Gario

Me too. What're you gonna do, though - lost the coin toss. I sure hope Realme moves forward, though; would be a real shame if I didn't get another crack at it sometime down the road 'cause he didn't move on, so I'm rootin' for ya, Realme! *Sigh* Welp, Cloudman it is. I'll do my darndest with it, for sure. On the bright side, Freezeman is a great theme, so not all is doom and gloom from me - I got a great match-up, lol.

Wait, are we asking if it's better to get one-on-one, personal training from a professional over random public feedback? I'd think that's almost comically obvious - of course it's better to have one-on-one teaching from a professional (assuming the professional is worth their salt). If you can afford personalized training and education, that's the way to go. That's sort of like saying a healthy balanced diet is better for you than McDonalds, because of course it is. However, the caveat is pretty easy, here - also like a balanced diet vs. McDonalds, it's better if you can afford it, and it's better if you can dedicate the extra time required for it. Many casual artists simply don't have those kind of resources, and unless they push toward making it into a profession it's difficult to justify the time and financial investments required for such one-on-one interaction. Sometimes you can get lucky and get some attention from a willing professional for funsies, but outside of that you've got to put in some real resources in order to get something like the one-on-one mentoring you're talking about. You won't get as much out of something like public feedback, sure, but getting less out of it is certainly different than getting nothing out of it. With online forums and chat servers today it requires much less investment from an artist - dropping a quick link and asking "Thoughts?" is faster and cheaper than sitting with a mentor to discuss your music. tl;dr of course personal mentoring is better than public feedback, but public feedback is more accessible, and it's better than nothing at all (provided my caveat I presented earlier).

Perhaps I'm biased, but I'd argue that feedback is more often than not helpful when someone is specifically asks for it, no matter the skill level. However, if no one is asking for the help and they're just sharing their music it can be counterproductive to point out all of the track's flaws. It took me a few years to realize this myself, but if you pour your critique of someone's music when they're not asking for it, it can take the fun out of the craft and possibly drive people away. Context is important, so if you want to be helpful pay attention to what the artist wants from you. It sounds a little counter-intuitive saying even experts can benefit from critique, but given the right circumstances it can help make things go faster. Sometimes, for example, if I'm working on something and I need a fresh set of ears I ask for some feedback (I haven't written anything in months, so you'd likely not notice nowadays). It's harder to accept feedback when you're more seasoned, but you can still get some use out of it if you remains somewhat humble about it. Most seasoned musicians will likely fine tune the track eventually, sure, but it can help make things go faster if you just let more fresh ears listen to something and give some honest feedback. So yeah, if people are looking for feedback it's quite helpful for them when they receive it no matter the skill level, but it's markedly less so when they're not looking for it.

Eh, it happens to the best of us; I've had one or two submissions to these things where I only had about 50 seconds of music finished. One week to make a mix can be a brutal limitation, and it's one hell of a hardcore way to get back into arranging music off a coldspell of 3+ years.

Oh, that sounds interesting. Well, let's see what happens - at the end of the day this ISN'T an OCR submission, so if you can justify your stuff then you might be able to get away with it. I just know what has qualified before, so there ya go.

Well if it helps contextualize this a bit, take a listen to some of the past competitions on here (like 2010 & 2011), and check out how they integrated the sources. Also, while not strictly called for, a good rule of thumb on handling the sources would be to pretend you're writing it for OCR - that is, make sure either of the sources are recognizeable for at least 50% of the track (either in the background or front & center). In 2011, for example, I did a funky arrangement where I pulled from plenty of alternative sources (including Schala, for shits and giggles) - but I made sure the sources I needed to include were there for at least 50% of the track. I'm certain if you want to do some more original writing you'd be alright as long as there's about half of your arrangement where people can recognize the sources somewhere. Aside from that, go nuts - whether the source is in the background over something more original or if the sources are more front and center, as long as they're there. Just realize that this is being voted on by regular people and not necessarily judges, for better or worse, so I suggest not being TOO subtle with your sources. If people feel like you're not really arranging the sources and instead going on your own rail that could impact the vote (even if you can prove that you're subtly using the sources). Of course, time stamping in here wouldn't hurt your chances if you feel it's pretty subtle, so hey. Hope that helps a bit!

Found out the composer for The Mummy: Demastered was an artist called "Monomer". I've been checking out his stuff lately, he's damn good.

Mmm, I'm lovin' the energy in here - glad I'm participating this year. TBH I haven't seen people getting excited for one of these like this in a while, so maybe we'll have some really full brackets to vote on next week. Can't wait to see which RM I'm gettin' next week, seeing that mine is contested with another user on here. Well, if I don't get Windman maybe I'll be matched against the person that does get it - would be pretty funny if that happened.

This one is in a funny place - we did an evaluation for this album about a year ago, and at that time there were seven tracks, of which 6 were of good quality / close to postable (and three were already OCR postable in their state). Only one song was rejected outright. If someone else is willing to take the mantle and give the album a nice little push over the edge (get 2-3 people to finish their tracks) then this could still make a nice little EP in a very short amount of time. If anyone wants to take it, send me a PM and I'll work it out from there, getting more staff permission, etc. It's definitely looking like Touchstone is a no-show at this point, so I'll do what I can to make the transition as easy as possible.

I'm intrigued. I'll listen to it when I can have an hour to focus on it.

Sounds like the people have spoken - bumpity bump it a week, if that's what's necessary.

First season is a great series of pilot episodes (four in total) for a potentially great show - which is probably the first season's greatest weakness. It sets up to be something great with excellent animation, solid character building for all of it's characters and some great action in short bursts, then it's over before it can actually do something amazing with that set-up. You don't have to be into the game series at all to enjoy the episodes, either, as it does a solid job building it's world in it's own right. It might in fact be a reason gamers have mixed reception to this - it actually takes time to acclimate it's non-gamer audience, where the gamers would probably rather spend in the damn castle. Finishing your analogy, it approaches a climax with some excellent foreplay, but then it never gets there, which blue-balls you for a whole year before the next season comes. But yeah, go watch the first season - it's a great pilot opening, about as long as a short movie, and shorter than the Ducktales' pilot series of episodes. Then be pumped for the next season, since this is where shit is gonna get real, boyz. Considering they're only making eight episodes for this season (iirc), I doubt the quality will suffer; they've had plenty of time to spend on a relatively short series.

Hey @DarkeSword if we get 15 people in on this you should fill in the last slot to participate, too. It'd be a pretty fun change of pace, and I'd personally be interested in your take on this thing. I mean, sure, you probably don't have time... but I don't buy it! I ain't got time for it either, and I'mma make time for a few hours in a week to give this some attention. Give this one some personal attention!

Quick(ish) note about the uncanny valley: if you work toward a realistic sound and you can only get kind of close to it, it's worse than having something that sounds intentionally fake. The concept as applied to visual appeal is that psychologically the more human something robotic appears the more appealing it is (since the human features pop out, give more familiarity). However, if the robot is close to looking human without being exactly human, the brain instead focuses on the robotic features that make the otherwise human features look... unsettling. Get too close to your goal and the brain focuses on what's wrong rather than what's right with the image. This concept does apply to samples in some fashion (though for different reasons) - if you're pushing for realism and can't quite achieve it near perfectly, the listener will more easily notice what isn't right. If the instruments sound like they're supposed to be "fake", the listener will acknowledge this and instead focus on how they sound in the arrangement in their own right. Similar concept to above. It's... more of a speculation on my part, to be honest, but I've found that getting close to what you want without actually getting there can be worse than going for something different (even if fake), but doing it solidly. It's easier on a budget to make synths, chips, etc. sound great than it is to do this with sampled instruments, so often for free instrument and sample users I advise utilizing these kinds of instruments. It helps give a solid foundation as far as learning how to mix, avoid production errors, basic arrangement practice, etc., prior to learning how to make simulated instruments sound as realistic as possible. Just my two cents on that topic, because it coincidentally perks my interests.

Yeah, it's legit one of my favorite MM songs to arrange; it has a lot of potential for expansion, with it's constant mixture of major & minor. Here's hoping I get more than one arrangement out of this compo, too (assuming I get Wind Man, of course).

Alright, so sorry for taking so long to get to this after your request, Audiomancer; work has given me little space to work with. EVAL Dragonquest - a classic series that doesn't get enough love, that's for sure. I'll say this first: for the most part, the production is fairly good. The mixing is generally where it needs to be, and I don't hear too much crowding, so nice work on that. The arrangement would probably cause some issues for an OCR submission, since this sounds like two very different songs put together rather than a single, cohesive experience, and I don't think the songs are expansive enough to count as individual arrangements in their own right (really just playing through one loop of the source each, if I'm not mistaken). I hate to come down on instrument quality since understandably not everyone has the money to fork for better instruments, but I can't deny that many of the instruments in this are too low quality to pass the panel. The organ is pretty solid, the choir can work and the square waves are... well, square waves (they're fine), but the other instruments definitely felt low quality. One can still make them work with a LOT of envelope manipulation (e.g. automating the attack, delay, reverb, levels, etc., to make them sound more "real"), but it would be crushingly difficult to do so. What you have here is really cool, but it's difficult to write orchestral music with cheap or free instruments. It's not impossible (Darkesword does a pretty good job with free soundfonts, iirc), but it's very tough, so be prepare to learn how to automate the envelopes of your samplers in order to get the most out of your instruments, if you want to keep going down this route. Alternatively, you can take a more hybrid approach (which is how I like to do things, personally), and utilize more synths and such - make something sound intentionally fake rather than emulating reality. More than one way to approach this, but yeah, if the arrangement didn't hold this back the instrument quality would get this rejected on the panel. Again, though, the production quality (clipping, mixing, etc.) is pretty good here, so I think you show off some solid skills with this. This wouldn't pass on the panel, but it does help illuminate what does and doesn't work, as well as why. I do hope to hear more from you sometime, even if it isn't this track, per se. Hope this helps!

HMM... I really do want to go for this. It's an oldschool tournament-style knockout compo, which I can appreciate, and more Megaman music under my belt isn't a BAD thing... Eh, what the hell, let's do this - worst case scenario I really can't muster the capability to make anything competitive I'll just get knocked out, I suppose, so this tourney format works in my favor. My computer doesn't handle my DAW very well anymore, so it's been tough to make as texturally rich music as I'd like. Excuses, excuses... Welp, here's my picks: 1. Wind Man 2. Cloud Man 3. Tornado Man ... Got a bit of a theme goin', here. Also, curious why the Megaman & Bass Robot Masters aren't included in the list this time - they were allowed prior. I suspect you might've just forgotten about 'em, Darkesword.

I think the arrangement is pretty cool, the singing is on point, and the production is pretty good. I hear the issue with the lower mids being cluttered, and I'll add that the mixing of the vocals get drown by the rest of the arrangement from time to time (such as the section starting at 0:24), but overall it's not anything that's breaking the track definitively. I do like how the track breaks things up a bit with the SFX on the vocals in the middle - it's a nice change of pace. It ain't perfect, but it's still pretty good. I'm all for it. YES

Hallo, Remixer name: Jorito Real name: Jorrith Schaap Email: Userid: 3899 ReMixer name: JohnStacy Real name: John Stacy e-mail: Userid: 33075 ReMixer name: BardicKnowledge Real name: Ryan Thompson e-mail: forum id: 12956 ReMixer name: DS Real name: David Sylvester email: forum id: 34014 Links: https://www.youtube.com/c/ds_music394, https://www.patreon.com/DS394, https://soundcloud.com/ds_music_official, https://twitter.com/DS_Music394 ReMixer name: GameroftheWinds Real name: Gregory Orosz email: Links: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQFIzKI61fxibPgfPKeJQxw ReMixer name: Damian Nguyen Real name: Damian Nguyen email: Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/sanjuroboe, https://twitter.com/sanjuroboe, https://soundcloud.com/sanjuroboe, damiannguyen.com Submission information: Name of Game(s) Remixed: Nemesis 3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_3:_The_Eve_of_Destruction) Name of Arrangement: Follow the Sun Names of songs arranged: We Followed The Sun (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHso_ZbG2mo), Memories (Prologue 1) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stiAJHkaL3Q) Link to the remix: Comments about the mix: This track goes back a loooong way, all the way back to August 2014. At the time, I just acquired a new orchestral sample library and was experimenting with it. That experiment turned into the first minute of this track, but I shelved the track since, and it was all but forgotten until the free round of PRC arrived at the end of 2017. I remembered this track again and figured it would be a good excuse to dust it off and give it another go. I did manage to finish the arrangement in time for the compo and ultimately won that round. However, I wasn’t 100% happy with it just yet. I was planning to polish up my MIDI some more and submit it to OCR, but when I posted the track on Discord, John Stacy reacted with a “hey, this sounds nice to play on” I started thinking. While I would love to have my arrangements played by a real orchestra, changes of that happening are slim. So I went for the next best option: go on a recruiting spree, try to get as many live performances in the track as possible, and incorporate and layer them with the samples. The performances by John, Damian, Gregory, Dave and Ryan really added a lot of life, depth and nuance to the track and improved the final result greatly. Good result, good vibes, making new friends, yeah, no reason not to be pleased with this one! Full credits: Arrangement, production: Jorito French horn, trombone, trumpet: John Stacy Oboe, English horn: Damian Nguyen Piccolo, flute, clarinet: GameroftheWinds Bassoon: DS Vocals/choir: BardicKnowledge Source usage: Most of it is pretty easily recognizable as “Follow The Sun”, with the part 1:28 - 2:34 heavily leaning on “Memories”, transcribed into a different key and with some liberties taken to make it sit nicely. Lyrics: To the Sun (4x) Cheers, Jorrith

Hey, I saw THX post that on Facebook. Pretty neat, and a great example of alleatoric music (a.k.a. chance music). You just look at that score and you can tell exactly how it's going to sound - a mess of sound that swings down/inward, then slides into a big, broad chord. Not something you'd think has a score, but then you realize that, yeah, they would've had to have some sort of performance in order to achieve that sound. Cool stuff.

Hi everyone! Your ReMixer name: ThePlasmas Your real name: Mauricio Castro Your email address: Your website: theplasmasvgm.bandcamp.com / facebook.com/theplasmas Your userid: 30081 Name of game(s) arranged: Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse / Castlevania: Circle of the Moon Name of arrangement: Baño de Sangre Name of individual song(s) arranged: Nightmare Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.: It was made specially for Viking Guitar's Danse Macabre 5 album, an album with a dark, spooky, terrorific tone. I love Castlevania 3 and Circle of the Moon, where "Nightmare" appears on both of them in very hard stages, those ones are my favorites.

Wow, now that's an upright piano, if I ever heard one; they really do have a certain characteristic to them that make them stand out. They're not as bright or clean as a grand piano, but for something as playful as this it's almost even better. That piano does need a bit of a tune-up, though. Again, adds to the charm in some ways, but give that piano some tunin' love! Anyhoo, performance is spot-on, and the recording is clean. The arrangement is definitely cutting it close to the 'Too Conservative' bar, though. I hear some flurishes that keep it interesting as it moves forward - moving that bass down in order to increase the density of the track as it goes on, for example - but it's still pretty close. I can see others voting the other direction on it's conservative nature alone, but I think this has enough character and juuuust enough variation to put me on the other side of the vote. I love me some playful piano music, so I'm on board. YES

Hi! I’d like to submit my arrangement of the Ending Theme from the Adventures of Lolo for the NES. It is not a remix in the traditional sense where any melody or chords or form is altered. It’s remixed in the sense that I’ve arranged all of the original notes (all three voices) to be played by one person live on the piano. I hope you consider my arrangement acceptable for OCR. Contact Information • 88bit • Rob Kovacs • • www.robkovacsmusic.com, www.88bitmusic.com • User ID: 23320 Submission Information • The Adventures of Lolo • Tresillolo • Ending Theme from The Adventures of Lolo • This is an NES game publish by HAL. Music composed by Hideki Kanazashi • https://youtu.be/eRxOcdLm2_8?t=1m4s • I got really sick one week and had plenty of time to play through this challenging game! I really liked the music and was kind of blown away by how intricate this final song is. And so few people have probably heard (compared to other video game tunes.) I want to help preserve some of the early music and performing music live is an important step for music to live on. The trickiest part in playing this piece is the speed, (repeated notes don’t work nicely on piano) and figuring out a way to get all three voices in two hands. The wildly jumpy bass part is also pretty tricky. Thanks for listening! Rob

EVAL Hey, I remember this one from the Meat & Potatos compo - I even gave it some praise, though I didn't believe it followed the spirit of the compo due to how liberal it was. For an OCR submission, though... Let's go through the good, first: the production is quite good on this! The crunchy percussion, the gating, the well mixed synths, etc., it all blends well, it's all easy to hear and distinguish, and overall it's quite pleasant to the ear. I mentioned before and I'll say it again, the variations on the theme are quite cool, too - lots of chord changes to keep things recognizable and yet familiar... periodically. While the composition has a lot of cool ideas, there are two things that do hold this back, as far as chances on the panel are concerned. Firstly, while for some portions the source is easy enough to hear, a lot of this (likely over 50% of the track) really deviates to the point where the source is impossible to hear, outside of the shape of the texture in the background. A rule of thumb that's often followed is if the source is clearly present for at least 50% of the track, and from a glance I'd suspect that this arrangement doesn't pass on that front. You MIGHT be able to make a case here, if you give some timestamps where the source is used, so if you feel I'm missing something then put out a timestamp and I can evaluate what you're talking about - I've seem minds change as far as source usage is concerned, but without a timestamp and an argument this'll probably be turned down on those grounds. The second issue that hold this back is the flow of the arrangement. As far as form goes, the track doesn't seem to have much direction or sense of beginning or end. The chords used, while great in isolation, don't make too much sense in sequence. This is a hard thing to "fix", though - considering it's so integral to an arrangement I can't give any suggestion that doesn't really come to "rewrite the piece". I'd say this'll probably get to the panel (well, it WILL get to the panel, I do the inboxing, lol) and get rejected, but I suggest making a timestamp to justify source usage and sending it off, anyway. While I have some issue with the flow of the arrangement, others might not, and if you can convince the panel that the track indeed uses enough source with a time stamp then you might have a shot on the panel. A long shot, sure, but a shot nonetheless. Best of luck!

Hey hey, Remixer name: Jorito Real name: Jorrith Schaap Email: Userid: 3899 Submission information: Name of Game(s) Remixed: Ancient Ys Vanished Omen, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys Name of Arrangement: Feena’s Premonition Names of songs arranged: A Premonition =Styx= (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDsipkzkEPU&t=58s), Feena (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6osyFmpABk) Link to the remix: Comments about the mix: Another remix I reanimated for the Ys 30th anniversary album (http://ocremix.org/community/topic/46281-recruiting-for-30th-anniversary-ys-album/). Originally I did this with fellow MSX composer Meits for a competition on msx.org, but because we were so late to sign up, it was very rushed, and frankly not very good. I always wanted to revisit this arrangement, because I felt it had potential, and the Ys album was a good excuse to finally give it the treatment it deserved. I set out with overhauling the piano, thoroughly changing the backing track/left hand part, adding variations and overall fixing a lot of timing and pedal issues as well as going for an overall more mellow, dreamy sound. In the original compo version, the piano was overpowering the entire mix, to the point of sounding distorted, and the backing parts were hard to notice. That part also got some serious work, with improved dynamics, some new parts, a few extra layers and some subtle added percussion. Overall I think it turned out well, and it finally creates this dynamic, symphonic opening prelude feel that was lacking in the initial attempt. Big shoutout to Meits for the original piano parts that I used for this track. It gave a good starting point, but I think I left no note untouched while fitting it to the new arrangement. Sorry, buddy Cheers, Jorrith