thomas_kresge

Hi! Here's a full orchestral arrangement of Green Hill from Sonic 1. I'm hoping for any feedback, critical or otherwise. I'm embarking on a quest to arrange the soundtracks for the entire Genesis trilogy much the same way this arrangement has been done; I suppose I have a particular fondness for the Sonic soundtracks. https://soundcloud.com/thomaskresge/green-hill Enjoy!

Hey everyone, I'd like to invite everybody to vote for the video game music you would most like to hear orchestrated! You don't have to back the project to vote.

I've tried, and now I'm waiting (and preparing follow up messages!) to hear back from dozens of online publications, blogs, video game sites, etc. So no, it has hasn't been posted to any sites, but yes, we've tried contacting some. Hopefully it interests some of them!

I am managing a new orchestral game concert called the United Video Game Symphony, with arrangements provided by many other game community fans, some of which come from OCReMix (such as Flexstyle, XPRTNovice, Chernabogue, and others). The concert program is voted on by fans like you guys, creating a unique concert developed directly from your input! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1399369938/the-united-video-game-symphony

Hello OcReMix! My name is Thomas Kresge and I am the project manager behind a new orchestral video game concert known as the United Video Game Symphony. If you're familiar with organizations like Video Games Live or Distant Worlds, then you have a general idea of what we're about; we are a symphonic concert that performs orchestral arrangements of video game music. The difference between the UVGS and other orchestral game music concerts is in the way our program is decided. The concert program is decided entirely by the community through a voting system. In this way we plan on being a community-driven production. You can actually go vote right now, even if you don't plan on donating! So, fans (you guys) select the music you want us to perform, and our team of arrangers will create the arrangements that will be performed by the full symphony orchestra. Our arrangers come from a variety of communities, and a number of them are OCReMix contributors and remixers who have worked on some of OCR's albums. Our arrangers include: Michael Birch "Flexstyle" (13x OCReMix contributor and 8x OCR album contributor) Alexandre Mourey "Chernabogue" (director of Vampire Variations and OCReMix contributor) Joe Zieja "XPRTNovice" (Balance and Ruin artist, OCReMix contributor) Callum Kennedy "Tuberz McGee" Alexander Rosetti (MS Paint Adventures) Curtis Schweitzer (Composer, Starbound) Clark Powell "Plazmataz" (MS Paint Adventures) Will Pisani "Light_of_Aether" (Metroid Reorchestrated) Andrew Huo (MS Paint Adventures) Peter M. Crockett "Moseph" (Composer, OCReMix contributor) Greg Nourse "Gario" (OCReMix contributor, also featured on their most recent album) Robert J! Lake "spellmynamewithabang" (MS Paint Adventures) Jeremy Iamurri "Solatrus" (MS Paint Adventures) Blake Robinson (Synthetic Orchestra: Banjo-Kazooie Symphony, Chrono Trigger Symphony) Tyler Dever (MS Paint Adventures) We have just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the UVGS, and we're looking for your support! We will also record and live stream the performance, and will later distribute the recording. A link to the Kickstarter can be found here. I hope this project interests many of you, and I believe it will provide a fantastic service to the video game music community. Our arrangers are fans just like you guys, which helps create a very unique concert that is driven by the community. Thank you for taking the time to read this! I appreciate everything OCReMix has done for video game music, and I hope to see the UVGS come to fruition!

For those who have expressed interest and are serious about arranging (and those who will express interst), I'd like to gather some short orchestral arrangements you may already have for the purpose of using them as backing tracks to a promotional video. I'm not looking for complete works or anything you don't want used for this purpose, just excerpts of 30 seconds or less from sampled mock-ups of orchestral arrangements you may have. This can give future backers a broad idea of what the concert might sound like. On another note, I'd like to add that this project is also looking for some people who can help out with a few other parts. I'm needing someone who can do some graphic design work, and somebody who could also help out with making a promotional simple (nothing too fancy, just something to tell people what this concert is about). A web master would be helpful, as well. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee any pay for these jobs unless the Kickstarter is successful.

This certainly isn't stingy at all, and on further thought, I've decided I want to budget an amount to go to the arrangers. I haven't decided how much yet (no less than $100, but more would certainly be better given how much time it can take to get orchestral music arranged, orchestrated, and copied), but I'd at least like to confirm now that there will be some compensation. The instrumentation right now is for a standard orchestra of about 44 players. Stretch goals would allow for a bigger orchestra, but it wouldn't include non-standard instrumentation (like a choir). With that in mind, if all you needed was say, one to four singers, and it was only for one piece, we could probably make it work. Worst case scenario you'd have to pay for it yourself. If you're still interested in trying, I am planning on writing a brief guide on orchestration and I could also recommend a couple books. With that in mind, I will be looking over every arrangement while it's in progress as a form of quality control and to give advice on the way. You could also team up with another person to handle the orchestration while you do most of the arranging. I don't want to limit this just to those with a lot of orchestral experience; on the other hand, the arrangements have to be of high quality. I'm not particularly worried about the quality part, though, since the arrangements will be "verified" before being accepted. This would be fantastic to get help on the verification process, even just for the sake of having more than one person to look over arrangements. I'm glad to see there's interest in this. I'll keep a list of those who have said they're interested. Just for future reference, post a link to some of your work if a link's not already available in your signature. If interest in this takes off, I'll have to start being selective about who can arrange. Thanks for the replies thus far!

Hello, OCRemix. My name is Thomas Kresge and I am currently working on producing a concert known as the United Video Game Symphony. Like Play! or Video Games Live, this is an orchestral concert featuring arrangements of video game music. I plan on funding the concert through Kickstarter, but before I launch it I am trying to form a budget and work out various logistical issues (such as where the concert will occur). My short-term goal with this is to produce a single concert, but if this proves successful enough, I hope to turn this into a concert series. What makes the UVGS different from other orchestral video game concerts is the way its program is decided. A voting system will be used so that anyone in the video game community can vote on what music they want in the concert and we will basically use a popular vote to decide the entire concert program, which will include about 10 to 15 pieces depending on the total length of each one. Additionally, I want every arrangement to be new and unique to this series, and I want them all to be provided by the community. This is why I have come to OCRemix: to recruit musicians interested in arranging for the UVGS. I’m not necessarily limiting this to those who already have experience writing for orchestras (I will provide help in this regard), though I am expecting the arrangements to be of professional quality. I’d like to solidify the list of UVGS arrangers before the Kickstarter is launched. I plan on budgeting some money to pay those who arrange for the group. I don’t want to guarantee anything at the moment, but payment will be at least $100. I understand the amount of work that goes into arranging, orchestrating, and copying, so I'll try to aim higher than that, but know that there will be payment for participating arrangers. I know that it is pretty difficult for fan arrangers to get their music performed by actual musicians, let alone a full orchestra. The UVGS was spurred by my own desire to have this, and I feel that this orchestra would be a fantastic thing for the video game music community, especially the remixing community. This is why I’ve brought this proposal to the community. I want to give a lot of people the opportunity to get their arrangements performed. Just to be clear, the only stipulation is that you would not get to directly choose what it is you’re arranging. Because the UVGS program is decided by a public vote, the arrangers would have a pool of options to choose from. Although the voting system is not set in stone, the final pool of pieces to choose from will probably exceed what will actually end up on the program to give arrangers a bit more choice (and I’ve yet to figure out a civil way to resolve the issue of two arrangers wanting to do the same piece). If anyone has any questions, advice, or wants to join the teams, please don't hesitate to comment. Obviously, there's still some things that need to be worked out. This is a project I really want to see realized, and I hope you guys are just as interested in this as I am. EDIT: I'd like to add that this project is also looking for some people who can help out with a few other parts. I'm needing someone who can do some graphic design work, and somebody who could also help out with making a promotional simple (nothing too fancy, just something to tell people what this concert is about). A web master would be helpful, as well. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee any pay for these jobs unless the Kickstarter is successful. While going through some of the planning on this, I'm hoping to also gather some advice or suggestions from anyone who might have something to say about this. If you've got anything else to say about this project, I'd love to hear it.

Definitely one of my top two biggest musical inspirations. One of the greatest modern composers, no doubt. Meeting him would be a dream come true.

Hello everybody. I put on a concert a couple months ago and I thought I'd get the unbiased opinion of others about it. I don't want to bore anyone with a wall of text, so I'll let the music speak for itself. The playlist for the music can be found here. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0BEEA251510400C7 The first video gives an in-depth description of the background of myself and the concert. Like I said, I'm looking for whatever criticism, comments, or whatever the people here might be able to offer. [Note: as far as performance quality of the musicians, please keep in mind that there was, essentially, only one two and half hour rehearsal to pull this whole thing together, so I know there are some clear performance mistakes at some moments.]

Here we have a WIP of mine, one that will probably not get posted on OCR (for a variety of reasons), but I figured I'd share what I've got so far and get some critique. This song is an orchestral arrangement of Panic Puppet (act 1) from Sonic 3D Blast (the Genesis version). There's not really a whole lot I want to say about it, except that I almost feel embarrassed to post this as I just listened to some of the University of Maryland's gamer symphony stuff and read about it... but have a listen anyways! Panic Puppet Ignore the small recording glitch at 00:16, and the very end is basically a placeholder until I get a transition into the next part of the song (which will be a more lyrical version of the melody, think in the style of the orchestral theme from Sonic Unleashed). P.S. Sorry it's in .aiff format. Does anybody know of a good free .aiff to .mp3 converter for Mac?

Thanks for the replies. I realize my mixing needs TONS of work, I just don't (yet) have the tools to get into the song and mess with that stuff, but at least I have an idea on what I should look at when I actually do get the tools. (I'm looking to by Sonar so that I can truly start to sequence, I've just been putting it off and trying to find a cheap price for it.)

I have a project that I work on whenever I have spare time where I am arranging all of the music from Sonic 1-3 and Sonic & Knuckles for orchestra. I have every song done in rough midi forms (finished a LONG time ago), and know I'm working on getting it all put into a realistic sound library. Currently, I've more or less finished two songs. The second one is a medley (called Water Zones) featuring the Labyrinth BGM from Sonic 1 and then the Hydrocity BGM from Sonic 3 (with the drowning jingle tossed in the middle). Water Zones The first song in the project, Mystic Cave from Sonic 2, can be found here. Mystic Cave

I like this arrangement. I'm not a big fan of harpsichord, though, but I can't say it lessens anything in the arrangement. Just one question, what are the orchestral samples you used for this?

Thanks for the comments, Spakku. Could you be a little more specific on some of them, though? The comments seem a little to general, i.e. ":20-:40 needs more work." And what spots could you points out that sound off-key? Thanks again!