Dave Harris

I think it was zabutom who came first in the originals category for famicompo IV. reduz won the 'famicompo classical' contest last year IIRC. Great entries in this contest, I love it! I can't wait to find out who did what, and also see what people have to say about my entry =X will be voting soon. lol

I really enjoyed this. Don't hear much stuff like this around OCR. I'm definitely fond of the 90s pop sound - reminds me of Pet Shop Boys or Eternal...or really any number of the soulful pop artists who were around at the time. Or if you wanted a video game comparison -- Sonic R. You hit the nail on the head stylistically harmonically nothing needed doing at all for this transition, and it really works well. Simple but effective. I sequenced a Wave Race midi recently too, so this is good timing still in vgmusic's new-files right now. Looking forward to seeing this complete and (let's hope) on the main page. EDIT: oh you know what else it reminds me of? Ultimate Kaos. haaaahaaaahaaa etc.

this is just... cosmic foppery.

Last I heard, he was doing stuff with j-pop. There's a thread about it over at project2612 - http://forums.project2612.org/showthread.php?t=218 And yeah I also thoroughly recommend checking out some of his other stuff if you haven't. He's a complete badass. I wrote up a Wikipedia article with all the soundtracks he's written (that I know of) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoaki_Takenouchi Most of them are available in ripped formats now.

seriously can't stop watching. hypnotic.

z0mg epic!

Just a reminder - anyone still interested in submitting designs has until December 1st. That's three days including today!

The actual prize is the $100 for vgmworld, but it is likely that whoever wins will also have their logo used on the site (because that's really the point.) Yeah we'll work with whomever wins. There's a possibility that minor changes would have to be made to the logo in order for it to fit the design.. but not to a great extent I don't think. If it's a good logo it should be able to fit somehow someway (and may just be a case of removing banner fonts and keeping symbolic content... who knows, I guess we'll jump the hurdle when we get to it.) All assuming a site redesign actually happens anyway. José, I personally loved your entry

Yeah I'm certain there are people who could help out. I think the thing we'd need most help with is data handling... lumping stuff from the current system into the new database by hand (or semi-automatically I should say, as I would hope there'd be some scripts to make this process easier.) In that situation it helps a great deal if you are familiar with the sequencers and whether they have multiple aliases, etc. That's going to take the most time I think. Otherwise, I think Powerlord (and Secret Agent Man) can more or less cope with all the coding-related stuff. It's ultimately an issue of time+effort than difficulty. Isn't it always? Great José, I was hoping you'd submit something. I need to nag Teck some more too yeah pencil and paper works just fine. It all depends what Powerlord has planned and whether it'd be applicable to do that. I don't know enough about databases myself to say either way (or even what that means in practice.) Thanks for the offer one way or another, though. I do know that it'd have all the fancy stuff like sequencer/composer profiles, view by system/game/sequencer/composer/year, forums integrated, all the good stuff you'd expect, so there'd be similarities for sure. Excellent. Speaking of which, we now have 27 submissions. It's hotting up!

I'm glad you finally decided to share this properly. Because really it's too good for people not to hear. Great! I don't know what to say that you haven't already heard anyway. I know; I'll give it another listen today to mark the occasion.

I've been wanting a fully-featured alternative to Logic's sampler for a long time, particularly something for percussion (EXS24 isn't great for drums.) I'm really looking forward to using this... being able to control all aspects of sound is really important to me. If there are any better free alternatives, I'd like to hear of them (or even any better commercial alternatives... it certainly isn't Kontakt, and I don't care much for CronoX either...)

Heh actually I agree, I think donating to medical research and whatnot would probably be a better idea than to a games fund for kids. But I suppose eitherway, donating is better than not donating. Besides, it makes more sense to advertise a charity that is relevant to the site itself. It'd probably be a bit odd to advertise a medical research charity on a videogame music site... I dunno! I reckon you should consider it anyway. It'd only be encouraging people to donate who otherwise probably wouldn't.

Ahh, great, glad to see there's some interest Yeah it sure does. We've been stepping around this issue for years now. Powerlord has some plans to rework the entire site from the inside out and make it all databased, but that is proving to be an incredibly complicated process, what with all the stuff on the site and having to read from text files and database it all and argh ... well it's a big kettle of fish putting it simply. I have no idea how that will turn out - but we can't realistically do the front-end without having the back-end at least somewhat sorted out. One hopes maybe a new logo would be a catalyst for a redesign... but perhaps that is wishful thinking. Fantastic. I was thinking about posting about this contest at deviantart, but I didn't know where to put it on the forums... it is quite convoluted over there. I may do eventually though - that is if $100 towards vgm-related stuff is really of interest to them. *shrug* No worries about the images - I can use the 'trace bitmap' function in Flash. Sometimes that doesn't get ideal results though. In hindsight, 300 x 150 bitmap as the format wasn't the best idea... but I'm hopeful that we'll find a way to work around it if/when we hit problems. By all means, keep vector copies of your own stuff I would encourage everyone to do this. If you know any other artists that would be interested, be sure to pass the info on!

I hope this is in the right place - and even more so that it's permitted. Let me know if there is a problem. We're running a little logo design contest at VGMusic. The basic premise is - you guessed it - to design a logo for the site, which ideally incorporates themes of both games and music in a coherent/unified/symbolic/artistic way, and generally represents the site and its content. The current banner sucks - we're looking for the level of quality demonstrated in other site logos such as videogameslive, zophar's domain, ocremix! etc. The best entry (handpicked by the staff) will receive $100 in store credit for vgmworld.com! The winning design could also end up being used on the site, on t-shirts and other merchandise... you name it. There's a detailed list of rules here. I understand the resolution limit could be a bit stifling, so be sure to work in a higher resolution and downsize it later if called for. We may need to either vectorise or get a higher resolution version of a given logo at a later date - so keep hold of your work files, whatever format they may be. f anything seems confusing let me know. Hope you enter!

$birthday_greeting

Totally badass. Insane sound programming skill! I love hearing people go this far with attention to detail, it's always great fun to listen to and demonstrates nothing short of hard work. I am unfamiliar with the source material, but I have a feeling I'd be let down by it anyway. This certainly does sound a lot like Shnabubula's stuff, with the trilltastic melodies, eclectic sound choices and aforementioned level of dexterity (infact he linked me to it.) A diamond in the rough!

Transformers (1986)!

I enjoy the source tune a lot (Bowser's Road, or whatever you'd care to call it.) I wasn't particularly taken by this mix much though, since much of the original harmony I loved in the track was taken out to make room for the hollywood-cliche modal figures. Hey, you can't please everyone! However it is very sonically impressive, swish production aesthetics and the like, and well made overall; I can see why it made the cut.

Yeah I'm surprised this didn't appear earlier. I thought it had already been submitted. Technically mesmerising as always; the meticulousness of it is something else, something I dare say is rarely seen on this site, though that is quite redundant since that's the case with all your mixes. Also this is one of those seldom occasions where you cover something that's mainstream and well-recognised. Yet it's obviously taken in a direction that no-one else would touch upon. So it still feels unfamiliar - familiar source taken into very new territory. I actually don't like it that much though! I prefer other mixes of yours more than this by quite a long way. I have to disagree with the review and say that this is what I feel is your least accessible track. While people can naturally get into it because of similar source material, I think it's more harmonically and tonally daring than most of your other remixes, if not all of them. So yeah, I am wow-ed by it technically, but it's not something I would listen to out of choice (like say Duelling Consoles.) Glad to see you back on your feet.

Dude.... nice. Certainly wasn't expecting to visit OCR and see your name pop up. Pleasant surprise, glad to know you're still doing stuffs . Sounds great. Can't say I know anything about the game, or very much about the targetted stylistic approach (other than the obvious), but I like the playing.

Weird, I've had this remix sat around on my hard drive as Kirb-03.mp3 since November '06. I have no idea how, either... I don't remember ever having any correspondence with you. Or have I? I'm puzzled! Nice remix all the same.

I wouldn't want the OST release to be orchestrated, as that usually results in significant changes being made to the actual compositions. There are those arrange albums from the 90s where they're basically nearly-identical material but with upgraded samples, but for TP to be upgraded it would indeed have to be performed. I'm sure things would end up getting a bit interpretive... which is cool in its own sense, but not if you just want the OST . On a side note, I'm not sure why reviewers are so critical of the production in TP. I wouldn't say it was particularly GM-sounding... it's just sample-based. Some things more than others I guess, but that's mostly the minigames, and quite frankly those don't need soaring string lines . However, I expect music from the game will end up being fully orchestrated in future, somehow someway!

MILD SPOILERS Certainly the stuff that came from OoT and any other zelda game he's worked on, yeah. Some of those may be covers of his stuff by the other two composers like you say, but others may actually be Kondo rearranging his own music... it's harder to tell with those. In addition to that though, here's some original tunes I clocked as being his: Agitha's Castle Fruit Minigame Ordon Village (I'm pretty much dead certain about those first three =P) probably Ilia's Theme too... Not sure what you'd call it but the "sad" music when inside the houses in Ordon (only earlier in the game) The music when Midna is sent outside the twilight realm The Postman's tune ..and also the music when you're flying up the river on the twilight bird/hawk/eagle - seriously, StarFox 64 much?! There's probably more I'm forgetting, I'll have to download the various mp3s hanging around and listen more closely. Incidentally, I don't think he did the Hyrule Field theme =P. Could be wrong of course, especially because I'm not familiar with much music by the other two composers (so I don't have a mental picture of their "style"), but there's a certain way I've heard him use jazz progressions/melodies for decades, and some of those tracks would have evoked the "Kondo" response in me without me even knowing they were from a game he composed for. Would be very interesting to see, for sure.

I certainly hope so. I'm quite far into the game now, and I'm STILL finding ace music (I won't say which, so as to avoid spoilers). I'd love to see a full OST release for it. Hell, I'd buy it. I'm fairly certain there'll be one, what with it being a very highbrow/anticipated game, quite when it'll be is another story. Mostly I'd want it so I could tell who composed what on the score, presuming Nintendo would do individual track credits (they did with OoT, didn't they?) I'm almost certain about some songs being Kondo, and it'd be ace to see a breakdown of who did what. So yeah, I'm pretty convinced he didn't just take a backseat as the game audio director, there's definitely some kondo musix in there. I'll see if I can find some line-in stuff for now. Some tracks are just dead cool.

Erm...? That's odd. Well, I suppose now I'm here - pictures are ace, glad you guys had a blast. I should hit fruitcake up and tell him the news too.