Leaderboard

Audacity is only for audio editing and recording; it's not a DAW. If you want to get a feeling for a DAW, either try Reaper or free trial versions of the various big DAWs (iirc at least Cubase, Studio One and Bitwig have demo versions available, there might be more).

And here... we... GO! With Dyne having officially stepped down from this project, we're starting a new chapter in this long-running album series' life. No, it's not going all death polka or grunge barbershop quartet, it's simply been put under my watchful eye. And what that watchful eye saw was that we kept having one of two things happen. Either 1) it was started two months before the deadline and people had to cram work in for it, or 2) they had so much time that they kind of forgot about it. So, we're trying a middle ground this year. And what better middle ground than July, the month that retailers love to have a second Christmas in? Yes, while 2 months was awfully short notice and a full year made it slip peoples' minds, I figure a good five months might be about the right amount of time. Guess we'll see, huh? This project is open to any and all OCR members, regardless of whether you're a posted remixer or not. And now, a few details... When's The Project Deadline?- December 20th, 2017 at 11:59 P.M. EST. This is now a REALLY hard, non-negotiable deadline, since it's very close to Christmas. We've had lots of last-minute entries and updates over the years and, to be perfectly honest, it shouldn't be that way. With months of time, having to hold off as long as possible for people made things pretty hectic for myself and Dyne in the past, between updating the artwork and getting everything uploaded. Treating this project like a college paper that doesn't get worked on until the last minute got annoying rather quickly when it kept adding up to lots of hurrying year after year. As such, you have until one minute before midnight EST on December 20th to get me the final WAV or MP3 of your song. After that, you're shit outta luck until next year. I need time to do everything, including possibly make a little website to host this one if Dyne isn't online for one reason or another. So this deadline's set in stone... PERIOD. What Information Does The Coop Need?- When you send me your final versions, I'll need what name you want to use (real or remixer handle), the name of your remix and the name of the song you're remixing (in case someone asks what this or that remix is from). Plus, if you have a website you'd like to pimp, supply that as well and I can add it to the MP3 tags. What Can Be Remixed?- Any song, really. Traditional Christmas carols, video game music, published music by a signed artist, music from TV/cartoons/anime... whatever gets your heart racing and into that Christmas spirit. This isn't an official OCR album, so you can draw from more sources than just VGM. Plus, you can take a non-Christmas tune, like the Main Theme from Space Harrier, Stage 6 Mission 2 from Metal Head, or I Defend STM from Truxton II, and turn it into a Christmasy one. So know that it's not limited only to songs that are Christmas-like to begin with. All that said, do keep in mind that if you want to submit your song to OCR later, you'll need to keep this site's guidelines in the back of your mind. But for this album, you can take it in just about any direction you want and get as crazy as you'd like (but please, no "Silver Bells" done in farts or something). How Long Can My Song Be?- As long as you want it to be. There are no restrictions on this, so whether it's 1:30, or 9:51 with a five minute guitar solo ala Metallica, it's all good. But again, if you want to submit your song to OCR later, keep their guidelines in mind. What Genres Can I Remix In?- Again, the door's wide open here. Rap, Metal, Pop, Piano-solo, Orchestral, Jazz, 8/16-bit, Barber Shop Quartet, A capella... it's up to you where you want to take it. What Format Should I Submit My Song In?- WAV and/or an MP3 of at least 192KB/s quality. I'll be tagging the MP3s and making MP3s from any submitted wavs, so you don't have to worry about that. But, if you'd like your website to be in the MP3 comments section, be sure to give it to me when you submit your song. How About A Little Music To Get Us In The Mood?- To help everyone along, here's a YouTube list of Christmasy tunes made by Ocre a number of years ago... http://ocremix.org/f...72&postcount=19 But remember, not all famous Christmas tunes are upbeat and cheerful. There are some that are more somber or haunting in tone, so you have more moods to play with than happy happy joy joy. What's The Website's Address Again?- It's got a new home at... http://williammichael.info/aocc/ This album will still be download there as well, as Dyne will continue to host the albums on his site. How Do We Contact This The Coop Person?- If you've got questions, comments, concerns, or your track is done and ready to be sent to me, you can PM me here on OCR, or send me an E-mail at thecoopscorner@gmail.com. So yeah, there we go. You've got over five months to get something done for the lovely people of OverClocked Remix and the millions of listeners around the world who've become followers of our project. Good luck, have fun and make everyone some Nice Work™! Artists involved thus far... The Coop (director, cover artist and remixer) JohnStacy (remixer) wildfire (remixer) Ronald Poe (remixer) HoboKa (remixer) Ridiculously Garrett (remixer) Skull (remixer) PlanarianHugger (remixer) TheChargingRhino (remixer) Yannic Geerts (remixer) Earth Kid (remixer) CelestialSonata (remixer)

I'd say IGN, of all places, put it best in saying (paraphrase) "When a show's biggest problem is that it's too short, you know it's doing something right."

I switched mine on today and it's looking good. 11/10, would recommend. Time to start catching up on the PC gaming backlog...

Maybe it's getting as much praise as it is because of how incredibly difficult it is to translate video games to movies or TV series. It's not just "good for a video game adaptation." It's good on its own. You don't have to have knowledge of the source material to enjoy watching the series, although such knowledge certainly deepens one's appreciation of the series. This type of adaptation should be used as the model for any future video game adaptations. They integrated major (and minor) plot points of the game and the series' lore in general without making it appear shoehorned in. Sypha is freed from stone by the defeat of the cyclops that imprisoned her, just like in the game. Trevor fights with Alucard before the latter joins, just like in the game. They also made reference to Sypha's appearing to be male and confusion about her gender, echoing the confusion about her gender in the early years of the series. The series also managed to include elements such as salt and holy water as weapons (and included references to throwing knives and axes) without it feeling over-the-top, non sequitur fan service. And turning the church hierarchy into villains was an incredibly smart (and historically accurate, since the church was such a politically powerful, yet often corrupt organization throughout that period) move. Dracula is at his most compelling as a villain when he's a sympathetic character. Symphony of the Night had such a great story because of the family drama between Alucard and Dracula, and Dracula is a far more engaging villain when you understand his motivations for why he's doing what he's doing. Finally, the inclusion of advanced technology as a defining aspect of Dracula's Castle was a great move by the show's creators to explain the presence of such technology in the original game. Had they not addressed this early on, they would have been either forced to deal with it when the characters were actually progressing through the castle, at which point it would have been much harder to explain and would have seemed a lot more forced as an inclusion in the show or just exclude the element from the castle entirely, thereby making the visual elements of the series more disconnected from the game. At the same time, while Dracula clearly has this otherworldly technology (otherworldly to humans at the time, anyhow), he's also capable of magic (as if Sypha) and there are clearly references to his powers coming from "Hell," so the ties to the video game lore remain intact. In short, the fact that the entire series wasn't composed of non sequiturs is an amazing achievement, mostly because of how many elements of the original game and game series would appear as such if directly translated into a story-telling medium intended for mass consumption (for reference, see the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film). The creators of the show did a masterful job translating the series to TV, and I can't wait to see what else they come up with.

Both Cubase and Logic (and maybe some others) support sheet music and I believe can export as sheet music (you can also load MIDI into Finale and Sibelius). However, DAW capabilities with notation are not nearly as robust as dedicated software for notation like Finale and Sibelius. It is also input as MIDI data, but it will be ultra-rigid, inhuman sounding MIDI, so you'd be better off to do what most people do with DAWS: Play the parts in live with a MIDI-keyboard controller for the most realistic results and edit the MIDI data after if need be. You could still compose the tune in Finale first if you want, of course — but a truly synergistic system between the two doesn't really exist, sadly.

I agree with Larry that the vocal samples are way overused, I disagree on the "Float like a butterfly" usage sounding bad, the way it's sped up. Repetitive sample usage aside, I felt the mix itself felt pretty barebones and not full enough. Some of the instrumentation ends up sounding very simplistic and of not the greatest sample quality. I think this needs more developing, maybe using the samples in different ways and slicing those samples into new patterns throughout the track to keep them from getting too repetitive, and getting the instrumentation to sound more full and complete. NO

I'm on the fence here. I thought the track was pretty creative, especially considering how pretty much all of the vocal clips fit pretty well into the track. That being said, I do think they end up being overused here. Along with that, certain clips end up being a lot lower in volume compared to "I don't understand what's going on here" which was very prominent, to the point of being distracting. I think adjusting the volume on those clips might help bring a little more focus onto the music as well, while still being a focus. There's a lot of variation here, but I feel like there are a lot of elements here that add up to making the track sound pretty repetitive. I think the constant sound wall of words is the biggest factor, but a lot of the other elements are used gratuitously. I think it's pretty close here, but needs a few adjustments to bring down the repetitiveness a touch and to make the track a little more varied. Good luck on the rest of the vote! NO (resubmit)

I'm a bit more in favor of this than Larry was--there's a lot going on here that I think works really well, and I actually thought your use of the samples as instruments was pretty effective. However, it's also definitely true that the organ and the orchestra hits were really thin and not effective as lead instruments. The MIDI electric guitar wasn't much better. And the arrangement also does feel repetitive by the time you get to about the halfway mark, due to a general lack of variation in instrumentation, style, and melody. I definitely think this is worth pursuing, but for me, the leads need some attention and the arrangement modified to be more dynamic. NO (resubmit)

From a standards perspective, the voice clips are abundant, but the cutoff to me if whether or not the track leans on the voice clip usage as the connection to the source tunes. Here, that's not a problem because the entire instrumental was made by the submitting artist, and that arranged those 2 sources. So even if you eliminated the voice clips, you'd have a Jet Grind Radio arrangement here. So like I said, I don't have an inherent huge problem with this using the voice clips, though to me, it's a bit egregious/overdone in this track. And I say that knowing we have an OC ReMix that already used that approach with HappyBivouac's "Late Night Sneakin'" way back in 2004, just not as over the top. For example, with the sped up voice clip of "Float Like a Butterfly" first used at 1:15, it just sounds like it's sped up and crammed in just to fit the tempo, and that doesn't sound good, IMO. There's a click/pop around :44 that should be fixed. Focusing on just the instrumental, it's noticeably thin, particularly during the sections employing the orch stabs and organ. I like the all of the bassline, guitar noodling, and breakbeat sampling, but the orch stabs and organ sound really thin and low-quality, which left the track sounding sparse for too long. I mean, once you get to :50, the instrumental's texture was as full as the track ever got. And at 2:07, I felt like I was just hearing the same sections of the instrumental recycled from :50 for the rest of the piece, when the track is pretty short. For me, the instrumental's well in the right direction, but needs more fullness, particularly through improved sound quality/depth/realism from the organ and orchestral stabs. The execution of the "Float Like a Butterfly" should fit more comfortably here, whether that's by reducing the clip or using it in more creative ways, and the overall voice clip usage is too busy -- and again, I understand the style you're going for. You could tone some of that back. You should also include more variation/ideas with how you're arranging "Sneakman"; don't get so cut-and-paste happy with the music and see what other creativity can be done there for the final minute. Good start so far, Caleb. See if you can polish and refine this. NO (resubmit)

This is a bit of a strange case. I'm split on the samples on this one - the vocal samples are from the source track, re-sampled and rearranged above an arrangement that ISN'T sampled from the source (though still sounding sampled itself, stylistically). I'm not sure whether this counts as "Too much sampling from the original source" or not, since the sampling is basically from SFX that are in the music. We've taken tracks that sample a lot of game SFX before, and this is sort of half-way between that and sampling the music itself, so... Yeah. Not sure where we should take this one, myself, so I just said 'Fuck it' and paneled it. All that aside, as far as the track goes on its own it's a pretty cool arrangement. The samples are pretty percussive in their use, which helps fit them into the track, though I would say it's excessive at a few places - "I said it before" isn't percussive enough to repeat as much as it is in this track, in particular. Most of those samples make up a pretty cool series of patterns that is really catchy. The sampled orchestra hits are pretty weak in this - they don't have very much presence, in comparison to the other instruments, which just makes them feel weak. The production on this is pretty solid, though. The mixing could've brought the sampling vocals down a bit while bringing out the other instruments more, but it's not something that breaks the piece, either. Yeah, pending on others opinions on that sampling I could pass this, but that's honestly a make-or-break issue. Not sure how to rule on this one - other opinions on that point would be appreciated. EDIT (04/05): Larry's clarification made sense to me, so I'll go with that. I think there are elements that could be better, but I didn't think those broke the track, so I'll give it my thumbs up. If it gets sent back, though, pay attention to those thin samples that you use. YES