Patrick Burns

I would think/hope that anyone who pledged is both willing and accessible in case a new pledge drive through a new channel with altered language is required.

You put together a nice atmosphere here. The temperature of the beat is nice and the form of the song does feel like it's calmly heading somewhere. The way the ending happened however, I felt like I got snagged in a tree instead of dissipated out into the stratosphere like I wanted . . . Like you said, it is pretty liberal. I know both of the top source tunes, and I didn't really recognize either. As far as production goes, there feels like too much competition in the 300 - 900Hz range.

Thanks for the positive feedback guys -- yeah, Orange Juice was my first real remix after coming to OCR for the first time and hearing Mazedude's Bubbly Clouds. Wanna hear something funny? This one is technically my first mixing attempt, about 10 years ago -- two tracks recorded with the help of a metronome and a CD burner that recorded from live input Rozo, thanks for the listen. I've updated the link in the first post with a revised version that addresses your comments . . . if you could at least run the sub by your ears again I'd really appreciate it. I'm currently working away from home for the summer, and my only option to mix that end of the spectrum is to sit in my car with my mp3-to-cassette adapter. (I think there was a lot of low end craziness coming out of Sculpture that needed some band-specific taming.) And is the name "Double Rainbow" too corny?

I removed the link from the home page; here's the music -- most of it's outdated and not stuff I'm comfortable showing off anymore -- I just finished school and I'm trying to decide what paths/image I'm going to pursue. I can't decide whether to finish my score portfolio and head to LA for grad school (and grunt-work), to just enjoy myself and focus on playing guitar/singing, or to invest in expanding my electronic toolset . . .

the front plate says TOBEJUDGED, the back plate says RESUB

colors on the site header

see first post -- this one feels pretty solid to me

thanks guys -- those were helpful comments and I hopefully addressed them all, assuming I knew which low notes you meant, Servbot. I'm going to wrap up the beginning and end real quick and submit it soon

$20k: OverClocked Escort Service

Update: [submitted] // // • less abrupt ending (scrapped my planned intro/ending due to technical difficulties) • lots of mixing adjustments to the low end, and overall • transition/pad adjustments • misc tweaks everywhere I think it's there . . . except for one rendering error on a bell in the intro Original Post: These two songs -- Grape Garden and Rainbow Resort -- are originally from Kirby's Adventure (where I heard them), but they've been used in so many Kirby games at this point, they're basically just Kirby songs. (Kirby's Adventure has some of my favorite music, and my first remix ever was Orange Ocean.) I started this almost two years ago, but I was only able to solve a lot of its problems when I fired it up again a couple weeks ago. I probably won't keep this link up for very long -- I just wanted to get a few impressions and make sure there was nothing too annoying about it. I'm pretty fond of it -- I still have yet to add the intro I envision, and the ending may still be a bit unfinished. - Patrick

Wow, what amazing support and trust for the members of the project and the OCR staff. I'm amazed at that response, but I guess I really shouldn't be. Being motivated just by open love of something and a desire for excellence can go a long way.

My only advice is emotional: I guarantee that you will be SO MUCH happier if you just move with the tides and let them have the name. Yes, when I read the letters and saw the level of vanity on their website, my jimmies were rustled, if you will . . . but don't get pulled into this. Your music won't be affected by a name change; it will be affected by an embattled spirit, regardless of the possibility of financial loss. Also, to echo whomever said it, it's my understanding that if you submit a request to register 'prophetik music' it will take years before that trademark is admissible in court. (I'm not a lawyer though.) I would find a new name, but keep your domain and try leaving up a simple webpage that very simply and directly informs any wandering fans of the name change. Put a link to your new domain, and put links to the prophetik fasion websites too. This should help boost their sites above your old site thereby (hopefully) placating them, while still leaving the portal for fans to discover your new name and giving your new site a little SEO assistance. Your music is a labor of love -- not a labor for capital -- so in this case don't confuse the symbol with the referent. Change the name, play your music, enjoy yourself. edit: find some obscure mineral and name yourself after it

This has got some great moments in it -- Depth Perception and The Evolution of Flight are great tunes, and Lift Off and Freefall have some really good understated syncopations

Well, having a specific list in which people might see something they love makes them more likely to go "hey this is for me, I'll do it." Also, I like those songs. And I don't see anything that calls for an apology!

Thanks to those that have responded -- I am reading very closely, and I enjoy your responses personally, apart from my research, simply cause I love these tunes. Since I assume anyone reading this far down has either participated or has decided not to, I can explain a little bit. One thing I'm looking at is the interaction between describing a piece of music's social/associative life -- anything it usually plays with, anything the song reminds you of -- versus attempts to objectify the music -- that is, attempts to look at the music as a product or structure in and of itself. I'm just exploring when people might tend towards one style of discourse or the other, and if given the chance -- if both forms of dialogue are available -- which one a person might choose. As video game music fans, it's pretty cool that, for any given game, we can find a community of people who have the same powerful associations surrounding these tunes as we ourselves do. Given the chance, do we tend to favor discourses of associations instead of examining the music as a self-contained object with in-built meanings? Personally, I find that I prefer the former almost exclusively -- when I'm fortunate enough to have someone to talk to with those same powerful external meanings for the music. Now, when we instead get into the subject of discussing music creation, then objectifying the music might start to play a more prominent role for some people. (E.g. naming its components with music theory, reconsidering its form, discussing means of production to name a few possible ways of objectifying the music.) I've left the topic of making music out of this discussion, however. (I'm thinking a little about it now, though. Similar to how a strong shared social experience of listening creates an atmosphere for talking about the music through association instead of objectification -- perhaps, similarly, a strong shared social experience of creating music [perhaps a culture where children all learn collectively and participate regularly together] also creates an atmosphere of discussing music creation through associations instead of objectification [i.e. music theory] ) Perhaps my ultimate hopeful conclusion, somewhere down the line, is that wherever you find a high usage of objectifying language for a particular kind of music (contemporary Western art music, for example), you will also find a correlating lack of shared social experience for that music for those using said language. Behind all the jargon, that's not the most groundbreaking idea, but -- it's the paper I'm trying to write.

Yes, the vagueness is a problem -- I'm trying to see how people respond to that. I'm not looking for a specific sort of language -- some people would interpret the need for music theory, others not. The bit about not describing context -- what I mean is that you're trying to imagine someone's experience, not shape it. I'll consider a better way to word that so it's less confusing. I can't put a writing example in without altering what someone would think to say on their own, without affecting the kind of language they would assume is appropriate.

Hello, everyone. I'm doing a little ethnographic survey, and I think some of you guys might be able to help me out. Just follow the directions below if you're interested. Step 1: Don't scroll down to see other people's responses before you respond. Just read these steps and give it a shot. Step 2: Choose/download ONE song from the following list -- from a game that you know very well (you may listen to as many as you want, but choose one): World of Warcraft Advance Wars (If you don't see a game you're really familiar with, you can choose your own song if you wish.) Step 3: Listen through that track. (Obvious, but it needs to be said.) Step 4: Now you're going to write a little bit about the clip you chose. You're going to write three different short paragraphs (try to keep it somewhere around 60 words per paragraph, give or take a tablespoon -- but if you want to write less or more, go for it). Each paragraph will have a different reader in mind: 1) one will be directed towards another big fan of the game 2) another will be directed at a typical person in the game music community (someone familiar with the sights, sounds, and people of game music) 3) the last will be directed at someone who is unfamiliar with anything game music related Now here's what I want you to write. (This is going to be a really vague prompt, but do your best.) In each paragraph, write in order to give that listener a sense of the track before they hear it, as if you're about to play it for them. Write as if you're talking to them; you're not going to be singing the track. Describe whatever you think they will hear, whatever will be the most prominent or immediate things happening for them, be they feelings/sounds/thoughts/images/notes/associations/ or anything. You want them to feel as little surprise, if you will, about the track as possible, based on your sense of the situation. Basically, translate their experience into words before they hear it. Obviously, there's a hundred ways people could approach this; just chose what seems natural to you. I know this is vague, but I can't provide a writing sample without affecting what you would think to do naturally. I can't casually list possible approaches without affecting your response. There's no specific right way to do this. ***** Some thoughts: • I know we can't begin to encapsulate what music does to us in 60 or even a hundred thousand words. Just do your best. • If the precise name of the clip or its location in-game does not immediately occur to you, don't worry, and don't rack your brain trying to conjure it. Just follow the prompt. • Your goal is NOT to provide for them a context or a "way inside" the piece; you're just trying to prepare them for what they're about to experience based on your sense of the track and your sense of what they'll sense. Imagine their experience; don't set out to shape it. • There's no need to artificially contrast your three descriptions; if you think two or all three groups will experience it similarly, write just that. • Someone asked, "if they're a fan of the game, won't they be unsurprised completely by the track?" Maybe surprise is too strong a word, but imagine how you felt, as a fan of the game, hearing that specific unnamed track from the game -- then imagine how that experience could have been most prepared in a short paragraph (ultimately futile, I know). • Thanks for taking the time to do this. - Patrick

In a matter of weeks I'll get my undergraduate degree in music, and I have no solid plans. Over the past four years, I've discovered that I have some skill and interest in music scholarship, so there's a real chance that I'll never leave school and end up being a professor. As inauthentic as I feel wearing a tie and talking about music, I'd prefer that role to many other possible ones. I mean, take my jazz band teacher as an example. He studies the music he loves, spends time around young optimistic people, takes his ensembles on world trips once or twice a year, and gets summers/christmases off (except for writing articles and shit, lol). On the other hand, I'm also putting the finishing touches on a portfolio for a film scoring graduate program -- for that path, I'd move out to LA and work like a dog for the foreseeable future. But I don't know if I'm good enough to be a composer. I just don't write music very quickly. And there really are very few things that get my blood boiling more than trying to work with notation software. So I've got some big decisions ahead of me. There's a part of me that is very resistant to staying in academia, a part of me that sees music scholarship as, at the end of the day, a lie. You know how Lao Tzu said roughly, "the tao that can be spoken is not the true tao" and yet continued to keep talking about it anyway? That's how I feel about music scholarship. But while I have fundamental reservations, I still recognize that I can be good at it, that I'd be willing to dance that dance in place of other less desirable careers. I dabbled in audio engineering for a while, but I'm just not a gear head, and I can't stand setting up for recording sessions or -- even though it's one of my jobs -- doing live sound. So much little shit that goes wrong, so many software bugs, so much anal retentiveness about audio quality... it's great to be around music like that, but I'm not cut out for the work, the attention style, etc. Of course, there are totally worse day jobs out there. So yeah, that's me right now.

I agree with Moseph and WillRock. But it's still a bit different these days, especially since that Nicky Minaj youtube video has made (it appears) tens of thousands of dollars in just 2 days, and I assume will eventually make hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars. Music can play to different aspects of life -- some music, Stupid Hoe perhaps, is loaded with a lot of really specific social meanings and signals, and not just in the lyrics. The Nicky Minaj character, the ways she inflects her voice, the genealogy of the production, the repetition, the video . . . it all works together to create meaning -- even if you still think it's crap. But, of course, if we wanted to look at that piece through the lens of purely "musical" characteristics (it's up to you to define that), then yeah -- definitely crap. This battle between innate musical characteristics and social meaning has been around for a long time in music criticism, (ethno)musicology, etc. Old fogies like Schoenberg and Theodore Adorno argue that music should be criticised (and ideally consumed/experienced) based on the innate musical characteristics present in the piece: form, motivic manipulation, etc. More recently, (ethno)musicology has emphasized more the social meaning of works. But regardless of how academia has evolved, I think it's obvious that, for whatever reasons (technology, etc), social meaning can take music a lot further these days than it used to, and the industry has grown around that. Hence, it's easy to say a lot of music sucks these days -- especially when you're not the targeted audience of meaning. Also -- with the youtube setup -- anything freakish is potentially valuable, so there's that.

Nice synthesis -- With soundtracks like this one, in which timbre and texture are central to the overall feel, it's difficult to pull off a remix that harkens back to the original. But you did a good job of choosing sounds that don't clash with the Machinarium feel. kudos

For about 18 years, most of the important activities in my life have in someway been connected to certain Apple products. For better or worse, Apple has had a big effect on me. interesting how Steve Jobs has been of interest to people through many different lenses: technology/design, business insight, management style, image power, etc.

Does anyone know the name of this song? (Ignore the conversation and the sound of me eating ice cream

Really really great -- you're good at sequencing movement, man. Keep it up. edit: but I can't help but feel a little coitus interruptus with the ending but not in an awkward way

There's always going to be give and take. As artists, if we want to benefit from the exposure OCR can provide, we have to pay homage to the infrastructure that gives it form and keeps it afloat. That structure does zap the occasional charming track these days, but it's the closest thing they have to objective quality control. (Which is amazing seeing as how they're all volunteers.) Still diggin' your track, by the way.