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I don't write purely symphonic/orchestral music because my computer is so terrible that my program shuts down when I try (it's a very poor computer nowadays) and I don't play guitar well enough to make metal music. I'm not withholding these genres for other's sake - I made this choice because I recognize these current limits. Being unable to make certain music due to what you have access to is a part of life for us poor peoples.

Bustling with activity, on here. I'm not going to make as long a response, but I'll drop a few more thoughts in here on the more fresh items. - The judgment process won't go faster with more judges. It sounds counter-intuitive, but the items where it takes time (split yes/no votes) take much longer when there are more people. Nine judges could have a track max out at nine votes (4/5 split), while in a crazy case thirteen judges could require thirteen votes (a 6/7 split!). If anything, judge replacement would be the route to go, but that is not something I'll discuss on a public forum. - On artist intention, I'm going to be honest: I avoid reading them when possible. They're great to have, and wonderful for Dave's write-ups, but it's bad to have something other than the music itself influence a judge's evaluation. It's harsh, but if quality control was affected by what an artist said or the experience level of a submitter then it would bring down the quality of what was posted on OCR. - On the topic of "If we told you it was supposed to be like a PS1 style track and not realistic orchestra" in a write-up, it shouldn't be relevant in theory (if the judges are any good at their job :P). Here's why: if you're writing something in the style of PS1 soundtracks, you'd have to really dedicate the arrangement (or part of the arrangement) to sounding like it was on a tracker with decent quality samples. If you make alterations in order to make the samples sound more realistic you've failed in making it a PS1 style arrangement, but if it's not realistic enough you also fail at making it sound like an actual performance. If you go for one thing rarely can you pass it off as another - the uncanny valley of "almost good enough" sounds worse than going all out in one direction or another. If you're not yet able to sound realistic with your tools, it's far better to sound stylistically fake with what you've got. Jorito's motto of "If you don't have the tools then don't make that kind of music" is where I sit. Darkesword said we've posted tracks using free soundfont samples, and he's right - it's not impossible to get something posted with free samples. AngelCityOutlaw said the trailer style arrangement is impossible without major bucks invested in equipment, and he's absolutely right - if you try with free samples it will likely fall in that uncanny valley that'll make it just sound not right. No one is forcing anyone to make epic trailor music without the proper tools; it's why you see so much synth music from me personally and relatively little orchestral or metal music, even though I'm an orchestra lover and a bit of a metal head. - On putting in links on the judges decisions, it's a matter of privacy; it's better for the judges to remove information and let the artist decide for themselves if they want to make it public than it is to assume they want to have everyone hear their rejection and cause uproar when someone DIDN'T want that. There is a cool workaround, though, that I used for some time before getting posted (and will continue to do so in the future): if you specify that you want the link to remain upon rejection, OCR will let the link remain. For example: This old chestnut. I would in fact love to see more people do this, since it certainly would be helpful. Keepin' myself involved in this thread, go me.

That's a good writeup and I think it frames things nicely from a listener's perspective too. Nowadays, VGM remixes and covers are a more common thing than they used to be, and I am not sure how listeners do perceive a song from OCR versus a track from, say, Materia Collective. Do they mind, do they care, or do they just like to listen to a nice remix and are they not too bothered with the remixing criteria OCR upholds? Production quality is a bit different IMO, because there is like a common lowest threshold if I am to judge it by e.g. Materia Collective or random (popular) VGM artists on Youtube. Do I take OCR (too) seriously? Perhaps, but I also used it as a motivator to improve myself, and having this decent threshold helped stimulate me to do so. Maybe that's not for everybody because not everybody is as crazy as I am, but your point on listener perception is a valid one, because I also do this because there's other people besides myself who enjoy what I do. I am not sure what the common issues with the current bar are. Maybe it would be interesting to have a look at the more recent NO'ed tracks and see what the common patterns are. Makes it also less anecdotal and personal if you go beyond just fussing about your own NO'ed track.

Just wanted to point out that if you want to do a trailer-style track, that goes with certain expectations from both listeners (and hence staff). With regards to sounds used, structure, arrangement and whatnot. Since any trailer music you hear tries to be pretty realistic, your track would stand out like a sore thumb when you use soundfonts or sibelius and don't try to achieve a similar realistic sound. You probably _can_ do it with free samples and soundfonts, but it means you need to work a lot harder on it and more skill than the out-of-the-box experience you get with current sample libs. Again, the right tools for the right job. If you don't have the tools, ask yourself really hard if you can do a good job. Maybe you should pick another style/genre that works better with what you have. Yes, I am not a fan of people complaining they got rejected because they made a poor genre choice up front and couldn't get it to work and meet general expectations. Now, maybe I should go find my poorest PS1 level samples and try to make a PS1 style track and submit it to see if my assumption is actually valid

Perhaps then, the community needs to make more of a preemptive strike on submissions? I seem to recall Darkesword or maybe Dave saying a while back that despite decreased activity on OCR actual, there are still plenty of submissions. Now, somebody stop me if I'm wrong, but most new people submitting just learned of this through the YouTube or social media platforms? Someone may hear that mix from 2009 that Hoboka linked to, or the "meh" strings in "Attack of The Drones" and then when their mix gets rejected on the basis of sequencing/realism, they're going to be a bit puzzled and I doubt that most people read judges decisions unless it's for their own stuff. So, perhaps in workshop and in j00jment, if someone is going for an epic trailer tune with GPO and 90s Roland patches, instead of giving them feedback as to how to make that track sound like Thomas Bergersen (which they obviously won't be able to do) we should instead steer them in the direction of making a really killer 90s JRPG soundtrack? You know, like turning a bad tattoo into a good one instead of removal and a complete do-over.

Oh. That is perfectly reasonable. Shoulda framed it more-so that way. Guess so. EDIT) Still, methinks that OCR can lower the bar like 10%. Whoops, misunderstood the context there. Sorry. I do disagree with removing links though. Considering the other shit that went down back in the day, that stuff is childsplay. Most remixers, even me, have thick enough skin to allow the links to remain - an assumption I feel comfortable with making, at any rate And yeah. The bitterness is bleeding through a bit here, hence the crassness, but I AM TRYING MY BEST to be logical! EDIT) removed the double post. Sorry about that DS. Also, henceforth I'm fine with OCR providing links to my NO's. Didn't realize we had that option. Color me informed!

I wouldn't mind to keep my link included for rejected links. Not at all! It's just that I didn't know/forgot to add it explicitly to every submit I do. I would love to have a setting in my profile somewhere (a checkbox that says "YES, leave links to my tracks in my submits even if they get rejected" so I can set it once and it can be used from there on. I am totally cool with sharing these links, heck, for every track I do, I usually have like 10 different work-in-progress versions before declaring it done, and I share those in-between versions sometimes for feedback and if it's interesting I wouldn't even mind sharing those to a bigger group. On the sample quality thing: a few weeks back I did a pure chiptune track with samples from SAC PC (so lo-fi by design) and submitted that to the panel. Not sure how it will fare in the panel and it might be too far out for OCR, we'll see. But earlier this week I also stumbled upon a video on Youtube with pure Amiga MOD file music and thought it'd be interested to give that kind of lo-fi sound (just 4-8 sample channels, about 500kB of samples) a shot too. In both cases I'm pretty sure the intent will come across well without anyone having to read any added notes

Aye, I hear you. Hookers and blow takes a lot of time out of the day

Work and other hobbies.

Still doing school and work?

Updated?

FL Studio.

Okay, I'll endeavor to fix that. BTW Bundeslang, what's your DAW again? This is pretty fun to listen to

At the risk of pissing everybody off, the whole reason we're having this discussion is because people tend to take this place way too seriously. I think that some of the more dedicated users and staff subconsciously (or not) see OCR as this bastion of quality VGM remixes and to enter its halls, one must claw their way to the top through rejection and feedback from the community until at last, you're "worthy" of the OCR name and you get that mixpost on their front page of everything and the integrity of the community depends on upholding this standard of quality. It kinda does feel that way when you get there at first. In reality, most people just know this as that place with a bunch of cool VGM remixes on YouTube and torrents. You just managed to shape your project into something that more or less fits the philosophy of the site and the particular judges it went before liked it. If people like a track, that's great; if they don't, they'll just skip over it and check out the next one. Sure, there's got to be a limit on how lo-fi you can go, but all I'm saying is this site's site is still standing from approving "Koopa Dubstep" — it will still be standing if the track in the OP were Yes'd, too.

I am a noob with Symphonic Orchestra. I did a trailer style track a few years back (http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03226) and none of the judges nagged me about poor sample quality. Might be an incident, I don't know. I agree that it is incredibly hard to get good sound quality with free soundfonts (I know I can't, but I am also not stupid enough to try). My whole point is that, in stead of going "boohoo, they NO'ed me" and putting it all on the other party, also take a step back and try to look at yourself and your work objectively and see if the feedback has some merit in stead of feeling all agitated and offended about it. Anyway, let's just agree to disagree on this one. I assume that the "scrutinize YES votes more thoroughly" is about the incident with the Big Bad Koopa dubstep remix? I am not sure if it's something that has happened more often these past years to warrant such a step or if it was an incident that happened only once 6 (!) years ago. Other than that, it seems a good list to talk about. A summary of bullet 3 would help. I would like to add a 'Make judge queue progress panel more visible and transparent' to it as well, myself.

I can't agree fully in this situation because this conversation is happening on a site that primarily remixes old-soundchip tunes and regularly features plenty of tracks that are retro throwbacks and bank on "nostalgia" to make up it. Tracks that don't feature higher-end samples or expert sequencing on older libraries wind up sounding like this unintentionally and can get NO'd. Do you not see this as then rejecting a track because of stated intentions and not whether or the track is in line with what the audience will enjoy and otherwise meets expectations? but you can't. There is this long-standing myth in music communities that shortcomings of samples, be they sound or missing articulations, can be overcome with skill. They cannot. You can still compose an excellent trailer track with free soundfonts, but you'll never get the sound quality. EWQLSO can sound great with great sequencing to make up for its abysmal playability, but even then many aspects of it are (and always were) garbage compared to more recent offerings. So if some noob is using the strings from Symphonic Orchestra because that's what they can afford, they must be held to a higher standard of skill to pass the panel then a different noob with CSS? If they get refused because they attempt a track that's beyond the scope of their tools, then that's their fault for overstepping some boundary, but Darkesword says we don't tell people to go out there and spend more money? But your earlier posts insist this can all be avoided if the user with limited-capability samples just says something like "I was going for PS1 JRPG soundtracks" when the only real difference between that music and modern video game soundtracks is the increase in sound quality. If so, then whether that track will receive a favorable reaction from the judges comes down to what you say rather than what you've done. I see this as hypocritical at worst, again because of my first point.

In my submits, I usually have a nice writeup about my intentions and choices for the track as well as my inspiration. Not sure if they take it into account, I just do it because I like to add that bit of retrospect. I hardly ever mention the samples I use, and I wouldn't expect any leeway or extra credits based on that. Feel free to try it, but I seriously doubt your samples are going to get you a NO. IANAJ, but it's very likely more in how you used them as well as some other things combined that give you a NO or a NO (resubmit). Maybe focus on improving yourself with these other things in stead in stead of hoping for leniency because of sample choice? Anyway, we're sidestepping from the main discussion about judging, influx of new artists and whatnot. Maybe we should go back on said topic.

No worries. Like I said, my resting bitch face transposes to text and it causes people to go from zero to knifefight. I've learned to live with it.

How is this at all throwing you under any sort of bus? It doesn't affect me because I don't submit stuff to OCR anymore; I can't really be emotionally invested in the debate. This conversation is literally the most activity I've had on OCR in years. But, I can agree with the points that have been raised and think the community would benefit from such changes being implemented. EDIT: Perhaps you mean the last part of my bullet points? What I mean by that is that yeah...I've definitely seen valid points dismissed as the ravings of bitter rejects over the years.

• "Lo-fi" mixes are either acceptable or they aren't, regardless of intention; if people on YouTube hate "fake" stuff, the fact that it's intentionally fake isn't going to change their minds. • Make the panel faster / relay more up-to-date information • Scrutinize "YES" votes a bit more thoroughly. • There are indeed some valid criticisms toward OCR that don't necessarily stem from whiny-bitch, bitter rejects. I think that's it? Like I say, doesn't affect me if things change or not, but I can support change regardless.

I feel this is a relevant example. Not personally a fan of the arrangement myself; I like Alex's other remixes better, but every judge commented on or alluded to being impressed with Hollywood sound of it. Fair enough. Alex has a pretty good setup worth thousands. I know he has Metropolis Ark, Olmpyus (?) choir, cinematic strings, lots of percussion libraries, has received some of Keep Forest's stuff like Evolution Atlantica for free, etc. So, we know he has no shortage of great sounds to work with. I wonder if, in the last 3 - 5 years or so, there are any remixes in this trailer-music style that were made with something like cheap or free soundfonts and were approved? Perhaps it's not a totally fair challenge since I doubt they get a whole lot of trailer-music submissions, but the point stands. Still, I have my doubts the panel would have passed this track if it were arranged with soundfonts or sibelius.

Right, but no one said you didn't. The point Jorito raises is: In my experience, what he's saying here is true. A few years back, I had a remix rejected because the orchestral parts were made with admittedly crap samples (all I really had at the time). If I had said it was supposed to sound like a PS1 game, would the judges have been bothered by it? Perhaps not, and if not, then if a mix were to be rejected primarily on the basis of the sequencing sounding phony, then in many cases you're ostensibly telling the user that they need to invest in more capable sounds (realistic sequencing is pretty easy with most modern libraries) as attaining the necessary realism with what they currently have may not be possible. Meanwhile, in another mix stated to be in vain of old "orchestra" scores, noticeably fake sequencing would not be considered a problem because of the context. My point, is that if retro-style tracks with intentionally phony sounds are acceptable and mixes like this are popular, then unintentionally phony sounding ones should be acceptable too if the piece is still good — I just don't see the harm in it, personally.

We've posted so much music made with free and cheap samples. We don't ever really ask people to spend money to achieve a better sound.

The issue that you then face though is a matter of deciding context wherever it suits you. You can create an awesome composition with those PS1-era sounds, in an "epic orchestra" style, but obviously fail to achieve the actual sound of modern movies and games. If you say to the panel "well, it's supposed to sound like a PS1 game", that could be the difference between a YES and a NO, even if it you really did intend for it to sound like 2017 Harry Gregson-Williams and instead got 1994 Uematsu. Those old samples may not sound real, but still sound good. Here's an example of Sibelius' Note Performer add-on. I, for one, think that's great even if not ultra-real. Which is why I say that the context here doesn't really matter. If it sounds like a PS1 game like the above, but it's still a great piece, most people will listen to that remix (of VGM) and think that it sounds like a video-game soundtrack. Again, I doubt this will turn most listeners off. I just don't think that it ever makes sense to reject a piece for not sounding "realistic" in a community based on remixing music that didn't sound real at all. If the only advice that a track can really be given is "it needs better samples", you're really just saying "you need to spend more money" and I don't see why anyone would do that for the sake of a hobby and getting YES'd by a panel of judges so you can get posted on a website. Myself? It doesn't matter to me if OCR took a hardline "it must sound like the best" stance, but I also don't think there is any real harm accepting something on production so long as the samples aren't completely terrible and are in line with either modern video game soundtracks or retro throwbacks — not everyone can get the former, but the latter can be achieved by everyone.

Thanks! ...but almost everything in this track is live. The only software tracks are the sawtooth lead, choir pad and strings

Oh crap didn't see it was covered already, sorry about this Edit: I got something planned for this one at least even if it's just a bonus mix (will try to participate both MnP and PRC this week anyway since i've got time)

Thanks guys!

Very well done, I've never played overwatch but I really enjoyed this.

This source selection has me intrigued. I'll try to knock something out by the 15th.

Oh wow, nice source, that's a tune I haven't heard in a very long time

Oh man how shameful is this " After several attempts, Shid0 got his first win. He got it for free since no other participants appeared. " Made me chuckle tho.

This is pretty amazing both sonically and visually. I'll definitely be coming back to this for a few more listens. Great job!

You might be going insane here. #RealityCheck - FWIW, I'm not afraid to use orchestral instruments in my music. Just because I'm not totally confident in what I can do with them, and just because I don't usually write orchestral music, doesn't mean I should discourage myself from using those instruments. In fact, I use them anyway, for the sake of learning how to use them... - Furthermore, if you have "poor tools" as you say, you don't have to shoot for "stylistically fake". That's not the point; the point is to do the best you can with what you have, meaning you can make something stylistically realistic with so-called "poor tools". - Remixer's privacy is more important than you think... It's important to have the rejection up for people to see, so that the public can know that the Judges aren't just some black box group of people who put up mixposts and hide all the rejections. In fact, if they did that, aspiring composers won't have examples of possible critique to be on the lookout for in their own mixes. However, the Judges don't want to offend those who got NOed, so the least they can do is omit the link to the submission by default unless requested otherwise by the remixer him/herself. I DO think that's fair...

I've used versions 5, 9 and 11. I guess this song was done in 11 but I'm not sure. Since I don't have much time I don't do much with it, just using the standard tools. This year I only did one song. If time let's me I'll do more but that's often a problem.

Hopefully the song gets more love as in PRC, http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/PRC305

Ever considered _not_ making _realistic_ orchestral stuff if you don't have the equipment to handle it? In Dark Souls it gets you killed, in OCR land you get NO'ed Seriously, with the sample stuff you listed, you might get PS1 era level sounds, which can be good if you are doing this kind of retro vibe. And if you would do a track in that style, with those instruments, where clearly you choose it for stylistic purposes rather than try to be realistic, I don't think it would be a problem on the panel. But epic realistic orchestra? As you said, it's very hard with the stuff you listed, so why be a mad man about it and try anyway? Nobody is expecting you to buy expensive sample libs and software, just as much as nobody is telling you to make realistic orchestral music. Seems a bit like a self-inflicted pipe dream to me. I am also not gonna be like "all I have is a banana and a didgeridoo, but that will not stop me from making the most brütal metal known to man"...