ella guro

wow, thanks! i didn't expect anyone out there to have this track. i think i have all of the other ones from IMC10, but it's nice to know someone else out there still has them. i can't believe how long all of this was ago! it was literally more than half my life ago, lol.

i wasn't super active then (also different name) but i was around back in 2002/2003. i haven't been around per se in recent years, but i have been thinking about doing a remix or two (or perhaps a remix album) at some point in the future

hey - i know this was a long time ago but i'm just wondering if any of these mirrors are still up anywhere? herograw's .rar file download seems to work but nothing else. i was specifically looking for the track "Jenova Rose" by Wintermute from IMC10 because i used to have it and it mysteriously disappeared. it looks like it was on one of these archives though, just not the one herograw has. also i have all the rest of the tracks from IMC10, including the ones that appear to have been missing as of 10 years ago. dunno if anyone cares, but if they do i can still upload them.

hey! in case any of y'all are curious what i'm up to musically these days, i just released an album called SCRAPS yesterday on bandcamp. it's pay what you want. it's sort of a cleansing exercise, to let go of old material that i'm never gonna finish but thought people might like to hear in a little sampler platter-type format. a lot of it is cleaned up demos and stuff of when i was more active on here (from around 2002-2005) - and there are several bits and pieces of videogame music arrangements. probably the most substantial/complete one is .on another note, i have a soundcloud page with a couple of themes i did for games recently (and a better-encoded version of a remix on here) here: http://soundcloud.com/ella-guro and i also now have a facebook page where you can keep track of my music escapades: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ella-Guro/595685913775299?ref=hl thank you! enjoy!

an obvious mention, but Boards of Canada are great. Geogaddi is my favorite album of theirs.

apogee was my life when i was younger! DOS games were the only real games i owned for a long time. i'd say my favorites are (having gone back and played these pretty recently): 1. Commander Keen or 2. (the other two Duke 1 episodes definitely have their moments, but aren't as consistent as the first)3. also, honorable mention to (this is ignoring the obvious choices of Wolf 3D, Duke 3D etc) oh, right. Jill of the Jungle isn't an Apogee game. well, whatever.

my post was a bit flippant, so sure. i think a dominant trend with people who are interested in technology of any kind is that there's a heavy degree of gear fetishism that comes with it. this makes sense, because they're excited by new advances in technology allowing them to do something they couldn't before. and i mean, it wouldn't try to argue that having access to extremely powerful recording/sequencing equipment on any computer isn't an enormous boon for creative people, because it is. hence the link to Björk saying that if there's no soul in electronic music it's because no one put it there, and not it's not the tools' fault. it's been said before but computer music really is the new "punk". so i'm all for that, 100% what bothers me is when i feel like the engineers are taking over the creative process. for me, personally, because i'm much more of an emotional than a technical person, i get tired of the constant gear talk that goes around electronic music-making circles. i like exploring new tools a lot, but it's very much secondary to the music-making process, to me. i've been shown a few high-end plugins that a lot of people use, and messing around them made me extremely nervous. why? one was that i felt i had to be an engineer to actually understand what i was doing. but ignoring my incompetence, i mostly felt they were doing all the work for me. and the most important part of making music, for me, is the process of exploring and building the sounds i have from scratch, so that i can form some kind of unique sound for what i'm doing. if the sound is already heavily defined for me, it feels like i'm just following a template. and i don't find that enjoyable - that's not why i do music. i know that other people are fine with music like that, and i have no problems with that. but i often feel like the tools are more built for a more left-brained approach towards composition than they are towards an open one. i mean, i get anxious about using a lot of sequencers because these days because i feel like they're built for pushing me towards making a certain type of music. even the ones that are supposed to allow you to do all kinds of different things. and i know you can make any kind music with FL or Reason or whatever, but i don't think it's a complete coincidence that the majority of the music that gets made with those tools sounds similar. what sounds good also is a huge matter of subjectivity - i have a mix on this site with a sound i really enjoy, but a lot of people think it sounds horrible. and i'm not really in a place to say they're wrong or i'm right, but i wasn't going to not make it just because i thought some people wouldn't like it. and i'm also very much a fan of The Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" album, for example, which has an extremely blown out sound that would be any engineer's nightmare. or Sleater-Kinney's " ". i approach sound more like sound-painting - how well does the sound realize the world that the composer is trying to achieve? and it bothers me that some people try to marginalize that approach, like it's overly pretentious or it doesn't exist, because that's the whole reason i'm doing music in the first place. i agree that chiptunes are a fad right now. i probably am as tired of them as you are. but fads based around a certain "sound" have been going on since the beginning of popular music.

http://youtu.be/ldP7I3OfQYU#t=3m44s i agree with the premise of the article that we've fetishized the technology to a huge degree at the expense of the actual compositions

My two cents: do lots of work, find a niche, find people you connect with, make friends, be as persistent as possible, be positive, keep in contact with people as much as you can. It's not easy (and I'm definitely not there yet) but it's certainly very doable, and absolutely worth your time if it's what you really want to do. I mean, in general, if you really want to do something, don't let anything or anyone stop you from doing it. If you don't really want to do it, then that's another thing. But even when it is true that some people are luckier than others, it's never helpful to make excuses.

I have an expo pass, so I'm sure I will see some of you all there!

...sucks. but yes I think it has a lot to do with the cultural climate videogames have developed around, as well as how young they are.

anything this guy drums in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_White_(drummer)

I just discovered this thread from some random browsing, so I thought I might add some thoughts (since the OP asked me for them) It is interesting to think about the place things like game remixes will occupy in the future. What purpose do remixes serve? Are they always artistically subjugated to original music because of nostalgia factor heavily weighing in? Why would you do a really weird, crazy interpretation of a well-known theme instead of doing weird, crazy music of your own? Now that it's possible to be heard and in some cases make a living doing original music for games, why spend a lot of time and energy rearranging other people's music? Will a place like OCR just become a launching point for people wanting to do original music? Though it is much easier to get exposure for original music now than it was when OCR was in its infancy, I don't think there's any danger in remixes or rearrangements becoming less relevant, or whatever. Though there is often a higher degree of risk/excitement in original music, arranging can also be exciting and interesting. I think a lot of it is about recontextualizing past experiences, or seeing well-known tunes from a new angle. Of course some of it is just that there are some really fuckin' great melodies that are in danger of going unnoticed because of a thing's obscurity, or being ignored just for being in a game even when they are more compositionally interesting than a lot of other things. Game music especially has occupied a pretty unique space in the world, because the technology of older games necessitated doing a kind of music that hadn't exactly existed before that point. And that's rad. The more people see how truly unique and important game music has been, the better. Coming back to the thread topic, it's a little hard for me to separate nostalgia from interpretation, because I feel like they both come into play most of the time. Nostalgia does have the tendency to make people just wanna revisit their experiences verbatim instead of doing anything new with them. So it can be a barrier to creativity and/or open-mindedness. But it also often the source of inspiration, the reason why you were moved enough to do an arrangement in the first place.

on a related note, The Shizz had a Top 30 NES soundtracks poll awhile back, the results of which are definitely worth checking out: http://good-evil.net/features/good-evil-presents-the-shizz-top-30-nes-soundtracks

A few months ago I played this for some old housemates of mine. Midway through, the girlfriend of one of them turned to him and half-whispered "this doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before." I think that's probably the best compliment I've ever received.

i've already added a lot of ocr people, but mine is http://gplus.to/ellaguro

I love sad things FF6 - Kids Run Through The City Corner (I was going to mention the opera/Celes theme but I'll wait for someone else to do that) It's not expliclity a "sad theme", but it always made me feel very sad. It's the sound of a bittersweet nostalgia from a troubled town soon to be ravaged by war. This theme isn't original to the game, but I wanted to mention it because it makes me cry possibly more than any piece of music I've ever heard. It might be hard to explain this one since the whistle at the beginning probably throws some people off. The melody is one of my favorite game melodies ever, it's just so jazzy but subdued and very bittersweet. Maybe I'm just a sucker for violin. I've never played Grandia but someone sent an mp3 of this to me and it's been on my mind ever since. It's a cliche image, but I imagine the sun setting on a beach with two people sitting by each other, just staring off in the distance. After the heart-rendering last boss battle of Earthbound it only seems appropriate to have this song there to sum up all your experiences. I have sort of a personal history with this tune, I remember playing this game when I was young and had a bad ear infection. When the game breaks from it's relatively normal worlds into these cosmic abstractions and the northern lights are showing, it had an oddly profoundly affect on me. And I doubt it would have if not for this theme. This one so perfectly encapsulates the feel of "that great big world out there" and all the mystery and sadness that's far beyond your grasp or comprehension. I swear I will do an arrangement of this theme someday. It's just, like, this mysterious world in the past, the sadness of time, feelings of things that have been lost. It's hard to describe, but Mitsuda is excellent at this. There are a lot of sad themes in Zelda 64 but even with the fake voice sample, this one still kills me every time. I love Malon, I always thought she was meant to be Link's romantic interest. And that ranch is such a sad and beautiful place, especially when the sun is setting and it's late in the game. You really feel the lonliness of the place.

I'm not often a fan of the genre but I thought this was really great. There's a lot of creativity and adventurousness on display that you don't often see in arrangements like this. The section at 1:35 is pretty out of character, in a really good way. I love how the glitchy percussion continues when it goes back to a more normal guitar-driven tone at around 2:00. The mix is a little random overall, maybe, but I've been guilty of that many times before so I can't complain. I thought the CD skipping was also a pretty awesome end.

Hey, no need to get mean. I do like reading this thread and other review threads so I can be embarrassed by some of my older posts. I do actually really like the timbre of the out of tune violin now, and think this has a haunting/off-kilter sound that really works for the source. I don't really think the arrangement goes nearly as far as it could/should but what's there is pretty effective anyway.

Super Mario RPG is the game that got me into JRPGs. I'd recommend that, if you haven't played it yet. Anachronox for the PC is a JRPG, even if it's made by an American company. It's somewhat like if there were a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy JRPG. That said, there's a slow start (and yes I know what you said about slow starts) but if you get the newest patches then you can move through it faster and the game really takes off after about two hours. The story's good and the dialogue writing is far funnier and better than what you're going to get in an average JRPG and some of the environments are pretty wonderful.

Yeah, I thought it was an obvious joke. The last three (Mass Effect 2, Super Meat Boy, Return All Robots) were kind of a punchline to the long list. I'm glad they said all the names out loud so they sounded appropriately ridiculous

Don't worry, Moguta, it wasn't you Magfest highlights, in no particular order: - hanging out a whole bunch with katie and ari once again (and katie making me up the second day) - being a whole lot more talkative than last year! - meeting old friends that I had never met in person before (shnabubula, danny b, etc) - meeting a whole bunch of new faces (chibitech, ubik, lapine, sumeet, matt pollard, a_rival, jimmy/bgc, josh welchel, alex brandon, brandon strader, wildfire, jenner, sir_arek, beatdrop, shariq, zircon, etc etc) - having quite a few good heart-to-heart conversations, both with people I'd met before and hadn't. - the kikuta panel ("give up your family") - 6am discussions about gender with bgc, danny b and alex brandon - the awesome, very hidden korean restaurant melody took us to (even though ari lost his wallet there ) - the "composers tell all" panel was quite fun, and I got to meet grant kirkhope briefly afterwords (who shared an interesting anecdote about the banjo kazooie music - apparently the reason the sounds are so percussion heavy is that those samples were shorter and took up less data) - sam and doug's dueling piano thing in the room downstairs. everyone was really enjoying themselves. - the subsequent weird emotion-laden "survivors of the night" talk between me, katie, sam, a_rival, beatdrop, and sir_arek - hanging out with sam and dhsu in the upstairs lounge on the last day with some nice piano talk - matt pollard's hilarious removal of duke nukem from his room - the party in a_rival's room where I had a "tranny triangle" going on with lapine and chibitech - sir_arek's complete and utter drunken good-naturedness - starla's costume was pretty goddamn hot, I have to say (you're a superstar, gal) - apparently quite a few people find me attractive (a nice self-confidence boost, even with some well-meaning slight creepiness (don't worry about it, moguta )) - despite the fact that it was hell finding parking there and it took forever to figure out what was going on, the restaurant Amy suggested to replace IHOP was quite good. lowlights: - the drive to Virginia (with some heroic driving from Obtuse) - the elevators - the badge wait - DoD listening party was a little bit of a letdown this year - creepy guy in the deadmau5 mask aggressively hitting on me - a_rival show was great but I kept feeling like it was too quiet :/ - running on virtually no sleep the whole weekend (but hey, I didn't want to sleep!) - having to come home - being blessed with the Mag Flu I said this to a few people before, but it bears repeating. Last year, mag was a new thing for me and I had just recently rejoined the community. I had a lot of fun, but it seemed like this weird fantasy world, a bit far off from reality. This year, mag seemed more real than my real life right now. Everyone (with only one exception) was extremely nice, almost everyone knew each other's name. I may have my disagreements and may only see you all once a year, but you guys are still family and I love you all. This year reminded me of that.

Yeah this was pretty upsetting to read. I did get at least one very persistent creeper talking to me and it was pretty uncomfortable, but not nearly as bad as what was mentioned in that thread. This is definitely something that needs to be watched for, and I know it can turn off a lot of girls from a con like this.

I had a wonderful time that I can't/don't want to sum up in a post. Thank you, everybody.

I'm more or less confirmed for mag now. Looking forward to seeing you guys in a couple of weeks!