Liontamer

No one else is particularly active enough to do the inbox except Palpable, and he'll be taking over some inbox stuff as well next week, which we've already been planning to do. Then, profit.

Well, the whole mangling of the quote was poor because Sam was discussing how, though some people go the difficult route, there are tools that make chiptune music creation easier and more accessible to musicians, specifically to the "Kind of Bloop" musicians. Thus, according to Suddath, making this chiptune game music style album was "laborious". Basically, she had a narrative in mind and tweaking Sam's quote fit what direction she wanted to take the story in. I'm not mad, but I think a more effective (not to mention, accurate) framing of the article would have been discussing how accessible chiptune music is now, both in creating it and its acceptance as legitimate music given that we now have a generation of adults who grew up on older games. [/shrug]

Hate you all for this.

Reader's Digest version, also edited into the first post: To summarize what happened for the first post, Sam's purported statement in the TIME article... ...was synthesized from this... ...in order for the article's author to form her narrative, and the synthesized quote distorted Sam's genuine POV. After banging his head though, Sam contacted the author, and eventually... Seems like Sam's satisfied with the article revision, but everything's still here for posterity.

If you're too much of a dum-dum to post it in a constructive way, just leave it at that.

My bad, I thought the format would be similar, and the idea was pitched way back when as reviving VGDJ. I'm a busy man, don't hurt.

Don't renumber the series, IMO. It has a history and hosting changes haven't meant renumbering the shows. Looking forward to hearing what you got!

Tweeting is cool! If you have not joined us yet, please do, i.e. join or die.

Bah, you can't leave it like that. Also, what's this strange "OCRemix" some of you keep mentioning? I've heard of "OC ReMix". There's no such thing as "OCRemix".

Looking forward to seeing you guys there!

Now these prizes are burning holes in out hands, so it's FINALLY time to announce these winners and dole out some swag! Running it down, 3rd place receives... An 8 Bit Weapon t-shirt, to show your chiptune love! A signed limited edition of 8 Bit Weapon's latest EP, Electric High, in a real 5.25" floppy disk! Your choice of an OCR t-shirt along with a pair of OCR stickers, so you can fly the colors! And the lucky winner for 3rd place's swag is mysterious German newcomer ko0x with a lengthy thumping club mix of the Reset Generation theme "Macro Boogie"! We're likely going to pay this this weekend during our music set at San Japan, so nice work giving us something to use! Next up is 2nd place, which earns the competition's runner-up spot. They walk away from the competition with... An 8 Bit Weapon t-shirt, to show your chiptune love! A signed limited edition of 8 Bit Weapon's latest EP, Electric High, in a real 5.25" floppy disk! Your choice of an OCR t-shirt along with a pair of OCR stickers, so you can fly the colors! A limited physical edition of OC ReMix's Final Fantasy VII album, Voices of the Lifestream! 2nd place goes to OC ReMixer and British import Tepid (Philip Schwan)! His ReMix of 8 Bit Weapon's "Tricky Game" entitled "TRIX" showed off a lot of creative sound design as well as some old school hip-hop flavor. No word on if his entry was titled after the cereal, but great job nonetheless. The winner of winners receives the whole shebang courtesy of 8 Bit Weapon, Nokia and OC ReMix... The Nokia N81 phone (a US$399 value) with 8GB of memory and Reset Generation installed! An 8 Bit Weapon t-shirt, to show your chiptune love! A signed limited edition of 8 Bit Weapon's latest EP, Electric High, in a real 5.25" floppy disk! Your choice of an OCR t-shirt along with a pair of OCR stickers, so you can fly the colors! Your choice of 1 more prize out of the OCR prize pool below! Cakewalk SONAR 7 Producer Edition (NFR) Sony ACID Pro 6 (NFR) Sony Sound Forge 9 (NFR) Novation V-Station Virtual Instrument SONiVOX Playa Hip-Hop Virtual Instrument A bundle of loops by M-Audio Project Gotham Racing (Microsoft, Xbox 360) Unreal Anthology (Midway, Windows) There can be only one winner, and for a contest partnered with chiptune enthusiasts 8 Bit Weapon, it's only fitting that our 1st place winner is VERY old school. He's been around since OCR's very beginning and he's also a Commodore scene junkie so he's got nothing but respect for the track "SID Vicious". Hayden Petrie, aka Rayza, holds the proverbial gold with a dynamic club-style piece entitled "Kid Malicious". It's got plenty of traditional Rayza sounds & techniques employed while still being something different from the rest of his OC ReMix, so you're gonna be loving it! As the winning track, "Kid Malicious" will be the first track from the contest to be posted to OCR, while we'll have several others we'll be adding as well! djp will have Rayza's mix up soon along with some congratulations! Props to everyone for putting their best into their entries! The scores (which we're keeping private) were CLOSE among the top half of the entries, and we judges (Seth & Michelle of 8 Bit Weapon, djpretzel, and Larry) had a difficult but fun time narrowing down the top finishers! We're planning on doing an organized OCR album release of the top 8 tracks, which we'll be getting into more once we finalize some things, so keep an eye out after this weekend for more news on that front. Congrats once again to all our big winners, to 8 Bit Weapon & Nokia for partnering with us with some amazing prizes, and to everyone for a great turnout of tracks that we'll be releasing soon!

As far as tags, I need to reconfigure MP3tag on my home computer to have the same setup I used on djp's; the prog's supposed to have an settings export feature, which I used, but it doesn't work at all and make the program unable to open. Weak. So I'll have to reconfigure that. As far as lyrics, everything where I have lyrics is already embedded in each MP3, both in the comments field and the unsynced lyrics field (which shows up in iTunes). All I'm waiting for is officially approved album art, and I'd need to offer up a set for djp to look through via his normal tagging program to make sure the tag changes all took, and to get his final approval. Basically, this has been my own side project, and replacing every ReMix would be a bitch and a half, and only something Dave can do AFAIK, so it'll take some time on his side. I'm shooting for sometime after mix #1900, but this isn't the most major priority, just noting.

I kill anyone who passes up this mix. Loved the subtle usage of the theme throughout most of the track; it was pretty intelligent arrangement. Definitely hope we hear more from Kentaro!

Yes it's YouTube; hit the HQ button in the video to listen to it properly. I wagged my finger and all that. - LT EDIT: Got a real version sent to me...at 16.6MB. One day, he'll do it right. Composer: John Sweeney (Sweendrix) Song: Main Theme from the Original Legend of Zelda Link: ------------------------------------------- http://www.zophar.net/nsf/zelda.zip - Track 1 ("Title") I'm liking the mood of the arrangement, but it plateaued early as far as the amount of the ideas that were there. You need to develop the arrangement more, not just develop a verse of ideas & repeat them. And you also need to not use cruise control drums that have no variation and don't make a cohesive texture. You will NEVER get a song passed that basically has the same drum pattern for seven straight minutes. It's either half-hearted or half-assed, but either explanation is no good. 4:09 was a good rise in the intensity of the leads, but still didn't offer much dynamic contrast or development beyond that one change. The mixing of the percussion at 5:16 was awkward; they got drowned out and just mudded together with other sounds in the background. There's absolutely nothing wrong with constructing something with a subtle curve, but you need more variation and evolution, even if the piece basically stays in first-and-a-half or second gear, tops. Develop the ideas more. You clearly have the ability to get a mix passed in terms of creating your own mood & style for a piece as well as decent production (even if some of your mixing between parts is off), but your arrangement approach for this is honestly kind of lazy and you're better than that. We're looking for fully-developed arrangements, John, so really put all of your potential into it. I liked your past Halo stuff and this had some initial promise, but it's time to raise your game. NO (resubmit)

Name of Remixer: Tweek Real Name: Brian Arnold Email: brian@tweexmusic.com Website: www.tweexmusic.com User ID: 6829 Artist ID: 4730 Game: Final Fantasy 4 Song Remixed: Fight 1 Having listened to/watched the Metallica S&M concert, I endeavored to recreate a mix based on that sound: rock fused with orchestral elements. It's not an unexplored area of music but it is one that I have been enamored with since I first saw it used in a film ( ) years ago. I wasn't keen on the feel of the original so I set out to change the mood of this one by taking it in more of a grandiose direction by pulling ideas from both the Metallica S&M album and from the Dark Knight. Having never played FF4, my hope is that the original hasn't been entirely butchered by this mix!http://www.tweexmusic.com/ff4/of_fiend_and_man.mp3 This is a project mix for the FF4 album and is not to be posted until the release of the project. In the event of a NO decision, I request the link to the track be retained in the posting. --------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff4 - Fight 1 (ff4-08.spc) So as far as a breakdown, all I could make out was: :28-:55, 1:03.5-1:38, 2:08-2:19 or about 70.5 seconds of a 216-second long track. As far as I could tell, the source was mainly in the first half, and I'm not making out anything from the source once the Metallica-ish section kicks at 1:46. None of the melodic stuff after that seemed to be from the source. No decision from me for now, I'm gonna need a breakdown from someone else.

Remix title: Destiny Forgotten Remixer name: diotrans, adrian Real name: Amy Hsieh, Adrian Porter Email address: amy@amyhsieh.com, adrian-o@aporter.org Website: amyhsieh.com, aporter.org Userid: 21446 Source game: Kingdom Hearts Source song: Simple and Clean/Hikari Composer: Utada Hikaru "Simple and Clean" has been one of my favorite songs ever for a long time. I've been playing acoustic guitar covers of this for years, so I thought it would be only fitting for it to be my first attempt at an OCRemix. For this remix, I decided to do something completely new by adding a string quartet. In this recording, adrian played cello; I played violins and viola. Many thanks to Palpable who taught me so much about FL Studio for me to produce this mix, and also to adrian for his mad cello skills! The title comes from the lyric "unmei wasurete" from the Japanese version of the song, which translates to "Destiny Forgotten" from a translation I read on the internet. Yeah, I actually don't speak Japanese at all (which is probably evident to any listeners who are fluent in Japanese), I just learned the pronunciations phonetically, so I hope I didn't butcher it too much ; I just love both versions of the song so much, and each has differences in the vocal melody, so I wanted to include parts of each. -diotrans ---------------------------------------------------------------- I'm counting both the Japanese and English versions as sources, since they feature different sets of lyrics. Kingdom Hearts - "Simple and Clean" & "Hikari" Better than the WIPs I heard as far as the sound balance, although the vocals and instruments were competing for the same space too much, particularly during the first verse. I thought the vocal delivery, Amy, could have been a little tighter, more important because of the dryness, but it gets it done. A couple of spots could have used some de-essing, but it was nothing huge. I would have loved the vocals to get a little delay on them to thicken them up, but y'all went for an unplugged style that I'm down with. I'd just say pull back some of the instrumentation that ended up competing with the vocals and this would be OK. Liking the arrangement, which kept the vocals intact but gave the music a new coat of paint. More interpretation with the vocals delivery would have been great, but that wasn't the focus here. Keep it up Amy, and I hope we hear more from Adrian as well! YES (conditional)

Hello There! ...Again, so much to tell: ---------------------------- I'm Jorge Mira, alias commandcom, userid: 26178. Original Track Name / Composer: Power Of Anger / Motoaki Furukawa ReMix Track Name: Latis Surrounded This is my second submission, so I will skip the personal details already stated in my first one, if you may. This is the next "Push Space Key (A Konami Tribute) (EP)" track. It is quite difficult for me to express into words what this track ment to me when I was a kid: It was the main reason for me to play Salamander (Ok, I'm a huge Gradius saga fan). So powerfull, so inspiring, so tragic, so on-the-edge and so BIG. Those were true emotions I felt while listening to it... BUT, as I am spanish, here in PAL regions those games (I played what I consider the best incarnation of all Salamanders, the MSX one) played slower than the NTSC verisons. You know, they made the game at 60fps and, when translading it to 50fps, they just played the whole thing a little bit slower. Gameplay was a little bit easier and, the most important thing for this submission, the MUSIC had a slower tempo. I am used to that slower tempo. The source track I included is the original NTSC version, wich, for me, plays uncomfortably fast. So that was an obvious first move, to slow it down a little, and then a little more, to find more "space" in time, you know, so it can flow in a different direction. I'm aware that most approaches to remix this track were rock-oriented, or, at least. guitar oriented. This is not my case. I'v allways felt it big, orchestrated, evocating. The ReMix: ------------------------- Ok, many many years later, came Gradius V on the PS2, made by those incredible ex-Konami team named Treasure. And that 2.5D shooter a-la-Ikaruga is not only the best incarnation of all gradius to date, but also has an amazing soundtrack! THAT is the direction I wanted to take definatelly: IF there was going to be a Salamander 2.5D a-la-Gradius V (Please, Konami, read this), this is the music I'd like to hear while playing the first stage, in which Latis is surrounded by Zelo's force and you have to fly there and save the day! What did I use? - Nuendo 4 / Reason 4, main tools. - EastWest Symphonic Orchestra (Orch. Bits) - StormDrum2 (Percussion) - Omnisphere (Several percussive items) - Voices of Passion (The bulgarian girl litte bits) Arranged and mixed in N4, mastering in Ozone2 / Wavelab (light one, preserving dynamics) Hope you enjoy it, Jorge Mira Diseñador de Sistemas | www.asvideo.net -------------------------------------------- Thanks a lot for attaching a copy of the source, Jorge. Salamander - "Power of Anger" I'm getting a very similar vibe from this that comes off as fine, but when I checked versus the original, I'm not getting the full connection. AFAIK, some sections used the source overtly, then on the next iterations, would subtract those parts out and just use the arrangement's backing elements to match the chord progressions of the source and preserve the same overall feel. I needed more than 82.5 seconds worth of source usage for it to be dominant. Here's what I came up with: :24-25, :31-32, :48-1:18, 1:20-1:23, 1:27.5-1:32.5, 1:35-1:36, 1:59-2:00, 2:08-2:12, 2:15-2:20, 2:23-2:37 That was about 64 seconds or 38.79% of the arrangement. That said, everything was structured to mimic the progressions of the source, but that's not a significant connection IMO. I heard some liberal stuff as well that I wouldn't count. That said, I could be not picking up on some connections, so I'd need someone to clarify anything I should have given credit for. As is, I love the arrangement, but as far as I can tell, it seemingly moves away from using the source tune overtly in favor of something that sounds similar, but isn't directly using the source enough. I'd like to get more opinions on this before I make a final vote.

Wishing José the best on his b-day today! He's always been a huge player in terms of helping the site, sending in great mixes and pretty much single-handedly making our YouTube channel happen. For his birthday, make sure to hit up his site (BronxRican.com) and also his Chop Sucky vids over at YouTube. You'll be glad you did (if you like bad kung fu movie dubs)! Birthday! You! Happy!

I'll definitely come out. I'll probably cap off the year with it. I'm waiting on stuff from Another Soundscape and Mazedude in particular, and Nutritious & OA are working on something.

Remixer Name: Willrock Real Name: William Harby Email Address: Will.rock@hotmail.co.uk User Number: 24181 Games Arranged: Virtua Fighter. Virtua Fighter 2 Songs Arranged: Akira's Theme (both games) Information About Games: Beat em ups both released by sega. Virtua Fighter was released on the Sega Saturn and Virtua Fighter 2 was released on the Sega Saturn and Sega Megadrive. The Soundtrack was Composed By Takayuki Nakamura. Sources: Comments: I have been a virtua fighter fan for many years now, and the music in the first 2 games always seemed outstanding to me, particularly Akira's theme in both games. I have always wanted to take both themes and put them together in a remix, as I always thought that the two themes together seemed to complete each other, like the 2nd akira theme was a direct response to the first. As far as arrangement and production have gone, I wanted to achieve an old school 80's wall of sound and for the arrangement, I have dulled down the original sections that were often in my older remixes and put more effort into messing around with the sources - and there is plenty in the two sources I have chosen. Anyway, this is the result, I hope you enjoy it -------------------------------------------------------------- Just noting that the dominant source usage in here is from the VF2 source. Virtua Fighter 2 SOUND TRACK - (12) "Ride the Tiger" The core drums had a good tone, but the writing was a bit boring and simplistic (too upfront compared to the VF2 source, where the placement was pulled off more effectively and didn't expose the pattern as being so bland). I also thought the mixing could have been a bit cleaner, but I was enjoying the arrangement overall. It definitely had a very old school arrange album feel to it, albeit with leads I wouldn't expect. Production-wise, I wasn't really hearing much growth compared to past mixes, but even if you plateaued at this level, Will, you'd still be in pretty good shape as far as getting stuff passed consistently. That said, I hope you continue to improve your production and sound design techniques as you continue to keep hitting us with cool mixes. Also cool to see you hitting some untread territory with Virtua Fighter! Keep 'em coming! YES

Hey, OC Remix! My apologies for submitting yet another Chrono Trigger remix...like you guys don't have enough of those already. But I thought it was worth a shot. Here's the mp3. If you guys like it, I can get you a better quality version, but a decent-sounding .mp3 was well over 192kbps and larger than 6mb--and because I read your submission criteria, I knew that was a no-no. (This is why I use .ogg when compressing...) Anyway, hope you enjoy the remix. SweetNES Natalie A. Vowell DJ.SweetNES@gmail.com http://myspace.com/DJSweetNES ---------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Corridors of Time" (ct-304.spc) I'm lovin' the concept, you're just not giving me enough Zeal theme by a long shot. Stopwatch: 1:07.5-1:11.5, 1:13-1:17, 1:18.75-1:23, 1:24.5-1:26, 1:27.5-1:32, 1:53.5-1:57.5, 2:10-2:14, 2:16-2:20, 2:22-2:26, 3:01-3:05, 3:06.5-3:10, 3:12.25-3:22, 3:23.5-3:33.5, 3:35-3:45, 3:46.5-3:57, 3:57.75-4:07.5, 4:09.75-4:14, 4:26-4:34, 4:37.75-4:47 If I added that right, that's about 113.25 of a 292.5-second-long piece or about 38.72% of the track. You need to hook that up over 50% so that the source tune usage is dominant within the arrangement. I like the original writing, BTW. And I hear how you're ultra-simplifying the source down to some scant chords (e.g. the intro), but none of that works on its own as overt usage of the source tune, IMO. If you're willing to add more overt source usage, this could be game, but if you're happy the way this is, that's perfectly cool and there's no hate on the track from me. It's just too liberal a treatment of the source tune for me to pass it. Hope we hear more from you, Natalie! NO (resubmit)

I haven't seen any official tracknames for Bionic Commando or The Guardian Legend from album relases or sound tests that I could use for the database. Rather than generic stuff like "Level 1 Boss Music", I'm cool with using quasi-official song titles that are extrapolated from in-game footage or game manuals and have done that for several games already. The issue comes from games that don't name levels or locations or use tracks across several different scenarios (e.g. StarTropics). As far as updating actual MP3 tags, I'm already working on a project for this that's basically complete. The ONLY thing I'm waiting for is José the Bronx Rican to give me official album art that djpretzel would be happy with, and for djpretzel to actually give José feedback/guidance so that José can give me official album art that djpretzel would be happy with. It's like moving a glacier. But when it's not mission critical, we get caught up with other stuff (and there's a ton that ranks higher in importance). At the moment, our DB is pretty solid as far as populating song/composer information that we know. But if you want to post in this thread about songs or composers that are blank, I'll be glad to either add that info or debunk it. Final Doom is a bitch, since it has two different soundtracks, so any insight you can give on that is appreciated.

It's either Xenogears or Donkey Kong Country 2. None of the others are as far along as those. http://www.ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=21

This track is from "Final Fantasy 4 : Echoes of betrayal, light of redemption" project. Contact Information * Your ReMixer name : John Revoredo * Your real name : Juan Revoredo * Your email address : yesterdaygeneration1750@hotmail.com * Your website None yet * Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile : 9896 Submission Information * Name of game(s) arranged : Final Fantasy IV * Name of the remix : The Flying Machine. * Name of individual song(s) arranged : Final Fantasy IV - Main Theme // Red Wings * Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. Well, despite this mix is an old one, I'm kinda proud of it. It took a lot of work. Don't really remember how I made it, but it's pretty sure it took a couple of "intense" weekends. A lot of things could've been way better, so I'm looking forward to hear your criticism. Other than that, I hope you guys dig this. Peace, and listen loud. ----------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff4 - "Into the Darkness" (ff4-12.spc), "Main Theme of FINAL FANTASY IV" (ff4-07a.spc) & "The Red Wings" (ff4-02.spc) It was cool to hear a brief medley that felt like a cohesive unit. The cut-and-paste repetition of :36's section at 1:52 was annoying as hell from a development standpoint, but what was there was still reasonably fleshed out enough despite being only 2:28-long. It weakened the YES, but it's still a borderline YES.

Remixer Name: Nase Real Name: Joshu Skowronek Email: kaesomorph@hotmail.de UserID: 7599 Games: Super Mario Land, Super Mario Bros 1&2 Tracks: SML Overworld Theme, SMB 1 Overworld/Underground/Fanfare, SMB 2 Overworld Theme Comments: Little hyperactive Big Band thingy. 'Dix' stands for Dixieland of course. --------------------------------------------------- Ah come on, you know the sources, I'm lazy Yep, a "little hyperactive Big Band thingy" (with an I-see-what-you-did-there title) is about right. Some of the sample quality was a little weak, but more than capable stuff, and this was a creative arrangement for sure. Nice work, Joshu. All subs should be this easy to call and interesting to listen to. Coming off this and the CV: Harmony of Dissonance sub, you sound like you've found your groove and can be a consistent presence on the front page now. Really glad to hear you come along so far. Keep it up! YES