Level 99

Hey, well, thanks for the listen, first-off. I'll try to respond to the critiques: 1) The original version went right into the lyrics and had a much shorter brass section in the middle. The song felt too short at the time, which is where PR wanted to work out a longer intro to showcase the brass and go over some of the main Kirby bits a little more before vocals come in. While the lyrics and vocals carry the melody during a good chunk of the parts, the brass really is going to be the star here. 2) If you're listening to the latest WIP, then the vocals you heard were actually done by me. I have Cyril's latest vocal take and there were a few issues with it that prompted me to record my own take for his reference, and in turn, reference for the rest of the people who are playing/possibly singing. Vocal harmonies are planned and the muffled stuff will not be in the final. Glad you like the lyrics! 3) Again, brass is the star. I might try to wank out something but it's 99% going to sound forced and out of place so don't get your hopes up. 4) Funny story about lulza: She was one of the first people I showed this to when I made it back in October. Unfortunately, this turned from solo effort to full ensemble so quickly after I posted it on the WIP boards that she didn't have a chance to call dibs on anything (DeathbySpoon beat her to the bass part). She's someone that is currently being considered as an alternate vocalist if Cyril's vocals end up not sitting well enough. Cyril's still gunning to do it, so I'm going to take whomever has the best vocals in the end, and he understands that if it comes to it. Cyril's doing one of the brass parts regardless, so considering the way way way small chance of "what to do if this was ever to be performed live", choosing Luiza might make more sense. Just gotta wait for the both of them to get some in.

I've been mulling over this myself, actually. I wrote them that way since Kirby's not pulling any punches in his expression of lust for food. The way the lyrics flow in some places actually semi-depends on the syllables of the vulgar language. Instead of going back to re-write it, there may be two versions: a "radio friendly" one with some form of sound effect censoring of the curse words, and one that's explicit. That gives the best of both worlds. If that were the case, whenever this is submitted to OCR or whatever, I'll request that the clean version be the one hosted and the explicit version be linked to in the mix info/summary. As of right now, though, there hasn't been a decision made. All your guys' freakin' compliments are pushing this farther and farther! You all rock.

I sang for you on your birthday. And you hung up on me. Hope it was a day full of dagrons.

GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! Parts have been distributed to folks who need them. I'm going to do some final tweeking to the drums and mix, and eagerly await the live parts to roll in. MAJOR MAJOR thanks to PR for doing the arrangement and sheet music and everything. Also, I'm currently in the process of figuring out the deal for vocals, but more on that later. Good luck to those recording their parts, and please remember to not process your recordings (all of that stuff will be done by myself/Avaris/PR).

Asking about finished tracks? From my mixers? In MY project thread? I'LL HAVE NONE OF THIS! HUTTAH! Ahhh...F^(& it, I'll just say it here and then send out some PMs. There's a melody found in many of the tracks in the NiGHTS Soundtrack. Since I'm no good with theory, I'll just reference the notes and give some examples of where you can find it. I think the progression is in any major chord, and goes 4-5-8, 4-5-1 (sometimes it's 4-5-8, 4-5-2). The first six melody notes in Message from Nightopia, it's present in Dreams Dreams ("In the night, dream delight"), it's in Growing Wings, the tail end of NiGHTS and Reala, and...well, you get the picture. For all songs not already incorporating it, I would like you all to try to get that NiGHTS melody in there somewhere. If it's already in there, don't worry. If you can't figure out a way to get it in there no matter how hard you try, I'll accept that. We have a few months to go before the next WIP date, but I'm going to start wrapping up my own tracks on this project relatively soon to give more time to other things like the administration side of directing this project. Good luck, everyone!

The best one I can recommend, and the one which is also currently helping me rescue a friend's pc, is EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. There are some others but that one is doing a bang up job of scanning sectors and finding files missing from the MFT and partition list. It's a little expensive but definitely worth it.

I am officially sad that your sig did not end up featuring you skiing down a slope eating grilled cheese while wearing cat ears...at least in the final version. Craig sent me an email with a link to his parts. I will download and incorporate them when I get home. OCAD > gym visit today. Also, now that we have all three sigs, we highly encourage each and every one of you do take one and use it as a sig banner. Totally link it to our website or this thread. We want you to wear your picking-of-favorite-host with pride! For sake of convenience, the code for all three banners is provided below (just copy and remove the spaces in front of URL and IMG): Brushfire: [ URL="http://lemonsinseries.com/ocad/"][ IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/34zn7fs.png[/IMG][/URL] Epicenter: [ URL="http://lemonsinseries.com/ocad/"][ IMG]http://lemonsinseries.com/ocad/sigbanners/ocad_epicenter.png[/IMG][/URL] Level 99: [ URL="http://lemonsinseries.com/ocad/"][ IMG]http://i781.photobucket.com/albums/yy97/level99remixteam/Level99.png[/IMG][/URL]

You make me feel so young... You make me feel like spring has sprung... Happy burfday, buddies.

I like some mixes to be produced very loud with the caveat that they remain uncluttered by the loudness. Some songs just truly sound better cranked to the limit, and I know OA will back me on that one. This sounds pretty damn good without coming off as compromising loudness for substance. I never feel like the track is being loud just to cover up something that's either missing or not mixed properly. It. Sounds. Great. (take into account I'm probably also going deaf) With every song, Dr. Manhattan keeps impressing me. And of course, gotta give my <3 to the guitars. They're expressive without going for the all-technical-flash, no-emotion approach. They do their function, and they're mixed great. This makes the entire mix shine. It definitely has a Mega Man feel to me, just from the leads and harmonies. The selection of instruments may be small, but they're picked intelligently. There aren't many negatives I could point out, except a few minor things with the drums. Otherwise, I'll take this and add it my driving mix, if you don't mind! *SPEEDS DOWN 695 at 180 MPH!*

In my mind, I've always seen this logical progression of Capcom's music, from chiptunes to modern audio production, and no where is this highlighted more than the Mega Man series. Even in a more modern game like ZX, you can still hear the roots of Capcom's long running blue bomber series. The melody is always a focal point, usually tending towards a driving techno or dance-y beat with very catchy chord progressions. This is the kind of source tune you catch yourself humming to without realizing it. And DJ Velly went and took that a few steps farther. Now it's completely stuck in my head. Production is fantastic: it's punchy, but not too punchy, with just the right amount of EQ. The piano and delayed drums at the beginning are a great precursor to the main sections of the song. The whole arrangement feels very fluid, and while it uses many dance-song trends, it makes sense and doesn't end up overplayed. It switches up enough to keep my ADHD-brain's attention, which is a very good thing. I would have liked to have seen some more drum variation, but as it is, still works. Good choice of buzz synths, too! Kudos for keeping me entertained.

Ah, the convenience of being forced to listen to so many OCReMixes due to OCAD editing. This was a gorgeous piece that starts with a very emotive piano. The playing is exactly what the style calls for. The main chunk of the first movement of the song, once the drums kick in, is awesome. Lots of layering and the lead being reinforced by the strings comes through without sounding cluttered. I wasn't a fan of the center-panned rim-tap, but that didn't stick around for too long and didn't greatly detract from the mix. It just stood out a little too much for me. The second movement is great, once things pick up speed. It is here that the strings sound a little more fake-y, along with the flute. It still works for the song though, as it doesn't sound overly synthetic, and the accuracy of the rest of the instruments, especially the mixing and playing of the percussive instruments, more than compensates. I'm not too familiar with the source tune, but coming at it from a song-solitary perspective, this is great. Well done!

I want to thank everyone for all the comments about the mix. They're all absolutely appreciated. What I intended with the song was to tell a story without words, and judging from some of the responses, I was at least moderately successful I won't speak too much but I couldn't have done any of this without Jay, as he definitely took all the ideas I wanted to implement and ran with them while adding a ton all his own. Keep on rocking, folks. /obligatory shoutout to OA for awesome FF4 project/

There are so many things about this podcast that I don't know about that I feel like this isn't even a relationship any more! Stoked for 2010. Looks like those return guests will have to wait a bit longer, as will my notions of sanity.

Episode 9 is out already. WE LOVE SPAM! Episode 9

Latest WIP, with shitty vocal performance on my part, with most of the proposed brass in MIDI thanks to PR. This is sounding really sexy: WIP4 Hopefully get the sheet music out soon, and a bassless version for DBS to do his thing. Considering changing up singers but I want to hear one more rendition from cyril and one from the alternative who's being considered. Feedback?

Here comes the first of our upcoming stuff. This is episode 8 – MAGFest Recovery Party. Lost Deven’s side of the audio but we ninja’d a robot in there. You won’t even notice…maybe. Episode 8 Edit: Also, our intro video is official up on youtube: Further Edit: AND EVEN MORE STUFF TODAY! I'm on a roll (on a boat). We have a Facebook Fan Page! http://www.facebook.com/pages/OverClocked-After-Dark/254114198721 Be our fan, won't you? We love you sooooooooooo much.

11th is a Wednesday, it really depends if I can take that fourth day off of work or not. I'll check and calculate in the coming week.

I'm not looking to get involved in any of this threadfighting, but I do want to say a few things, especially considering it's partly my birthday that's bringing this together in the first place: 1) people should be allowed to do what they want. There looks to be a LOT of people possibly coming, and the more people that come, the more varied the desires of activities. I know I'm going to spend a good bit of time with bLiNd and Jade, since it's also Jordan's birthday and this was all planned around that. But I also had the idea in mind to do some of the more adult things. Regardless, people should be free to do or not do what they please. 2) I can't take too long off of work so I'm going to be cramming a lot into those dates. Since there are so many birthdays going on around the same time, it might just be easier for all the relative August birthdays attending to say EVERY DAY IS MY BIRTHDAY just for sake of convenience 3) My rooming plan will be to stay with bLiNd and Jade about half the time, and at a hotel where other people are staying the other half for the "authentic Vegas treatment" and such. Whoever wants to go around the time I'm going, feel free to do so. However, don't be offended if at any time I jump between crowds of people. As I said before, there will be lots to do with lots of people wanting to do it, so I'll be moving between them a bit. There should be a general schedule of popular shows and attractions in the OP for people who want to do that stuff, and also the selection of things to go on outside of the strip and whatever. ALSO! There's the discussion of pushing the dates closer a week. I would be okay with this as long as bLiNd and Jade's hospitality would accomodate. This would make it so more people could come and not interfere with school. So my choice of dates for ME to go are as follows: August 7th - 11th/12th August 14th - 18th/19th Let me know what others think and we'll go from there. And now, for a bit of Jewish guilt: don't make me regret my birthday out in Vegas, folks

I think I'm coming. No, I'm definitely comin- Oh, my name's already up there. SCORE!

Works for me, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, this is getting a little ridiculous... Just a rundown of all the issues we've had lately: 1) The Holiday podcast had issues with the skype call because, apparently, skype only takes mono input for mics and if the source is stereo, it just takes the left side. Also, because of this, I found out that the stereo-merge switches on my Lexicon Lambda only merge stereo to mono for the monitor jack and not for the USB audio, so I could heard it in mono but the computer was still getting it as a divided stereo. Lastly, even though we jury-rigged the call so it would work, the laptop (my Macbook) froze recording the stream, so the recording was completely lost. 2) For the MAGFest podcast, we had a whole host of issues. The audio froze on that laptop (an HP laptop) mid-recording and I had to restart it, but it sounded fine at the time. However, after getting home to check it again, the first hour was garbled and completely messed. I could still hear some things, but it was literally chopped up audio and beyond unacceptable for use. The second bit was fine, but it was a lot shorter so in the end, we basically lost most if not all of the audio. We had a camcorder recording as well, but the power cord was left at home so that ran out of juice before an hour was up. The audio for that is okay but you can't make much out (it's about as good as home videos of family activities that your Dad used to make), and we're waiting on the video from some nice individual who decided to record the second bit for us. The best we can hope for is a half-decent video of the podcast... 3) For the post-MAGFest wrapup at my house, everything was alright with the computer this time (except for some weird glitch on XP with my Lambda where the playback was glitchy but the files themselves played fine on other computers or on the integrated audio drivers) but, apparently, Epicenter's side of the call was lost in a reformat. Needless to say, I'm currently Y'all have waited long enough, so in the absence of Epicenter's side of the call, I'm going to tastefully edit in some stuff to make it seem like he's REALLY THERE and then upload the podcast over my extended weekend. I'm really sorry to everyone who's been waiting patiently for the next episode, so as long as no more technical fuck-ups happen, your patience will probably be half-rewarded. Time for some more reorganization. Brushfire, Epicenter, watch your email.

Keep your number-comparisons out of my project thread, boys. Go play outside or something, just stay out of Mr. Tamer's yard. You know how he hates it when kids play in his yard. He just likes to sit on his porch and whittle while reminiscing about the good ol' days of "NO OVERRIDE". The number of projects people are on doesn't matter. Like Jade and bLiNd have said, it shouldn't feel like work. It needs to be all about the love. Looooooooove. Considering some new project rules and regulations because of the moratorium, I must have a talk with Mr. Cho and Mr. Burr soon.

Is it time for me to say that I'm on this project too? >_> >_< If and only if I'm able to meet the deadlines with something satisfactory. Oh, and just so people don't jump down my throat or anything, this has been something I've been talking to pu_freak about for a while. Damn you, and your 80's-style fadeouts.

First half of the OCAD MAGFest video podcast uploaded sometime soon to you-boob, once second half is here, I'll edit that too. And the latest podcast will come out once Deven emails me his portion of the podcast...come on, Deven! Gallofan is waiting on you!

I'd much rather the first set of dates. There's a potential work conflict if it's the later dates, and I don't want to miss a second of next year's awesomeness.