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The Judges Panel has been talking about ways to work through the queue of submitted remixes at a faster pace, and after a lot of discussion and weighing the pros and cons, we've come to a decision that's probably one of the biggest adjustments to our process in a long time: Submissions no longer require four (4) YES votes to pass. A decision is reached as soon as the difference in votes is three (3). To clarify the key change here: when a submission receives three (3) YES votes and there are zero (0) NO votes, the submission is accepted, because the difference in votes is three (3). If a submission continues to go back and forth without reaching +3 in either direction, the panel will continue to vote until all active judges have voted and the majority will determine the decision. This update to our decision making process will immediately apply to any submissions on the panel at the time of this announcement going live, and for all decisions moving forward. We won't be going back to previous rejections to find decisions that started with three (3) uncontested YES votes but eventually got rejected; in those cases, what's done is done. We hope that artists will find this new criteria a little bit easier to understand. Overall, we've been impressed with the quality of work being sent in these past months, and this should make it easier for us to get the slam dunk tracks through the process faster. Thanks to all the artists who continue to participate in our curation process. Hope to hear your work soon. - DarkeSword

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US! OC ReMix = 25 YEARS OLD! 4,500 ReMixes later, video game music is STILL an art form! We've got a celebratory Zeal mix by JSABlixer from the upcoming anniversary album TimeShift, and we'll be doing lots more over the course of the next year to celebrate the creativity and impact of this powerful community! Thank you to everyone -- past, present, and future -- who have made OverClocked ReMix what it is. Please share some positive memories on how you discovered OCR, artists and tracks you love (original VGM OR ReMixes), let's go! :-D

In the shadows, we stay busy. ;-) Joining us as a Sage, we now have @Treyt, who's shown off a lot of skills, enthusiasm, and potential since his fateful forum post nearly three years ago! We're proud to announce some staff promotions with the twin magic of Sages @pixelseph & @paradiddlesjosh stepping up to become two of our newest judges! We had some fun internally joking that they were a package deal, yet I'm happy to say they both independantly have done well and proven themselves capable to help us out in this new capacity on the panel! We've also honored to have another judges panel addition in @jnWake, who cut his teeth in OCR way back and has massively grown since becoming a Dwelling of Duels regular! All three of the new judges should help us NO every VGM arrangement submitted to us with more speed, politeness, and class. ;-D Be sure to use our resources in the Workshop forums and our #workshop Discord channel and you may just get some feedback from our new staffers!

good job everyone

Eighteen of these. Eighteen years. Holy shitballs, Batman! Another album is in the books. This year we have seven songs of various moods, genres and tempos, all set for everyone to listen to and as you get deep into the holiday spirit. While we wait for Dyne to update the site, I'll be hosting the zip file. Once he's done, I'll change the link here to go there. Make sense? Good. A big thanks to the remixers who joined up, and to Dyne for hosting these albums for yet another year. And on behalf of everyone involved, Merry Christmas! https://williammichael.info/aocc/

Voting Guidelines Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game. In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance): The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 3 Remix Pack (MP3). For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 3. Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey II The Last Soul Labyrinth IV - Petal Bridge [Dungeon: 16F-20F] Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey III Go Straight Labyrinth VI - Cyclopean Haunt Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey Shinobi Reverse Labyrinth V - Lost Shinjuku [Dungeon: 21F-25F]

Voting Guidelines Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game. In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance): The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 1 Remix Pack (MP3). For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 1. Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey Fighting in the Street Labyrinth IV - Sandy Barrens [Dungeon: 16F-20F] Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey II Never Return Alive Scene - Wings and Cherry Blossoms [Event: Ones with Wings] Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey III The Poets II Cityscape - Between the Azure Sky and Sea You can also use this thread to leave comments about the tracks. Remember to be kind and constructive. Thanks for listening, and thanks for voting!

Voting Guidelines Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game. In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance): The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 2 Remix Pack (MP3). For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 2. Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey III My Little Baby Cityscape - Engrave Thy Name and Go Forth Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey Alien Power Strife - Rapture [Normal Battle: Final Floor] Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey II Ending Return of the Heroes [Ending 1]

Don't try to throw the OCR mission statement in my face and think that that somehow proves your point. Nowhere in that mission statement does it say that we need to treat all forms of music in the world equally, regardless of whether it was written by a person or generated by a machine-learning algorithm. That's not there. We are dedicated to the appreciation of and promotion of video game music as an artform. This has, for the last 25 years, meant recognizing that the composers who wrote music for video games created art. They are artists. They are human beings who made thoughtful decisions about the music they wrote. They created with intent. Can you use machine-learning tools to create artwork with intent? Sure. I pretty clearly stated in the announcement that I don't have a problem with machine learning as a technology, but that I don't want people to post music on OCR from services that trained their models on music that was not provided with consent from the artists who created that music. The technology is not the problem; the people building these services using resources they're not supposed to are the problem. These folks have not figured out how to build these services without plundering the collective creative works on the internet. No thanks.

Fixes The MP3s for two recent remixes had some unintented skipping due to an error in the upload process. Those files have been updated and redistributed across our mirrors. Please update your local collections accordingly. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket "At the Drop of a Coin Flip" Silent Hill 4: The Room "Dreamy Ring Around the Forest" News Final Fantasy V: The Fabled Warriors is spinning up again with auditions open for Volume 3: Fire. Head to the audition event for details. Speaking of Projects, we've setup a new Project Comms forum that offers a direct channel to OCR's Project Staff (lead by @Kit Vivid) for all of your coordination needs. The threads you make are private, so only you and staff will see it. If you're currently running any album projects, head over there and setup a dedicated thread for each one. This will help Kit and the rest of the staff keep up with questions and communications about files, consent forms, album art, etc. Coming off rebuilding the Submissions system as a forum module and building the 8Tracks feature, I'm experimenting more with creating some tools for album project directors to play with in conjunction with the forum's Clubs feature. If you're an album project director and you're interested, head over to the OCR Discord and ask me about it. We'll see if we can get you set up. That's all for now. Stay tuned for more fun stuff on the horizon! -- DarkeSword

These are just going to be first impressions from voting, so take this all with a huge grain of salt! The City Is a Warm, Dead Waste: I love the variety here! It reminds me of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin in some ways, it doesn't surprise me to see a few Team Whip alumni on this one! Guitars are kickass here, and there's a monster amount of synth variety too. There's a solid amount of cohesion with the sounds chosen here, though I'm somewhat less sold on the arrangement itself - lots of great ideas but I think it'll take me some time to grasp where the arrangement is actually taking me. I think there's some reverb fine-tuning to do here, a lot of the elements feel overly boomy, which takes away some of the bite from elements like the drums. Other than drums/guitar, I actually surprisingly can't pinpoint individual elements contributed by each artist - there's a lot of sounds that feel like they could have come from anyone, which is pretty neat! 🏆Duel of the Shifting Sands: Ooohhh, 8-bit plus! I'm not surprised at all by that, but I'm not used to hearing it with all the extra bits and bobs, and I gotta say... I dig it! A lot. I think there's untapped potential to process the chiptune elements a little more dynamically, but overall, the blend works pretty damn well. 3:02, hell yeah! This is a great way to drive this home. I was on the fence about which track would get my vote, but this section really clinched it for me. Overall, I saw a huge amount of potential and TONS of great ideas thrown out from both entries in this duel, but this track feels like like it has the edge in terms of focus and cohesion. 🏆Seven Fists Under the Sakura Tree: Motherfucker, you guys are not playing around. This hits IMMEDIATELY off the rip. That fill at 1:06, excuuuuse me? I think this has a bit of the same "washiness" that I noted in "Warm, Dead Waste" where there's just a little bit less clarity to the mix than I would like, but I don't think the track suffers too much as a result. Ok, and now we go into something completely different at the end that somehow also works? I was trying to write out my highlights as I went along, and I just couldn't keep up. The sound choices, writing, production... y'all are crazy for this one. This is going directly onto my Smash Bros. playlist. This is going to be hard to beat. Sakura Wa Karenai: Ok, so that's how you're gonna play this. The production on here is IMMACULATE right off the jump, I can hear some strong DJ Mokram influence on the world instruments, then some psytrance beats come in and I immediately know who's at the helm. The production on here feels a little tighter, but I'm waiting for the moments like Team Rage had in their entry that REALLY knocked me off my feet. Oh, there's 2:06 - that's more like what I'm talking about, but it still feels like you're holding back on the energy levels. We've still got time to go though, so we'll see where this goes. 2:42 really jumped out at me in a completely different way, but it was a powerful moment with the entrance of vocals and that beautiful FM piano. The sound design in this section is off the hook. OH BABY SHUFFLE RHYTHMS now we're cooking. Ahhh, this matchup is TOUGH. There's so many brilliant ideas here and there's actually quite a bit of connective tissue to bridge them all together, but will say that the energy management falls just a little short of my hopes. The mix is incredibly clean, from the instrumentation to the mixing/mastering, but it feels like there was room to push the intensity further. I still loved this a ton, and you gave the other track a serious run for their money, but Seven Fists takes the crown in this matchup for me. 🏆Only Trust Your Mix, Techniques Will Never Help You: this title sounds like something I would hear in an incomprehensible Youtube Short production tutorial, I'm curious what the title alludes to! This starts off with some pretty straightforward but catchy, bright rock that reminds me of old Sonic Adventure music, the lead performances are top-notch. I don't feel like this track was as ambitious as the other ones from Team Rage in terms of ideas, but it feels like perhaps the most cohesively-executed of the three, and just because it's more focused, doesn't mean that it's any less impactful. The seagulls are a nice touch too, reminds me even more of Sonic Adventure when we hit that part. Crazy breakdown at the end, this was really good! You Make the Sun Shine (In My Heart): Aww, so cute! This is definitely the hardest matchup so far just by virtue of the fact that each entry were clearly going for different things. The other two matchups, although executed very differently, ended up going for relatively similar energy, but this is the kind of diametrically-opposed matchup I love to see from GSM. The lead vocals are confident and fit the bill really nicely - some slightly awkward moments where the lyrics and the melodic phrasing don't perfectly sync up, but that's to be expected on a short timeline when you have to add your own lyrics to the equation. Across the board, I'm hearing brilliant synth riffs and excellent sound choices. I love the vocal harmonies that I assume colorado weeks contributed? 3:25 onward to the end of the song is when everything really clicked for me <3 The area where this struggles for me is the mixdown - it doesn't feel like it's quite baked yet, specifically in terms of relative volume levels. The lead doesn't always feel like the lead, and there's certain elements (like the synth bass at 2:40-ish, for example) that feel inexplicably louder than everything else. There's also several elements that don't quite feel glued together with appropriate level of bus compression or reverb to really give this a sense of place. When both tracks are full of great ideas but in totally different ways, I need to fall back to execution, and in this case, I have to trust the mix from Team Rage. There's no dead air this round, every team brought the heat in terms of concepts and energy! Execution was a little more of a mixed bag, ultimately I feel like any of these matchups could have been swayed with different levels of polish on the execution, which means that you all hit the mark in terms of blending the sources well. I am well familiar with the time crunch element of GSM, and it does tend to play out tougher for more ambitious, multi-genre concepts that will always take longer to polish. Even though I ended up generally voting for the tracks that felt tighter and maybe took a few less stylistic risks, it's not for lack of enjoyment of the more ambitious ones! If you didn't get my vote here, it just means that I thought the song needed a little more time in the oven - everyone did excellent work and I enjoyed it a lot!

This was a super fun showing! Just writing down stuff I've brought up in the discord and listening party: - I helmed (arranged, produced, mixed) the lion's share of Dead Waste. seph was super helpful in spicing up the guitar parts I wrote and doing some extra textures/transitions. H36T did stems for piano and female vocals, Ronald did some dark ambient synths/FX, and I consulted with josh and Moebius on drum part-writing and mastering, respectively. - both the gf and I thought the ocarina in Shifting Sands was a soprano sax, lol, but after the drop I can hear it better. - Shifting Sands is also the most VVVVVV-sounding thing JSA has done, imo. The low end profile right before the drop kicks in is great. Xaleph(?) did a great job with the mixing. - "Seven Fists" is the punchiest one this round, imo. I joked with seveneyes/alex that he was gonna master it to -7LUFSi and it came out to -6.9. "Dead Waste" and "Mix" both sat around -10 to -11LUFSi (different people mastering). Its Run, Lola, Run-sounding transition is awesome. - I'm pretty sure all of Team Streets was floored by the Etrian!Sakura arrangement. It took us a while to figure out the flow of ours, in part because the Cherry Blossoms MIDI was formatted as triplets instead of "true" 6/8 or 12/8. The buildup/sound design in the intro is great. - I also had no idea Weeks also did the low vocals during the breakdown in Etrian Sakura! Her range is crazy. - Moe's time changes were super fun and Moe/josh overdubbed seph like three or four times in Mix. Moe also schooled on josh and I by making one of his transitions a seagull when we were trying to arrange it with drums or guitar, lmao. - Sun Shine (In My Heart) has some good vocal balancing for the time-crunch. I also can't hear "Azure Sea and Sky" without hearing the lyrics now. I joked in the listening party that Moe should have stuck like 30 seagulls in his to make it a fair fight. I also thought it was neat how many credits each track had - it seemed like each team member had a hand in nearly all of each others' tracks. Looking forward to Round 2!

These are fucking bangers. I am glad I got to finally listen to them. Wonderful job to both teams. <3 Kinda funny how I can directly distinguish who is in what team, just based on the sound palettes, techniques used and their individualistic motifs from previous work of theirs!! It's a highlight to hear everyone's hearts and passions and skills mingle together to make something this unique, and both series' OSTs are pretty crazy and gives such a weird, lively, and wide variety of possibilities to the imagination on arranging a remix! So, kudos to the series selection, source choices and the end results! Look forward to more, and remember, no matter the result, these are fire and I was thrilled listening to each and every one of them (several times over.) :)

I just randomly was thinking that OCremix was started in December, and checking online, see that it says December 11, 1999. For me right now, thats an hour and half away. Myself finding this awesome place in 2003. Not knowing how to make music, but as a lover of listening to it, I don't post much....but, I didn't see anywhere on here it being mentioned about the 25th anniversary. (maybe I just missed it) So anyways.... Just wishing this place a HUGE HAPPY 25TH BIRTHDAY. And of course a huge thanks to everyone who has contributed and kept this place alive for so long. Heres to 25 more years....

Alright folks, got some news for this one - yes, the album is still moving along! Even better, it's been submitted in it's entirety! I've listened to the finished product with some of my fellow judge peers (as well as with Bahamut, the original director for the album) and it seems like it shouldn't have any issues under review, so I can finally say that this thing is happening, and it's happening soon. There will be some teasers and such in the coming months to get y'all excited about the album, but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the *second* most fun organ bit from the album. Ain't the whole song, but I did have a lot of fun making an organ part for one of my tracks so I figured why not spread the joy a little bit? Actually pretty excited to have this submitted, and not just because it'll be a decades-long endeavor coming to a close, but also because the album sounds great. Will it be worth the wait? ... well it was a long wait so I can't be sure, but it'll definitely be worth spending some time with, that's for sure!

Inspired by the old playlisting site, I dove into Invision's database tool and built out a fun new feature I like to call 8Tracks! Create a playlist of exactly 8 OC ReMixes by entering their OCR IDs (e.g. OCR01235) in the form and generate a player that you can listen to and share. We've put together a couple of 8Tracks already, which you can find at the 8Tracks Index, but feel free to make your own! The link is also available at the top of the forum page in the main navigation next to ReMix Submissions. To premptively answer a few questions: Why can't I do more than 8? The forum software I'm using to build out these kinds of features is very limited, so I need to lean into these types of restrictions to make them work. Wouldn't it be easier to have an "Add to playlist" button on the actual ReMix pages? The main site and the forums are actually far more separated than it seems. It's almost impossible to develop user-specific features for the non-forum part of the site. Is this the playlist function you've been talking about for a long time? No. Eventually I want to build a proper, robust playlist function that hooks into the remix database and also ties to user accounts with no restrictions on playlist length; that will come as part of the full site rewrite that will happen eventually. However, building this feature (especially the JS stuff and how it interacts with the YouTube player API) has taught me a lot and I'll be able to apply these lessons to the eventual rewrite. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy. Looking forward to queueing up some 8Tracks from you. :) -- DarkeSword

Hello!!! Although I'm quite unfamiliar with this place, it is nice to meet people who enjoy remixing VGMs and OSTs! Although I usually make original tracks, I also make remixes. I met this place a few days ago, and I forgot introduce myself. I hope all is well!

Sent these over to DS last night, but here's my take for one of the years!

I say we should give Netscape Navigator 9 another shot.

Hey just so you know, this whole "they don't care about privacy anymore" is 100% fucking nonsense. Mozilla does not say that they can use your data however they want. This is also part of the terms of literally any site you upload anything to; the service needs to say "you grant us the right to do things with your work so that our service can actually function." For example: uploading a picture to Bluesky? Bluesky asserts the right to transform your work so that they can generate a thumbnail of the picture you uploaded. That's what these terms always mean. It's never about a service or a piece of software asserting ownership of your data. It's about you granting them a baseline level of permissions so that they can actually do the things you need them to do with the data you give them. This type of "company is stealing your work" scaremongering makes the rounds every few months in art communities and every single time someone has to clarify that companies are not stealing your work. Mozilla is not claiming ownership of your work. Mozilla is not throwing privacy to the winds. Instead of watching a clickbait video that perpetuates the same stupid misunderstandings, maybe go directly to the source and actually read what Mozilla has to say about it? Also, Brave is the second-to-last browser you should be using (behind Chrome). Brave has engaged with scummy shit such as: Replacing ads on pages with its own ads and taking a cut Putting their own affiliate links in search suggestions Installing a VPN on Windows without notifying users Numerous partnerships with cryptocurrency firms If you want a reliable browser that's not Firefox, there are plenty of options like Orion, Waterfox, Ungoogled Chromium, Arc, etc. Brave is not it. EDIT: But also just keep using Firefox.

Howdy, folks. You may recognize me as Zack! on the OC ReMix discord. I've been enjoying OCR since roughly 2002, and a few months ago I was reminiscing about the OCR podcast in its various incarnations and how much I missed them. I voiced this in the 25th birthday hangout, and @Liontamer encouraged me to get off my butt and just restart the pod. So I did. Check it out here: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2445308.rss Ad-free, not trying to make a single cent off of this, and I keep the language tame so that you can listen with kids if you want to. I'm very much an amateur at this, hoping to get better at it as I go. I learn a little more every recording and editing session, so fingers crossed a few more of these and thing will be half decent. If you're reading this, episode 2 is out, so go grab it if you're interested. I'm aware that a few of the voiceovers sound, well, awful. I had the wrong mic selected, didn't notice until edit time, and I have a cold now so my voice is all funny. I figure you guys can deal with a couple minutes of webcam mic. The format is roughly news, new remixes with my worthless commentary on them, some random segment that strokes my ego, and then one final Russian Remix Roulette track. I remember them rolling a die and playing a RRR track on the very first incarnation of the OCR pod, and I wanted to keep it going. Question for the powers that be: any objections to me using the OCR logo as the pod's thumbnail?

I have submitted Star Fox: Double Wing Damage to OverClocked Remix project panel. Now all we must do is wait and see what's next! Great job, everyone! I am so proud to have worked on this album and I'm appreciative of all your support and hard work! Everyone did awesome! We did Fox McCloud proud!

Hallo hallo, another "long time listener, first time caller" for the list A long time fan of VGM; Vinyl & CD collector, obsessive fan-music listener, occasional VGM remixer with my partner. I was finally able to make it to MAGfest this year (I come from far off Europe, and it only cost.... Ye gods, over a thousand buckaroos!) where I met so many amazing friends, and even more amazing strangers, and had so many amazing conversations with 'my people', where I had a sort of, 'wait, I'm not alone, thousands of people are just like me!' moment. Especially it was great to hang out with the ever wonderful KyleJCrb, who I went to the con with, and spent a lot of the weekend with (and crashed the room of many times) - I was planning to check out the OCR panel regardless, but as he was one of the speakers, I made extra sure to clear my con schedule - and as I sat there at the panel, I wondered suddenly why I was lurking, because I felt like I would very much like to be a present part of all of this. I spent a while after I arrived home observing the site much more closely, asking around interestedly to my friends of their own VGM projects, then I decided to poke my head in for real. So... Er... Hello!

Just chiming in to mention that I've sent a finished mix of Resident Evil 4's Save Room theme to VQ, so that's at least one track down for this project! Excited to hear what everyone else cooks up ☺️

Mr. Coop? HA HA! Fuck... now I feel old. You've got four days to finish it and send it if you want to get in on the action. The deadline's 11:59 PM EST on December 20, 2024. If you submit it, make sure to let me know what the remix title is. And don't worry, Mokram, Souperion will be there with us.

I'm just gonna say that the source is valid. It was written specifically for the series. It made its way into Pikmin 2. It represents Pikmin in Smash. We can call this a Pikmin 2 remix.

Back at it again, m'friends. Hope y'like.

I'm in!

If life permits I'll jingle dem bells. 🎄

Howdy! :) 🦇 Some of y'all know who I am, but in case ya don't: 'ello, 'ello--the name's VQ. Bit nervous writing this up, but here goes! Many here (including myself) have participated in (or know of) @Dyne & @The Coop's lovingly done, yearly [Unofficial] OCR Christmas Album, and I'd like to try and implement / propose something similar for ALL HALLOWS' EVE! 🧡 Out of every holiday in a year, Halloween has always been my all-time favorite, and it's a shame to have noticed not many artists or communities hold much weight for that time of the year--outside of any compos that chime-in for it as one-offs--and I'd like to give the opportunity for music inspired by Halloween, or that present "spooky vibes" to be freely envisioned and showcased for that special date! :D Here's the deets!

If no problem with that, I'd be glad to join this album too, for the first time. After all, there's no strict quality controls or anyone being nitpicky with mixing on this one, right? :D You say any source is okay, even if not VGM, but just asking: are original compositions allowed, too? Because it sounds more tempting to try something original but influenced by good weather (aka cold and snow haha). If this is only about arrangements/remixes of other things, the source I'm thinking of is "Ary" from Tales of Phantasia. The original is slow and chill as heck, but I'd love to try something a lot faster and upbeat, in the style of the so-called "doujin" artists from the 2000s like I-Chu, Akineko, U-Gen, etc. I can totally see the vibe fitting this style and still fitting the theme, kinda sounding like some weirdo is having fun running with a skate all around the streets of an empty city because everyone is busy at their homes with family and stuff, just a funny concept I'm toying with mentally :D

I just made a Christmas tune, a version of Gloria. I'll send it your way when I get a moment:)

Welp, good news everyone!! Finally managed to get in contact, and have access! I'll make the channel / threads in a jiffy! :D

And to those thinking about it but haven't yet. . . COME ON IN, AND JOIN THE FUN! :3

as someone who tried to do this yearly (and only managed for 3 years (3 eps of 3 songs for 3 halloweens does sound kinda cool though), i love this idea, i have a couple of songs i'd like to do, i just need to pick one. but count me in. also, if you need help with the website/hosting/whatever, let me know, i might be able to help.

Hello all! CosmicBartender from Discord here; I'd love to participate if anyone has need/desire of drums/percussion. DMs and mentions are open - thank you for your time!

Sounds like we need listening parties for both soundtracks... :-)

Transporting is right. The noise crunches as percussion as well as the spacious audio give me Massive Attack vibes. This is something that you could leave on in the background while coding, or easily fit into a playlist of driving music for when you're cruising at high speed. While I'm not familiar with the OST (but have seen enough of the gameplay) and thus the source isn't necessarily familiar, this creates a shimmering crystalline ephemeral space that leaves me breathless. Beautiful.

The intro is already going when we get started and then we're at high octane from then on. And everything from there just keeps getting better and better as various surprises are thrown in from left and right. This ReMix is a trip, as we are thrown from idea to idea to idea like electricity arcing from point to point. Perfectly captures the vibes of a shmup.

This seems like an opportunity to delve into Indian folklore instruments to arrange the credit theme of a 16-bit game very dear to my heart. This is why I love these OCR albums: they are the perfect excuse to try concepts I wouldn't otherwise have dared to try on my own. 😉 Best advice I can give ya @mo.oorgan is to try and enlist someone with some experience as a co-director. At first it will seem manageable on your own, but especially if you've got an aggressive timeline for this many tracks, there's a lot of administrative and HR tasks that can drain your artistic soul dry. Best of luck, and maybe I'll join the effort if/when this gets going. 💪

The oldest files currently on my computer which have jumped from hard drive to hard drive over the years are mp3s from this site which show a "Date Modified" of November 21, 2000. Based on the fact they all share a 9:03 PM timestamp though, I suspect that they're actually slightly older than that and the date got modified as they were being copied from one location to another or something.

Just a head's up, most of the community is on the Discord server these days, and on the off chance either of you aren't there, hop on over! There's a hangout for the anniversary starting around 8:00 PM. (I'll be on an hour later after I get children to bed, which is something I cannot imagine typing back in 2003-2004, haha. :p) https://discord.gg/ocremix?event=1316531137803194460

Artist Name: Emunator, Chimpazilla feat. Pixelseph Credits: Emunator: Original arrangement, production, mixing Chimpazilla: Arrangement, production, mixing, mastering Pixelseph: Guitars (rhythm, lead) Artist Notes: Emunator: This submission is a completely reimagined version of a my contribution to "VGM Essentials: Drum & Bass" on Firaga Records - the original version of this arrangement is available for streaming now! When I finished that track, I sent it to Chimpazilla to share, and she loved the potential of it but wanted to see it done in a harder-hitting, modern drum & bass style. I sent the stems over, and about a week later, she came out of nowhere with this absolutely killer VIP edit that is way too kickass to not share. The original intent behind this concept was to remix Lower Brinstar in the style of Deus Ex. This inspiration still shows through in the atmospheric sound design throughout the song and the cyberpunk-style synth plucks (as well as the title, which is a literal translation of the phrase Deus Ex Machina) but along the way, it doubled in tempo and got way heavier than I'd originally planned! This ended up being a perfect blend of influences - I was captivated by the more rock-oriented, traditional D&B stylings of artists like Pendulum, and Kris brought that modern flair and beefed up the production beyond what I could accomplish alone. Pixelseph came in clutch with some really badass guitar chops that amp the arrangement all the way up to 11. This now marks my 11th collaboration with Chimpazilla, and the 7th in the last year, and I don't think we're showing any signs of letting up. I'm so lucky to be able to have a true collaborative partner-in-crime that is down for literally any genre, any time - you saw potential in this track and ran with it, and I'm so grateful that this version of the remix is able to exist because of you. Chimpazilla: When Wes first sent me this track in nearly-finished wip form, I thought, oh gosh yet another Brinstar arrangement. (I'm not sure what planets aligned in the last couple of months but around 50 Brinstar arrangements were submitted to OCR; was there a memo sent out that I was unaware of?) But I adore this theme, and the massive amount of Brinstar submissions had motivated me to think about doing one myself at some point. And then Wes sent me his fabulous wip. I loved his concept so much, and Seph had already added the aforementioned badass guitars when I heard it. Wes had some killer neurobass, great synths and a lot of DnB drum detail, and the track had a lot of positives to it, but my big gripe was the arrangement. The way the song was structured, it seemed like there were builds but no big payoff. I felt super strongly that it needed a proper build into a very heavy/badass DnB neurobass drop. I am guilty of harping on this to Wes until he said "FINE, here are the stems, do your thing!" I definitely had my way with these stems; I reworked the first two minutes quite heavily, extending the intro and adding the drumless buildup and then the big drop. I made many more changes and additions to the rest of the piece, mixed it for maximum badassery, and mastered it. Pixelseph's guitar work in this track is so tasty, and goes so well with the heavy DnB drums and basses. I really like this track, it turned out to be one of my favorites of our many collabs (wow, 11 so far did you say?). Wes is right, we will not be slowing down on these. We have so much fun working together exploring new genres and production techniques. Our work always fits together so seamlessly, working with Wes is joyous and effortless, and I feel like the results just get better and better each time. Wes, thanks so much for trusting me with this! I am grateful to you for your incredible friendship and for being the best collab partner ever! Games & Sources Super Metroid - Lower Brinstar

what a fucking song. i got to know it because i binged many an art bell show in the last 2 years. what a national treasure you had in him, man!!! RIP also look at the cover in HD, it's so cool.

HA! Gario put that in our #judgechat and it requires being shared with the world. :-D "ChroNES Trigger" would have also been an acceptable title too. :-) Dropoff at 1:09 was "WTF", so nice way to catch me off guard, then shifting to Game Boy-style instrumentation at 1:18. I put a hex on you for 3:28-3:56's section, but the slow de-sync to re-sync was a fun idea. :-P Nice deconstruction at 4:07; not the mooooost engaging thing to listen to, though I'm trusting it to go somewhere, so I'll let it simmer. The track filled out the most at 5:00, and to me the way it essentially crescendoed here is disappointing. 5:35 though had a nice textural change to start winding down (not really, as it spun right back up). It'll sound like I'm saying I didn't enjoy it; to me, this is good, but the track plateaus in energy too early and then some sections feel like they go a while without saying anything new for too long. When the texture changed up at 6:27, I love it, but it also should have happened, say, at 5:00 instead and you wouldn't have lost anything, IMO. Though I wouldn't be shocked at a NO for basic production, the creativity is there for me. :-) YES

Matt, your Maynard impression is pretty damn on-point, and you also came prepared with the FX processing to nail the iconic Tool sound. Major shoutouts to Seph on the screams too, I didn't know you had that in you! I remember commenting in the DoD listening party (before I knew it was you guys making the track - I should have known!) that there were some sections that felt particularly imbalanced in terms of volume, but that appears to have been totally ironed out in this version, because everything is crystal clear and sitting in just the right spot. The bass and guitar tone, in combination with the vocal processing, are the perfect mix of sludgy, aggressive, and clean at all the right moments. And it should go without saying that the instrumental performances are incredibly tight across the board - I can tell you all had a lot of fun with this. I have a few minor gripes with the mixing. I didn't really pick up on this before, but the vocal sibilance is really coming through hot on my current listening setup, and could use a bit of taming on the consonants. The kit drum, specifically the kicks and (to a lesser extent, the toms) feel mixed a bit too clean and clicky, almost like you would mix for an EDM track rather than a rock track. Everything is distinct and the clarity is excellent, but something doesn't sound QUITE right for the genre and I think the clarity on the kickdrum is the culprit. That's all I got for you though - the rest of the mix is really, really good. Easy yes on all fronts, you guys are powerhouses at your craft! YES

Another Silent Hill mix after few years.

well, ok then. opening is definitely a stylistic mashup. love the way you took metallica's vibe and make it work with these tracks so well. at 0:46, though, this is almost straight Metallica for like 30s straight. the melodic adaptation is indeed tenuous, especially when you consider it's two bars out of hundreds in the original (admittedly they are very recognizable bars). at least the chorus is more from the Rival track. the singing works great, it's realized well, and seph does a good job with it. i'm just not sure it's not too much metallica. the transition riff is back to the final battle riff, and then another verse (same caveats as before). the bridge works well to bring together the style and original into a better combination that's more in balance of the original. there's then 30 seconds of insane solo battle, because that's literally what the originals are about, and a bunch more instrumental sections that go through various elements of the sources. the end of the false chorus section at like 3:50 was pretty hip. the track cycles back to one more verse and chorus dyad, a quick riff, and it's done. the performances here are nuts, as expected. the three main performers are among the best in the local community at doing this kind of stuff, and it shows. there's a ton of synergy in the performance, it's intense and complex without being overly meandering or relying on tropes to make it work, and it's mixed very well by xaleph as well. the arrangement concept is also great. my concern is just that the verse's connection to the original works is essentially academic. it's tough to map the vocal lines to the original, although your timestamps make it clear once you've A/B'd it. i think what's here overall is probably distinct enough from Metallica to be ok. but this is the second really fun track from you guys that's come through recently that's been very, very close to a mainstream original. you need to be careful as you're treading a line here that we (the judges) don't want to more clearly define because of how subjective it can be. YES (borderline) edit 10/25: larry's numbers make it clearer than i originally thought that this is not 'probably too much Metallica', it's just plain too much. i didn't realize it was over a quarter of the track. sorry guys, sick track, but not for here. NO

that castlevania source is cursed. opens with some fun washes of sound and vocals, and then we're in the meat right away. some really impressive sound design in that first 30s. there's a huge hit right at 1:10 that's awesome. the continued distorted morphing bass through this next section is great as well, and the drum work in here is really superb. there's an extended build through 2:03 and then it goes nuts for a while. a tiny nitpick is that there's a lot going on in the low mids - it's not overly dense, but it's hard to grasp everything that's going on down there. there's a big hit at 2:17 where we finally get, over two minutes in, a real chord progression with sustains and everything. such a payoff! 2:45 is a shift in styles and is a huge fat edm beat that i can't get enough of. great idea to end it with a big style shift. the ending itself is a little sudden, but it works with how angular most of this is. the mastering isn't 100% bulletproof, but there's some really interesting stuff going on in here. the use of sfx and sweeps and distortion to keep everything constantly morphing and shifting is so technically impressive. excellent work. YES