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Awesome! I'm going to overhaul my Boss B track a bit, so hopefully I can get to that in the near future. While not as major, I'm also going to change Macbeth around. Composition is still bugging me in places.

ANNOUNCEMENT Well, we're into it now ... I have now submitted the application for this project to become an official OCR release. Or, to become OCR-approved, as I like to say. It will likely take some time for processing and review, so don't expect changes tomorrow; however, I will let everyone know ASAP when I hear back from the Projects Team. Once again, great work everyone - we are (hopefully) one step closer to @Thomas Neil's vision. Let's continue making this an album to remember!

Welp, Fear of the Heavens was the one I had been eyeing up. Best of luck with it, Kylok! I guess I'll go ahead and call dibs on Spirit of the Night instead.

Dewey's and my collab bonus mix is up on YouTube and Soundcloud if you want to check it out!

Terra Tripmachine is my OCR introduction song. Heard it one day fro something (2003ish? So, maybe Newgrounds or something like that back then), looked it up, found OCR, hung out, conned a bunch of people into making a pokémon album for me, hung out more, make some friends and enemies (friendimies?), and so on. $300 Time Mage hat! Sidebar! UnMod's ultimate end! That smiley thing that we did for some reason! All those things, and many more! All that happened, and we were there for it. It was us, and ours, and no one else!

Hi guys, I'll start by saying that a recent remix made me cry. What? How? Let me tell you a short story. Fact: I have been a huge fan of this website and community since my first days on the internet. The first remix I downloaded was La Samba de Agua back in 2001, when I was around 10, and since then I have been following the website, the remixes and everything you guys do. For example, in 2012 I assisted the OCRemix panel at PAX East 2012, and it was great to see some of the people responsible of bringing you so much happiness and good music. These are some of the ugly pictures I took. So, a couple of days ago, after being absent from the website for like 2 months (busy life is not fun), I downloaded newly released remixes I haven't checked out yet. To my big surprise, one of them was from Pokemon (huge Pokemon fan here),- Gotta Catch a Wave and a Memory - so I went for it first. And guys, around the minute 3 I started to get all emotional. Some reason the song made me remember all those days of zero worries in your head, the days when you believed everything was perfect, the time when the hardest thing was a silly math exam, or trying to get a shiny Pokemon. Bottom line, I took a trip down memory lane and it was a mix of great and happy memories and some sadness at the same time. So, I cried. After the song end, I went to the song's page to see what the author wrote about it. This is an excerpt of what he wrote To that I have to say that I agree with you a 100% Von Nebo. These days and good, and fun, and full of adventures and challenges. However, nothing will beat those old days, those Pokemon Sapphire days. Thanks for the remix Von Nebo, and thanks to every single of you for keeping this community alive and full of great music. - a big fan.

Not sure if anyone else knows about this, but I figured I'd share. There is an online radio station themed after Jet Set Radio. Been listening to it for awhile now, and not only do they play songs from the two JSR games, but they play a lot of similar sounding music. They've since added various individual stations with tracks falling within that station's theme. Managed to discover some pretty cool tracks. Hopefully some of you can have fun with it: http://jetsetradio.live

Double-post time! It seems to be the right time to start getting this ball rolling hard, so here we go! @bLiNd @Moseph @XPRTNovice @Cyril the Wolf @PabloComa @zykO @Eitzpii @Jorito @Sbeast @DjjD @Amphibious @Alephmale @Quinn Fox Giving a heads up for people that want to claim tracks without submitting a WIP, this is the last week I'll be taking those claims. After this, there will be two things that will happen: 1. There will be a concurrent competition that I will be organizing that will be utilizing the sources that remain. If one of these compos are available, this will be the strongest opportunity to get a spot on the album as a newer or less recognized arranger moving forward. I will be taking three sources at a time, and aside from the first round (which will be a freestyle round) I will be adding genre conditions/preferences. One more detail is that you will have one month to complete a competition track; ample time to submit something of solid quality, but it's short enough to keep you on your toes and push you toward finishing. While the sources are being set aside for the competition, though, I will NOT be accepting WIP claims on the track, so if you wait to make a claim past this week I can't promise the track will be available solely to you (though you may put your track among others into the competition). There will be some advantages to working on your track in a competition format, though, so keep an ear out for it! 2. If the competition schedule doesn't claim your track, you still have the opportunity to claim it yourself, but I will ONLY accept claims with a functional WIP attached to it from this point on - there will be no more red claims on the board from this point forward. If you still want a chance to nail your claim, now's the time. Of course, if you've made the claim, awesome! I will be keeping an active, watchful eye on your progress moving forward, so be ready to be bugged by me soon. If you're one of the venerable members that have a near finished track from ages ago, I will be spending the next week getting in touch with you one-by-one, seeing if there's anything I can do to help get you guys the supplies to finish your track (getting in touch with musicians to help, offering feedback if needed, etc.). I've made a cursory attempt to get in touch, but I will soon be actively pursuing your finished WAV. I am hoping to have these particular finished WAVs long before the final deadline, though, so expect me to be giving you guys some annoying nudges from time to time. Alright, here's hoping I start seeing people pushing forward with their music soon!

Well, I could have said your woolly Wookies or masterful Minions...

Whoever = me. I still need to build the second WIP with all the additions we made in, uh, early December. I've been maybe a little slow about this... but I will have something together soon. Hopefully this weekend. Once the second WIP is built, I'll PM everyone on the collaboration and we'll make a decision on the next course of action. Well, I sent you and your merry men a formal review for the current WIP on December 29th. Some changes had been proposed, but I've heard nothing since. I suggest you check with @classic_gamer_76 and @Pichu's Dad to see where things are at with this.

I'm working on something

99%+ certain that it cannot be used as a VST. It is a standalone DAW. It isn't free. There is a 60 day trial period that you can evaluate it for, after which you would have to purchase it. However I have heard that the trial period doesn't actually run out as far as the program is concerned. You can save stuff and come back to it later. Basically, if you could use it as a VST, I don't know why you would want to, since you would have to spend a bit of time learning how to use it, and then you would have a lot of redundant functionality. Switching to Reaper from Logic, currently.

Excellent choice, it's a lovely tune. Dibs hereby granted, looking forward to your first WIP!

True, I edited the link. 9 hours left, hopefully the bonus mix is not the only song.

Hey, @Bundeslang, clicking the submission link brings up a blank, white page. I notice that the URL has the word admin in it, so I'm wondering if you maybe you accidentally copied the wrong URL? The ThaSauce link underneath leads to the contest page.

I will close this off agreeing with most of what MW and Liontamer brought up above. I will point out that the Harpsichord popping out at 0:11 makes sense in the context of when all the music is playing together, but it really doesn't make sense to pop through that much at 0:11. Context is important - if something really soars above the other instruments like that, tone the levels down a bit until it makes sense to bring them up again. There are also considerable limiting issues with the production present throughout, but due to the dirty sound you have altogether that doesn't quite bother me as much as Liontamer. It's something to be aware of, though, and you'd be better off if you fixed your levels so you didn't have those limiting errors in your track. The biggest thing that brings this down for me is the issue MindWanderer brings up, though - the repetitive and static nature of the arrangement. Instruments are generally used in the same manner throughout the entire track - lead doesn't change, the growls are used in a similar manner throughout the track (save for at 1:17 - nice incorporation of it through that part), the drums vary little throughout, etc. Along with the almost straight repetitions that are present in the track, this leads to an arrangement that doesn't have much new to offer the listener after a minute and a half, which is a shame. The ending doesn't feel like it's finished, which almost makes this sound like a solid (if incomplete) work in progress. It's a great start, but I think there's some further development required before we can give it our stamp of approval. NO

Well, bonus tracks are accepted at the discretion of the director(s) of an album, and even then, only approved for an OCR album by OCR staff. I can't speak to the DKC3 album or the decision made to accept these bonus tracks; only that they must have been approved by the director(s) and OCR to have been featured on the album..

Hey there, welcome to OCR! I'll say this first and foremost: the best thing you can do in order to get into making music is to... well, make music! Every DAW has it's perks, and people have made great music using nearly anything (FL, Reason, Famitracker, Milkytracker, Audacity, etc.). Fruityloops is apparently a good starting place, Reaper being a great free option, too. As a guy who studied music theory thoroughly, I'll let you know the ups and downs of music theory. The biggest benefit of basic music theory is that it teaches you a language for communicating musical ideas. It can be tough for others to convey what notes to fix when one doesn't know what the names of the notes are, for example (I should use C instead of C#? What is this magic?!). The more music theory you know and understand, the more concise you can convey and receive advice, which can speed up your learning process. Basically, if you know what notes and chords are, you'll know what others are saying when they claim notes X, Y and Z are sounding off, or when some chords are not meshing well. To be honest, there isn't really a downside to learning theory, but sometimes people can mix up music analysis with composition. Often, people learn theory in the context of older classical music, and how THEY used chords. Strictly speaking, back then there was a "right" and "wrong" way to utilize chords, so sometimes overextending older analyses with your own (or other people's) compositions, you can needlessly be thinking there's a wrong way to write music, when in reality it more comes down to making things that you enjoy. Keep that in mind and you'll only benefit from music theory. Learning an instrument is very useful for being able to... well, hear what you're writing or composing. I highly recommend at the very least learning to sing what you write, as that saves a WHOLE LOT of time when you make music. This might be a more general recommendation, but being able to hum your themes and melodies as you write saves you the time and effort in playing the music back to know how it sounds. There are other more obvious benefits to knowing how to play an instrument (Hey, I can include guitar in all of my music because I ROCK!), but that's one relatively hidden benefit to being able to play your own music back. Otherwise, hang out here, show others your work and be receptive to advice that others may be able to provide. I personally like learning how to use a DAW by doing covers and arrangements of VG music, so feel free to listen to music and see if you can imitate. People on here will likely be able to give you the advice you need in order to move forward on your music (especially if you post your music in the workshop forum), so do take advantage of that. Good luck, and I hope you get the help you need, on here or elsewhere!

Basic music theory isn't the same thing as formal music theory. You can learn this stuff by messing around with the program, trying to recreate the music you like to listen to, following guides and tutorials, and through getting feedback on the music you make. "Music theory" sounds daunting and complicated to a lot of people. It's really just a system of explaining why some things sound good. If you can make something sound good, you know music theory. At least some of it. Knowing how to play an instrument is 0% necessary. But it helps. It makes learning faster, it's useful for working out melodies and developing ideas, and it teaches you the capabilities and limitations of the instrument. Get FL, or REAPER, or some other music software, and start messing around with it. Make notes, make sound, and see where that'll take you. We have some guides and other threads that can point you in the right direction when it comes to this stuff, too. Welcome to ocr.

I like the concept of this album and am willing to contribute a track. However, my roots being in the MSX scene and not so much in the NES scene I'm not sure which game to pick. There's quite a few games that were released on both systems (like Contra ), so those are the most interesting to me. From this list I'd pick either a song from Metal Gear, Bubble Bobble or Final Fantasy but not sure which one and which track. Unfortunately the OST from Metal Gear on the NES is so different that something like 'Theme of Tara' is no option.