thomas_kresge
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Posts posted by thomas_kresge
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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.
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Has this been posted to any video game news sites? I haven't seen it on Kotaku, at least. Get it out there!
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!
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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
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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!
- Michael Birch "Flexstyle" (13x OCReMix contributor and 8x OCR album contributor)
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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.
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At the risk of sounding stingy, I'd love to arrange conditional on you budgeting (in this proposed kickstarter) for definite fair pay for those arranging; if money is going to pay performers then at least just as much should go to those making the music they're playing.
EDIT: i mean, i know you put that in the post; what i mean is that it should be included in the amount proposed from the start, as opposed to being a stretch goal.
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.
I don't suppose you could use any voices for this project?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.
hmm, I've done some orchestral remixes but not sure I could write for an actual orchestra.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.
I'm tentatively interested in being involved. I have experience writing for real orchestra players and depending on what your needs are could possibly also assist with orchestration and editing for any arrangers who are less familiar with orchestra writingThis 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!
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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.
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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.
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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.]
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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!
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?
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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.)
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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).
The first song in the project, Mystic Cave from Sonic 2, can be found here.
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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?
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The instruments' volumes throughout tend to be biased toward the higher notes, which doesn't work for me with such a bass-focused source tune. The brass section sounds off-key at a few spots. Your :20 - :40 section needs more work than the rest.
That being said, I never thought that this song would lend itself to an orchestral arrangement and I think this could be great with some more work.
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!
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Here I have an orchestral rendition of the Mystic Cave BGM from Sonic 2. The first version of this I did years ago as part of a big project of mine where I orchestrated and arranged every piece of music from the original Sonic trilogy (including Sonic & Knuckles). As those were just MIDIs, I've finally begun to go through and stick these arrangements into my newer sound library. This is one of those songs that I feel I've redone about eighteen times as everytime I get a new program or sound library I end up redoing the whole project from the beginning. Anyways, here's what I got. The song is short, but I meant it to be that way in the context of the entire project I have.
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Thanks for the comments so far!
hewhoisiam, thanks for the in-depth break down. I try out some of your suggestions.
RemixedT, this remix is partially inspired by the Smash Bros. version of the song, so it sounding a bit similar to that isn't surprising to me. I should probably go in and mix up the start a little so it doesn't sound as similar.
Also, I don't know if anyone really noticed this (nobody actually commented about), but I also mixed a lot of the riffs from Dr. Mario's other in-game BGM, Chill, at different points in the song.
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Alright. Thanks.
On a separate matter, what do you mean when you say something's to exposed, like the contrabassoon solo?
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A couple months ago I arranged a small rock group version of the Fever tune from Dr. Mario. I foolishly submitted (I realized minutes later that I shouldn't have done that), it eventually got rejected preliminarily, and now I finally decide to post it up here from some much-needed, personalized critiquing.
The arrangement was rejected on the grounds of being too repetitive and too poorly sequenced. The repetitiveness I've addressed overtime, thought there's still more work I think I can do on that. The sequencing quality, though, is a bit harder for me, since I'm not very good at that, and I've yet to obtain that proper tools for that (though I plan on getting Sonar soon so my sequencing doesn't have to be through Sibelius).
Basically, I just want to hear everything that can be improved for this on any front.
P.S. Sorry the file's in WAV format. I'll change that soon.
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Thanks for the comments.
It's in WAV format because I forgot to convert it before uploading it and I was too lazy to reupload it.
Sequencing and mixing has always been sort of difficult for me. I actually put this together in Sibelius rather than an actual sequencing program, but I do plan on purchasing Sonar soon so that I can actually tinker with my musics' nuances and such.
Hemophiliac, what do you mean by "nudging the place where the notes start off the beat ever so slightly"? I'm a little confused at what you're advising me to do.
Dhsu, I do have some other stuff, but most of it is incredibly unorganized and kind of old. I just showed this because it's probably my highest quality stuff in terms of sampling, though I do have some other arrangements I could try to scavenge (I actually have a rock arrangement of Dr. Mario's Fever tune I plan on putting up on the forums for critiquing). Finally, I don't really want to submit this piece because I personally don't find it to fit my personal definition of a "remix," especially considering OCR's standards.
With that being said, thanks again for the comments.
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I arranged a number of songs from the older Castlevania games into this medley. The arrangement is somewhat old, but this version of it is new. I got myself the EWQLSO sounds and decided I wanted to throw this arrangement into them. Anyways, I'm looking for some constructive criticism of the arrangement. I have no intentions on ever submitting it, given that's it's not much of remix, per se, but it's my first major dealing with my new samples, and I'd just like to see what people think of it and what I can improve with it.
I appreciated all comments!
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Really, very good arrangements !
I visited Garritan Orchestral Libraries and I had just a question : did you buy the Personal Orchestral ? Or have you a link to download it ? (because it's soooo cool !!)
However, good job !!
I had to buy it. My personally copy was one integrated directly with Sibelius, but now you don't actually need that since Sib. 5 now has a VST plug-in.
If you think Garritan sounds good, you should like at EastWest Symphonic Orchestrator. If didn't tell you, you would probably have no way to tell it apart from a real orchestra. Of course, that's only if you really have the cash to afford that.
Thanks for the support and comments from everyone! And I'll really look at some of my bass parts more closely to make sure everything is well optimized to sounds perfect if a real orchestra were to play it.
The fourth song is almost about half way done (although it doesn't quite feel halfway). I'm posting right now because I'm hoping someone might be able to give me some advice on anything to help improve it early on.
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I hope I'm not sounding pushy or whiny by wanting more comments. I need all the help I can get. Or do so many people think that it sounds that bad?
Anyways, I just finished the third song. This one includes the Hill Top music (StH2) and the Mushroom Hill music (S&K).
Over at the vgmusic.com forums these arrangements weren't welcomed as heartily as there here. Although I'm open to their opinions. Somebody there mentioned that the songs had balance issues, particularly among the low brass, and that some of the trombone and tuba parts were written sloppily. Does any one else feel this way, and if so, can you expand what all this means and specific parts where you notice it the most?
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Thanks for the comments so far!
Kizyr, I understand what you're saying about the drowning theme thrown in. Personally, I like it. But thanks for the thought. It gets me thinking... also, the fall at the end of Water Zones is supposed the effect someone would play when they see a note with a glissando line dropping off the staff with no specific note to fall to. I think it's a matter of me not being able to get very good sound for the effect.
@ CHIPP and GuitarHero, what do you mean by heavier or bigger? CHIPP pointed out that maybe it needs to be louder, so could the MP3 sample just be too quiet, because I can easily fix that.
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Is anyone going to respond or was all this asking in vain?
Green Hill Zone symphonic arrangement
in Post Your Game ReMixes!
Posted
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!