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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.

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!

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?

It's July 7th. It's time for the Summer, baby. We've got heat, we've got humidity, we've got all the things needed to make you feel sticky... and not in a good way. But don't worry, I've got something cool for you. Yepper, it's time to start recruiting for the next An OverClocked Christmas album! We've got over five months before the due date, so let's see how many people are interested in taking part for the seventeenth entry in this (usually) happy, seasonal project. As per the norm, this project is open to any and all OCR members, regardless of whether you're a posted remixer or not. You want info? I got your info right here... When's The Project Deadline?- December 20th, 2024 at 11:59 P.M. EST. This is now a REALLY hard, non-negotiable deadline, since it's very close to Christmas. We've had lots of last-minute entries and updates over the years and, to be perfectly honest, it shouldn't be that way. With months of time, having to hold off as long as possible for people made things pretty hectic for myself and Dyne in the past. Treating this project like a college paper that doesn't get worked on until the last minute got annoying rather quickly when it kept adding up to lots of hurrying year after year, with last second updates to artwork and retagging/reuploading things. As such, you have until one minute before midnight EST on December 20th to get me the final WAV or MP3 of your song. After that, you're shit outta luck until next year. I need time to do everything, including possibly making a little website to host this project if Dyne isn't online for one reason or another. So this deadline's set in stone... PERIOD. What Information Does The Coop Need?- When you send me your final versions, I'll need what name you want to use (real or remixer handle) and the name of your remix. Please, come up with something when you send me links to the file, rather than just giving me a file called "ff6-owa-v3f.mp3" and nothing else. You don't have to tell me what song you're remixing, but I do need a name for the remix. Plus, if you have a website you'd like to pimp, supply that as well and I can add it to the MP3 tags. What Can Be Remixed?- Any song, really. Traditional Christmas carols, video game music, published music by a signed artist, music from TV/cartoons/anime... whatever gets your heart racing and into that Christmas spirit. This isn't an official OCR album, so you can draw from more sources than just VGM. Plus, you can take a non-Christmas tune, like the Main Theme from Space Harrier, Stage 6 Mission 2 from Metal Head, or I Defend STM from Truxton II, and turn it into a Christmasy one. So know that it's not limited only to songs that are Christmas-like to begin with. All that said, do keep in mind that if you want to submit your song to OCR later, you'll need to keep this site's guidelines in the back of your mind. But for this album, you can take it in just about any direction you want and get as crazy as you'd like (but please, no "Silver Bells" done in farts or something). How Long Can My Song Be?- As long as you want it to be. There are no restrictions on this, so whether it's 1:30, or 9:51 with a five minute guitar solo ala Metallica, it's all good. But again, if you want to submit your song to OCR later, keep their guidelines in mind. What Genres Can I Remix In?- Again, the door's wide open here. Rap, Metal, Pop, Piano-solo, Orchestral, Jazz, 8/16-bit, Barber Shop Quartet, A capella, Death Polka... it's up to you where you want to take it. What Format Should I Submit My Song In?- WAV or an MP3 of at least 192KB/s quality. I'll be tagging the MP3s and making MP3s from any submitted wavs, so you don't have to worry about that. But, if you'd like your website to be in the MP3 comments section, be sure to give it to me when you submit your song. How About A Little Music To Get Us In The Mood?- To help everyone along, here's a YouTube list of Christmasy tunes made by Ocre a number of years ago... https://ocremix.org/community/topic/32727-an-overclocked-christmas-~-now-recruiting/?tab=comments#comment-676914 What's The Website's Address Again?- It's got a new home at... http://williammichael.info/aocc/ This album will still be downloaded there as well, as Dyne will continue to host the albums on his site. How Do We Contact This The Coop Person?- If you've got questions, comments, concerns, want feedback, or your track is done and ready to be sent to me, you can PM me here on OCR, or send me an E-mail at thecoopscorner@gmail.com. Just be sure you remember to include a link to your remix, or attach it to your message. So yeah, there you go. You've got over five months to get something done for the lovely people of OverClocked Remix and the billions of listeners around the world who've become followers of our project. Good luck, have fun and make everyone some Nice Work™! Artists involved thus far... The Coop (director, cover artist and remixer) The Vodoú Queen (remixer) colorado weeks (remixer) Dj Mokram (remixer) Souperion (remixer) Seth Skoda (remixer) Lampje4life (remixer) NarnianWarrior (remixer)

Hi everyone! Last night, I held a live webinar on YouTube about dialing in mix-ready guitar and bass tones for your remixes. You can find the VOD below: VSTi and VSTs from the Webinar, also in the video description: (not all were used in the webinar; all plugins listed below were curated for this webinar based on their quality and price - they're all free!) Guitar: Cute Emily SG Shreddage 3 Stratus Unreal Instruments Metal-GTX (requires Plogue Sforzando) Bass: Shreddage 3 Precision MODO Bass 2 Amp Sims: Ignite Amps SHB-1 (SHB-1 is a boutique tube amp sim for bass guitar; comes with it's own cab IR built in) Ignite Amps Emissary and NadIR (Emissary is their boutique tube amplifier sim, NadIR is a cabinet IR sim that can be used with ANY other amp sim) Guitar Rig 7 Shattered Glass Audio ACE IK Multimedia Amplitube 5 Pedal VSTs: TSE Audio 808 TSE Audio R47 Plugin Boutique Face Bender

If life permits I'll jingle dem bells. 🎄

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 ☺️

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!

Welcome to Game Set Mash!!, a team-based, long-form competition format for the OC ReMix community! Current Status The final scoreboard is as follows! | Streets of Rage | Etrian Odyssey | Round 1 | 6(sub) 2(won) | 6(sub) 4(won) | Round 2 | 6(sub) 2(won) | 6(sub) 4(won) | Round 3 | 6(sub) 4(won) | 6(sub) 2(won) | --------+-----------------+-------------------+ Total | 26 | 28 | 2 points were awarded for each submission, and additional 2 points were awarded for each match-up won. Congratulations to TEAM ETRIAN ODYSSEY for their win! Music Download the MP3 packs for all three rounds! Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 What are the games we're remixing? The time around we're celebrating the music of Yuzo Koshiro! This legendary composer has such a wide breadth of work, and for GSM3 we're going to mix the pulsing beat 'em up beats of Streets of Rage with the sweeping JRPG scores from Etrian Odyssey. Streets of Rage - Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage 2, and Streets of Rage 3 Etrian Odyssey - Etrian Odyssey, Etrian Odyssey 2, Etrian Odyssey 3 Each franchise features more games than just the initial three, but for the purposes of this competition we're going to limit to those first games. What are the rules about teams? I want to make things easy and accessible for people to participate, so there's no maximum on team size, but I'll be asking people to do their best to even out the teams once we have all of our participants signed up. There are no rules about who has to be a primary arranger for a track from week to week. Teams will be free to organize and determine how each of the three remixes gets covered. Using your teammates for collaboration and feedback is highly encouraged. Game Set Mash!! is run primarily on OCR's Discord server, so you need to make sure you join up there. I'm new to GSM, how does the competition work? Participating remixers will form 2 teams of at least 3 members each. Each team will be assigned a set of 3 games. The competition lasts 6-7 weeks, with 10-day mixing rounds alternating with 4-day voting periods. At the start of the mixing round, each team will choose and reveal 1 source tune from each of their 3 games. Each source will be paired with another source from the opposing team, for a total of 3 pairs. Each team will be responsible for writing 3 remixes for the week that combine (or mash) both source tunes in each pair. At the end of the mixing round, we'll upload the remixes and have a community vote. Voters will vote on the 3 remixes that did the best job of mashing the two source tunes together. Teams will accumulate a score based on how many of the community votes they win. In the next mixing round, we'll rotate which games get paired up with opposing games.

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.

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

I'm in!

Happy 30th birthday Earthworm Jim! I was invited to a groovy little celebration album called "Earworm Jam" to honor the occasion; here's my contribution (which I'll be submitting to OCR), and there's a link in the description to the full album if you want to check it out!

Hi Uffe! The track you linked doesn’t sound like it contains western harmony functional chords inside. I’m hearing trills between half-step notes and an occasional whole-step note to make the tension ramp. However, to answer your question, the method I use to determine chords when listening to arpeggios is to listen for the lowest note and then work out what the interval is between it and the closest note to it, then do the same for the next note. The relationship between the intervals will usually give you the biggest clue to the chord. Sometimes there can be multiple chords being outlined during a single arpeggiated melodic line. It’s not always easy to pick out when this is happening, though one trick for that is to listen to the harmony/support instruments and if the notes shift under a particular spot in the melody, it’s highly likely that the chord has changed

Well here are a few tips based on some grueling experiences I went through licensing my tracks, hope they help. To start, I use https://soundrop.com/ as my distro service; it's not as fast or as friendly as it used to be unfortunately (live chat disappeared in favor of a slow ticketing service, for example), but I still get monthly play reports and it's great about regularly adding (and including your materials) on new platforms as they become available. As to licensing the music, here's the kicker: they require proof of a U.S. release of the original track. That means before you even want to try licensing something, see if the source soundtrack album exists on Apple Music or Amazon (the two they put the most stock in). (That part also used to be easier, but the restrictions changed a few years ago.) If you can hunt down an ISRC (album) or UPC code (track), even better! Musicbrainz.org is a great resource for that. For example: https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Grim+Fandango&type=release&limit=25&method=indexed Each track you want to license gives you a spot to include a write-up, so come with everything - track title from the game, composer, soundtrack title, official album release links, codes... you'll be in good shape. If the track you're licensing has multiple source tunes, be prepared to include both in the description. Sadly there's a ton of material I couldn't license after maaaaany attempts, because even though I could prove US game release, note the production company and show the Wikipedia article, there was no official album. Doom 2, for example. I found some album records online but if you look closely they say "bootleg" as the "status" and that doesn't work well. Not official enough. Anyways I hope that helps, take care!

It's great to see new policy forged in my absence. I do expect this stance to change & evolve over time, as the tech also changes over time. As written, the first line mentions "a prompt" (singular) but then further down it mentions "tracks generated wholly or in part" and cites a couple of those shiny new services. I agree that music generated by a single short text prompt doesn't come remotely close to the expectations and concept of this site, or any similar community which emphasizes the creative process & human decision-making extensively. Right there with you on that one. My mind just tends to then jump to all the future hypotheticals that will one day crop up: What if it was 5 prompts instead of one? What about.... 50 prompts? 100? What if was just one prompt, but instead of text it was someone singing a complete arrangement and tapping their fingers on the table and the AI took that, respected all the beats/intervals, and built out the whole track around that concept? All will be possible, at some point... It really comes down to a ratio of input to output & the overall amount of human discretion and time involved. What I expect is that these lines will only get blurrier & blurrier, and more difficult to assess, as AI-based tooling becomes ubiquitous within DAWs and as part of creative pipelines, not just as a soup-to-nuts prompt-based magic track generator. I also do wonder about traceability/proof - beyond asking for project files as evidence of effort, seems like it would mostly be honor system. Even asking for project files will only work until AI is proficient enough to understand & navigate DAW interfaces and work within human-oriented tools, allowing for further human refinement. It's all a matter of time, and just more to consider when it arises. The ethicality argument, well... I don't think you actually need to go there, so I personally wouldn't. People learn from & mimic other people, just not at the same speed & scale as AI, and the body of work in the public domain alone is sufficient for a pretty badass model, even if that's not the approach Big Tech seems to have taken. The issue of creative input ratio is not only more critical, it also persists even if you (somehow) fix any ethical concerns.

Oooooh.... me thinks this might be a great place for choirs / singers doing banshee / ghost / goblin etc vocals to have lots of fun. Teeeheeheee. Very interested in singing on and/or arranging vocals for a track on this:) - Bonnie Bogovich the weird lady who runs The Bwak Choir co-founder of Super Smash Opera https://blackcatbonifide.com

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!

Well, look at all the nice stuff Morgan said, it warms a middle-aged man’s heart! We’re glad to have you too. :-) This was definitely a trip on the USS Weirdshit, and I’m here for it. Boy, this gets pretty grimey, and props to Chimpa for her post-production efforts as well; just like the Mario 64 piece that she also mastered, everything sounds awesome on my car stereo, which can’t be taken for granted. (I’ve heard pro tracks that don’t come out sounding full and clean on car stereo, to be sure.) Just voted on mooooooooo.ooorgan’s Super Mario 64 piece before this, which I believe was the second or third track of his that I’ve judged. That said, the dude’s got me trained now: expect a journey and expect to be impressed. YES

This may or may not be relevant, but just something to think about, timing-wise: Project threads, traditionally, have been locked for historical record sometime around the release of the album.

@Atomicfog It's pretty much up to OCR staff to get the albums they plan on releasing ahead of this out in a timely manner. XPRTNovice will likely release his track ahead of the album with a nice music video attached to it, so there will likely be some opportunity to hear at least one track ahead of the full release (and it's one heck of a track). The music itself is done, though, and the album does sound pretty darn good if I do say so myself, just gotta get the rest of the behind-the-scenes work finished for it. Sorry it's taking even more time, but it will be worth the wait, I promise!

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.

When the strings hit, I was like "Whooooooooa! This is my favorite part!" and then even more cool instrumentation kept dropping in as things kept shifting. Very dynamic and, at nearly 5 1/2 minutes, it does a great job evolving and justifying the length. Fun energy!

Love this remix. It's been a staple on my Halloween playlist for years now.

Shit, I can double dip on threads then.

So... a few days ago I released which happens to be my most complex VGM Remix album so far. 11 covers, remixes, arrangements or whatever of 11 (or 12 if we count some hidden track haha) different tunes from this amazing soundtrack. Musically this is pretty varied but always with metal as the main base. Featuring a lot of talented performers in all tracks, some of them also active in OCR. You can listen to or/and download the full album in Bandcamp (it's "free or name your price", so just put 0 as price. Or ask for a download code if you want to add to your Bandcamp collection) https://unknownpseudoartist.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-phantasia-a-metal-tribute-to-tales-of-phantasia Alternatively you can also listen to the full album in Youtube in a single static "video": Anyways, if you can find some time to listen that'd be nice There was a huge ammount of time, effort and passion poured into this thing and I thin it's worth it. I hope you like :)

@Dj Mokram Ooooh yes, I feel you about the stylistic experimentation; I'm super curious which source you're thinking about, and hope I get to find out at some point 👀 The album seems to be lacking in this type of representation so far, so it'd be welcome with open arms if you decide to join up at some point. Bird is absolutely the word! I also really appreciate the ultra-valid & aptly-stated advice, and I definitely resonate with the implications behind what you're saying. That notion is starting to make itself known, and I'm working on ways to streamline/mitigate some of these things to a degree, but I also can also see that good planning can only accommodate for so many things. I at least have a few levels of consultation to help guide some decisions, but I agree and think a co-director would be a key step in ensuring this comes together in a smoothly (esp if the scope of the project continues to grow beyond the initial expectation 😅). @GCJ That's stellar!! 😎 Thanks for extending your desire to participate; I like the style and energy behind your posted ReMixes, and could see you being a great fit to the project! I'll be reaching out to you on Discord momentarily to discuss it a bit further here~

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. 💪

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.

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

Rancho Relaxo over here! Zack & Seph's guitar performances sounded extra classy. Are y'all trying to melt up the ladies? :-) YES

Here's a Hip-Hop/Electro arrangement of mostly 'Wood' and a little bit of 'Ruby' (just the ending) from Blocks That Matter. Originally released on the official remix album 'Reworks That Matter' which was directed by the game's composer Morusque/Nurykabe. This version is an edit I did recently, slightly shorter than the original and focusing on the more rhythmical parts of the remix. The mixing has been redone and a few touch ups have been made. My inspiration for the first half was the soundtrack from the anime Full Metal Panic, and the second half was inspired by the soundtrack from ArtePiazza's Opoona. Hopefully it's enjoyable even if you're not familiar with this fun indie puzzler. ☺️ It's a really joyful and creative soundtrack. I'll link the sources below if you're interested. <3

I'm may not be overly familiar with the source, but it's awesome to hear mixes from you again Deej. Nice work with the orchestration in the first half mixed with the rhythms, and great work with that lead melody in the second half as well dude!