Sixto

OC ReMix presents Paths Less Travelled: Terranigma!

December 19, 2019
Contact: press@ocremix.org

FAIRFAX, VA... OverClocked ReMix today released its 72nd free community arrangement album, Paths Less Travelled: Terranigma. Featuring 31 tracks from 61 artists, Paths Less Travelled: Terranigma celebrates both the soundtrack and today's 23rd anniversary of Terranigma's European Super Nintendo release, and is directed by Jorrith "Jorito" Schaap and Troy "Trism" Plain. The album is available for free download at https://terranigma.ocremix.org.
This 3-disc release features a deep roster of musicians interpreting Miyoko Takaoka and Masanori Hikichi's atypical and thought-provoking RPG score with more than 2 hours of arrangements. Paths Less Travelled: Terranigma was made by fans, for fans, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Quintet, Kamui Fujiwara, or Square Enix; all images, characters, and original compositions are copyright their respective owners.
"This has been quite the experience," album co-director Troy Plain affirmed. "Three years and one hiatus in the making and it's finally here. I really hope you, the listener, enjoy this smorgasbord of different genres and interpretations of some truly amazing source music. Now; what to choose for Paths Less Travelled vol. 2..."
Terranigma represents the inaugural album of OCR's new Paths Less Travelled series, an endeavor that will focus on the soundtracks of overlooked and lesser-known RPGs. The Paths Less Travelled concept was initially developed by the album's visual artist, the UK-based David "Odai" Owen, himself a veteran visual contributor in the OC ReMix community.
"Every single contributor to the album has reflected stellar work on every track, and it proves to be a truly eclectic triple-album that pays homage to what I consider to be one of the very best unsung computer games of all time," declared Owen regarding the initial Paths Less Travelled installment.
Paths Less Travelled: Terranigma also marks Jorrith Schaap's third directorial effort for OC ReMix, including 2017's Resonance of the Pure Land, an extensive musical tribute to Hiroki Kikuta's score for the popular and recently remade SNES RPG Secret of Mana. Having contributed multiple pieces to OCR's 2018 album Hometown Heroes: Town Themes Arranged -- including entries from the Suikoden, Legend of Heroes, and Dragon Slayer series -- Jorito is also no stranger to arranging music from more obscure RPGs like Terranigma.
"After finally playing the game, the tracks, and their context, make a lot of sense, because they are all very well chosen and perfectly crafted for the occasion," explained album co-director Schaap. "The game is definitely worth a play, as one of the great SNES RPGs; if you haven't done so, do check it out."
About OverClocked ReMix
 
Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is an organization dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form. Its primary focus is ocremix.org, a website featuring thousands of free fan arrangements, information on game music and composers, resources for aspiring artists, and a thriving community of video game music fans. OC ReMix operates under the umbrella and sponsorship of Game Music Initiative, Inc, a 501c3 non-profit charitable organization (EIN: 81-4140676).
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Preview it: https://youtu.be/b9dPugNPNig Download it: https://terranigma.ocremix.org Torrent: https://bt.ocremix.org/torrents/Paths_Less_Travelled_-_Terranigma.torrent Comments/Reviews: https://ocremix.org/community/topic/48971/  
 

I was in high school when I got my first job, but my dad was always the provider of video games so up until that point I just came to him with requests. I'm not sure which came first, the PlayStation or the N64, but a friend of mine had me try FF7 on his PS and I rented a N64 with Pod Racer and Mario 64. I quickly realized that 3D graphics and camera controls were a sin and a perversion of video games, so I just quit. Few years later, near the end of the PS2 era, games caught my attention again. The first video game I ever bought with my own money was KotOR. Fell in love with it, bought KotOR II, a PS2 and Dragon Quest VIII. Good games. Then last week I bought Sekiro. Haven't played it yet. The end.

You guys who named me as inspirational <3
Ok when it comes to remixers that inspired me from OCR there are 3 people who instantly pop in my head - @Sixto, @bLiNd and @zircon. Sure there are other remixers I could probably name but they were some of the most striking remixers I found here from an early age and helped shape my own style. 
Also, this is going to sound super corny but you can't have a question like this and not mention @djpretzel - Sometimes I don't think people give him enough credit, creating this site - When I joined in what? 2008? The site had already been going for 9 years, from what I have been told, the site had a HUGE surge of popularity and influence long before I even knew the site existed - when I joined it was pretty much the only place where there appeared to be a community based on this stuff, and from what I can tell, its one of the first of its type. How many of us would be where we are if djpretzel hadn't founded OCR? Honestly? What is the video game remix scene without him? If thats not inspirational, I don't know what is.

Neblix, Bustatunez, Detective Tuesday and Sixto were the main ones that I became friends with and talked to a lot.
Wiesty was the one who welcomed me into the OC Jazz collective which made me examine my arranging style more closely.
There are plenty more, those were just the ones I interacted with the most when I became active in 2016. Although far from a musical newbie (I had already finished a music composition degree and was working toward a career as a session horn player), I was a newbie to this scene.

To me Zircon, Sixto and WillRock, to name a few... I dig what they did (/do) and they inspired me to push myself and get my chops to a postable level in those early days. Even though I hardly interacted with them at the time (even though I did manage to bribe Sixto into a solo for reasons still unclear). Especially the composing streams by Zirc were great to get a glimpse of the chef in the kitchen, if you will. Also Eino Keskitalo for being open to collaborate with a newbie in the Shovel Knight team compo, where we did 2 lovely tracks and we still try and do some collabs every now and then. Sir_Nuts for being a fellow Italo/Synthwave enthusiast and the enjoyable chats and excellent mixing critiques and feedback.
And, dare I say it, the entire judges panel? While I didn’t always agree with all feedback, each time a track was reviewed I got something useful out of it and learned my strengths and weaknesses and was able to improve, It probably helped that I didn’t see them as scary (as some people seem to do) but rather as helpful critical listeners.
There are many many more, of course. Once I grew more confident and comfortable I collaborated with a lot of people from the community through the forums and Discord, and each collab was fun, interesting and a great experience. There’s too many to mention here, but know that you have my thanks for joining me on this ride and for being a cool person

What up, fam,
I've been around a long time. Like, I've been around and semi-active since OCR orange days. I've met a lot of people. Almost everyone that has been mentioned in this thread, even. (Except the ever elusive @Sixto who's totally going to MAGFest this year, for real, he swears).
From all of my experiences, from everyone I've met, I can tell you this: Everyone (most people...in this community are) inspirational (in some way). For the "never meet your heroes" thing. I've met enough of my heroes to know that you can both be inspired by someone's energy and inspiration, and also not be impressed by them as a person or their online presence. Everyone has demons and beasts and dark sides, and some people have trouble with what they should make public. This is very important: If someone (of good conscience) did something that inspired you (to also do something in good conscience) embrace that.
Of everyone I have met from the community who has truly done something I have looked up to, no one has struck me as a "bad person." I've seen things from people in this community that I wouldn't parrot on my darkest days, but the things from people the same people on their best days I would preach forever.
If you take nothing else from this community, in my experience, remember this:
This is special.  It's very easy to overlook this because many of us feel either too small or too embedded to understand the gravity. What OverClocked ReMix, VGMix, and the community at large has done at this point is absolutely exceptional. @djpretzel has (quite frankly accidentally) created an amazing community that has literally created the shape of the indie game music community. People who had a dream were able to create real careers because of the people they made in this community. That is not changed and you should not ever forget that. These people are human. The internet has given you access to all manner of people to which you were not privy to previously. There are all kinds of talented people in this world. Some people have cultural differences. Some people had a rough upbringing. Some people have or develop, mental illnesses. Some people develop drug addictions or dependencies because of hard times. It sucks. It really sucks. There are people, I considered friends, that I can't even speak to now. There are people who have inspired me to do great things, that have done or said terrible things afterward. What I can tell you is this: At some point, they all created, and shared something with you for the same reason that you were are here now. They were passionate enough about the same thing you are to put themselves out there and share their work with you. If you can take something positive from that, and run with it: DO IT.  Don't let what someone has become discourage you from becoming something better than they are. You have the means, and the support to do better, even if you don't know or utilize it yet. I have learned a lot from the community, and it's people. I've turned it into something positive, and so can you. I can't put this any more bluntly than this: This community has shaped my life. Period. Full stop. I am building a family with an amazing woman I would not have met without OverClocked ReMIx. I have made a career off of the experience I've had in this community that I was able to translate into the professional world. I've had career numerous opportunities based on my experiences in this community. I have made life long friendships with many of the people who have been mentioned here. I consider most of the people I've met to be friends, even if I don't agree with everything they have said or done. Everything I have learned from everyone I have learned to turn into a positive. I am a better person because of my time here. In the end, here is what I can say about this community: I've been in it for 17 some odd years. Truly, I have loved, and I have lost. I have believed on people who have let me down, and I still do. I believe in the best of everyone, even the worst offenders. I know we have built something here that is special. I know that @djpretzel and everyone else who is involved here has changed the world. I know that this community can change the world, even in the darkest (and I mean darkest) of times.
Don't believe me?
I've done one hour compos with @danny B and seen him in his "SysteManiac" days before he composed Super Meat Boy. I've heard his bad songs, but I'd also like to think I'm part of the community of guys who gave up before he did that helped propel him to be something amazing in the world. I knew virt when he rebelled against the oppressive OverClocked ReMix regime and create his own community. A community that thrived and blessed the hearts of a hundreds, if not thousands, of people who created and shared works that they created and loved. People who still reminiscence over that connection today from long before Shovel Knight and Shantae and Ok KO! I was present at @Nekofrog's wedding with other members I've met in the community. I can't condone some of the things he's done/said on the internet, and I don't think I have to, but I maintain that I care deeply about his family despite that, and the people I've met as a result of that interaction are invaluable. Again, I don't have to agree with everything a particular person has said/done to find a positive in the experience. I do know that some of the burdens he's willing taken on in life are some that no person should ever have to do, and while I don't respect everything he's said or done online, I absolutely respect what he has done in his personal life. I also know that he has done and said absolutely inexplicable things on the internet. I have seen so many people rise up out of this community that it's not even possible for me to name every single one. Certainly, not everyone has been a successful composer (albeit many have), many have become successful in their own right, and I can guarantee that most can speak positively of their experience here. At the end of the day what I'm saying is this: From every interaction here, I have found a positive result. I am a better person for every second that I have spent on this site. It's easy to give djp all of the credit, and certainly he deserves a lot, but literally, every single person I have interacted with here has shaped my life in some way. Some people inspired me, some people taught me hard lessons, but these interactions have shaped me, my future, and the future of my family, and for that I am truly grateful.
 

This album is pretty amazing. The title "Colors" is pretty fitting, I think. Plus, it's reeeeally fun to improvise over when you're trying to improve your guitar playing

But the orchestra exists much longer than microphones, EQs or digital music production.

So they had to solve the frequency issue with the things they had there (right choice of instruments, fitting octaves/pitch, fitting articulations, greater use of volume and timing of each sound event, right "panning"/deployment of the musicians/players of the instruments) if they played the orchestra live for the public.

I don't think that those ancient orchestras and ensemble sounded bad without this high tech stuff - maybe rather the opposite.
But I think that the people in those days could have had sharper senses, sharper minds and probably a greater knowledge of acoustic sound design within the technological possibilities the had in those days. 

You can probably count me in at that point.

You can probably count me in at that point.

Two reasons I like this place in Texas:

1) It's cheap

2) I'm hoping hosting in Texas will make @Sixto more likely to show up

If @Sixto is there, it's more likely I will be there.

Now this is more like it

I can't really help you but I seriously hope you can figure out how to get past those feelings. There's so much talent in this community and it's always so cool when someone from here goes past remixing for OCR and composes for a game or a TV show, or starts a successful business creating and selling sample libraries, or ends up performing at Video Games Live or MAGFest. All of these things! I really hope that'll be you, too.
I'm not a composer like most of these people. I couldn't create anything original to save my life. All I could ever do was make silly remixes and I don't even do that anymore. The only thing I've done in several years is finally finish a remix I started a long time ago. And I really wish I hadn't. It honestly feels like I've actually made the world worse for putting my "music" out there. Just calling it "my music" makes me cringe. There's a voice in my head that says "your music? Please. Just who do you think you are? Come back down to Earth." I just started my first solo album but I'll probably never finish it. Can't seem to make it past "this is really dumb and nobody's going to like this." So pretty much all I do now is contribute things to other people's music. Guitar parts and things like that. Over the years, I've amassed a large collection of all kinds of samples. Particularly drums! So I offer to help people with things like that too. It helps me stay at least a little relevant to this community, which is all I really want. 

is good. yes

is good. yes

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:
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.

I don't mind ads... (thanks, AdBlock Plus!).
Keep the pennies you made with the 120k views I got with OCR (if any) ... it's only gonna help keep stuff on the servers or something.
Why such a drama ? (No, I haven't read the 6 pages here lol).

OC ReMix is neither dying nor becoming irrelevant. We get plenty of submissions, lots of listeners, and tons of engagement on social media. Also, don't try to back up your point by speaking for other people who "wish to remain anonymous." There's absolutely zero value in saying something like that. Make your own points and back them up.
We're not going to dump curation. It's just not going to happen. OC ReMix has been very clear about being a curated catalog of arrangements that meet a standard of both artistic interpretation and technical execution. We have never—and I can't believe that this has to be said again—claimed to be the end-all-be-all source of VGM arrangements, and we're not trying to be. We've consistently supported other communities and initiatives like DoD and Materia Collective.
OC ReMix can afford to be selective; we've built up a catalog of quality arrangements over the course of nearly 18 years by setting some standards and pushing artists to hone their skills. Our philosophy at OCR has always been "share your music, get feedback, and make your music better." You'll be hard-pressed to find any other art community that does that. Getting a track posted to the front-page is a soft goal that fosters that growth. There are obviously instances where an artist will disagree with those standards and make an exit, or honestly just outgrow the process altogether because they've found their artistic voice and don't need to take part in the loop anymore. That's fine. We have no problem with people who decide OCR isn't for them anymore.
There are plans in place to integrate the workshop deeper into the site's game database so that people can find WIPs and non-posted releases by browsing game pages. But OC ReMix will continue to examine and curate submissions from the community against our established standards because having that goal in place improves artists. We're comfortable with where those standards are and comfortable about the direction the site is taking.