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I didn't see anything from Esperado, so Chalis makes 16. Alright, fellas. I'll run the draft sometime this week and we'll get started with the first round this Sunday.

Blunt and sour, like the great lemon-flavored jaw-breaker it is, is often the only way the young and dreamy get the requisite wake-up call they need to truly advance in this line of art. Polite and gentle have their place in advice and criticism, but when they're doing very childish things in their paths to glory and trying to syphon money from people in the process, someone's got to grab them by the collar, shake and start screaming "Attention, New New York! Stop acting so stupid!" I remember when I was young and poor in both sense and quality music. I had a lot of help in my development from a variety of sources, but it was always the blunt, sour kicks to the proverbial balls (and occasionally the very non-proverbial) that always leveled me up the fastest. That and a potentially unhealthy sense of jealousy and competition, but I'm only officially advocating the former there.

Not really fair to compare a string library to a full ensemble sketching library Albion is a pretty amazing sample library; it stands by itself really well and can create an emotive full spread. It's not as agile with line-writing as a full string library, but again, not really a fair comparison. What you get with Albion is tone and ease of mixing. That being said, I think you're greatly overusing the word "need". You "want" gear and you "want" to get started on a music journey. You don't "need" to. "Need" is stuff like, your life circumstances will severely diminish if you don't get it. Unless you've somehow bet your life finances on a music career you haven't even started yet, this is probably not the case.

In if there's still a spot. 1: Fire Man 2: Flash Man 3: Metal Man

About Rise again, Robot Masters! The year is 2018, and the battle for musical supremacy returns! Bring your phattest beats, your wailingest guitars, and other superlatively described musical elements! Current News Round 7 is over. The matchups were as follows: Remixer and Source VS Remixer and Source Arceace - Air Man vs Garpocalypse - Tengu Man Voting is live and will last until November 14, 2018. Past Rounds Music downloads for past rounds are available in voting threads. A tournament archive will be provided at the conclusion of the competition. Round 1 - Mega Man Bracket Round 2 - Proto Man Bracket Round 3 - Mega Man Bracket Round 4 & 5 Round 6 - Proto Man Bracket Round 7 - Grand Final Eliminated Competitors Eliminated competitors are welcome to challenge other eliminated competitors to friendly matches during any mixing stage. I will encode, tag, and host any friendly matches and provide voting along with tournament entries. Remixer and Source AxLR - Metal Man Ronald Poe - Cut Man pixelchips - Tornado Man Supercoolmike - Shade Man Realme - Wind Man Gario - Cloud Man Trism - Top Man Starphoenix - Grenade Man SuperiorX - Ground Man Ridiculously Garret - Crash Man Chalis - Flash Man PlanarianHugger - Freeze Man Mak Eightman - Fire Man Jamphibious - Charge Man Submission Instructions Submission All entries must be sent to me (DarkeSword) via PM on the forums. Please include the round number in the subject line of your PM. I encode all MP3s myself, so please send me your submissions in 16bit, 44.1KHz WAV format. Don’t send MP3s. Please do not use MediaFire, RapidShare, or any other ad-ridden public sharing site as a host for your entry. There are many better options you can and should be using to host your music. I recommend Dropbox or SoundCloud. Make sure your files are downloadable. File Names Filenames must be in the following format: Your Artist Name - Your Remix Title (Your Robot Master vs. Opponent's Robot Master).wav For example: DarkeSword - Be Cool, Man (Ice Man vs. Blizzard Man).wav Notes Make sure you’re using proper capitalization for Robot Master names. Put spaces on both sides of the hyphen the Artist and the Title. If your remix’s title has special punctuation that you can’t include in the file name (e.g. \ / : \* ? " < > |), please let me know in your submission PM so I can include the correct title in the tags. Robot Master names have a space between the element and Man; e.g. it’s Ice Man, not Iceman. There should be a period (.) after vs. Please follow the file name format exactly; I use the file names to make sure that all the metadata is correct when I tag the MP3s. It’s a massive pain sitting there renaming, re-spacing, and reformatting so that everything works properly with mp3tag’s file-name-to-tag tools, and ultimately it means that when you all do it right, I can get the music up for voting way faster. Voting Rules and Guidelines Voting is conducted publicly in the Public Voting forum. Every week, a thread will be created for the most recently completed round of remixing. Things to keep in mind when voting: The most important thing to consider when voting is how well the remix incorporates and arranges both themes. Production and enjoyability should also be considered, but this is primarily an arrangement competition. Everyone is allowed (and encouraged) to vote, including competitors. Everyone must adhere to the Competitions Code of Conduct. How Does it Work? Theme Selection Choose three Robot Master themes from any of the following classic Mega Man games: Mega Man 1-6 (NES) Mega Man 7 (SNES) Mega Man 8 (PSX/Saturn) Mega Man 9-10 (PSN/XBL) Mega Man V (GB) (This game has Stardroids instead of Robot Masters, but that’s okay) Mega Man & Bass (SNES/GBA) Post your list of three in order of preference. A draft will be run to determine your Robot Master theme assignment. This is the theme you’ll be remixing as you progress through the tournament. The Tournament The GRMRB is a single-elimination style tournament, with scrambled match-ups every round. The tournament will have 3-4 rounds (depending on participation). Each round is divided into two stages: the Mixing Stage and the Voting Stage. At the start of the Mixing Stage, you’re matched with an opponent. You and your opponent have one week to write, produce, and submit your own respective remixes that arrange both of your Robot Master themes. Once the week is up, all remixes are submitted to the Competition Organizer (i.e. me). This is the end of the Mixing Stage. At the start of the Voting Stage, the remixes are uploaded and made available for voters to download. Voters will listen to the music, and decide which remix in each pair “wins the battle.” As the GRMRB is an arrangement competition, the primary criteria voters should look at is how well the remixes incorporate both themes. Production quality and enjoyability should also be considered. After a week of voting, votes are tabulated and the winners of each remix battle are declared. These winners are scrambled and new match-ups are posted for the next Mixing Stage. Defeated competitors are welcome to challenge other defeated competitors to “friendly” matches while the tournament progresses. These matches won’t affect the outcome of the tournament and won’t be tracked in any kind of bracket, but I will collect, upload, and provide voting polls for friendlies. The tournament will continue until one remixer remains. That remixer will be crowned the Grand Robot Master Remixer.

I find that thinking about my creative endeavours often fills me with anxiety, to the point where I'm compelled to avoid them at all costs. Things like knowing I have no ideas, or being afraid to return to a half finished piece of music because I don't know how to improve it further. I often read when looking for anxiety management tips that channeling your anxious thoughts into something creative can be a great outlet, but when it's your creative outlet that is causing the problem how do you learn to reprogram your mindset? Any help is much appreciated.

Well, this topic took a pretty major turn. I'll need to edit my post above so it actually makes some sense. Also, the $40 deal I posted above is no longer applicable. It was only good until July 31st. The full price isn't too bad either compared to the $750 you were projecting, but just an update on that.

Soooo.....I've been here since about 2016, but I'm really starting to be more active and serious about game audio and composition. I've been a fan of OCRemix since I found it in 2016 and have been a game audio fan for about all of my life. I have been making music since 2014. HUUUUGE fighting game fan so, #FGC representation right here. I hope to get to network and meet new people here as well as learn the best I can!

Beat Mania mode and got all the Emeralds with Ray. Working on Mighty right now. I think I prefer Ray's play style. The glide takes like maybe one Act to get used to, and then it's second nature. Really good. I got as far as Stardust Speedway in Encore Mode. Pretty tough. Can't seem to find character boxes. Wish there were more sitting around.

I agree you can get plenty far for much cheaper. Miroslav is a great starting point and SUPER affordable. If you're looking for something more high end but still affordable, Adagietto, while not "over-priced garbage", is from 8Dio and is on sale right now for $118. It's got everything you need to get you going as far as strings - all instruments, sections and ensemble patches, any articulation you'd need (including nice legato patches), mod support on sustains/legatos. I also (foolishly) bought Albion years ago, and Adagietto pretty much eclipses it in every regard except for the spiccato articulations. Unless you also need to buy the full version of Kontakt, $700 is way more than I think you need to get going (which is hopefully good news!). Watch for sales! I always keep my eye on: Native-Instruments - they've had sponsored bundle sales of third party instruments, which has landed me some incredible deals Embertone - great solo instruments and prices, once you get to a point where you have a need Soundiron - they've got sales pretty frequently Ilya-Efimov - excellent ethnic winds and oddball instruments Strezov Sampling - while I don't own any of their instruments yet, they've got some affordable brass libraries that sound really great As blunt as MX is and as sour as I find almost every post of his I've read, I have a hard time disagreeing with most of his sentiments. I started with a pretty bare setup. I used the Kontakt's free factory library with Kontakt Player (also free) for my first game soundtrack years ago, and it worked out fine because I put in the time to figure out HOW to make it work fine. I think good MIDI composition is much more about creative processing and knowing how to use what you have than it is about what you actually have. Hopefully that's more encouraging than not haha. Good luck!

Yeah, Meteo is right. Also, I'm not sure what string vst you're looking at that would cost 750, probably some over-priced garbage from 8Dio. You're in the USA and all prices are either Euro or USD. You can get CSS for like 399. I saved up over a year and bought nearly 2000 (that exchange rate to Canadian is brutal!) in all the things I wanted to the point I don't see myself upgrading any time soon, while suffering the same expenses normal people do. I just think you're very unlikely to find anyone sympathetic to your cause and you could also lower the amount required for a MIDI controller and string library easily

Edit: Now that the topic has taken a pretty major turn, the previous post here no longer applies, so I'm takin' it out.

Yup! https://rainwave.cc/ocremix/

I can relate so much to this, and I dealt with the same issue for years. After studying music in college, I felt burned out and thought I was done with music. Years later, what I've finally realized is that I was so worried about being successful that I didn't let myself make the kind of music that I love, and I stopped enjoying it. I realized that not only did I have unrealistically high expectations of myself, I projected those expectations onto everyone around me, especially my mentors. I spent so much time studying composition but so little time actually composing, and that was the most stressful part. I'd say the stress comes from thinking about it, and the only release is doing it. But the thing is, music isn't about being the best. It's about getting people to feel something. People aren't expecting masterworks from you (yet!), but you might feel like they are. Until you're through this anxiety, just enjoy making it. Know that until you choose to share your work, it can go through as many wild/shitty/insane/vulgar/dumb stages as you need it to. It's safe in your hands until you choose to show it to people. All the unfinished stuff, don't think of it as failure, because that's just a recipe for creative anxiety. There's always going to be a huge pile of discarded ideas relative to finished works. That's just part of the process. I think often about kids making sand castles at the beach. They get so fascinated by the process and the desire to see it finished that they don't even feel the time pass. They don't say, "I'm going to make the best sand castle in the world! People are going to line up and give me money to see this! I'll be known the world over!" They usually don't even start with a plan. They're just having fun doing it, really getting into all the little details for no other reason than their own satisfaction. That said, I also agree with Garpocalypse. Competitive drive is often a good motivator. I just released my first indie game online, and even though it's completely free, the first comments were all negative. After the initial sting, I found I wasn't angry. I was actually really motivated to get it right next time. I think that forcing yourself to release your best work and subjecting it to criticism can help you gain perspective. You feel so close to this thing you've made, but as soon as it's out in public, you can suddenly see it objectively, as if you were looking at someone else's creation. And you can learn so much from people's reactions about where to go next. It pushes you to reach new levels. It's easy to silo yourself off and then get into a really stressful negative feedback loop. I still haven't found my best work process, but I feel like I'm getting there. Right now, it's "Feel safe working on things in private, and then once in a while, release your top choices and see if they survive on their own out in the wild." I hope you find what works for you. It's a lifelong journey, and your creating music or any other art can only have a net positive effect. You've got this, dude.

Everyone has a different take; for me, I think you just HAVE to come to the creative process with a goal of making something that makes YOU happy. There can be flaws, there can be things you'd do differently next time, you can digest & consider constructive criticism, but if there's an idea SOMEWHERE in there that, regardless of anything else, you think deserves to exist in the world, which you're proud of, you can draw strength from that. Applied to something like poetry: If I write a poem, and there's a single line, or even a phrase within a line, that I love, that I am proud of, that I want to exist within a context that facilitates it... I'm good. With music, arrangement in particular, if there's a single melodic or harmonic idea that's not obvious, that works, that feels like something personal that only I might have done "that way"... I'm good. Obviously, it's better if there are multiple ideas, and it's better if the context in which they exist is polished, strong, etc. overall, but even if it's the most professional-sounding piece of music in the world, if there ISN'T an idea/moment like that in there, I won't love it. So, to paraphrase: "Draw creative strength from your moments of light, no matter how dark their surroundings may sometimes seem"? Something like that!

Just remember... if you like it, it is good. At it's core don't worry about pleasing others. Please yourself. If you like it then thats fantastic. If you don't, work on it until you do. Other people don't need to be involved, but if you're struggling, a second opinion might help you make sense of what you're making. The end result makes the self-doubt worth it. Fight through it.