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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

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

I'm happy to announce a couple of staffing changes here at OCR. First up, I wanna welcome @Hemophiliac to our Judges Panel! Hemo's been putting in the work for the last few years as one of our Workshop Evaluators, and has also stepped up in the past few months to handle a lot of the visualizers for the remixes you see on our YouTube channel. He's an active presence in our community and has a lot of helpful advice in the Workshop. We're glad to add him to the panel. Look forward to getting some fresh new NO votes on your tracks! Speaking of Workshop Evaluators, a few months ago we retired our Ready for Review process in the Workshop because we felt that it was a cumbersome extra layer of evaluation prior to submitting to the Judge's Panel. Our Evaluators did a lot of great work over the years but we're retiring that role. In it's place, we're introducing our new team called Sages! Sages are active artists in our community who'll be in the Workshop giving feedback on remixes, posting tutorials, and coming up with their own ways to revitalize and energize the Workshop. Our three new Sages are @Xaleph, @pixelseph, and @paradiddlesjosh! We're glad to have some fresh faces on staff, and I'm personally looking forward to seeing what these folks have in store for us. -- DarkeSword

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!

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/

Starting today, the sharing of music generated by feeding a prompt into AI-software is prohibited on OC ReMix, both here on the forums and on our Discord. LLMs, AI, and other machine-learning technologies are both interesting and impressive, but the implementation of these technologies in popular usage rely largely on unethical training practices. Copyrighted works are used without artist consent to train commercial AI-models. Moreover, OverClocked ReMix has, over the course of over 20 years, established itself as a place for artists to learn about the composition and production of music and hone their craft. We ask artists to pay tribute to VGM through the art of interpretation; we're looking for the personal spin, the human touch. I, personally, don't believe audio generated by a machine-learning algorithm is doing that. There are ethical implementations of AI-technology in the music sphere, such as sample libraries, physical modeling software, and audio production suites that use machine-learning to perform complicated tasks that an artist can use in the production process. Sharing music that uses this kind of tech is absolutely fine. But tracks generated wholly or in-part by services like Suno and Udio (among others) do not belong here. And just to clarify, the discussion of machine-learning, LLMs, and AI here at OC ReMix is not prohibited, but should be tempered by an understanding of the goals of our community, which include artistic development and education and the appreciation of VGM through thoughtful exploration and interpretation. Thanks. -- DarkeSword

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.

I'm really excited - we have some cool stuff planned ahead!

It's a huge pleasure to be fulfilling this role! Over the coming weeks, you'll be seeing my mug replying to your posts in the workshop and (if I'm doing things right) I'll be providing you with means to make improvements to your writing, arranging, and/or mixing. Can't wait to hear more of what y'all have cooking out there!

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!

Very difficult question. I will not answer with Bundeslang. So many different styles and genres. Favorite is also a very hard term, I fill this in as personal like the most (and genre helps with this). Still (to mention one name) I go for one of the names in the beginning of the contest: Sir Nuts. Perhaps we can do a contest/round one day (maybe a yearly free round or something like that), who knows...

Awesome to see this Sage business! This is important stuff. Just yesterday I was talking about OC ReMix's rare feedback culture to a musician friend of mine. Can't wait to see what you come up with.

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!

good job everyone

I say we should give Netscape Navigator 9 another shot.

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. 🎄

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!

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.

Welcome to Game Set Mash!!, a team-based, long-form competition format for the OC ReMix community! Current Status 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.

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.

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!

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!

The Sages have been killing it with their Wednesday night Office Hours sessions on Discord! If you're needing musical feedback and growth advice, y'all gotta be in there. :-)

There's not much that can be added on top of the stellar critiques you've received so far, and I won't bore you with technical FFT analysis and stats. Imma just tell ya how I feel about the arrange, and of course take it all with a bucket of salt cuz I'm nobody and this is just my unimportant opinion. ? It's refreshing to hear a take on 'Blizzard Buffy' that isn't the usual fast paced EDM or Metal. The 'meandering' nature of the piece is part of the charm, and I believe you've achieved a cohesive wintery aesthetic coherent with the theme of the album. The slow building intro and winding outro, on top of setting up the scene properly, also showcase an eye for worldbuilding and composition. As someone who both partake in and appreciate the work that goes into an audiodrama, I give ya props for going the extra mile and adding Buffy's stomps and groans to add context to the arrangement in a way that surely fits this 'filmscore' interpretation. Now let's talk address the elephant in the room, 3 times heavyweight champion: Mr Glockenspiel. While a fitting instrument choice to an Xmas theme, it has been processed in a way that boosts its natural resonance beyond what a human ear is designed to contain ?. It may or may not be due to the sample itself, but I suspect toning down the salad dressing on the ol' glock would remedy this small, if pivotal inconvenience. One thing that would greatly help this remix stand out, especially in regard to the genre you're going for, would be to work on strengthening bridges between parts of the track. The piece as a whole proves you've got the arrangement chops to make this a hit. But each transition feels like an afterthought, almost as if you were ice skating from one part of the source to the next. It's never jarring, but if you put the same care/thought into them as you did for the intro and outro, this could truly elevate the whole song. ? The bombastic middle section from 2:35 onwards sees the return of our favorite superhero, Captain Glockenspiel, which once again shatters my heart by dancing without a care on top of an entire orchestra that is trying its best to convey the source material. It's a bummer because you've clearly put all the stops for this part, and imho this is legitimately well done. But that repeating leitmotiv on glock should be a background dancer, not the vocaloid Diva it's trying to impersonate. I'd also push the thunderous percs back slightly, as they seem to impact overall dynamics, and to let the orchestra breathe so the source melody can properly dominate the soundscape during the fulcrum point, one of the only instance where the audience can hear your interpretation in an uninterrupted sequence. The last section before the outro features a kick that's (I'm guessing) intentionally simulating a heartbeat and its acceleration as the piece/fight reaches its conclusion. It feels estranged and anachronistic to the rest of the conventional orchestra instruments. Also its overpowering the lows, as any Trap kick should, except in this case the sample's character is clashing with an already busy composition while trying to compensate for the orch lows you didn't write. Otherwise, that section is a wonderful way to wind down before the outro. All in all, this is a captivating arrangement that confidently tells its story in a brave yet understated way. It only needs a little more love to reach its full potential, and I'm confident you'll get there in no time, with all the great feedback from remixers and staff alike. Gambare VQ! ?

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.

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

I made a list of 25 ReMixes I really like. Certainly not a favorites list (but many of them are favorites. Maybe it's a partial favorites list.). There's something special about each of them to me. Can't put it into words for many of them. They just resonate, you know? 137: Super Mario 64 – Liquid Mario (MkVaff) 469: Final Fantasy VII - Seven Degrees of Judgment (Rosencrantz & guildensternN) 511: Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Mud Mix (Scott Peeples) 814: Final Fantasy IX - dubnofantasyaloneman (DJ Pretzel) 821: Perfect Dark – Air Force One is Down! (Danny Baronowsky) 1008: Final Fantasy VII - Of Transformants and Brevity (zykO) 1403: Pac-Man – Glass Cage (Israfel) 1527: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 – Walk on Water (housethegrate) 1642: Super Mario RPG – Leafcutter (Radiowar) 1657: Shadow of the Colossus – Wanderer on the Offensive (Live Edit) (B33J, Cerrax, Juan Medrano, nonsensicalexis) 1759: Donkey Kong Country - Lost in Jungle (Johan Krafft) 1770: Super Metroid - Samus Bubblebath (Shnabubula) 1984: Secret of Mana - Step Off My Flower Bed (Nase) 2000: Donkey Kong Country 2 – Re-Skewed (David Wise, Grant Kirkhope, Robin Beanland) 2982: Metroid – Cancer (Redg) 3068: Super Smash Bros. Melee – S-Tier (Flexstyle, OceansAndrew) 3119: Dark Souls II – Like a Dream (RoeTaKa) 3203: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Ocean Lanterns (Emunator) 3393: Skies of Arcadia – Undervalued (Kylok, Bree) 3831: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Pajarito Paiso (Audio Mocha) 3851: Sonic CD - Dream Current (Rebecca E. Tripp) 4118: Power Drift – Velocity: Fueled by Sake (Katajun, Manny, Sagnewshreds, Trohnics) 4429: Mario Paint - I have Seen the yellow paint (jmr) 4585: Pokemon Red Version – Look at All the Ships! (ZackParrish, Pearl Pixel, Jeff Ball) ????: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Animal Counterpoint (prophetik music; not on OCR mix technically but it's on an album so I count it)

Shit, I can double dip on threads then.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2025 everyone! 🎄🎅🏽 Happy to see this tradition still going strong after 18 years and a big thank you for your efforts on this again TC ❤️

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

Hudak was the perfect choice for a leadout track, hell yes

OK, so I've been holding off on voting on GSM tracks because of my involvement in the competition, but since we're limited on judge bandwidth and this is still sitting here with one vote on it, I'll jump in and give my two cents. Yeah, this source is cursed for SURE. Fair enough though, we hit you with Environmental Mystery in Round 2 and that's just as unwieldy in a different way. The source usage checks out even if it's obviously not the catchiest material from the Castlevania side, and the triumphant Super Metroid melody makes for an insanely rewarding payoff. On the production side, this goes all-in, and you're quickly proving why you're one of the most promising up-and-coming electronic artists in the community. You really don't hold back on your processing, and it's abundantly clear that you put a lot of love into every little detail, fill, filter sweep, and transition so that you're never just coasting on autopilot. There's an inherent challenge to mixing a track like this, but when you're doing the DOOM thing, a little bit of crunch and mud in the mixing isn't always a bad thing. Let's ship this one off, this is clearly strong stuff by Treyt as the ringleader who also made really brilliant use of the contributions from the rest of the team, as well. Great work! YES

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

Howdy, Master Mi! Besides calculating time-based effect durations, you can also use this calculation to place studio monitors in your space. First things first: the speed of sound through a given medium depends on the medium's density (and temperature). At room temperature (20C or 68F), the speed of sound through the air is 343 meters/second (about 1,125 feet/second), slower at lower temperatures and faster at higher temps. To calculate space in time-based effects like reverb and delay, that's 343 millimeters per millisecond (343 mm/ms) or about 1.125 feet per millisecond (1.12533 ft/ms). Next, sound waves radiate from the source -- almost perfectly spherical in lower frequencies and more directionally as the frequencies climb. A spherical room with a radius of about 11.25 feet will have early reflections (i.e. bounce off the walls) at 10ms. Of course, no room is spherical; most are rectangular prisms or combinations of 3D shapes, so you'd need to measure the distance from a given point in a room to all the faces (walls, floor, ceiling) to determine the travel time for the sound to reach that point from the wall and vice versa. Because higher-frequency sounds have smaller wavelengths, they lose energy faster than lower-frequency sounds. For especially large rooms like your cathedral example, it'll be necessary to roll the high frequencies off in your reverbs and/or delays for realism (and lower frequencies for mix balance). I like rolling off at 360Hz (high pass/low cut) and 3600Hz (low pass/high cut) as starting points but play around with these to suit your production. Regardless of the other dimensions, the average height for human males is about 1.77 meters (5.8 feet), while human females stand at about 1.63 meters (5.35 feet) so the time for a sound to travel from human-ish height to the floor is about 4.75-5.1 ms (1630 to 1770/343 or 5.35 to 5.8/1.125). But unless the sound source is facing the ground, most of this first reflection is likely not getting through your HPF. For the distances to other surfaces, convert the distance to either millimeters or feet and divide by either 343 (mm/ms) or 1.125 (ft/ms). It'll be up to you to decide how big you want this cathedral to be and calculate accordingly. You can also fudge those delay timings to simulate a colder or warmer room -- e.g. at 0C or 32F (freezing point of water), the speed of sound is about 331 m/s (1086 ft/s), or 331 mm/ms (1.086 ft/ms), so the time to the floor is about 4.9-5.3 ms. Not much slower for the first reflection, but the difference is more noticeable for further surfaces.

yeah, i got lucky a few days back, in the morning. this old fav tune sprang into my mind, green hills (actually, stage 5 in the 8 bit sonic 2!) it's pretty WIP-y after 2 minute mark. i'm a bit stuck for now, but idea is a buildup of course, to something.

Here are some of my recommended tools I've used the most (I'll mark which ones were already mentioned as "*"): Drums (Libraries) - *ISW Shreddage Drums Heavocity Damage Drums (Samples) - I always go back to these Platinum Percussion (great for world music) BHK D&B Rough Connections Vol. 4, Bladerunner Dread Drum & Bass (for fast music) Equipped Music - Smoker's Relight Vol. 1, Vol. 2 (for Downtempo music) Black Octopus Leviathan (for hardcore EDM) Goldbaby Drums (MPC60 Vol. 1-3, When Alien Drum Robots Attack Vol. 1-2, for general use) Synths - I always go back to these *u-he Zebra2 (for practically ALL of my music honestly) *Xfer Records Serum (mostly for dubstep) Samples - 4Front TruePianos (physical model actually) *Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Trilian ISW PEARL: Concert Grand (truly an amazing Yamaha C7) ISW Resonance: Emotional Mallets (mostly for glassy percussion) Embertone Friedlander Violin and Blakus Cello (usually as solo instruments) OTS Evolution Acoustic Guitar (Steel Strings) Neo-Soul Suitcase (realistic electric piano, if I wasn't satisfied with just synthesizing that in Zebra2) Transitions (Samples) - I always go back to these ISW Juggernaut: Cinematic Electronic Scoring Tools Effects - u-he Uhbik (mostly "T" [tremolo] and "G" [granular]) *Guitar Rig Effects (free or nearly so) - Variety of Sounds Density MKIII (compressor), NastyDLA MKII (delay) *kiloHearts Essentials (most notably, Ring Modulator and Transient Shaper) ISW SNESVerb (SNES reverb emulator, $20) digitalfishphones endorphin (compressor) *dBlue Glitch v1.3 (free) and v2 ($60) Lofi Plus (bitcrusher; hard to find, let me know if you need a link) Sonalksis FreeG Stereo (Gate Plugin) Misc (free) - I always go back to these s(M)exoscope (spectroscope to check waveform loudness) *TDR Nova (Equalizer with Sum and Difference capabilities) TLs-Pocket Limiter (simple, soft knee limiter. Never got overcompression since!)

That's what I've always loved about OCR. Y'all care about human interpretation, performance realism, personal touch, and other aspects of music that go underappreciated by the casual listeners out there. At first I thought the perspective towards AI-generated music was because of that philosophy, but I do understand that there is also the bit about unethical training practices. Good to see OCR still going strong, and I hope to continue seeing real music coming out from real artists, using real production efforts and/or real studio time!

Everything happening from 1:50 to 2:00 was absolutely phenomenal. This remix was definitely an absolute jam. Very well produced, it hits hard and rocks!

This is an interesting topic I've been thinking a lot of lately because the recent hype with AI generated music got me in a time when I just released my first original music album. Since I'm still learning and lacking of experience the results aren't that great so some people might prejudge that and assume it's AI, even though actually I manually wrote every single note in the pianoroll. But it was a pleasant surprise to see you all pointed at exactly the points I'm concerned of. It's not about results but more about the process. Nowadays AI generated music might be still mediocre, to say the least, but even if it eventually got real good... there's something special about the satisfaction of simply having your work done after all the time and work spent. You kinda grew with your works in a way that it makes them more like friends you build memories and stories with, and when you finally see them ready to be published you feel like you accomplished something you can be proud of. It don't matters if the compositions or arrangements are bland, if the mix sounds horrible or the genres/styles are not everyone's cup of tea. It's your work and you love it and want others to enjoy it just as you enjoyed the process, with all its moments of both tediousness and happiness. And then you keep learning and being able to do more and better stuff as you keep trying and doing more and more of that. If all you did to get it done is just writing some text line in a web/app form, however... where's the story? Where's that special feel that may connect both artists and listeners? That work ends being nothing but some randomly generated product, very much like any of these old Flash avatar generators. Music making can be often too hard and frustrating, especially if you are under disfavorable conditions of some kind (like lacking proper tools, dealing with ancient hardware, being in some kind of depression or any mental craps that makes everything even harder, etc), so I can totally understand people loving the idea of having access to such a task with just asking some cold and emotionless AI. I'm all into making things as easy as possible for anyone to show their creativity to the world, actually. But making things easier is one thing; and I can see how practical AI tools can be to just ease some parts of the process; but for the end-product? That's a totally different thing that does nothing good for creativity but rather the opposite.

Hello, I'm sharing a wip for a remix of Tomorrow and Tomorrow after receiving live feedback on the OCremix discord. The goal was to mimic the style of Imagine Dragons (ie Warriors) Source from 0:00 - 1:05 of and below is a earlier wip to compare changes I've made (for better or worse)