Lanodantheon

Only 40 something remixers out of 61 have accepted their challenges. What's up with the others?

I might have to just say F it and try FL.

The pots and pans idea reminds me of another person who did a similar thing: Brad Fidel for the Terminator 2 soundtrack used a DAT recorder and a Pot to make a sound some people think to this day is the sound of an anvil. I will try every which way and see how they work. Who knows, I might learn something....

After frequenting this site awhile, I've decided like many to download some software and try my hand at a remix. I don't expect much from this remix, I'm just messing around with software in hopes of getting a quality work... For financial reasons and because I'm not a serious music guy, I'm just messing around with open source software instead of FL. I could get the demo for FL, but I believe you can only get the demo once, so I don't want to waste it on a spur of the moment thing like this. Open Source stuff is free, but notorious for bugs, zero documentation and my comp is old and is getting Alzheimer's as I type this. I am using Audacity and Frinika with every SF2 I could find to make my remix, but I need some help.The questions I have qualify for this forum because they are technical in the sense of using software and they are serious musical questions. It is important to note that I am looking to win any awards with this remix, I just want to make one to say that I can do it too. I could have picked something simple and be done with, but I don't think that way. Background: My intended remix is an arrangement of several songs from Secret of Mana. The tentative tile to give me direction is, Something Looms... The remix I have in mind comes in 3 parts. The first part is to be a pleasant sounding mix of field themes and such: Birds in a field, rabites hopping, the galaxy is at peace kind of thing. Then, the happiness stops as the Mana Fortress appears overhead and the song transitions into The Star of Darkness. Then, a thousand voices of the Mana Tree cry out in terror and are suddenly silenced.... It is also important to note that my motivation for doing this mix is because once upon a Seattle Convention, I got to meet Hiroki Kurata. The soundtrack he signed for me got lost in my recent move, so I feel I owe my respect. Technical Questions: 1. One of the sounds that I want is a low rumble. The rumble will start quiet and get louder until the Star of Darkness section. The rumble is supposed to be the sound of the fortress flying overhead, it's what looms. Making it go from quiet to loud is easy in an editor. The question I have is, how do you make a rumbling sound in a synthesizer? My ex-music student brother suggested using drums, but I don't know how to do it. The easier the solution the better, I'm not afraid to cheat it. 2.Music Theory Question: When the song goes from birds in a field to Star of Darkness, the birds in a field music has to do something. I was originally thinking of making it go Wowwwwwww.....like the music was disrupted by the fortress. But I have no idea how to do it. My brother suggested just fading the pleasant music out and going into the new song. But I could also transition the music from the pleasant stuff to the Star of Darkness. The fade out would be the easiest to do, but which would work better? 3. Frinika's synthesizers keep wigging out when I use too many instruments at once in realtime. Is this the software bugging out or is it my standard sound card crying?

Gratz Zircon. Break out the fine china, chill the lemonade, wrap the colored ribbon 'round the old oak tree my man. You earned it.

First of all, I'm a huge fan of your work. I say that so that I can get that little prejudice out of the way. I say this to you the same as I do everyone I give criticism to: I'm trying to be constructive with my criticism so if I ever sound mean or uncaring of your present circumstances, don't worry because I want you to do better, not worse, but you can''t do better if I'm nice to you. So, here we go: The good: 1. I think your presentation's concept is good. On the one hand using Zero Punctuation's format grounds it in Gamer Popular Culture and by keeping up the pacing you keep the audience interested. 2. Your overview of Gaming history is fairly good and it is selective enough to get your message across. 3. Your visuals keep the audience interested in the presentation, I'm never bored. The Bad: 1. Your voice: I don't don't know if it's your microphone or if it's acceleration used on your voice to keep pace with your rapid-fire visuals(Not your fault, Yahtzee talks really effing fast), but your voice track needs to be rerecorded more cleanly if you can. Break up your presentation into 1 to 2 min seconds if not 30 second sections and rerecord it until you get good recording. The current voice sounds kinda high pitched and slightly nasally and gets kind of distracting, especially when you POP and on S's and T's. If you are having trouble recording at that speed, slow your presentation down and smidgen and go at your own pace. If you can't rerecord it in time, there's not much you can do. I'd raise my hand to volunteer to record the voice, because I could with my resources, but this is your presentation and not mine so you probably want to present this yourself. 2.Cite your sources: The Psychonauts section is damn close to Yahtzee's review of said game. I haven't even played the game, but I will agree that it looks to be brilliant just like he says. However, your wording is bordering on plagiarism of Yahtzee. Site him and every other source you mention. In a college level course, you can get away with almost anything if you cite your sources. This will save your ass if you have people who actually question you and turn a Grade A presentation into a Grade S that will piss off everybody else in class. 3. As we say in the Eastern Washington University EMAF deaprtment,"Trim the fat": You can cut about a minute of material from your presentation. There are several moments where you joke about rambling and the audience getting bored. Those are the parts of the presentation that probably are boring, so get to the chase faster and cut the unnecessary bits. If you put in those bits because otherwise your presentation is too short, I have so ideas for that too. 4. The Apparatus of Game Storytelling: You talk a lot about games that tell stories, but you are missing a key bit, how they tell stories. In Mario, you play as Mario by control his actions, his decisions, his choices, tell me that aned you'll be good. My personal $0.02 on VG's: I personally think that MGS and the FF series' are the Citizen Kane of games for a number of reasons, but that's just me. It's your presentation. I personally think that games are a storytelling medium. As a gamer I believe that games are the new are of the 20th and 21st century. However, as a Filmmaker I believe that whether we like it or not Video games are descended from Film and are inheriting a lot from it, so to prove Video games are art, parallels must be drawn. A film philosopher maintained that Film is like rape in that a point of view is imposed upon the viewer. Similarly, IMHO, video games are like rape because they although they give the player choice, they also control behavior by giving rewards to desirable actions and punishment to undesirable actions, just like operant conditioning. Games impose their Ideology by emphasizing certain parts of the world over others and by portraying certain kinds of people as the good guys/bad guys, etc. For more incite on this as wells as applying genre theory on Games, read the essay Ideology/Genre/Auteur by Robin Wood. Just apply what he says about movies to video games. It is also my opinion that modern games are more and more following in the foot steps of cinema in terms of production process. Game Designers sound more and more like Directors everyday. In terms of Storytelling, a lot more can be said about stories in games if you bring up more examples. I personally look at games in a number of different approaches, based on the film philosophy I have read: 1. Level/Event/Boss Driven Approach: The Plot of a film is the ordering of its events. A game is held together by its plot which is measured in terms of events, with the player moving from one event to another with the rest of the game merely existing to get the player from event to event.The game's unit of measurement varies from game to game. Level driven games move from level to level. Many average people view games this way with the cliche, "I'm almost to level 99!" If Level is interpreded as the levels of a character, then the game is based on the progression of the main character from the lowest level of power to the highest level of power. Boss driven games go from boss to boss. Metal Gear Solid can be viewed this way since the game 's cut scenes lead up to, prepare for and follow these boss battles. 2. Character Driven: Movies, according to Robert McKee in his seminal book Story, follow a single active protagonist who move to achieve an ultimate goal and do so by changing by overcoming increasing difficult obstacles until the climax when the ultimate goal is either achieved or it isn't. Sounds like a game doesn't it? The Character Driven approach assume that in a video game, you control the main character (MC) and the game is the obstacles the MC must overcome to achieve his/her goal. This assumes the game's MC has a goal, even if it changes countless times over the course of a game there is always a goal. In a JRPG like FF, you have a goal and you overcome your obstacles (Boss battles and dungeons) by building up your character and participating in the game's story world. In a more open ended game like an MMORPG, you still follow a character. The only difference is that the MC's goal is determined by you, the player, and the game ends when you turn it off. 3. Sandbox: Games are a lot like Theme Parks, MMO's especially. I know this because I worked at Disney's Animal Kingdom for 6 months of my life and I noticed right away that the designs are similar. There are several game designers that also draw this parallel, but I don't have any sources on that, so take that statement with scrutiny. That's all I got, Seph. Hope your presentation goes over well.

Better he learn his lesson now than when he goes to college and gets the usual punishment....expulsion. But it kinda makes me chuckle that he can't even spell Christian, yet claims to be one and does something completely the opposite of what he should.

Cool. 3D is hard. Especially when you don't have time, energy, brain/manpower to fix things the way you want. I have to do the same stuff. This week I get to finally do low-poly modeling for Zero A.D. I get to make Roman buildings. Do your best man. I'm sure it'll turn out great.

I kinda like it. I'm doing 3D Animation too. My instructor doesn't like Fullsail, but I really don't care. This critique is meant to help you by being honest, but take it with a grain of salt since we use 3DS Max at EWU (Even though we have Maya and Blender on our machines). So I'm not familiar with the capabilities of the software you're using, I just know what I would be thinking about. I am trying to be constructive, I am not trying to be an A-Hole or act like I'm on a high horse. I only have a tiny idea of what Full Sail's Visual Effects class Curriculum is, so I don't know what you've learned outside of the animation. Even though it's not my degree, EWU's 3D Animation Degree (shameless plug) features classes that force students to make a raytracer and quake levels in Java and Open GL (I don't remember which language is used for which). But, I'm not an animation guy, I'm a film guy. Ask me about animation techniques, I can't tell you much beyond basic theory. Ask me about the traditional Japanese Ideology of Princess Mononoke using the ideology writings of Robin Wood and Mamoru Iga and we'll really talk. I'm just a fellow student calling it like I see it My first concern is that your slate is longer than your animation. Slates should be in, out and on with life. I shouldn't have to wait for your animation to start. Using reactive physics is a good idea, using perpetual motion is a good idea. But I do have issues with it that I'm not sure you can really fix. 1. Speed: If you're going to do Metroid it has to appear faster. which leads into my next point 2. Cinematography: Your camera's too far away, we lose track of the Samus ball. Get closer, with tighter shots and use a longer lens. Longer lens exaggerate motion, you always use them when you're capturing movement. Or at least, that's what my Production Prof tells me... 3. Make your tracks longer and copy/paste a few more tracks and just make the whole thing go faster. The motion is biggest compliant about it. Tweak the individual keyframes of the motion. That's the constructive criticism I got, though I have no idea about the team you're working with or your deadlines or anyother practical concerns you need to worry about. I just call it like I see it. Overall though, I like it. Good concept. I especially like the music selection.Stemage and MM rock!

This plagirism not only pains me but I have a few facts to add up: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 1. He lives in Rossland, B.C. 2. My parents own a cabin in Rossland, B.C. that is about a 3 hour drive from my Cheney, WA home and I can easily get across the border. 3. 14 years of age is no excuse in the digital age for being STUPID! 4. I know where his school is in Rossland. Conclusion: I can personally smite him I were so inclined very easily. For $5 I'd be willing to find him after school and kick his ass.......NOT. Being a nonviolent person and huge fan of Psychological warfare, I believe that any sort of prank would be counterproductive to the OCR cause. As much as I would love to be the one to hire homosexual prostitutes, send them to his house, film them and put the video on youtube (I am an Electronic Media & Film major, so I can do that well...) I say no. Personally I think there are easier ways to let this guy know he has done something wrong at the very least and at the most put the fear of god into him from on high. What is this mystical answer I speak of.....? I got nothing. But, if a more serious response is required by the OCR community, I would be more than happy to deliver it personally to his front door. Of course the smart thing to do is what we've already done; got him banned from...everywhere; flamed the hell out of him; and thought about punishing him. The only other smart thing to do would be to send a letter to the principal of his school and let him/her handle it internally. This not only gives us the personal benediction of seeing him punished, but all we have to do is write a letter, sit back and drink our Dr. Pepper. Or at least, that's what I'd do. Plus, it is important to note that Rossland B.C. is a town of only a couple of square miles with a population of less than 1,000 people, I believe. When the community finds out about this kid, he's going down. That's my $0.02 on this matter.

Since a bunch of people have posted links to MP3's of their source tunes using Mediafire and Rama seems content with them, I thought I'd make my challenge easier. Better Source tune: Rex's Lair From Metal Gear Solid Oh God I hope this doesn't blow up in my face.....

I dedicate this challenge to the memory of Reuben Kee *Throw Down Gauntlet* Game: Metal Gear Solid Platform: PSX Song: Rex's Lair Source Tune: Sorry, couldn't find a midi. However, this song should ber easy to replicate....but challenging to remix. My rationale for selecting this song is thus: 1. There aren't many MGS songs on the site. 2. This song is my personal favorite from the MGS soundtrack besides The Best is Yet to Come. I consider it to be a near perfect song already because it is littered with symbolism and I just like it. 3. I thought it would be not impossible to remix, but Challenging. Have fun if it's not rejected.

Thanks a lot man, I'm glad I asked. Luckily, the song I have in mind is not that difficult to find. I'd just come out and say what my challenge song is and be done with it, but that would spoil the surprise when I throw down the gauntlet for one of our 55 Remixers.

Matter of last minute clarification: "Challengers MUST include a source tune for reference." Does this mean that we must provide a link on the web to a midi or MP3 of the source tune or just provide the Title of the song and where to find it? I ask this because the song I want to use for the challenge is not obscure and is in fact available on an OST CD. I have the source tune for the challenge I want to make both on CD and on MP3. But, I could easily find it on the web as an MP3 or I could just point to the much better recording on an authored CD and say to the challegner, "Look here for reference." Maybe I'm just worrying about nothing, but I was curious. BTW: Good luck to all the remixers in this event. I respect all people who can compose/remix music because I can't due to poor musical ability.

Ah, the great DarkeSword......*Bow* Thanks a bunch. Sounds cool as doe3s all of your work. Just what I'm talking about..

When I first played X4, I wanted to choke the English Voice Director/Producer that decided to make the VA's deliver their lines like it was Hong Kong Action Theatre. But after that, I loved the music immediately. I think it's because I'm a Mega Man fan, but also because some of the tracks reminded me of Vince DiCola's work on Transformers: The Movie. After playing for a while and taking in the music, the chords just resonated with those fond memories of a watching a kick-a@# movie about giant robots scored to heavy metal and techno. I'd finish a level and go, "I want more! I'M NOT SATISFIED!!!" When I first discovered this site, I could not find any X4 Remixes aside from the Opening Stage and that is unacceptable. I request something be done, I must have X4 remixes. Unfortunately, I'm a film major and not a music major So I can't remix one myself. At best, I have ideas for a few tracks that I request somebody do, if they think it's cool. Although my expertise is in film and not music, I still think musically to a point. I still think in terms of leitmotifs and the mood and imagery created by music. Although I'm a fan of Chikusho Sound Team's Airbased's Heavy Metal approach to , not all my suggestions require that style, but that would kick A&@ The following is a list of my ideas for tracks. I will do my best to give examples of what I'm talking about: 1. The Opening to the game (English Version): The Japanese had a different song, but I haven't heard it. The English one demands Rock guitar. 2. Slash Beast's Train: This is the track that gave me the connection to Transformers: The Movie. I just one problem: It's too short. I want to see a longer version of this. 3. Magma Dragoon's Streetfighter: Magma Dragoon is a Fan Service Boss. How many Bosses do you fight that throws Fireballs and Dragon Punches at you? I'd love to see a remix that is an epic duel between Martial Artist and Lawman. I could imagine using Leit Motifs from Streetfighter(of Course) since I already dig parts of Rock the Asphalt. But If you wanted to send this into the stratosphere, use traditional Japanese instruments to contrast the fact that they are robots. Samurai 7's Soundtrack does this, contrasting rustic folk music with far future setting, and it can work here. 4. Pink Floyd presents, "Split Mushroom": You're fighting a mushroom, need Acid Rock. Nuff' Said. 5. The Colonel's March: He has a pretty sweet theme, but again it's too short. I'd love to hear a remix that scores it with very subtle drums and muted trumpet, something that says, "Officer on the deck!"(Even though he is Army and not Navy...) A good place to look for inspiration would be Harry Gregson William's Debriefing from Metal Gear SOlid 3: Snake Eater. That's all I got to request for now. Hope somebody finds the ideas interesting at least.