Gario

HA! I got that track as a part of a listening exam once. Easiest baroque track to identify ever. I was gonna bring that one up, but I wanted to hear everyone else's response first.

Huh, the orchestration has a similar vibe to the Tor remix you have on Youtube (which is the shit, by the way). Very interesting. This mix has a lot of additional personality, with the guitar, percussion, piano and atmosphere - very impressive considering the source was something with enough personality to go around, to begin with. The rest of the orchestration is quite beautiful, might I add. The reharmonizations are great - they really make for a more bold arrangement than the original, without losing sight of the source. Awesomeness is all around, there. I'm feeling that the mids in the song are crowding quite a bit when the song has a full soundscape, even to the point where I hear a little fuzz from clipping in that area. It's certainly the plucked instrument that's causing much of the problem (the one that enters at :30), so perhaps tone down on either it's strike or the sustained bass note behind it. In a great track, it stands out quite a bit, for me. The flute at 2:01 is a little bit too artificial (especially compared to the handling of the rest of the instruments) & sometimes out of tune, for my tastes. I think the tuning can be 'fixed' at your leisure, though - I understand in a more human performance it would actually be pretty tough to make it pitch perfect, so that might actually help you out. I hear a lot of breath noises, which really help it along in the right direction, but there are some parts you go straight with pitch bends without any sort of breath in between which is throwing me off a little bit. Perhaps it's a nitpick, but it's salient enough to me to make mention of it. That's really the only thing I have against it, though (well, that and the fact that it's incomplete). It's really a well done track. I'm personally glad to see you back in the remixing game, here, and hope that you stick around with us for some time, man.

Ooo, a Theory thread! A perfect time to shamelessly plug my own thread about a similar subject... As for the purpose of this thread, I don't really know how you're going to achieve your goal, seeing that what evokes one emotion in a user may evoke another emotion in another person, due to variance of how music has influenced the two people in question in their lives. I am nonetheless curious, though, so I'll send in a question for you - how would you harmonically represent chaos, how would you rhythmically represent disorder, and would the two differ in any significant way?

Hey, can anyone find/provide links to the Street Fighter 1 soundtrack? YT just knocked out all the SF1 music off the site. I mean, really? Street Fighter 1 music? You'd think they'd have something better to get upset about...

To one of the more popular misspellings on OCR, I salute you. Have a good birthday, man.

Sack was just complimenting my mix. If he were trolling the only person it would seem to be working on is you. Don't sweat it; there's nothing offensive or "troll-ish" about his post. Also, I'm glad you liked my mix, Sack.

I hear you. However, once you realize that the slow walking graphics go with the music and pretend that the character is grooving to the beats it becomes not only bearable, but even kind of awesome, in it's own right.

Damn, I was actually kind of excited to go up against Zircon, too. It doesn't feel right to advance by default... Oh well, I get to advance, anyway, so I guess I can't complain much.

He has to convert everyone's track into a proper Mp3, so there's more work for him this time around than there normally is. Also, he probably has to set up the social group for us to vote in, make the threads, etc., so be patient - he'll get it done shortly, I'm sure. That being said, I wonder if Zircon subbed his track on time...

Sorry, upload took 40 minutes. Sending you file now.

Alriiiight, time to upload. Fuck, I need to upload a WAV. This is going to take a while - I have the file, DS, it'll be in your inbox as soon as the upload is done.

Less than three hours to finish this... I think I can handle it. Soon it'll be time to see if I can smoke Zircon in the first round of the compo. Worst case scenario I lose but still produce a mix that was intended to compete with Zircon's track, so I suppose it's win-win for everyone, in the end (well, except for me - I lose if I don't win, but whatever ).

Meteo speaks the truth - that's why he's got me completely beat, in terms of number of birthday threads he has for himself. Oh yeah, and happy birthday, man.

Well, we don't like to boast...

Go play Diablo 2. Hell, go play Diablo 1, too. The series actually has a pretty rich lore, so you'd be missing out on half the fun of the third game if you play it without having played the other games.

Alright, you're just being an idiot, now. You do know that in those posts you proved exactly what I said, right? If I didn't know any better I would say you're just trolling me, with that. Urgh, back to the original statement. That is not a statement on production, the give away term being 'context', as that rarely has any application to production values. That is a statement on instrument choice (like telling someone that the person should swap, say, an oboe sound for a clarinet), which is not a production issue. Ever. With this misunderstanding, the needless push against chiptune artists and the insistence that Espergirl is what people are upset about, you're completely missing the ball so hard in this thread. Seriously, before you post in here again slowly read the posts in this thread (as well as in the links provided throughout) and try to understand what everyone is talking about. Not that it even matters because the issues have been resolved, anyway, but you're seriously coming in from left field in nearly every aspect you've posted on, making an ass out of yourself all along the way. Oh yeah, and making back handed remarks against people is not only petty; it's downright insulting. I'd suggest you break that habit, as it only serves to piss people off.

You know you're repeatedly sticking your foot in your mouth, right? I never said the sound of an instrument doesn't qualify as a production issue, I said the choice of an instrument is purely an arrangement issue. Pure waveforms like squares, sines, triangles, saws, etc., are actually very clean and usable, in terms of sample quality (which is the only 'production issue' that a sample can have). If you don't like the sound of an instrument in a song and the sample is clean then the issue is compositional, not production. You think you're talking about one thing when you're talking about another. Think about it and try again.

Hmm, there are plenty of people on here that mix only using what's available on FL Studio. I mean, there's a mixer window in your program, right? That's all you need to mix with - that represents all the options that you'd have on mixing hardware. You just need to learn how to use it, is all. I think Zircon talks about it in this tutorial (actually, all his tutorials are pretty good - you should check them out sometime). In short, FL Studios has all the tools you need to mix the track properly - you just need to get used to the program and learn all the nuances with it.

Yeah, no. People have tried and were rejected (and by the sound of it, repeatedly). People don't continue an action once they hit an insurmountable brick wall because it is a waste of their time, and the people that do are generally considered 'stupid' (since they hit an insurmountable brick wall). Yeah... but your opinion on the triangle wave is subjective and had nothing to do with production (instrument choices are purely arrangement choices). That is actually not a call the the judges should make, and that in fact isn't what bothered them about that remix. Stop that. You seem to be repeatedly missing the point. I know you're not stupid, but right now you're ignoring what plenty of people have been saying - this is not about that particular mix. It's about what was said in the evaluation of that remix. As was pointed out by Rush Jet (as well as myself), DjP pretty explicitly stated that he would not be accepting chiptune remixes. That is the point that's being addressed. As said above (as well as in other posts), this isn't about a single song, but about a statement that was said by the head of the site. If DjP explicitly said that he wouldn't accept electronic music (perish the thought) then wouldn't it be really, really stupid for people to continue to submit electronic music? You're not challenging a consensus in that case; rather you're just knowingly running yourself into a brick wall. It's a waste of your time, at that point. You're kind of saying the community needs to change their attitude when both the community AND the staff needed to come to a consensus on the issue. Vilifying the artists after the fact when both parties were at fault is really a fruitless endeavor - all you're going to do is get people from both sides upset at you over it.

Actually, in that decision it really sounds like the opposite was true (whether or not that was the intention is different, but that's precisely how it came across). More specifically... It can be read as more than one thing, but chiptune artists have read that as meaning 'No chiptunes because they CANNOT pass the standard of quality', so they silently accepted that and stopped wasting their energy on OCR. It takes a lot of work to make a pure chiptune, so making chiptunes with OCR's arrangement standards in mind when you know it's not going to be accepted is a waste of considerable time and energy. This is the precedent that I was talking about, specifically - DjP came down and laid the law. This has been taken to mean that Chiptunes are not allowed to be posted on OCR, so people didn't bother to try. Obviously all of the judges and DjP have tried to correct that sentiment throughout this thread (not just Darkesword, as you seem to think, for some reason), but based on that comment hopefully you can see why chiptune artists didn't think it was worth the effort to attempt it. Hopefully, since this thread has discussed the topic heavily more artists will be willing to give it a shot again and break the misconception that chiptunes cannot be accepted onto OCR. As for the song itself, go listen to it. It's been linked on here before, but here's the link to it again. It's pretty fucking good - listening to it might give you some idea as to why people thought that if that couldn't pass then nothing would be able to. Keep in mind that this was made in 2006, so judge it accordingly.

I honestly don't know where you get that sentiment from - seriously, this have little to do with Shnabubula and/or his chiptune arrangements. I suggest you re-read what I posted and think about what it means to "set a precedent" (which the decision on that track certainly did) and how that could possibly be relevant in a thread about how OCR is seen as being biased against chiptunes.

Because Espergirl created a precedent against chiptunes that has stuck with the site for six years, now. It is the last known chiptune track to be submit to the site (for most people, anyway - only the J's really know if more have been sent), and it was a very well done track, in terms of chiptunes - arguably good enough for the sake of posting, back then. I don't think it's important for a track that old to be posted now (the sites standards have changed to the point where the track probably WOULDN'T pass, now), but the rejection of that track, along with DjP's reasoning behind it back then, virtually stopped chiptune artists from submitting their material. That is the significance of that song - it's not the status of the music itself that matters, at this point, but the precedent that people want to change (and in that regard I'm all for it, personally).

In the absolutely worse case scenario you could D/L the songs individually, if the zip and torrent don't cover it for you.

Hmm... I like it. The guitar work is very nice, and the whole ensemble working together meshes together perfectly. Personally, I'd like to see something like this done where there are no instruments - just a pure classical guitar ensemble. Percussion is done with the guitar (using the body for the beat, and such), the violin is done with the guitar instead, etc. You've got something so close to that anyway that I could hear that working, so give it some thought.

Oh hey there, man. Yeah, I actually heard the discussion behind this mix - there's certainly a mixed opinion, there. Well, since you're here, these are my thoughts on the track. The arrangement is actually pretty good. I thought that the lead into the Sonic 2's Emerald Hill zone was excellent, and bookending it with Sonic's Green Hill zone was perfect - that makes for a great overall structure to follow. The synth solos were also a nice touch. It could be better, from a OCR standpoint, seeing that when the source is in there it's pretty much stated verbatim. While repeating something verbatim isn't bad, you do it a little too much in this track; at 2:48, for example, you repeat the same ideas as you did earlier in the piece. People have heard this idea before, there's no reason not to really have fun with the melody. The FO ending is also a bit of a cop-out ending - run through the Sonic 1 idea one more time with some improvisation and embellishment and then end the song with something conclusive. Right now it sounds as if it's incomplete. That section that you feel isn't right is different from the source. The guitar part should be a minor sixth lower (or a major third higher) than it is right now match the source. Personally I don't mind it, actually, but you didn't like it so that's how to correct it. The mixing is pretty abysmal. I know there are good ideas in this, but the drums drown everything in a sea of crashes that just cut everything out. The melodies are hidden behind the guitar rhythms, and the texture bits that should be more in the background often pierce instead. The mixing is one of the biggest issues that this track holds, right now. The samples are certainly a bit on the plain side, and I'm the wrong person to ask about getting better samples (I use Reason, so I don't need to use different synths and such). However, there are places on here that could help you find more samples (more free samples, too, I'm sure), and plenty of people that know where else to look, so feel free to ask around and look for more tools for your music. There are also plenty of people on here that love to work on arrangements with others, so if you want a particular instrument or something for someone to supply for you then feel free and search for members that specialize in the instrument in question, log on frequently AND are willing to collaborate - you might just find someone who's willing to give your mix something special. Those are my thoughts on your mix - arrangement could use a little work, the samples are plain, but most importantly the mixing buries your music to almost make it unlistenable, so first and foremost fix the mixing so the music and soundscape are clear. Hopefully that sends you in the right direction. EDIT: Oh yeah, and don't forget to put the song you're arranging in your title + source in your post. It makes things easier for people who want to comment on your track.