Eino Keskitalo

Mmmm, Castlevania goodness.. tempting..

Not boring at all. As you could probably tell I've been thinking about the same subject for a while.

It's worth it.. I buy way too many games too (esp. considering my budget), but this one I actually gave a go and have stuck with it, too. Good summer for games actually, I already finished Kero Blaster which is another great retro action platformer. (Plus I've also played a bunch of Henry Hatsworth on the DS, I guess platforming is my favourite kind of gaming.) Anyway, go for it!

I like to listen to my own stuff. I have a playlist of my finished VGM rearrangements and it's an album's worth of music. Not only does that give a nice sense of accomplishment, but I like to listen to them in themselves. Turns out I actually make music that I like! I've also put together a playlist of my unfinished VGM rearrangements. There's so much stuff there that's it's almost not even funny anymore. That pile is kind of fun to listen through since quite a bit of it is pretty close to finished, it gives the illusion that it's easy to make that first playlist bigger. If that makes any sense. I've been making music since 1996, but I've only reached a level where my music really clicks after working on this stuff around OCR for a couple of years - for one thing, the submission standards have forced me to work on production and that's allowed me to be able to put together fully realized presentable pieces of music. I'm not listening to my older stuff. It would be nice to put together original music that I could stand to listen to myself. Another goal would be putting together vocals that I could stand to listen to myself. I'm happy to have at least three friends in real life whose comments are tangibly helpful (they're honest and critical) so I'll try to always play my stuff to them. No-one I personally know is particularly enthusiastic about hearing my stuff, that would be pretty ego-boosting. I sometimes put my stuff on when people are visiting but I don't think I'm forcing it on anyone, I hope.. I really enjoy making music, that's the most important part. It really does help me that OCR provides a framework of sorts, a community and an (idea of) audience, plus a musical and cultural framework to where I can place my work into. I've noticed I need that sort of a context and some kind of an outlet where other people can (theoretically) hear it, I don't seem to make music completely for the sake of it or just for myself. But it doesn't also seem to really matter if lots of people hear or like it or not. I think that to satisfy my ego in that way I would need to get something like dozens of comments every day and that sort of attention would be scary in another way. It's good to get a few valuable comments every now and then that actually help you to become better at making music.

Thanks for all the comments on both of my mixes. Also Aaron, I really appreciated the offer to collab - this time though schedules would've made it impossible anyway + I really wanted to use the Marth source. Dammit if that Xenoblade source isn't a third one in the row that's pretty easy to blend with the Marth tune. Dunno how I'd like to approach this.

For me it's actually easier to wake up in time for 4 am Saturday morning rather than stay up all night.

Seems all right judging by the first stage! =) Even died a couple of times. Need to unbutter my thumbs. Cool tunes, no surprise. The title theme almost made me drop the controller and reach for the guitar. Thanks for linking that Gamasutra article, that was a cool read.

Super cool thread. I'm a member of hackerspace that is only a block away, I have zero experience and tons of ideas (plus stuff like a broken electric organ stored away). Sadly I just don't have the time (or is it mind) to put into any of it. But I still wanted to post in the super cool thread. Maybe some day!

Can I just say how weird and wonderful it is to hear the immediately recognizable tones of your national instrument in an OC ReMix? Fantastic arrangement and performance. Very well paced, comparing to the source I think you emphasized its dynamics to a great effect. Super fine sense of space. Even the biggest sections have lots of room. Props also to working the melody to a natural vocal piece. I had a thought that this is something that would've fit quite well on the soundtracks of the LOTR movies.

I'm one of those people who don't really mind the wait. I spend ages working on the pieces anyway, and I haven't had trouble picking something back up after a number of months. I, too, certainly appreciate any and all effort to speed up the process!

What a fantastic sound, what a fantastic arrangement. I love the combo of lofified mellotron-esque chords & bubbling chippy synths, but there's just a lot to love here in terms of sound. I also very much appreciate the brevity, everything is packed into a perfect length and I can't imagine more that wouldn't be less. I can always press play again. (wooooo renoiseeeee)

Ahhaha, duhhhh...

The crackle effect is nice. I like the soft/mushy aesthetic. The bass drum is very loud! Quite possibly the bass is a bit loud too. You're taking the original to an interesting direction. Looking forward to updates!

I realize my comment to the Aidyn track TillyFun posted was a bit snobbish, perhaps? I can of course speak only how it sounded to myself, without the context of the game too. In hindsight my comment wasn't in the spirit of the thread (or maybe very good manners in general) so I apologize for that. I do make the "bad crazy" and "just plain crazy" distinction myself. I'm not sure which one the from Star Control 2 is. It certainly fits those demented jokers.

This is actually bad rather than crazy. Seems ok up to 0:21, but then the flute starts playing random notes (sounds like it was composed by smashing keys randomly), and the added warbling instrument seems to be in a completely different key. Maybe the flute is supposed to emulate Hiroki Kikuta/Secret of Mana tunes. Anyway, it does start out quite nice. Now this is quite cool! edit: That Extreme Boards and Blades. Now that's the stuff. The stuff indeed.

Ah, so it's too late to participate? I've been having a flu so I didn't rush to film. It's all right. The end of the last OCR Talkback has a great bit of Gameboy memories from PhoenixDown btw, it's worth checking that out!

I quite enjoyed that. There should be more game music like that. If anyone knows any, post in this thread please.

Anticipating mixes from the EP on the front-page in 3.. 2..

Sent mine in! What a painful learning experience. I probably don't have the time to vote on the villains, unfortunately.

I on the other hand have written a terrible lyric to sing with my terrible accent. Still no idea if I'll be able to record anything.. oh well, there's still plenty of time!

"Bored" is a good word, even if I thought those games were great, I just didn't feel like playing further than I did. OTOH I can't help feeling like I should finish them too. I kinda like it when a good game is brief enough.

Aha, thanks for reminding me, I too have only almost finished FF6! Definitely need to replay that one. It might be a bit silly, but I loved FF4 so much FF6 never really felt as stupendously great to me as it supposedly is. *shrug* It's been more than 15 years though, so maybe I'd be able to enjoy it better now. But the games I came here to post about are a few Zelda games: Link to the Past I've played *twice* to the 7th dungeon in the dark world, which is like two and a half hops to the end of the game. I really do love that game, but for some reason it's just a tiny bit too long or something. The same with Link's Awakening - it's been longer since I played that, and I remember even spending time digging up secret seashells and what not, but still couldn't finish it. I'm also stuck in the 6th dungeon in the first Zelda, but that's just because there seems to be two really difficult rooms back-to-back. It's such an upward spike in the difficulty, that I'm sure there's some trick to it. I certainly should be replaying all these games..

I wanted to record acoustic guitar, but it's hard to arrange a moment for that (can't do that in the middle of the night, for instance). Maybe I'll resort to the electric..

It's great to see a new JJT mix come up, a couple of his tracks are some of my fondest from the OCR catalog. I've also really liked what Roof Beam Carpenters I've heard. I'll have to save the new album for later, but I did buy the previous EP right now. Into the mix at hand. The new chording with the guitar alone is pretty thrilling to hear, and throughout it's an original, yet very fitting way to treat the source material. As a nod to the intended era and style the piece very successful and fun to listen to. The big crash cymbals section of the beat seemed to squish a lot of the other instrumentation away (I also remember the huge crash cymbal beats from Hydrophone Breakdown, loud there too!). Overall the mix feels a little tiring to the ears, for one there's a lot of distortion in the EP and it's maybe piling up some frequencies, but the acoustic guitar is sounding a little suspect on its own. Other than that the production was very good & the playing really tight. The bit that I wasn't feeling at all in the arrangement was the chromatically descending bit of the melody at 0:44 and 1:44. It's a high point of the melody in the original but didn't seem to work in this context. I tried noodling around on the guitar and the final chord which seems to clash might be something like Eadd2? It sounds to me that the G in the melody is causing some sort of a major/minor mode collision due to the major E chord on the guitar. Esus4 seemed to maybe be ambiguous enough to not clash like that, but hard to say about just humming above some chords which I might be transcribing wrong in the first place (plus just in case it sounds remotely like I know or pretend to know music theory, I don't really, I'm just using a reverse guitar chord finder and trying to put into words why those spots didn't seem to work to me). Other than that I thought the arrangement was quite superb, well I generally like the type of arrangement that keeps the melody and rewrites the backing already so this was an easy plus for me. I liked how the melody was transferred from one instrument to the next in each section, and the original melodic bits fit in very cohesively. timaeus, you should really check out more JJT, like right now! I agree that this sounded pretty pro.

I just applied my leet hacking skills and signed the consent form for this album.