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Listening to the album now. Nice arrangements and playing in all the tracks, definitely a nice tribute! My favourites on first listen: - Time's Seal. Cool rendition of the original. - Dream of Green. Forest theme lends itself well to jazz with the cool chord progressions and ambient mood. I love the strong accentuated chords in the "chorus". My favourite of the album. Also really like the bass and synth lead. - Fight or Flight. Love the change at 1:10. Like that this one is more upbeat. And it has a drum solo! - Driftwood. Another source very suited for jazz! Really nice! All tracks were cool but the 4 above were my favourite.

Hey guys. It's been a long time! I haven't submitted new remixes here in what feels like ages, however I've still been working on things. One of which I'd like to announce here. I've been developing a retro arcade game called Hive Bomber. It's a one-man project so it involved a lot more than music writing from me. It will be my 2nd released game (whether it makes it through Steam Greenlight or not) and I'm hoping it will appeal to the people who fondly remember the early 80s arcade games as I do. A brief description: The gameplay is simple. You control the Hive Bomber and assault enemy bee hives. Each hive has 4 randomly placed honey "cores". If you get all four, the hive self destructs. However, even numbered hives contain a randomly hidden queen which must be destroyed as well. Queens possess an impervious energy shield which is powered by the honey cores, so optimal gameplay will involve getting the honey before releasing the queen. Other bees work together to defend the hive from it's attacker. Workers repair the damaged hex cells. Defenders protect the hive and allies with their rechargeable bubble shield. Others fend off the Hive Bomber utilizing various attack behaviors. The Hive Bomber has a rainbow of forms it can take, each one represented as a powerup. You can have up to 2 forms that you can switch from at any one time. Each one has it's own weapon attributes and unique special ability. All forms can teleport to the opposite side of the hive if they have at least 1 teleport energy unit. The Steam Greenlight link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=742007760 Checkout the trailer and screen shots, and if it looks like something you'd like to play, be sure to vote. The game's not 100% complete yet so any feedback/suggestions would be appreciated.

I got really excited about this album when I saw the trailer a week or so ago, it feels like a long time ago since I'd been that hyped up about an upcoming album, and it felt great! I haven't been checking out as much of the new content here on OCR as I would like in recent years (mostly just busier, sorrrrrry!), but I knew this album was going to be a must-get as soon as it was out for me, and I could not have been more right. To give some background, I never really considered myself much of a jazz fan until I discovered OCR many years ago, and just sort of absorbed a love of the genre of jazz through some kind of musical osmosis without even realizing it from the many excellent jazz remixes I've encountered here over the years. This eventually resulted in me becoming a fan of non-VGM related jazz music as well, and I have OCR to thank for that, which I could not be happier about! So with that out of the way, few things could be more of a perfect storm than a Chrono Trigger Jazz Album for me, and it's every bit as awesome as I could have hoped for. A couple listens through, I can safely say that I love the way every single track flows, that perfect combination of keeping the source tune alive while improvising just works so well here. While I almost don't want to single any one track out, I'd be lying if I didn't mention "Dream of Green" cause let's face it, there is simply no such thing as too many remixes of "Secret of the Forest" and this one is as good as any that came before it! Thanks for an awesome album, OC Jazz Collective!

Been a while but I've got 2 new versions. I need some feedback as to which is better: Feedback?

Cowboy Bebop Flashbacks anyone? lol. this is awesome!

OC ReMix presents Chronology: A Jazz Tribute to Chrono Trigger! August 22, 2016 Contact: press@ocremix.org FAIRFAX, VA... OverClocked ReMix today released its 60th arrangement album, Chronology: A Jazz Tribute to Chrono Trigger. Coinciding with today's 21st anniversary of Chrono Trigger in North America, the album pays tribute to Chrono Trigger, released by Square in 1995 for the SNES. Featuring eight vibrant arrangements from the OC Jazz Collective, Chronology is directed by OC ReMixer, multi-instrumentalist, and arranger Dylan "Wiesty" Wiest, and is available for free download at http://chronology.ocremix.org. Chronology includes a deep roster of jazz musicians honoring Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu's timeless soundtrack in the Chrono series by arranging several themes for improvisational jazz. Chronology was made by fans, for fans, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Square Enix; all original compositions are copyright their respective owners. "I was able to assemble my own 'dream team' of musicians and arrangers on OC ReMix who all shared a passion for jazz and video game music. I felt Chrono Trigger would be an ideal candidate for our first release given [...] the fact that Mitsuda's music lends itself so well to jazz and improvisation," recalled director Dylan Wiest. Speaking to the format and end result of the album, Wiest explained, "Jazz is a social music best captured in the moment... and while the production process of this album was anything but 'in the moment,' I think the album's sound and cohesiveness will speak for itself." The album's cover artwork was designed by Andrew "OA" Luers, who also created the visuals for OC ReMix's Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin album, which raised over $153,000 via Kickstarter in 2013. Supplementing Luers' cover artwork are nine visual art pieces from several artists depicting Chrono Trigger's various eras from Prehistory to the End of Time. "The musicians and artists on this album have put in countless hours of practice and recording to produce an album which I think sounds authentic and natural," observed Wiest, who steps forward with his first OC ReMix directorial effort by assembling and leading the OC Jazz Collective. Also featured alongside the OC Jazz Collective are the Triplepoint Trio of Doug Perry, Sam Suggs, and Jonny Allen, formed at the prestigious Yale School of Music. Weist added, "It has been an honour getting to know and work with these talented artists from different parts of the world. Each of them brings their own unique sound and nuances to the album and without each and every one of them this album would not have been possible. I hope that our devotion to detail will be apparent in the music and that you will enjoy Chronology: A Jazz Tribute to Chrono Trigger." Chronology marks OC ReMix's second Chrono Trigger album dedicated to a specific musical style, following 2006's Chrono Symphonic, which focused on symphonic and orchestral arrangements. The album is also OC ReMix's second dedicated to live instruments following Sebastian Freij's 2015 project, Seven Songs for Seventh Saga, featuring Freij arranging and performing music from Japanese RPG The 7th Saga for cello trio. About OverClocked ReMix Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is an organization dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form. Its primary focus is ocremix.org, a website featuring thousands of free fan arrangements, information on game music and composers, resources for aspiring artists, and a thriving community of video game music fans. ### Download Chronology: http://chronology.ocremix.org Torrent: http://bt.ocremix.org/torrents/Chronology_-_A_Jazz_Tribute_to_Chrono_Trigger.torrent Comments/Reviews: http://ocremix.org/community/topic/44200-/ Preview Chronology: http://youtu.be/3wiyaNlffwY

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.

Preview Chronology: http://youtu.be/3wiyaNlffwY Download Chronology: http://chronology.ocremix.org Torrent: http://bt.ocremix.org/torrents/Chronology_-_A_Jazz_Tribute_to_Chrono_Trigger.torrent I first played Chrono Trigger when I was seven years old. It was my introduction to JRPGs, anime, and most importantly, video game music. I can vividly remember watching my brother play this game... or was it a movie? It certainly wasn't Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong Country. It had complex writing and intricate characters put into a vast and colourful world accompanied by music you might expect to hear in a film. As I learned to play the game, it consumed me. I would rent the game every weekend for what seemed like years. It didn't matter how many times I had completed it because I could restart and it would seem like a new adventure every time. Needless to say, I have a bit of an addictive personality. Over the years, I would go on to obtain many new obsessions and interests that would come and go. Chrono Trigger, however, did not. I am 25 now and, after nearly two decades of playing the game, I can honestly say that it still remains an important part of my life and that every time I play it, I look at it with the same wide eyes and enthusiasm as when I was seven. I explored Chrono Trigger through all of its facets whether it was trying to copy Akira Toriyama's art (and learning that I'm not very good at drawing), discussing the more intricate plot features on the forums at Chrono Compendium, actively awaiting the English dub of Radical Dreamers so that I could further my knowledge in the Chronoverse, or attempting to learn Yasunori Mitusda's score on piano. I believe at one point I had just about the entire soundtrack learned and it was this that nudged me in the direction of the video game music community and, eventually, OverClocked ReMix. Fast-forward another half-decade and I decided to pitch the idea for a jazz-based Chrono Trigger album. It seemed like this was going to be an impossible task to accomplish given the genre restriction and general interest from other arrangers at the time so move ahead another couple years and the OC Jazz Collective was born. Through some fluke, I was able to assemble my own "dream team" of musicians and arrangers on OC ReMix who all shared a passion for jazz and video game music. I felt Chrono Trigger would be an ideal candidate for our first release given the game's quickly approaching 20th anniversary and the fact that Mitsuda's music lends itself so well to jazz and improvisation. The musicians and artists on this album have put in countless hours of practice and recording to produce an album which I think sounds authentic and natural. Jazz is a social music best captured in the moment... and while the production process of this album was anything but "in the moment," I think the album's sound and cohesiveness will speak for itself. It has been an honour getting to know and work with these talented artists from different parts of the world. Each of them brings their own unique sound and nuances to the album and without each and every one of them this album would not have been possible. I hope that our devotion to detail will be apparent in the music and that you will enjoy Chronology: A Jazz Tribute to Chrono Trigger. - Dylan Wiest (Wiesty)

Is Underworld still 'possibly' claimed? If not, I am interested in claiming it. If you need any samples of my work, here is my submission from the PRC round 329. http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/PRC329.

I got to hear this one a few months early, and I fell in love with it immediately. Such a good album!

Ah, that's much better. Yeah, the new version addresses the issues I had pretty solidly - it's a pass for me, now. YES

Let's hold up this vote until I ask Brett if he wants to revisit the mixing. This song MUST be posted! It's soooo good. But I agree about the mixing and the piercy moments.

I haven't listened to it yet but I love the idea of "Kingdom Trial" and "Lavos" in a Jazz style. It's a clever idea and probably sounds great. I'll give it a listen.

There are nine people on each team. Each team will be given about 11-12 sources they can choose from and assign to their nine members.

I won't be making any Mega Knight / Shovel Man tunes, but I'm really looking forward to hearing how this plays out! Choosing the Game Boy Mega Man soundtracks was real smart. Nobody's going to argue that the NES versions are anything but amazing, but they've been revisited... what, 200 times on OCR alone? Exploring new territory sounds fun. - Stephen

Whats up guys! So I did a vocal mix of “Shamar (Arid Sands)” from Sonic Unleashed! I call it “Catch Me If You Can.” Fast rapping style! Enjoy! I also done vocal remixes to the other Sonic Unleashed stages if you're interested

Such a great idea for an album. My daughter Aika's birthday is VERY close to Esther's. (Great name choice, by the way.) It was January 7th, 2014. I waited freaking forever for this album to come out. Now I can play it around Aika TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY! I'd like to point out that my remix has the greatest title in the history of everything. Your welcome, Esther. ^_~

If you know the principles behind how to make the lead, you should be able to make it. The main difference between synths is the approach to making certain sounds, except for sounds that are particularly complicated (such as some FM sounds, or metallic sounds). Try going for a detuned saw lead with multiple voices, and a slight envelope depth on a low-pass filter's cutoff frequency. Further tweaking would be needed to get it exactly, but that should get you most of the way there.

Yessir, that would be a particularly sharp/dirty sounding Saw Lead with some monophonic glide and vibrato modulation on it. A lot of major synth VSTs will have something like it - Synth 1, Zebra 2, Omnisphere, z3ta 2... Particularly, I think you'll want to get Zebra 2 for that because someone here made some Zebra 2 presets that were based on some of the later Mega Man games and one was a particularly dirty bendy Saw Lead that sounded pretty close to what you're looking for there. Not the pinpoint answer you deserve, but hopefully that will get you closer to what you seek.

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.

Some random Sonata Arctica tracks while I eagerly await October. Hyped for The Ninth Hour! I recently finished Ecliptica Revisited. It was pretty good as a re-release with some noticeable changes. It didn't deviate too much from the originals though - some songs were a step or two lower, or had slight tempo alterations. The mixing was kind of eh though.

The only thing embarrassing was how you handled yourself here. You have a historical pattern of this, and I am personally done with it.

I have to call this out. What total bullshit this statement is. You started this, which ultimately I think was a good thing because it got the ball rolling on some good things, but you set the angry and accusatory tone right from post #1 and maintained it for 14 pages of thread. We are all getting too old for this. Are you even serious? Dave began providing solid, undeniable answers right from the start. You continued screaming. They are pissed at you because you made incredibly insulting and darn-near libel-worthy accusations claiming you had actual evidence. You dragged OCR and Dave specifically through the mud, and not just here. Whatever. You need to clean up your act in a very big way. You had Dave on the border of insanity yesterday and I'm REALLY not ok with that. I'm sorry but this just needs to be said.