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Hey guys, I'm new here! Just submitted! Thanks for the extension, as I only found the competition yesterday! Good luck everyone :)

Vote Begins: August 10 ToiletDay @ 8PM 8 hours & 51 minutes left. So any one looking to submit can do so! (edit) There, I call that a good half-measure fix. Hope that's satisfactory.

Nice. But that renders my comment to Mr. L useless. Lmao. Now we have a voter bonus ^.^

Entry Submitted!

I work at a library and we have a weekly podcast called the All the Books Show. This week, we talked about music we listen to while we read and I did a few supplement episodes about Overclocked Remix. The first was an interview with Liontamer (Larry Oji) about the site, it's history and mission, ect. It was a lot of fun to do and I dug all the behind the scene stuff I wasn't aware of. Larry can just name remixers like a machine. The second was an Overclocked Remix playlist episode I put together with my co-host, Nic. That was a lot of fun to do.

Couldn't edit the Youtube link at ThaSauce, but I was able to fix the MID. Also changed here, thanks for pointing it out.

I had a fun thought a couple days ago, as I wondered what folks would think as far as using remixes from OCR, VGMix (rip), and the like as "mood music". I'm pretty sure there's enough variety at this point that we could have quite the diverse settings available. l For example, I recently perused the site for driving music, specifically looking for remixes of music from various driving/flight sim games. we also have some pretty chill tunes that would work for relaxation or dinner music. Thoughts?

Welcome aboard. Glad you were able to submit without a hitch. Lemme know if you have issues going forward. Thanks for participating

Neither is OCR of late. Or my browser...or maybe even my Office 365 doing funny stuff with the Windows 7's clipboard...overriding it or somethin'

Welcome on board! Hope you enjoy your stay.... lol We always like to see new visitors, Nice to see your interested, it’s a fun way to showcase appreciation for VGM. Good luck to you too

Sniped. Almost immediately. But the copy/paste format problem rubbed me raw again.

Vote Begins: August 10 Sat @ 8PM

Good eye there. I fudged that royally.

Wow, it felt like it went so fast lol. Expect a vote shortly...

Vote Ends: August 12 Mon @ 11PM

Welcome to the Voting Stage...in 8 hours & 51 minutes. So any one looking to submit can stiillllll do so de sei! There are 3 entries this round. Thus far. There is 1 Bonus entry this round There IS a voter bonus this round. TheVideoGamer has a 2x vote. Don't vote for Bonus entries please. Participants may not vote for themselves. Vote ends on PINGAS Egg-o-Matic Day. 11PM standard time. Comments ARG. I can't paste formatted text from 1 OCR thread to another!! That means no bullets points, no bold, no underlines, no colors etc etc. This is getting to be a real pain. Started about a month and a bit ago. I think I'm gonna bitch about this in the Feedback section. Oh and YAY for a 3 round entry. Don't feel you have to vote for me - I'm just participating so we can have that juicy voter BONUS. Yeah. Totally no conflict of interest. At. All. No sir!

Preface: I am a formally trained musician. Went through public school band from 6th grade through high school, got 3 undergrad degrees in music (education, horn performance, and classical composition), and am almost finished with a master's degree (classical and jazz composition). I finished my undergrad with 214 credit hours and am currently 23/31 hours through the master's degree. I am a professional performer (classical and jazz), and a high school band director, but have taught theory and private lessons and classes on guitar, bass and piano. I have performed in almost every genre that uses live performances, on many different instruments. I see many discussions about the importance of music theory, and honestly most of these discussions disappoint me, but not in the way you would think by the preface above. All musicians fall into one of two categories - Music theory is necessary, or Music Theory is unnecessary. There are no other categories, although there are subgroups. I'm going to start off by saying, that by far, modern music theory is one of the worst taught classes in the history of classes. I put it below most high school Spanish classes. If you compare the standard expected of music theory students to that of a standard biology or English class, it is almost laughably low. I don't know many classes where it is not only normal, but understood by the *teachers* of a class that half or more of your students are going to not learn the material. This is absolutely absurd. Further than this, I don't know of any creative art other than music where the system of organization used to understand it is emphasized so heavily as rules. Let's give an analogy to help this sink in. You're in an English class, studying Shakespeare. You're learning about the plays of Shakespeare, but it's communicated that the traits that were used in Shakespeare's style of writing are the rules that dictate how books are written, and if you don't follow them, you're wrong. Right off the bat, you should see some red flags with this. "But what about Earnest Hemingway? He breaks the rules here, does that mean he's not a real author?" "Yes. He broke the rules, so he doesn't write real books." This is about how music theory is approached by many teachers. If you see this, and understand that this is not what music theory is supposed to be, you'll see why almost all arguments against it fall apart really hard. So what is music theory? Music theory IS a form of analysis. It is a way to listen and analyze music and understand what's going on. It's a way to learn music, and a way to communicate music. Music theory IS NOT a bunch of "rules" that tell you how to write music. It IS NOT a way for classical musicians to point at things they don't like and say "this is worthless." If it is used that way, it's used very wrong. Music theory IS a way to compare styles of music to see what is similar and different, and be able to understand what makes an unfamiliar style of music relatable to styles you are familiar with. Music theory IS NOT tied to or directly related to sheet music. If you don't read sheet music, you are no less of a musician. Theory actually doesn't have much to do with notation on a fundamental level. You know how I mentioned I used to teach guitar classes to high school kids? When I taught guitar classes, I taught theory. But I didn't say "we're learning music theory today, here are the rules." It really was more like this: Let's listen to this Johnny Cash song. Let's learn it, do this now. Alright, how is it similar to <song we learned last week>? These chords here, are they the same as <other song>? Yes. This is called a 12-bar blues progression. Let's look at it. The class learned 25 songs in the next week. Because we had the framework of what a 12-bar blues progression was, and the theory behind it, we went from learning one song a week, chord by chord to 25. We learned 25 songs that used the 12-bar blues progression. This was music theory applied directly to understand music better. We then did a quick lesson on lyric form (the rhyme scheme and whatnot) of most 12-bar blue songs, and I had them write one. There was no lack of creativity here. They could write a song then teach it REALLY easily because everybody had the common language and framework. Further than this, in similar ways, my students could play in all 12 major AND minor keys. They could figure out how to finger chords they didn't know. For example, this chord is an Ab major 7th chord. How do you finger it without looking at a chord chart? They knew what notes were in that chord, and what do do with the strings to get that chord to happen, and then they remembered the fingering. This is what music theory is If you're looking at my description and saying "But you didn't teach music theory." You're wrong. I gave them the same written test that I gave the students I was just teaching theory to. They did just as fine as guitar students as the ones who were specifically theory students. Test scores showed very little deviation when compared. This is how music theory is supposed to be. Music theory is the inner workings of music, and why things sound the way they do. Music theory is the reason I can hear a song I've never heard before, and learn it in a short period of time. Any time you hear a song and go "That's the same chord progression as <different song>" you're using theory. If you write music AT ALL, you're using music theory. You may not think that's what you're doing, but that's what you're doing. If you know that *this chord* followed by *this chord* sounds good, but don't know what those chords are called, you're still using theory. If you know that writing a song using the form "Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus" makes your song make sense, you're using theory. All musicians who produce music are using theory whether they know it or not. The advantage of knowing theory is that you can talk about music in a consistent way and help others understand either the music you write, or the music you like. If you hear something I write, and really like it, I can tell you EXACTLY what I did to create that sound and where I got that chord progression/texture from, so you can learn more about it. You know how I mentioned that I have degrees in composition? I have a degree in composition, and am almost done with another one. I took 14 theory classes in my undergrad. The same 4 intro classes, and 10 specialized classes (such as jazz theory, 20th century analysis, 18th century counterpoint, and electronic music). In all of these classes, the professor (a composer) would ALWAYS have us listen to the piece before doing any theoretical analysis on it. It didn't matter if it were by Bach from 1730, or if it were by Charlie Parker in 1950. We listened to it and thought about how it was similar and different to what we knew. The analysis ALWAYS fit what the music was doing. If we were analyzing a Bach chorale, we looked at it using the style tendencies and traits that defined that style. If we were analyzing a Charlie Parker tune, we looked at it using the style tendencies and traits that defined that style. We didn't do this with one set of rules and traits for both styles, unless they were similar enough where we could do that and actually make sense of that. As a composition student in lessons, if I wrote a piece in the style of Glenn Miller and his big band, we would look through Glenn Miller sheet music and listen to the charts to find out "Why does it sound the way it does, and what can you do to get that kind of sound in your pieces?" If I wrote a piece in the style of modern, 20th century classical music, we would analyze pieces of classical music from the 20th century and find out why they worked. Then, when writing a piece, I could express myself in that style. The argument that music theory destroys your creativity is valid only if you're viewing music theory as a set of rules that you have to follow. If you view any creative adventure like that, your creativity will be stifled. However, if you view it as a series of tendencies and style traits that make music sound the way it does, it frees you to write in any style you want, authentically, and express yourself. As a composer, I write a lot of music that blends jazz, fusion, and classical. I write things I'm proud of and think are pretty creative. But they are that way because I know how to look at music I like and take things from it and use them to express myself. THIS IS THE WAY MUSIC THEORY SHOULD BE TAUGHT AND USED. THIS IS WHAT MUSIC THEORY IS AND WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE USED FOR. One little side note If you're using your knowledge of theory to say that somebody else is not a real musician, or they don't know what they're doing, or that music has rules, shame on you. You're giving formally trained musicians a bad name. Alternatively, if you are one of those people who brags about not knowing theory and tries to flex on the people who say you need to know theory, you're as big of an ass as they are. I hope that my little essay here has helped you understand a new perspective on music theory and why I feel the argument against it is not particularly valid in most cases.

The PINGAS has struck again, you scurvy Coconoids!!...soon as it finishes rendering. Totally NOT a troll track. No sir!

The negatives first. The opening synths felt pretty stiff. The bell riff from the source is actually kept with some quiet, tingly instrumentation in the background, which was a nice touch although the part got buried most of the time (you hear it more audibly from :42-:45, for example, when the drums dropped out). During the chorus (e.g. 1:02-1:27), the vocals were getting pushed behind the instrumental, so the mixing wasn't the best, but it gets by. Not feeling the effects on the vocals from 1:35-2:21; I hear how it's meant to thicken up the vocals, but it was a grating effect IMO, so it could have been shorter in duration. It felt like a really basic/default effect was just put onto the vocals without much work, but that's just my reaction from feeling it wasn't used well. Structurally it was pretty conservative, but that's Alex's pocket, and he does better when he works within that space. He did a good job giving the track a denser and more driving sound, and the vocals further fleshed things out. (I hope Dom and you worked things out; I've generally liked his POV on politics, so he's always cool in my book.) I'm with Gario that the piece isn't as polished and well-mixed as it could be, but it's still solid and the interpretation & beefed up sound were above the line. Keep working on your production, Alex, but the pieces are in place here. YES

Smooth as. Although we don't get much variation throughout the underlying groove, the lyrics are well constructed and keep the mix moving at a solid pace, making the mix feel like it crams a lot into the relatively short timeframe. Typical dropping in and removal of layers which feel right and we placed well. The bass only break at 1:28, while simple, was a good addition and was timed right. Vocals did seem a little soft in places and could've been more upfront, but I think the blend here works. YES

I think the arrangement is pretty cool, the singing is on point, and the production is pretty good. I hear the issue with the lower mids being cluttered, and I'll add that the mixing of the vocals get drown by the rest of the arrangement from time to time (such as the section starting at 0:24), but overall it's not anything that's breaking the track definitively. I do like how the track breaks things up a bit with the SFX on the vocals in the middle - it's a nice change of pace. It ain't perfect, but it's still pretty good. I'm all for it. YES

Man those lyrics are pure cheddar. I think the arrangement is groovy and the arrangements ideas keep the track fresh for the most part, the effects put on the vocals mid-way were pretty cool as well. The whole thing doesn't overstay its welcome either. Overall I think the lyrics could've been less simplistic, and the mix could've been a bit cleaner, as it does feel a bit muddy at some points, specially on the lows and mid-lows but overall I think this is just above the bar. YES

We don't have lyrics, and while a lot of it is straightforward there are a couple sections that I couldn't quite understand. The bass that comes in has a pretty fun sound and sets the track up nicely. Nice groove overall. The synth that comes in after that is a bit thin and shrill, but it doesn't take away from the track much. Smooth's performance is good, though I felt like a lot of the lyrics for the chorus are repetitive and some what uninspired. This becomes really noticeable when you have the chorus followed by the bridge Gillard by the chorus. It lasts from 0:45 to 1:27, nearly 45 seconds. It feels like a lot of chorus/vamping. After that is the party I can't really make out bit definitely feels more inspired, and another hero verse to the end. I'm a bit torn here because the middle repetitive section cuts a lot odd momentum from the track. I'm curious what others think but I do think in the end this has a lot of good aspects and a solid performance. Good luck on the rest of the vote. YES(borderline)

It should say Saturday. I was never good at copy and pasting lol

Dammit you beat me to it!