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I've mulled over this topic since it happened, and I just keep coming back to the same conclusion: forums are dead. Traditional forum software on the internet is few and far between now. Most communities have moved to "discussion"-style systems like Discourse (not to be confused with Discord) or Reddit. Not that every site should be reddit, but how ridiculous would reddit look if every person had an image signature? Or even a text one. Removing visual clutter makes it easier to quickly navigate the conversation. Images on the page, especially large ones, should be meaningful and representative. Watching 2-3 people discuss something in a conversation and seeing the same 3 images in different patterns is not particularly meaningful. It's excessive. I do agree it's nice for users have more customization/personality/whatever, but I don't think it would come from forums signatures. It would come from a organized and utilized user profile. Custom avatars are good. Banner images are better. Invision does a pretty good job of supporting both of those, but it's really base-level. Heavy text, low imagery. Very data, no flavor. Do I expect that to change any time soon? Ehh. Do I think reactivating image signatures is the right move? Almost definitely not.

There is a plan to bring back FBRC (and Doubles Dash) once we have a system that will facilitate it better. Honestly, I think from an administrative position we could really knock it out of the park this time around. That said: FBRC is typically held during the summer time to avoid holidays and obligations (that is, back when we were all young enough for that to matter). 2020 seems like a good year to bring it back, but I wouldn't do it until July/August.

They *are* velocity sensitive. They just do a poor job. I have to hit them harder than I’d like to trigger them at all, and if I hit them just a bit harder than that I’m maxing them out. Consistent hits seem to register anywhere in the 90-120 range with little rhyme or reason. Again, all of the akai finger pads I’ve tried are like this. I’ll tell you what has good pads, at least for my tapping style, and that’s the m-audio code keyboards. I don’t have one (and I’ve read a lot about build quality/longevity issues with them), but I got to demo one once for a couple of hours and it was heavenly.

Hey Souperion! I'm glad to here some your stuff! You comment to almost everyone on the board, and I wanted to return the favor So, the first thing that I heard is the low quality of the sounds you are using. It sounds like a glorified SNES track, which may be what you are aiming for, but I suspect will not be good enough to be publish (if that's what you're going for). Just for you, I watched a presentation of Minsitry of Rock 2 on YT, to try to understand if the lib is the problem, or if it's what you're doing with it. And I'd say it's a mix of both. Regarding the lib, it's main problem in my book is the fact that guitar have distortion pre-recorded. On a real guitar setup, the distortion will be applied on all the notes played. Given the intervals you have, it'll sound more or less noisy. It's why most of the time, when playing with heavy distortion, people limit themselves to single notes, octaves, or power chords, and don't play the full chords, as it may sound too rich and noisy (exceptions are plentiful obviously). On the other hand, if the distortion is applied on each note individually, when you play multiple notes together, you'll get the impression that each note is played by an individual guitar. Okay let's breakdown your track and see what you could improve! Spoiler alert, there is a lot to take in. The synths arpeggios are fine and the little sample at the beginning is cool. The rhythm guitar clearly needs some more articulation, as it sounds really robotic right now and makes weird gaps when it stop. Try adding more effects on it! A bit of compression, maybe some light reverb, to make it feel less midi like. If you have such a plugin, try some amp simulation (with little overdrive to not overdo it). You should also lengthen the notes and play with velocity. Some patches seems to have "chugs" when hitting low velocity notes, and it would feel more appropriate and realistic. It doesn't feel too mono, so maybe you already have it double tracked? I can't tell, but if it's not, you should definitely try it! You should find tutorial online to do that with Ministry of Rock. You could also add some variation, and play some legato single notes and not only power chords? Bass lack some oomph. I generally use amp simulations presets, but I guess you could obtain good results with a compressor, light distortion and EQ. Or try other patches, the demo I watched showed some cool sounds. Same for drums. Your lib seems to have individual mixer and effects chain for the most important groups of sounds (kick, snare, toms, overheads), so add stuff (mostly compression, again), or try other patches. The trumpet sounds really out of place. It has a lot more reverb than the rest but is in front in the mix, which sounds weird. Plus you play very short single notes, which don't sound very realistic, sadly. It also lack articulation (which is generally what makes this kind of realistic instrument sound bad). You seem to have wrote your trumpet lines as if it was a single instrument, but you have overlapping notes, which is physically impossible on such instrument. You could maybe re-write your brass parts as if it was an ensemble? Pick a few different brass/horn sounds, write pure solo line for each but build the harmony! Also, try to respect the range of each instrument (tuba shouldn't go as high as a trumpet, this kind of thing). And remember that horn players are supposed to breath sometimes ^^ You also have this single string note lurking on the background. It doesn't sound very nice as is, and I'd suggest either getting rid of it and build around the brass section, or expand it and play full chords. Be careful to not overlap too much sounds around the same pitches, as your track can quickly become very muddy (more so if you expand your brass section). Space your soundscape Your lead guitar has the same kind of problems your rhythm guitar has. It sounds fake and robotic. So same kind of advice, add some effects (distortion, eq, compressor, delay/reverb) to expand your sound, and articulate! Play with the velocity, add vibrato on long notes, do some bends! The problem right now is that it has always the same attack on each note. Explore your lib to see if you can make legato sounds. And don't play power chords when playing melodies. The piano section at 1:10 is weirdly written, with sudden burst of notes (and the section right before it has the same kind of weird sequencing). Try rewriting it maybe? Same for the last section. There is some section where I hear notes out of the harmony, mostly during the guitar solo from 1:38 to 2:30. The worst offender is this long A around 2:02, which should definitely be an Ab IMO. But you have some minor/major clashes during some of the shreddier parts, which can be palatable, but feel rather spicy right now regarding the overall writing. As far as I understand the harmony of the track, you go from F to G to Ab (all major). It's rather ambiguous, as the arpeggios stays on suspended seconds and never really plays the third as far as I can tell. But it sounds rather major to me, and you play sometimes in major scales, and sometimes in blues scales (which are minor). You could manage it with more articulations, like bends. I hope I have not crushed your spirit with this ridiculous amount of feedback (I know it happened to me when I posted my first tracks on OCR). You seemed willing to explore the possibility of Ministry of Rock 2, so I suggest you start by working on your guitar sounds and explore this plugin furthermore. To me, this is clearly the most important thing to do right now, as it's the most defining aspect of your soundscape. Try to not add effects right of the bat, but work on sequencing and articulating to make it sound more realistic, and see were it gets you. That, and bad notes. Hope to here back from you! Have a great day, and a happy new year!

So yours true just went through a breakup. Rough, right? Yes, but also: This is how I tend to process things like that (artistically). Honestly, I feel like this is the best thing I've done musically all year (and I do a lot of stuff, some of it of questionable quality). I'd love some ears on it and some feedback. Do be gentle-ish and please bear in mind that I do everything on my own (write, perform, record, mix, master), so yes, those are my vocals and I am in no way a professional singer or anything like that. I am, however, always interested in bettering myself so please, let me know what you think and thank you for listening if you do.

You're very welcome. Music is a powerful means of expression, and in a way, we make ourselves vulnerable in sharing it because it effectively displays a part of us and our experience. So thanks for sharing Destroyed By Polariods.

Absolutely blown away by this response. Thank you so much for this and your sensitivity to a stranger, friend. Have a really good New Years!

Impressive and evocative. Chilling at the whisper section (if there isn't a musical term for those, there should be.) You convey (well) a bitter intensity with an electric spark. I love the journey of this piece, it bears a painful semblance to a hard emotional progression. My condolences for that emotional baggage, wishing you the best on moving on from that. But it seems that sorrow can beget great art. Your piece imposes strong feeling on the listener, and I'd go so far to suggest a cathartic experience as well. Good work here.

Cool! Thanks for the update. Here's to hoping we see FBRC in Summer.

Been going through guidebook the past few days, I'll make sure to add this and check it out!

Fingers. I think sticks would destroy them pretty quickly, hah. I got mine used for something like $60-80 delivered. I can't remember exactly. I've also demoed new units and the pads built into akai keyboard controllers and they also have the same issues.

Since I will never be able to say it as well as Coop does, I agree with Coop I think the sigs add to the personality and feeling of the overall site. There are more than enough emotionless social media-outlets. I don't think OCR should try to follow that trend, I think it should differentiate itself; allowing the personality/art aspect of sigs as The Coop described very well is a part of that in my opinion. Adding to that, I think a big part of the appeal of ReMixes of videogames is the nostalgia; why remove that sense of nostalgia from the rest of the site?

15+ year lurker here. This comes across as unnecessarily overbroad, even destructive. If this change must absolutely happen, why not have sigs disabled by default, but still remain a customizable message board feature instead, and allow any user to re-enable it on their own end/device, if their priorities don't align with this "streamlined" notion of "modern forum experience"?

The Discord server was probably not the best place to ask this, since things move fast and get buried quickly, so apologies if you saw this question there and it’s redundant to you. Could there be an option for text-only, character-limited forum sigs instead? Considering the rationale given, it should reduce clutter while bypassing the whole issue of non-SSL (and other problematic) images. I ask because my sig contained an invitation to collaborate, which I’ve gotten a few replies to recently.

I've been around OCR since the logo was blue and I've got to be honest, I think you're being misled by the same UsErExPeRiEnCe clique that's behind most horrible UI decisions that actual users utterly despise. With social media and tech being the way it is today we're seeing more than ever an extreme gulf between what "experts" and self proclaimed thought leaders say customers and users want and the reality. You see this everywhere from phones to computers to pop culture, just compare the "critic" score to the user score on almost any major mainstream release on rotten tomatoes for the past decade.

Wow. It's certainly been a while since I was a sig maker... Anyway, what about two or three little buttons under our group and post count that can be linked to personal websites or social media profiles? Maybe with the ability to change the color/icon of each.