Rozovian

I've been thinking about this. I had a look at the submission standards. I think they need to be rewritten for future submissions. 2.1. Your submission must be your own, original arrangement. 2.4. If your submission involves multiple artists, ensure that all artists: (are named, agree with the content policy, and are credited how they want to appear on ocr) Without any opting out of being part of the training data of some of the ai generators, and some of them (Udio at least) being sued over recreating copyrighted tracks, it's difficult to confirm that an arrangement is the artist's own, original arrangement. And while sample libraries and loops are licensed and don't need crediting, the artists contributing (without consenting) to the ai generators are contributing their arrangements and performances to the tool, which is turn generates (possibly overfitting) an arrangement based on some amount of prompt and directing. Would using a ghost writer for the arrangement and not crediting them (anywhere) be acceptable on ocr? I think that's a close enough analogy to some of what the ai generators do. 3.3. Any incorporation or arrangement of source material not from games (mainstream, classical, etc.) should be extremely limited. This isn't just something an ai generator might do, but when it does so, it might do so deliberately, as in referencing the track in the training data with the intent of recreating some of it. When a human does it, it can be coincidental, simply doing the logical thing based on a chord progression or rhythm, not having ever heard the thing it resembles. If I recognize that my remix is ripping off the 5/4 bass and brass combo from Lingus, I can rewrite it. But what if an ai generator recreates it and the artist doesn't recognize it because the artist doesn't know it? Can it be someone's own, original arrangement and be built on and contain sizable portions of someone else's track without the artist knowing it? 4.2. Your arrangement must be substantial and original. Submissions must be different enough from the source material to clearly illustrate the contributions, modifications, and enhancements _you_ have made. My emphasis. The ghost writer scenario applies here too. Different from the source can't just mean a close copy of some other track that exists in the training data instead. 5.2. Production must show significant attention to sound quality, mixing, mastering, and utilization of effects. Whose attention? Logic's gotten its new ai mastering tool (haven't upgraded and tried it yet). Isn't Neutron some kind of auto-mixing tool? Tools are tools, and it's difficult to draw a line exactly in between when a tool is convenient and when it does everything for you. I don't think ocr would reject a track for using Neutron or something. But at some point a tool is less a tool and more a collaborator. At that point, credit is due. And given how the generators are trained, and the black box between training data and output, how do you do that? I suppose a new section regarding ai generators should be added regarding where ocr draws the line. Don't know what it should contain. Do all notes need to be inputted by the artist(s)? Does the artist need to have had full control over each track in the mix? How does using an ai performance of the artists' notes count? What about non-neural-network automation tools that humanize things? -- My general stance is that it should be clear what an artist has done. Like in point 4.2. I know I get disappointed when I find out that the cool thing I like about a track is just a loop anyone could have used. What was impressive about the track and the artist is then just an asset they found. But that doesn't mean they can't use the tools available to them. A guitar player is using a tool to play the notes, more notes than they could produce with just their mouth. Usually. A composer isn't necessarily performing, and a performer isn't necessarily composing. People often select their sounds from presets rather than make their own. There are automated mastering tools, be they based on written algorithms or neural networks. There's no shortage of tools that simplify the music-making, but we all have some idea of what counts as effort and skill, and even if my performance on Eye of the Storm isn't all that interesting (if any performance at all), my choice of notes and sounds is what makes that track mine. I think that's the key. What did the artist actually do? What's the thing that makes this _theirs_? A full ban on everything related to ai is probably not the right direction, when much of the same criticisms of making things too easy can be said for automation like humanizing features in sample libraries, chord generators, arpeggiators and multiband compressors. And synths. And Hatsune Miku. And at some point we might turn into goat farmers. But there's the other direction too, where the artist is less creator and more facilitator. Director. Producer. Not performer, writer, designer. Patron rather than artist. I don't know if there's a convenient stopwatch-like criterion that can be used, so I think the best I can come up with, for now, is the question regarding an artist's work: "What makes this track theirs, and not the tool's?"

I think, in principle, it's not so much the training data that's the ethical problem but how the network can be used to replace the people who made the training data. In our case, musicians. Remixers. Composers. Much like how using images on the internet to create a tool to help blind people see is imo fine, but a tool to make photographers and illustrators largely obsolete isn't. I don't think it's in line with ocr's goal of promoting vgm as an art form to let people use remixes as mere assets for other works, including future vgm, so I think it'd be good to communicate this, even if it's unenforceable. A principle. I like how valve wants disclosure of how AI is used in the development and functionality of games on steam.

IIRC, there was a Zelda fansite that had a time-based splash image and color scheme, switching between day and night styles based on the user's clock. If you want a fun but not too complicated js coding project, you can do that. Though maybe not a day-night cycle for AOCC. Making the colors change with the seasons and turn wintry as the next release gets near would make sense, but would take a while for any changes to show. Still, it could be good practice.

Good job everyone who got something done this year. It'll be interesting to hear what you all have come up with. About this, the server is slow, so you should probably use smaller images on the main page. We're a bit spoiled with most big sites being fast, so a lot of them don't bother will optimizing image size. But it's pretty noticeable here. I like the general vibe of the new colors, feels more wintry, though the background is a bit too bright for my liking. Overall, it's an improvement, and should indeed make updating a lot easier. I've worked with php, where you can easily update an element that shows up on multiple pages. Requires a different server setup, though. In html, this is probably the best approach, though in 17 more years the page is gonna be loooong. But by then you'll have learned javascript and can do some show/hide things. And linking to anchors/bookmarks. And more. Good job.

Someone that knows this stuff well enough should do a write-up on how to release remixes properly licensed on these services. I know there's info out there, but this is where it's relevant, and not all info out there is.

Seems like your main problem is platform specific, so I'd do an experiment: Upload with more headroom. Spotify recommends -1 dB True Peak. The article on their site said it's to avoid distortion or clipping when encoding to lower quality. Or something like that. I'd even go as far as to upload it as wav, highest quality, more than 1 dB of headroom. And maybe just the hats and cymbals. If I don't hear a problem with that, I can start stepping back towards my previous upload until I replicate the problem. -- As for samples, I wouldn't mind some samples for layering, normal drums and other percussion and weirdly recorded ones and other useful sounds. Any recommendations?

Sounds like someone got rejected and is trying to deflect. I've done that too, in at least one bad attempt at humor. Some good points here, but I think they get lost in an unhelpfully negative attitude. Since OP supposedly won't respond, let's just talk about some of the points being made here. I'll ignore the ones conflating tracks passing the panel with tracks being good, because not every track is suited for ocr and vice versa. The standards could benefit from an update along the lines of OP's suggestion of a LUFS number. Useful reference. I propose a range, so people aren't making their ballads and bangers equally loud. Nepotism! Like hoboka and platonist and velkku and a bunch of other familiar names among the recent rejections. I kind'a agree, actually. I would have liked to read a bunch of positive remarks from a minimum number of judges on my Frozen Rose track which bypassed the panel and got direct-posted. But from a listener, non-remixer, non-direct-posted pov, direct posts look a bit sus. No specific suggestion on how to improve here. Regarding album tracks, especially regarding those selected for an initial remix flood, they've been discussed internally on an album eval thread... Could that thread be made public after the album is released? In part so the remixers get to read about their tracks, which is nice and/or useful, but also to add transparency to the process, even if it isn't during the process. I think it could be made more clear what a resub is. Have it in the submissions standards/guidelines/instructions/recipe and/or in a sticky in the judges' decisions subforum. For those unaware, a resub is a re-submitted track, one that has already been rejected by the judges. To have the improved version go through the entire judging process is a waste of time and energy, when all it takes is for the same judges to revisit their previous points and see if the new version has solved the problems without introducing any big new ones. Hence why resubs get fast-tracked to the panel. I'm not sure a resub has to be given a "no, resub" vote to get to be a resub. That too could be clarified. The waiting time. Argh. An automated system would be nice, one that takes in the tracks and creates the appropriate judging threads and updates some page or forum thread about the progress of them all. Initial eval, views, posts, maybe also votes. But that's a big coding challenge. Not to mention the initial eval might be a form rejection, simply a statement that the track clearly doesn't meet the standards, vague as they might be. I suppose a possible solution for this is to give people viewing access to the subforum overview or whatever, the names of threads and the number of replies on each. Might be what OP suggested, just using the wrong words. Having the entire community be the judge negates the need for a panel in the first place, and lets every beginner with a posse overrule more experienced folks. Not a good idea. And it would create an imbalance in attention even if the crowd doesn't get to vote. There'd be a lot of attention on Zelda and Final Fantasy remixes, while other games would be largely ignored. And that assumes the remixers are cool with their possibly rejected tracks being scrutinized by everyone. I don't think the remixers usually want rejected remixes to be available to people, so them being removed by default is reasonable. Remixers can always opt-out of this default, opt-in to having the link left in. When submitting something that's more of an experiment and not being sure it's fit for ocr but wanting to try submitting anyway, that makes sense. When planning on resubbing if rejected, link removal makes a lot more sense. Submissions standards might be a misnomer. Unless standards can work in reverse, and the standards list things that are cause for quick and easy rejections, while tracks that don't fail those standards are more closely evaluated. That's how I'd interpret how they work. Is standards the best term for that? Dunno. Finally: Quoted for irony. Possibly intentional. I do think OP's greater point about transparency and feedback is a valid one. I've been staff, I've seen some of the staff subforums, I'm on and very occasionally check staff discord. So I have some amount of insight here, something not everyone has. And I remember my frustration with a community I greatly enjoyed but with a staff that walls itself off to make a lot of decisions in private. I've ranted about the feedback checklist and a bunch of things, often because there was little involvement with the community before those things were brought out. The things themselves weren't necessarily bad, but presented in a decree-from-on-high kind of way. I think there's a failure or unwillingness to leverage the strengths of the community, which is that it's actually a community. So maybe there's a few points here worth talking about. edit: forgot to mention mastering. do we count preparing a mix for ocr as mastering? because if so, it's all fine. otherwise maybe a bit of pedantry on that point is in order.

This seems like a fun idea. I might join. No promises.

Oh look there's a trackball option. Thumbball trackball, 3-finger hold. Had to go and check, on laptop atm.

Grab yourself a well-mixed track in roughly the style you're going for, and aim to mix similarly. Compare. Especially check that your lows aren't too loud, as they'll eat up a lot of headroom, and that your leads are bright enough, ie have enough high frequency content. It's okay that yours isn't as loud, mixing is more important than loudness, and loudness is easier when things are well mixed. Turn down your reference track accordingly. You get used to the sound of your track as you're working on it, so make a habit of using a reference track to reset your ears so you can tell when you have too much reverb, too much compression, too much bass, too much of anything. You can also check your mix by turning down the listening volume and mixing on super-quiet, because then you'll only hear what's most important in the mix. Use this to check that background things stay in the background and the important things are the loudest. Compare with your reference track like this too. Use decent mixing headphones.

I can't count. Thirteenth.

How do I put this... I would love to do a Christmas tune for a twelfth year in a row but that seems like an awfully big lift for me. ? We shall see.

VBR has to do with data compression, not related to volume, so that's not an option. iTunes on desktop has (at least has had; my version is old) a setting where it does some analysis and tries to do exactly what you're asking for, with varied results. Streaming platforms like youtube does this too, at least for uploads deemed too loud by its system. iTunes also let you adjust the volume of tracks and save this in the metadata. Depending on where you're listening to them from, you've got different tools available. It's far from convenient, but you can also process batches of remixes with, uh, some audio tools out there, probably. There should be negligible effect on sound quality with a single conversion, if you convert to a high-quality format rather than convert to a different mp3 encoding (that's a xerox of a xerox). This is fine so long as you don't distribute these copies. If there are no other tools available, you can always put compression (the audio kind) on the output from your device. This might require some special software to hijack and process the output, or a hardware compressor, either of which will likely cost you a little. And figuring out the right settings might take a bit of work, too. It will screw a bit with the dynamics of the track, and might make the start of a soft track extra soft... Not the best solution, obviously, but it's an option. I guess the most convenient solution is to use a music player with this feature built-in.

Yeah, the VSTs themselves aren't all that big, but any sample libraries they use often are. These you might want to have on a separate drive, be this internal or external, USB or something else. Depending on their size and number, you might not need to, especially if you're just starting out. The kind of drive and connector doesn't really matter, so long as it's fast enough, and USB drives are more than enough for most cases. Reinstalling is the safer option compared to just copying things, though I haven't had much trouble (on mac) copying libraries and setting a new library directory. The few VSTs (well, AUs in my case, because mac) that wouldn't let me do that I could just trick with symlinks. Symlinks, or symbolic links, are a special kind of alias on unix systems like mac, not sure if there's an equivalent option on windows. Moving the actual AU components (the VSTs, basically) would probably also work using symlinks, but I don't think it's worth the trouble.

Cmaj7. A C7 is an Edim over that C. Flat 5th. Tritone for the E. And that REALLY really wants to resolve somewhere, probably to an F or C# chord.

I don't think so. It'd have to be on the old laptop, then. If that even starts up anymore. Time to give music making another shot?

I'm no lawyer. This is uneducated opinion. btw remixing the song, without licensing it, might not be covered by fair use, depending on... things. If you want to be safe when it comes to all this, get a license. Game music is usually fine to remix (probably not ok to sell the remix), but commercially released music is different. 1. Purpose and character of the use The first factor is "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes." To justify the use as fair, one must demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new. Quoth Wikipedia. It's transformative, in that it's not the original audio of neither the trailers nor the original song. And your own cut of the video material. Can't say if that's enough, but I would think so. Educational purpose though? Nope. But it might "advance ... the progress of the arts" though. 2. Nature of the copyrighted work Fact vs. fiction, ideas vs. expression. This kind of stuff. You're not copying an idea, you're copying the expression itself, the video material, but re-cut. The material is fiction. The material is published. What else might matter? 3. Amount and substantiality You're presumably using a lot of the material you can find. A trailer itself is not the whole game, but it is a complete video that's been cut, mixed, released. 4. Effect upon work's value The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work. In this case, a positive effect, if any, on the trailer. Maybe also on the song. So as far as I, non-lawyer, can tell: You're probably OK on the first and fourth factor, maybe not on the middle two. All are supposed to be considered.

Sorry it took so long to give this a listen. Bad year. Listened to the most recent version in the thread, 9a. I'm not familiar with the sources so I'll focus on the sound. Let's talk about the first 5 seconds. The sounds used are all good enough, you shouldn't need to replace any of them. But pick a lead and make that the most prominent instrument. The pad swells into being rather loud. The piano plays the most identifiable melody, but it's rather muffled. The thing in the high range is bright and loud. Which is the lead? From how it's mixed, I'd say it's the high-pitch thing. From how it's written, the piano. The piano sounds like it could use a high pass (low cut) filter to get rid of (or with a low shelf, mitigate) some low frequencies that don't add anything musically. Don't cut too high up, but see if you can reduce that low-frequency part of the sound. That should make the piano compete less with the pad for the low range, gives you a bit of headroom, and takes away some of the proximity effect that doesn't seem to match the distant pads or the hard-panned high-pitch chirps. You might want to do something similar to that chirp thing, too. The next 5 second is in a different key/scale. There's a natural shift within those 5, but moving from the first 5 to the second 5 doesn't sound right. I'd experiment with transposing those 5 first seconds until the transition makes more sense. Your synth pluck lead, despite being doubled at times by some background harpsichord-sounding thing, is weak. Your drum+bass combo is strong and aggressive. That's a difficult combo to work with. The accompanying pads are rather loud. You've put a lot of things into the background here. I'm not sure what to suggest to improve things here, besides softer pads. Lead down an octave? Play octaves? Different backing doubling? Different lead entirely? Make it more about the drum+bass groove than about melody? The lead sound isn't bad, but I don't think it works as a lead here. There are some weird harmonies happening here and there. Some of it sounds intentional and unsettling, some of it more newby. I'm not gonna go over it all. Some of it might come from long releases and echoes on the instruments, some from mashing the sources together. The middle section or whatever, from around 1:40 is a welcome change. It goes back into a rather weak main section after that. Dynamically doesn't make much sense. I'd try either building up the middle section, or kicking off the main section with more energy. The middle section also has the loud pad problem (which btw might be a loudness or just a frequency range problem; many ways to look at it and solve it), and I'm wondering if the accompaniment there should be an octave lower, as there are a lot of instruments competing for the high range. I can hear a lot of high-range shimmer, wondering if that's an fm synth you're using for some of these sounds. In any case, the sounds aren't bad (except maybe the lead), but they end up competing, and there's a bit of a gap in the middle of the frequency range. There's a lot of good stuff in here, but a lot of things to improve too. Those simple, short synth blips here and there, the more rhythmic ones, I like. Very atmospheric. I also really like what's happening at 2:38-2:43. The lead coming in again isn't necessary, and if it just did that first note there, I wouldn't mind. But it's not a sound that works as a standalone. I'd try using the piano for this melody, or leaving it to just one note on the pluck lead. Or having found a different lead, maybe that'd work better. I'd try stuff. TL;DR: Good stuff, bad stuff, nice sounds, lead doesn't work, instruments competing... wait, opera?

https://ocremix.org/album/96/golden-sun-a-world-reignited I should be in there, among arrangers I guess. Just noticed I'm not. Same on vgmdb.

Yeah, it inadvertently turned into a bit of a time capsule. Clem, dude, mad props for your series of album reviews. :D

I wrote a bit on feedback in my remixing guide, back when. It's less about giving good feedback and more about identifying it among the feedback you get, but it might still be useful to you. The checklist mentioned above. I think good feedback comes from good listening. This means understanding what you're listening to, understanding the artist's intention but also a typical listener's reaction and negotiating some kind of useful response out of that. Knowledge, whether music theory, audio engineering, performance, sound design, mixing, music history or anything else is also useful, so learning any of that will help. Be aware of the artist's intention. On this site you might come across releases, works-in-progress, experiments and all kinds of things, and some of it is made with to suit ocr's standards and some of it isn't. And elsewhere on the internet ocr's standards aren't relevant (the vgm interpretation stuff anyway). Then comes the psychology of how to actually deliver the feedback in a way that's constructive. I've screwed up on this a few times (apparently the word mediocre means bad), and you will too, probably. Don't tell the artist what to do. Offer your perspective. Suggestions are fine, but be more descriptive than prescriptive. There's a saying about how usually when people say something's wrong they're right, and when they say what's wrong they're not. I try to offer multiple solutions when I identify a problem, as in "you might be able to solve this by EQ-carving some space in the other instruments, or side-chain compressing them out of the way". That gives the artist options to consider rather than directives to obey. If you make music (I haven't seen you around), think about the feedback you'd want on your mixes, and how you'd want it delivered. And then write it a little softer, a little nicer than that, because tone is difficult to convey in text. I'm not exactly in my best head space right now, so this might not be entirely coherent. I hope it's still useful.

It's not that bad. Not yet.

What the... again?

Dude, you have every reason to be proud of this one. It's great. It always puts a smile on my face when I hear it.

Sounds like a blast. One of the ways to tell that you've improved is being able to tell that your old work was worse. There's always more to learn. But it's easy to forget how far you've come already. Enjoy your music making, dude.