Liontamer

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In agreement with the other Js. It is an A-B-C-D structure, but with actual care put into the transitions flowing from one theme to another, which is important in allowing to medley to flow like one cohesive composition. Transitions don't need to be overly complicated; as long as themes flow naturally from one to the next, you're all good! Good adaptation to rock and solid performances. Glad to have more La-Mulana representation here and I'm looking forward to more submissions from WASD! YES

No. Sorry to miss this from the previous thread, YB. No, we've never had a video taken down due to copyright notice. We have 23 videos out of 3,000+ that have been flagged for copyright notices; some are based on similar melodic matches to the original music, some are claimed by the artists or copyright holders, and many are false positives based on sound effect matches or similarities that we really should work on resolving now that we have a MCN that can handle this on OCR's behalf. I can create a list later, if you need.

I've only done voice stuff on a few mixes, but I'm fine with anything I'm in being used as long as the collaborators are.

Have to include some new stuff from Brandon that continues to assume the worst about how OCR is run, including the belief that mixes from popular games were posted in order to maximize YouTube revenue (ignoring all the less popular games we posted mixes from). I want to be sure people can see these accusations. My responses below: Most of you probably don’t know that recently, OC ReMix attempted to monetize videos to get revenue on YouTube. They started doing this on June 14th, 2016 but recently were forced by public response to take it off until such a time that their ducks are in a row. The monetization had been active for 2 months without any of the artists being informed or asked permission, and none of the remixes were legally licensed so that revenue made would be shared with the publisher or rights holders of the music. There were a lot of issues with this taking place, but the most glaring issue is that they did this without asking or informing anyone. They did it in a really shady manner, and tried to justify having done it by saying “nobody noticed for 2 months”. When confronted with this betrayal and questions of legality and ethics, some staff shared their opinions, while others — such as site owner djpretzel — became very defensive, and ultimately brushed concerns aside. At the end of the short discussion, I was blamed for “misrepresenting” the situation, or making OCR “toxic” by airing my concerns, speculation, and grievances. My biggest problem from the start was that they had gone behind our backs — we, the artists, who essentially provide all of the content for OCR — and did this without asking and without permission. Then, when confronted about it, they justified generating revenue on this platform outside of OCR (YouTube) by saying it’s “the same as advertisements on the OCR website.” I personally don’t see it that way. YouTube is a free service, and “remixes” need to be legally licensed so that the rights holders get their fair share of the revenue. If the YouTube aspect had been in the agreement to begin with, or if we had simply been asked if it was alright, this probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Site owner djpretzel has stated that the Content Policy will rightfully be updated to reflect changing technologies, as the original policy had been written in 2007. The second thing that bothered me about the situation is that rather than apologize, and simply state that they’re going to try to work harder to appear ethical and work more diligently to adhere to legality as much as possible, I was demonized and scapegoated by site owner djpretzel. I was, more or less, accused of “poisoning the well” as he brushed aside the negative concerns surrounding the situation. I have often, for multiple years, been critical of OC ReMix’s lack of accountability and transparency. Going forward, I will probably also be critical of their lack of trust and good will. As someone who provides content for the website, and essentially a customer (if you would consider OCR to be acompany), I am in no position to be scapegoated any more than any other customer would be for asking questions. That’s unprofessional, and demonizing me over the situation is embarrassing and shows a lack of character, something that has been coming more to the forefront with how OCR conducts its business. As a result of this whole disrespectful display, and waste of mytime, I am ready to remove all of my personal content that I produced alone from OC ReMix. However, I decided to do what OCR was not capable of and leave this decision up to the fans. Only 8 people voted in the poll I pinned on Twitter, sadly, which is hardly a sample size worthy of note. But in an age where people don’t really care that much to begin with, this is probably the best I can do outside of running the poll for a month and publicizing the situation in other ways. So in brief: I’m not going to request my content removed from OC ReMix. However, as a result of this petty, inept nonsense, I am going to be seeking other avenues to release and promote my own content — legally, and in a manner that I can’t be exploited in some way. This may mean many less submissions to OCR, and more legally licensed, high quality projects released through Loudr, available on iTunes and Spotify, in addition to original music released through similar platforms. (ed: I forgot to mention YouTube. I will still put all my new mixes on YouTube unless they’re made for a project.) I have no intention to end any of my current projects. The only difference you might see is less fresh content going towards OC ReMix from me personally, yet the projects that are currently active (FF3, FF8, others) should ultimately not be affected. I can only hope that the revenue generated by upcoming projects allows the staff to look past their grudges, as the artists involved deserve to have their content heard if they agree to release their content through OC Remix. Thank you for reading, Brandon E. Strader Sagnewshreds, on 15 Aug 2016 - 01:46 AM, said: Need to be clear that Brandon wasn't blamed for "misrepresenting" the situation, as if it were just a difference of opinion. Despite pages of discussion and details, he's continued with over-the-top conspiracy theories, fake claims of evidence, and conclusions in bad faith that were literally libel. We believe the Content Policy gives OCR the permission to republish the mixes on other sites and present advertising in the context of the submitted materials, that fair use allows us to do this without licensing the music, with the revenue going to OC ReMix as an organization and that all revenue is disallowed from being used for profit. He doesn't agree with that point of view, and that should have been the focus of his issues. But negative concerns weren't brushed aside as he claims, and Brandon wasn't the only person who shared them. He also claims there were no apologies and that no commitment was made to transparency and legality. People can read through this thread and see all of the back-and-forth. Everything brought up was addressed. I will say that Brandon is very good at projection, since demonizing people, being disrespectful, and displaying a lack of trust & goodwill are things he was great at in this discussion. One thing not mentioned before is that enabling YouTube ads increases the search ranking of the content, the same way that enabling ratings does. Back when we started the YT channel, we actually disabled ratings for everything to match how we didn't do polling or ratings of the mixes. It turned out that disabling ratings made YouTube reduce the visibility of the videos. But enabling those things makes YouTube increase their visibility, so we're trying to get the mixes heard by more people. That may explain why the SM64 mix, which was the first one with monetization turned on, received greater views; YouTube actually gives more weight in discoverability to content that's monetized and allows ratings. That said, I'm the sole person that decides mixpost order these days (because I'm tagging them up and staging them), and claiming that we were just posting popular mixes to maximize YouTube revenue is silly and needlessly overthinking things. Sagnewshreds called your suspicions "tinfoilly," and he's right. For posting your Chrono Cross mix out of cycle, sometimes I do that. I just noticed you hadn't had a mix posted in about a month and didn't know you had anything else waiting besides some tracks on the FF9 project that were going to be posted on 9/9. We can't state enough how we're not actually motivated by money and don't profit, but in any case, in the 2 month period where ads were enabled on 43 out of 3,000+ videos, we also had mixes from Gradius Gaiden, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Yoshi Touch & Go, Skylanders, ilomilo, To the Moon (yours), Global Gladiators, Lufia II, Rollerball, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Tyrian, Vectorman, After Burner, and R-Type for the C64. Have to say this over and over again: we don't care what game something is from. At all. It doesn't change how we evaluate anything. If the submission is creative and interpretive enough with the arrangement, and produced well enough, we'll post it. We don't post stuff from certain games to boost ad revenue or social media metrics or whatever. Also, all ads were off since the 14th, including when that Chrono Trigger album trailer went up (plus we had already decided not to monetize trailers (which is why you yourself noticed the Esther's Dreams trailer wasn't monetized). Brandon's also saying that even BEFORE YouTube monetization, we were ALREADY strategically weighting mixposts to heavily popular games. This is despite publishing an album from him for the super-obscure game Teen Agent. As I've said many times, we don't pick what games are mixed, the ReMixers do. And it almost goes without saying that Chrono Trigger or Mega Man 2 or Final Fantasy VII is more of a nostalgia and popularity draw among the ReMixers themselves, which is why they arrange those games more than others. We don't control that or try to steer anything in that direction. If OCR could have 1,000+ more Tim Follin arrangements, that would be awesome. The last thing I'd say is that I don't know why Brandon put up a poll on keeping his mixes up on OCR. It's very obvious that he assumes the worst about the staff, thinks we're pocketing the ad revenue, maybe buying cars or comics or anything & everything non-OCR related with it, that it's some money-making cabal, that all the staff are complicit in said cabal, and that we'd love to illegally and unethically generate YouTube revenue in the shadows and willingly anger hordes of artists. Since he's convinced it's run like that and unethical like he claims, why would a poll convince him to keep his ReMixes up? Like I said before, no amount of transparency or actions can make Brandon believe that OCR is run honestly, ethically, above board, and without a profit motive. Weighing that, I can't imagine why or how he'd convince himself not to request removal of his mixes. Due to his overly suspicious, paranoid, and imaginative nature about all of this, I think that's inevitable.

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Will also add that if you still have questions about ad revenue or other concerns that you don't feel were answered fully, zircon wrote up an FAQ that we've reviewed detailing everything to the best of his ability. Feel free to ask questions and continue the discussion there.

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It's not particularly important to have the names, but most of those comments are from the catch-all discussion thread on The Shizz where Brandon raised his concerns and also shared a lot of negative assumptions and distortions that framed the issue in a negative way from the start. In any case, the names don't really matter, although it's really silly to hide them. No one on OCR staff cares who said what; there's no reprisal or adding their names to a shitlist; people can say their piece, even if they don't understand the situation or just dislike OCR for having a judging process and discouraging less interpretive covers.

No anger implied by it (but it's the internet, so there's no emotion to pick up from what I'm saying), but if your specific question isn't answered, just re-ask the question; there are a ton of posts being responded to. Also, if you have follow-ups, just keep on asking, that's all. Your bad faith aside, Dave has been working to answer all of the questions. IIRC, you were asking how albums fall under the Content Policy, and it's the same exact policy, but I think the ethics conclusions you're drawing are over the top. I'm not a cheerleader for OCR in the sense that it can do no wrong and I'd unilaterally go along with anything at all, especially something that I felt was unethical. If something like that happened, and Dave was improving his house off OCR funds or anything non-related to OCR, I'd just quit the site and say it was a good run and be the first to publicize that Dave wasn't running things ethically. That said, the Content Policy has bound OCR to not do shady things with ad revenue, donations, or any money given to the site, even before any talk of 501c3 non-profit status. Even then in 2007, it was simply meant to codify the way he already ran this place to begin with. Everything has been functioning as a non-profit entity would do it, i.e. there's no profit motive, and excess funds are reinvested in improving the website and organization. Staff have also remained unpaid volunteers. I don't know what people are envisioning would be done with Google Ad revenue from YouTube, or how much would be there, but anything beyond operating costs is going to be spent on unsexy things for site purposes, e.g. video software for José to help him make trailers more easily, hiring someone to create a new YouTube video template, buying a new server, getting new forum software. Even the cases where staff have gone to conventions to promote OC ReMix, half the expense would go to OCR, half would be paid personally out of pocket. From what I understand, believing that what OCR does is a valid instance of Fair Use, we believe the ReMixes do not diminish the original work's value, and that the music is being presented for nonprofit educational purposes to advance knowledge of the arts through the addition of something new and transformative. That would be a scenario where, because of the Fair Use case, OCR 1) would not be required to seek licenses for the music, and 2) would not pay the artists because the derivative works would be created for profit rather than for nonprofit educational purposes. Everything about how djp has looked at this has been to continue the ReMixes as nonprofit fan works. That said, there hasn't been any decision on YouTube advertising beyond enabling it on a handful of videos to see how it works and if it's disruptive to the listeners; AFAIK, djp hasn't mentioned it yet, but the embedded versions of the YouTubes on OCR are a small enough size where ads are automatically disabled; a lot of his thought has been how to make it unintrusive and non-disruptive, including ruling out unskippable ads, so there's not been any effort to maximize Google ad revenue at all costs. This hasn't been a case of trying to sneak anything past anyone. As far as trying to hide enabling ads on videos, that's silly because how would you enable ads on all the videos, say nothing, and believe no one would notice or have questions? Obviously, djp sees it as a shift of where the Google ad revenue comes from, and it would be treated the same as the Google ad revenue from the website. Not to make anything personal about Brandon, but I don't believe there is any information or transparency that would alleviate his assumptions of bad faith. I don't think 501c3 status, an audit, an accountant on retainer, eliminating all advertising, or him joining the staff in some capacity would do that. There's a level of paranoia and bad faith that ends up negatively coloring everything, which is a shame because the way he insults people due to his political beliefs and his insistence on insulting the staff he doesn't like (DarkeSword and zircon) are the things that have caused him issues here, not any actual problem from the staff. A few weeks ago, Brandon tweeted at me that I was in favor of babies being killed because he concluded that I like Hillary Clinton (I don't, for the record); again, it's hard to convey emotion, but I truly didn't take any offense because it's politics and that talk can get heated. But at the same time, was it REALLY necessary to get that level of incendiary and accusatory with people you disagree with? It wasn't that long ago when the conspiracy was that the judges would never, ever approve Brandon's music. 89 mixposts later, here we are with the same bad faith. Anyway, it's not meant as any attack or an attempt to discredit or disarm Brandon & his concerns, because he's not the only one who's expressed them. But he is the only one that's expressed them with the belief that OCR's descended into a money grab, that staff are being paid -- maybe handsomely at that, that huge checks are being cashed from YouTube, that there would have been an effort to hide the mass enabling of ads on the YouTube channel (has anyone explained HOW would that be possible?), and that everything from djp has been about being slippery or dishonest. I don't understand why nearly everything has to be framed by Brandon that way. For all the appeals to transparency, this thread and the Facebook artists discussion could have been shut down or erased to discourage this conversation, and all dissenting voices could be silenced easily; this community handles drama with a pretty warts-and-all approach.

Not sure why this has such a muffled sound. Also, as soon as this opening beat started, you could tell the sequencing was very rigid and mechanical-sounding, all the more obvious when the piano also came in at :21. The piano sounded bone-dry and had no resonance at all. Even if it's just going for a less-organic keyboard sound, there's just no trail-off with the notes, and the rigid timing doesn't sound good. The claps brought in at 1:10 were too loud and too dry and made no sense being so much louder than the other instrumentation. I like that there's some attention to the bassline having presence, but these were very plodding beats overall, and very thin textures. 2:18 was a cut-and-paste repeat of :21's section, and then there's essentially no real ending, the track just hits the end of the bar and stops. The arrangement would need to be developed more with further variations, much more balance and richness with the instrumentation, and some sort of genuine resolution for the ending. Not bad for a beginning effort, Galih, but very far from something we would pass. Make use of the Workshop forums here to get additional critiques and feedback on your VGM arrangement, as well as solicit production advice to improve how you're using your current samples. NO

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Opens up pretty similar in mood/tone to the original song, only starting with the chorus, then showing its electronic hand at :21. Beats arrive at :42, and I'm not disliking anything so far, but haven't heard anything too remarkable or creative with the synth design. Hmm... when the build arrives at 1:04, something's not right about these textures. I'm hearing a lot of high-end sizzle from the cymbals, but the actual beats felt too flimsy, and the rest of the elements aside from the lead seem to just mush together without detail, undermining the energy intended in the writing. I thought the cymbal hits, bass kicks, and overall energy level from 1:04-3:56 dragged on after a while. Varying up not just the writing of the backing beats, but the sounds as well would help vary this up even if you weren't going for pronounced dropoffs or changes. The dropoff at 3:57 was very welcome though; not saying this track has to be cut down, but it may have been even more effective to get here a minute earlier and allow some dynamic contrast to surface earlier. Not diggin' that lead at 6:06, as it has a very robotic sound, but it's not a huge deal. My main issues, Nick, were the track feeling repetitive for nearly 3 minutes due to the beats and needing to create a sharper-sounding soundscape, but this one is well in the right direction. Definitely come back to this one and improve it with some of these criticisms in mind. NO (resubmit) Edit (9/16): It's not often we get two distinct versions of a mix submitted to us a month apart. Checking out the shortened 5:02 version from April, the opening build was more interesting and creative. Once the track kicked in at 1:11, the same dealbreaking production criticisms applied with the sizzling cymbals, overall lack of clarity in the textures, and flat dynamic curve of the arrangement until 3:19. I agreed with Chimpazilla on making sure the middle of the track doesn't stray too far from the source tune; it's not necessarily enough to place original writing on top of a generalized chord progression, so just be careful there. Ensure that the majority of the piece has explicit ties to writing from the original source tune. 3:21 changed things up with a more creative dropoff than in the longer version. The lead writing there was the same, but there was more dynamic contrast than the longer version by dropping out most of the instrumentation from 3:21-3:45 and using the section as a breakdown & rebuild instead. I wouldn't have went back to the same intensity and writing until 4:07-4:28. The sequencing of the lead from 4:06 sounded very stilted and robotic; make sure the timing doesn't sound so stiff. Good close at 4:28. To me, both versions shared the same general issues, but both were very promising and demonstrated that Nick has a fairly good handle on making music. Now he just needs to refine his production so that nearly everything can be heard clearly during the densest sections, and tweak the arrangement to have more ties to the source tune as well as more variation & dynamic contrast.

Started out feeling like a nice-sounding by a good genre adaptation with a more cover-style approach, so we'll see where it goes. Not the most unique sounds I've ever heard, and one could argue the melody got too repetitive, but, after a few listens, I thought this actually did well creating subtle dynamics within a relatively fixed level of energy, with very understated textural changes. There's also the lead synth gradually getting more interpretive with grace notes and rhythmic changes from 1:51-on before going into more of an original comping route on top of the source from 2:26-3:42. Good usage of the shimmering chromatic percussion SFX throughout; some may argue it could have been used more judiciously, but it set a nice mood and I had took no meaningful issue from it. The main Zelda theme reference from 3:42-3:49 sounded awkward, and I didn't thin it made a good fit. It just sounded like a hiccup that should have went straight to the source's chorus at 3:57. That said, it was a minor speedbump. A little long for me given the deliberate tempo, but that's just personal taste. Nice work to Seven X on creating this evolving soundscape. I wasn't sure I'd be on board when this started, but I think it works nicely! Good luck with the rest of the vote. YES

Dear OC Remix, My name is Greg and I really respect what you all do as far as bringing video game music from one artist to the millions of fans worldwide. I'd like to join this community as an artist as well as a fan. I am submitting the first track entitled DestinyDivine from the album i made inspired by "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". The album is called "VictoryVirtueValor" and features a variety of genres that fit the parameters that judges from the OC Remix community are looking. I wanted to see if you'll accept the album - complete with artwork - is to your liking. Thank you for the opportunity and the privilege. Greg a.k.a. Seven X https://soundcloud.com/seven-x/destinydivine ----------------------------------------

Just so this doesn't turn into a total dogpile due to the initial tone of the complaint... To defend Yogarine's overall intent, I don't react to his suggestion as if it's an all or nothing scenario required; if there were some way that could work out to get some OC ReMixes on Spotify, that would be great, and we've thought about it. However, like DarkeSword said, it's still time and energy we collectively don't have. Also, I believe that many VGM arrangements available on music services are actually unlicensed and there just isn't enough oversight.

It's more about source tunes than even the number of games. Just a rough check it our database puts the current amount of different songs that have been referenced in OC ReMixes at 2,689 songs. We're definitely not going through that.

Wow, the opening sounds very similar to the original, only sped up... OK. We'll see where this goes. OK, some breakbeats come in at :43, and I'm noticing everything's written with intensity yet the levels are so low. Anyway, the synth design's pretty vanilla, and after the cool drop from 1:03-1:06, I thought something more creative with the arrangement was about to happen, and then it went back to the same treatment of the melody. Another dropoff at 1:28. Well, this isn't a bad cover at all, Jay, but there's not much interpretive going on besides the breakbeats and increased tempo. Synths at 1:49 during the chorus were super dry and exposed. Not sure what's up with that countermelody introduced at 2:13; it just sounded very atonal. In any case, bland/generic/vanilla synths, not enough interpretation, and too repetitive sum up the issues to address. NO

Direct audio sampling is a matter of context. There are almost no context where the audio itself can be extensively sampled yet transformed enough to be considered arrangement, but it has happened. As I've said there, it's a difficult formula to pull off, particularly to use sampled audio in a way that reflects arrangement. I don't feel this Splatoon mix does that, so that option's off the table. The other option is simply having a piece that would pass on dominant source usage with the arranged material even when all of the direct audio sampling were removed. A good example of this outside of OCR that I've referenced before is Juha Kaunisto's "Zoids Revisited" at Remix.Kwed.Org, which samples the original audio heavily for the intro and particularly for the extended outro. Meanwhile, in the middle is a completely developed rock/synth arrangement. In that case, the original audio sampling is extensive but isn't leaned on as a crutch to provide the connections to the original music, and there's already a large piece of the track that's interpretive arrangement. This doesn't meet that kind of criteria, already shown by Gario's breakdown. I timed it out a little differently. The track was 5:35-long (discounting some of the intro/outro without music), so I needed at least 167.5 seconds of source tune usage from the arranged material for the source tune to be dominant. 0:47.5-1:17, 1:19-2:23.5, 4:35.25-5:07.25 = 126 seconds or 37.61% overt arranged source usage I disagreed that 2:23.5-2:53.5 section was directly referencing the source. All I heard were rhythmic similarities, but not the same note patterns as the source. With such a simple source tune, it's easier to veer into soundalike territory when attempting to arrange it. I thought 2:55-4:03's section felt totally disconnected from everything that came before and after it; it broke the flow of the piece and just sounded awkwardly shoe-horned in. The sampled source audio behind it was so quiet that it was practically inaudible, so I don't know why it was even counted in Gario's timestamps. Production-wise and in a vacuum, this is a perfectly fine track (aside from the middle original section feelingly stylistically disconnected from the rest of the piece), but there's too much reliance on the direct audio sampling of the source tune to provide the connections to it. We may need to run this by djp and/or update the Standards language to better clarify what's specifically discouraged, but in order for me to pass this, a decent chunk of the direct audio sampling would need to traded out for more arranged usage of the source tune. What's here is a strong start. Jakub, if you have no interest in updating this to better fit OCR's arrangement standards, that's no problem; first and foremost, you should always be making the music you yourself want to make. That said, if this was something you were open to and you felt like potential updates could also improve the piece overall, then come back to this one. NO

Yoooooooo. Fuuuuuuuck. Niiiiiice. YES

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