, lol. But yeah, this really is a huge bummer, but at the same time it's not hard to argue that it's for the betterment of the site at this point, too. You can't let people do what he was doing without repercussion.

Have to include some new stuff from Brandon that continues to assume the worst about how OCR is run, including the belief that mixes from popular games were posted in order to maximize YouTube revenue (ignoring all the less popular games we posted mixes from). I want to be sure people can see these accusations. My responses below: Most of you probably don’t know that recently, OC ReMix attempted to monetize videos to get revenue on YouTube. They started doing this on June 14th, 2016 but recently were forced by public response to take it off until such a time that their ducks are in a row. The monetization had been active for 2 months without any of the artists being informed or asked permission, and none of the remixes were legally licensed so that revenue made would be shared with the publisher or rights holders of the music. There were a lot of issues with this taking place, but the most glaring issue is that they did this without asking or informing anyone. They did it in a really shady manner, and tried to justify having done it by saying “nobody noticed for 2 months”. When confronted with this betrayal and questions of legality and ethics, some staff shared their opinions, while others — such as site owner djpretzel — became very defensive, and ultimately brushed concerns aside. At the end of the short discussion, I was blamed for “misrepresenting” the situation, or making OCR “toxic” by airing my concerns, speculation, and grievances. My biggest problem from the start was that they had gone behind our backs — we, the artists, who essentially provide all of the content for OCR — and did this without asking and without permission. Then, when confronted about it, they justified generating revenue on this platform outside of OCR (YouTube) by saying it’s “the same as advertisements on the OCR website.” I personally don’t see it that way. YouTube is a free service, and “remixes” need to be legally licensed so that the rights holders get their fair share of the revenue. If the YouTube aspect had been in the agreement to begin with, or if we had simply been asked if it was alright, this probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Site owner djpretzel has stated that the Content Policy will rightfully be updated to reflect changing technologies, as the original policy had been written in 2007. The second thing that bothered me about the situation is that rather than apologize, and simply state that they’re going to try to work harder to appear ethical and work more diligently to adhere to legality as much as possible, I was demonized and scapegoated by site owner djpretzel. I was, more or less, accused of “poisoning the well” as he brushed aside the negative concerns surrounding the situation. I have often, for multiple years, been critical of OC ReMix’s lack of accountability and transparency. Going forward, I will probably also be critical of their lack of trust and good will. As someone who provides content for the website, and essentially a customer (if you would consider OCR to be acompany), I am in no position to be scapegoated any more than any other customer would be for asking questions. That’s unprofessional, and demonizing me over the situation is embarrassing and shows a lack of character, something that has been coming more to the forefront with how OCR conducts its business. As a result of this whole disrespectful display, and waste of mytime, I am ready to remove all of my personal content that I produced alone from OC ReMix. However, I decided to do what OCR was not capable of and leave this decision up to the fans. Only 8 people voted in the poll I pinned on Twitter, sadly, which is hardly a sample size worthy of note. But in an age where people don’t really care that much to begin with, this is probably the best I can do outside of running the poll for a month and publicizing the situation in other ways. So in brief: I’m not going to request my content removed from OC ReMix. However, as a result of this petty, inept nonsense, I am going to be seeking other avenues to release and promote my own content — legally, and in a manner that I can’t be exploited in some way. This may mean many less submissions to OCR, and more legally licensed, high quality projects released through Loudr, available on iTunes and Spotify, in addition to original music released through similar platforms. (ed: I forgot to mention YouTube. I will still put all my new mixes on YouTube unless they’re made for a project.) I have no intention to end any of my current projects. The only difference you might see is less fresh content going towards OC ReMix from me personally, yet the projects that are currently active (FF3, FF8, others) should ultimately not be affected. I can only hope that the revenue generated by upcoming projects allows the staff to look past their grudges, as the artists involved deserve to have their content heard if they agree to release their content through OC Remix. Thank you for reading, Brandon E. Strader Sagnewshreds, on 15 Aug 2016 - 01:46 AM, said: Need to be clear that Brandon wasn't blamed for "misrepresenting" the situation, as if it were just a difference of opinion. Despite pages of discussion and details, he's continued with over-the-top conspiracy theories, fake claims of evidence, and conclusions in bad faith that were literally libel. We believe the Content Policy gives OCR the permission to republish the mixes on other sites and present advertising in the context of the submitted materials, that fair use allows us to do this without licensing the music, with the revenue going to OC ReMix as an organization and that all revenue is disallowed from being used for profit. He doesn't agree with that point of view, and that should have been the focus of his issues. But negative concerns weren't brushed aside as he claims, and Brandon wasn't the only person who shared them. He also claims there were no apologies and that no commitment was made to transparency and legality. People can read through this thread and see all of the back-and-forth. Everything brought up was addressed. I will say that Brandon is very good at projection, since demonizing people, being disrespectful, and displaying a lack of trust & goodwill are things he was great at in this discussion. One thing not mentioned before is that enabling YouTube ads increases the search ranking of the content, the same way that enabling ratings does. Back when we started the YT channel, we actually disabled ratings for everything to match how we didn't do polling or ratings of the mixes. It turned out that disabling ratings made YouTube reduce the visibility of the videos. But enabling those things makes YouTube increase their visibility, so we're trying to get the mixes heard by more people. That may explain why the SM64 mix, which was the first one with monetization turned on, received greater views; YouTube actually gives more weight in discoverability to content that's monetized and allows ratings. That said, I'm the sole person that decides mixpost order these days (because I'm tagging them up and staging them), and claiming that we were just posting popular mixes to maximize YouTube revenue is silly and needlessly overthinking things. Sagnewshreds called your suspicions "tinfoilly," and he's right. For posting your Chrono Cross mix out of cycle, sometimes I do that. I just noticed you hadn't had a mix posted in about a month and didn't know you had anything else waiting besides some tracks on the FF9 project that were going to be posted on 9/9. We can't state enough how we're not actually motivated by money and don't profit, but in any case, in the 2 month period where ads were enabled on 43 out of 3,000+ videos, we also had mixes from Gradius Gaiden, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Yoshi Touch & Go, Skylanders, ilomilo, To the Moon (yours), Global Gladiators, Lufia II, Rollerball, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Tyrian, Vectorman, After Burner, and R-Type for the C64. Have to say this over and over again: we don't care what game something is from. At all. It doesn't change how we evaluate anything. If the submission is creative and interpretive enough with the arrangement, and produced well enough, we'll post it. We don't post stuff from certain games to boost ad revenue or social media metrics or whatever. Also, all ads were off since the 14th, including when that Chrono Trigger album trailer went up (plus we had already decided not to monetize trailers (which is why you yourself noticed the Esther's Dreams trailer wasn't monetized). Brandon's also saying that even BEFORE YouTube monetization, we were ALREADY strategically weighting mixposts to heavily popular games. This is despite publishing an album from him for the super-obscure game Teen Agent. As I've said many times, we don't pick what games are mixed, the ReMixers do. And it almost goes without saying that Chrono Trigger or Mega Man 2 or Final Fantasy VII is more of a nostalgia and popularity draw among the ReMixers themselves, which is why they arrange those games more than others. We don't control that or try to steer anything in that direction. If OCR could have 1,000+ more Tim Follin arrangements, that would be awesome. The last thing I'd say is that I don't know why Brandon put up a poll on keeping his mixes up on OCR. It's very obvious that he assumes the worst about the staff, thinks we're pocketing the ad revenue, maybe buying cars or comics or anything & everything non-OCR related with it, that it's some money-making cabal, that all the staff are complicit in said cabal, and that we'd love to illegally and unethically generate YouTube revenue in the shadows and willingly anger hordes of artists. Since he's convinced it's run like that and unethical like he claims, why would a poll convince him to keep his ReMixes up? Like I said before, no amount of transparency or actions can make Brandon believe that OCR is run honestly, ethically, above board, and without a profit motive. Weighing that, I can't imagine why or how he'd convince himself not to request removal of his mixes. Due to his overly suspicious, paranoid, and imaginative nature about all of this, I think that's inevitable.

He said it's always been infringement, not it's always been illegal. He said if website ads were ruled illegal, than so would YT ads. And he also said if website ads were ruled legal, than so would YT ads. Fair Use and copyright infringement are not mutually exclusive. Fair Use is a defense for a category of copyright infringement that has been cleared by a court of law; in other words, it's infringement, but the judge says it's okay if he thinks it's Fair Use. OCR has always operated in this manner. Your own arrangements operate in this manner whether or not you make a single cent on them for ANY reason. All of your video game arrangements are copyright infringement, and always have been, and will continue to be even if OCR shut down Patreon, turned off the donation service, and took down all ads everywhere. Nothing you say can get you out of it. It doesn't matter if you release the music for free and non-profit outside of OCR, it's still infringement. Even if it's Fair Use, it's still infringement. There is nothing inconsistent between what Larry and Zircon said.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

I'd like to defend Brandon Strader's claim, and this is the only reasonable defense:

I don't think you have. I don't think you've done your best to present "the facts as stated"... Here's why: "I think the major problem here is that the trust of the site is so far beyond gone that nobody has a legitimate reason to believe any staff or owner of OCR is not profiting from this." - this is not a fact, this is a thought that starts off personal, but then you assert that NOBODY has reason to believe anything we're saying w/ regard to profit... which is not only NOT a fact, but is in the proximity of libel... "Disregarding the unethical and potentially illegal aspect of them profiting off of the music itself" - right, as stated, we aren't profiting. The funds are earmarked solely for site purposes. Continuing to call this profit is synonymous with claiming that ANY money OCR *ever* takes in would be profit as well, in which case... no more OCR. So not a presentation of fact... "I'm going to assume from now on that each staff member is making a fair amount of income from the site." - this is you doing your best to present facts? "Your content policy doesn't stretch to youtube usage." - not a statement of fact; your opinion. Hinges on the word "context" which I happen to think most people would have a pretty good idea of... "Your own policy prohibits you from doing what you did" - not a statement of fact, ditto as above. "Were sales of Super Cart not too good? That's unfortunate." - not a statement of fact, just kinda douchey. It's sold pretty well, FYI... this is you doing your best to present facts? "We need an audit, we need someone to go over the financials, and the horrors within need to be disclosed." - which horrors? The ones you have absolutely no evidence of? So that's doing your best to present "facts"? "I have more reason to believe the site will be dead in a year because the financials weren't properly held and OCR falls into legal hell, than anything else. There's more evidence of that." - now you're talking about "evidence" that we'll fall into "legal hell" because financials weren't "properly held." This is actually libel, FYI. I have no intent to act on it, but I believe it would qualify. You're literally claiming that evidence exists of fiscal wrongdoing. This is not only not presenting "facts as stated", it's a statement for which you could be legally held accountable. "since it was hidden from us for 2 months, there is no way I will ever support this regardless of an audit." - this isn't a statement of fact, it's just you doing a full reversal of your above call for an audit. You literally said "we need an audit!" and then "I won't support this regardless of an audit!" - this isn't presentation of fact, it's schizophrenic. "And probably the reason I didn't find it sooner is because I was banned for over a month due to questioning OTHER shady stuff that occurred and staff behavior from the past." - this is misleading. You were informed why you were banned. If you want us making all of that public on this thread, we can. It wasn't related to "shady stuff"... "You say nobody but OCR should worry about legal issues, but the content policy clearly pushes liability onto the remixer." - this is not a statement of fact, and is again misleading. We CANNOT indemnify the submitting artist because our license is non-exclusive - they could post it elsewhere, they could sell it for $10,000, who knows. We can't indemnify that, and we're making that clear. "This really isn't about me in any way though" - sure... So... just to be clear... all of that was you... doing your best... to present the facts as stated? Anyone wanna defend that claim, or is it as egregiously false as it seems to me, based on the above?

In the interest of making the forums easier to sign up for and more accessible to everyone, we've made some changes to registration. In the past, we've had it so that new accounts had to be manually vetted and activated; this was to avoid spam accounts and the like. This worked, but a side-effect was that new members couldn't engage in the community immediately and would become discouraged from participating. To move forward, we've done the following things: Updated our manual registration form to use the latest reCAPTCHA. This is to help fight spam accounts. Removed administrator approval from the registration process. New members will be able to post immediately following email verification. Enabled new members to register using their social media accounts. New members can now use Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to register. If you're already registered for the forums, you can link your existing forum account to any/all of your social media accounts by going to your Account Settings and clicking the relevant links. Once you do so, you'll be able to use your social media account to sign-in, as opposed to a traditional username/password sign-in. If you have any friends who are interested in OC ReMix but haven't joined the forums, get 'em over here and get 'em involved! Between album projects, competitions, and gaming discussions, there's a lot to do here. If you run into any registration or account linking issues, please let us know right here in this thread. Thanks!