Leaderboard

Hello ladies and gentle peoples! After months of work and lots of pestering, the latest An OverClocked Christmas is done and ready for downloading. Featuring a record-breaking 15 remixes of Christmas carols and VGM, it's got many different moods and genres covered. R&B, Jazzy, Orchestral, Metal... that and more are present. So with a big thanks to everyone who stepped up and submitted a remix, and to Dyne for continuing to host the files, feel free to go ahead and download the finished product that we all slaved over for you http://williammichael.info/aocc/aoccv11.htm Enjoy everyone. And of course, Merry Christmas! Edit: Looks like Dyne got the official website updated, so I've changed the link. Thanks Dyne

We're open to posting things like this, but it would take quite a long time to post. If the issues that I brought up in here were enough to sway votes to a NO, it would take some time for the panel to reach that decision (possibly even years), by which point the artist will likely have moved on, dejected. Even with an unanimous YES vote it would definitely sit on the panel for some time prior to posting (longer than the average track). This potential issue is what the submission standards is alluding to when they warn "Anything longer [than seven minutes] and evaluation may be delayed." It's not impossible to post, nor does OCR reject tracks based purely on length. However, very long, complex tracks take much longer to review and submit than many short songs of equivalent length - that's just how a human volunteer panel on things like this works. I've got to keep it real on this front, since it does no one any good to say such a long track won't hit some bumps in the road upon submission solely due to it's breadth. Hopefully, some of my advice averts these particular issues.

From the point of view of a patron of this site, I would personally say OCR should definitely be open to posting long-form pieces as long as they fit into submission guidelines. There's a strong recommendation of length between 2-7 minutes, but that's still just a recommendation! Longer stretches of music are more difficult to pull off, but there's a ton of value there if it succeeds.

EVAL ... ... holy shit, this is a 54 minute epic symphonic poem, isn't it? The largest track I've had to judge was a 20 minute Tomb Raider track (though that had more sources - something like 30 to sift through), so this is off the charts. Before I even begin, would there be any way to break this up into significant movements (much like most traditionally long music, from Requiems to Oratorios to Symphonies), then request they get released together as something like a single song album similar to other traditional music releases (like Haydn's "The Creation", Briton's "War Requiem" or any of Strauss' tone poems)? That would scare the judges FAR less than seeing a 54 minute single track pop up on their radar! It's not impossible to post in at least some form or another, but you'd likely be stuck in panel limbo for years with something like this as a single track rather than an album. Furthermore, you must post timestamps of where the source was used, as well. Fortunately, this is a widely known soundtrack so I can personally verify that the sources are well represented for much of this, but that's not a given among the rest of the staff. From a basic listen I can at least tell this is within our source usage bar, but we still need to know exactly what sources you used in this, what games they're from, where they were used in the arrangement, etc. *Ahem* On to the (actual) eval! First thing to note, this is a really, really good arrangement, with some solid orchestration, to boot. When I'm really familiar with the material it stands out just how the motifs are interweaved throughout, as well as how you transformed them to keep them fresh. Being that I've not played all the Zelda games I do feel like I'm missing out, though, and a lack of a detailed source reference in the post (what games, what sources, preferably where each is used in the arrangement) makes it impossible for me to double-check to see if it complies with OCR's requirements. It sounds great regardless, but you ARE responsible for posting what sources you're using specifically. Upon a rough, uneducated listen I think I can hear the source clearly in more than 50% of the track, but without those sources or timestamps it's nearly impossible to tell for certain. Is that some Holst "The Planets: War" inspiration at 43:46? I think it is, don't think I didn't catch that - that chord at 44:39 in particular is iconic. From what I can ascertain, the strings do sound a bit artificial, which keeping it real does impact the track. They're not the worst (they might even still be passable for most of the arrangement), but when they're the only thing playing (like at the beginning, for example) it's pretty noticeable. Obviously a live performance is pretty tough to get a hold of for something of this scope (it would be incredible if you could, obviously!), but overall if you ever plan on getting a hold of a better sample library that would do this arrangement wonders. I normally don't suggest purchasing better sample libraries as a fixall solution (not everyone has the dough to spend), but the amount of work it would take to hand-craft the human touches to something of this magnitude would be completely impractical, likely spanning years in personalized edits. Beside that, with your overall talent otherwise that would just be a wise investment; companies in need of composers would definitely take your music even more seriously with solid instrument packs behind it. I hear the articulations, and I hear the dynamics, so a more advanced sample library would likely give it that much more life and push this far over our bar for realism. On to the other instruments, the woodwinds sound alright, though the brass all sounds extra bright and tin-ny. A small amount of low-pass would help keep them in check. Not too much lowpass, but just enough to make them tolerable to sensitive listeners. Overall the instruments used in this sound pretty good otherwise. Aside from that, though, it's still quite good - even as is, it would have a good shot on the panel. The thing is, though, simply due to the breadth of the arrangement we'd likely need to release this as an album rather than an individual track. That's not at all a bad thing for you, per se - there's more advertisement space provided for something like that no OCR - but it WOULD mean breaking up the tracks into smaller parts (which affects the tone-poem element of the track). Upon a single listen of this I could parse a few places where segmentation would make sense (31:04 and 48:20, for example, have nice clean breaks one could take advantage of for this purpose - hell, 48:20 - 54:57 makes a great standalone arrangement, in itself!), so this isn't unthinkable, even if it cuts off some of the motivic callbacks sprinkled throughout the entire track. Rather than using the front page as a place to post the entire thing, using it to put up a few of the more enticing stand alone moments (like that ending) and telling the listeners in the commentary to listen to the whole unbroken album for the full experience could be a reasonable way to get something like this posted. This "album" method also will allow the less realistic moments that cause some issue in other sections of the piece to be covered as "album only" moments, with the juicier, fuller parts being posted onto the front page with virtually no hassle. There are a LOT of advantages to posting this as an album. If you want to go this route, get in touch with me; I'll see what I can do to help make it a reality. You're right, there's not enough music like this on OCR, so perhaps you can help fix this.

Compo: MnP (Meat 'n Potatoes) Midi: http://compo.thasauce.net/files/materials/MnP85_bk64_freezeezy_peak.mid Youtube: Deadline: Dec 28th @ 1PM Vote Ends: Dec 30th @ 11PM Submit your remix Here when completed. MnP ARCHIVE - made by Trism MISSION STATEMENT The goal of Compo:MnP is to promote that "meat and potatoes" conservative approach to remixing: this includes the mood and composition of source tunes. It is up to the remixer to create their own personalization, or to simply give it a sound upgrade. Moreover, the compo is a great opportunity to hone your remixing skills and give video game music the respect that is due. SOME reinterpretation is recommended, but not required. MnP Instructions/Guidelines Covers and Sound Upgrades are permitted. Most or all of the source notes must be present (but not necessarily in the exact same order), secondly the mood (energy, pacing, feelings being conveyed etc) should also be retained. For example, a source tune that is fast-paced and energetic that's remixed into a mellow/chill-out theme would be a hard sell. If you decide to do a genre swap (i.e. symphonic to techno), make sure that the conditions of #2 are met. Submissions must be at a maximum of 20mb (keeping in step with ThaSauce's file size max). Only 1 entry per participant. Previous winner cannot participate but can submit a BONUS entry. Please don't make any comments about people's entries - including your own - until the Voting process is concluded. BONUS entries are exempt of this rule. All competitors and voters must adhere to the rules stated within: Competition Code and Conduct MISC/TIPS - When picking a source tune, make sure it has a MIDI to make ppl's lives easier. - In-game sound FX are permitted, so long as they don't comprise the whole track (i.e. replacing entire MIDI tracks with just sfx)

punctuation quest?

Congrats FreakyT.

HAHAHA holy shit a 55-minute mix? Some time when I have more time, I'm definitely going to give this a listen. Got a long drive this weekend; that will be the perfect opportunity

Congrats FreakyT! It was really good!

Mwahahah, I picked the right time to take a vacation from evals. Man, I thought I made long tracks. That's probably why you haven't been getting much feedback. People are scared of it. I've yet to listen to it myself, I'm just dropping by to laugh at Gario. Looking forward to listening, though, when I think I have the time. Also, I suggest you sub the full-length thing to ocr. Maybe a regular remix release isn't the best way to release it, but I want to see what the judges have to say about it.

Aww, but we love more traditional arrangements when we can get them - having a formal education myself I appreciate the amount of work that goes into things like this. Our most posted ReMixer this year was Rebecca, after all, and she does nothing but luscious, full orchestral arrangements. This is certainly more subtle in some ways, emulating something stylistically akin to late Classical music (like Beethoven's 6th) or early Romantic (thinking like Edward Grieg's 'Morning Music'). It's really quite neat, even if some of the instruments are a bit mechanical (them violins toward the end, for example). OCR has a strange rep from ages past on being all about the untz, though I can't imagine why. Maybe it's because of the easier level of accessibility solely writing in a DAW has? Perhaps DjP's hillbilly Bubble Bobble is considered too low class to call classically arranged? Ah well, that's neither here nor there, since you're sending stuff my way in the inbox. Personally, I'm looking forward to more Schoenberg or Babbitt-styled 12-tone arrangements to come our way, but people tend to shy away from those styles when remixing (save for one notable WoW remix we received years back... eh, that's more Messiaen, according to the artist, anyway). I can't imagine why.

Sorry for not posting the results earlier, I completely forgot it the last days (for the first time in my PRC history, since PRC131 ). Results time. Flurry of Flames got 10 points and the last place wooden spoon. Dex gathered 14 points, enough to get second place. And the winner of PRC363 by unanimous decision is FreakyT with 16 points. FreakyT congratulations. It was a maximum win, everyone voted for you. As a reward, you may pick a source for PRC365. The winner of last round (PRC362) also picked a source for this round. Send the source to me (with a MID/MP3 file, otherwise send a second source with a MID file) by PM, other options are PM me @ ThaSauce or by e-mailing to bambombim@gmail.com (I prefer a PM @Ocremix). Send your source as fast as you can, but before this Monday (25 December 2017), 10:59 AM ThaSauce time (18:00 UTC, 19:00 GMT). You may select any source for any game, but not a source with an OverClocked remix or a source which has been used in PRC before. An overview of the past PRC's can be found in the following links: http://sites.google.com/site/bambombim/prc http://bambombim.googlepages.com/PRCRemixList.doc (also downloadable via the link above). Check the ThaSauce Page for the results and votes. Again apologies for the late reaction.

Let me start with the constructive feedback this time, as I got a few (but only very few) things to say in that regard: Sometimes the orchestra sounds a bit too artificial IMO. I do fully understand, that it would cost quite a lot to record such a piece with a full orchestra in a studio, so that's nothing I would have expected anyway. But being a conductor you certainly know many musicians. Maybe you can get some of them to record some parts and mix it with the samples you use. They did something like that for the music in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie and it worked like a charm. Like that you will have some real attacks and sustains with more life and variation and it will add a lot while the samples still give you the impression of a full orchestra. This time in opposite to your other Zelda song I reviewed here, it's a bit too film scorish for me, but as this may have been your intention and it's just a personal thing, you can of course fully ignore this. Some more mallets and percussion would be nice (especially mallets, the amount of drums is quite okay). I thought I heard a Star Trek TNG opining reference somewhere after 12 minutes. Is it on purpose or just my imagination? However I liked it because I'm a total fan of the Star Trek series. At 31 minutes it reminds me a bit of The March by Manowar (which is inspired by Richard Wagner who had probably also some influence on your piece). The whole piece is absolutely in harmony, in the sense that the transitions work very well and your own compositions merge flawlessly into the original Zelda compositions. Very impressive work!

First question, how come you got so few followers and likes even after posting it here (and probably elsewhere too)? You deserve so much more! I will also give you a review for your symphonic poem later but first I'll have to listen to the entire piece. What I especially like about it is that you don't try to let it sound like one of those typical Hollywood film scores. Because that's what most people do when they orchestrate game music. I can hear that you come from classical music and have a deep knowledge of composition and arrangement so you don't fall into using stereotypes only (no stereotypes at all wouldn't be good either except if you'd want to make some avant-garde stuff). I don't have anything constructive feedback to give, because I totally like it as it is. I absolutely prefer this over most electronic remixes, but I'm also new here so I'm probably not the typical OCRemix audience. LOL My game covers will be mostly Prog, or if electronic then Eurobeat or Synthwave (maybe I'll try some Hypertechno too). But I agree getting feedback from musicians of other genres is often very helpful, because they may have a completely different perspective and notice things you wouldn't have noticed on your own.

I got some other stuff going on so I'm not submitting this time but I will listen to everybody's submissions, vote, and give feedback. I'm ready to hear what everybody came up with.

All right! At this point, I feel like my bonus mix is conceptually complete (this source has been a blast!), and I feel like production's going a bit better this time around (hopefully!). There are a couple of parts with some kinks, but, hopefully I can fix those within the next couple of days!

Awesome job with this mix! Taking such a short track and extending it out to the 5 minute mark without the track becoming overly redundant is impressive. There isn't much I can give in the way of feedback except to say that the resonance of glass synth that drops in around the 5:05 feels rather high. Good luck with the judges panel. Look forward to seeing this on the homepage sometime in the near future.