Gario   Judges ⚖️

omg we actually nearly did what this post suggested - release the SD3 album for OCR's anniversary - but we missed it by a decade, lol.
Can't wait for the actual 20th anniversary - glad I've been along for the ride for about 11+ years, myself.

Lots of good music for it. Just keep in mind that a few of the EWJ tracks are Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (multiple movements), so one wouldn't be able to submit those specific tracks to OCR specifically, but considering they're well inside public domain it'd be hilarious to hear remixes of those tracks on an album regardless, lol.
Such strange games, such good OSTs, I definitely approve. If anyone gets those rolling, they should get in touch with Tommy Tallarico; he's namedropped OCR in VG concerts he's held in the past, he would probably super appreciate such a project.

It's a banger.
You head shall remain unbanged.

SPEAKING OF MOVEMENT:
Gonna be bangin' some heads tomorrow, y'all. This ain't like last time - we're gonna be releasing this soon, so don't sleep on those WIP dates!

It's been eight years since my 2nd album, More Of Me (2011), and probably just as long since I was active on any forum. I'd say it's about time to fix that. 

My 3rd album is now out! The Tale of Nario!
https://nario.bandcamp.com/album/the-tale-of-nario
The Tale of Nario is a compilation of 8-bit chiptunes I wrote over the years. Dating between 2008 and 2015, this album consists of singles, new songs that have never been released before, a collaboration, extras, and unfinished pieces. 
Enjoy! Thank you for listening to my tale. The rest of my discography is also on my bandcamp as well!

I would suggest you pre-mix it to an ideal level (e.g. to levels that would normally be used for OCR submissions). The album and WAVs are quite old at this point, and the people involved are honestly not easy to collectively get a hold of / files have been lost over time, so it would be pretty crazy for me to try to get a set of WAVs with headroom that don't already have it.
Thanks for asking, though! Also, I'm DEFINITELY looking forward to your WAV submissions.

Oh, you're not in America, my apologies. Yeah, the law is different in different places (with, for example, Article 17 floatin' around in the EU placing copyright adherence on the shoulders on the webhosts along with those uploading the material themselves). Well, one bright side with all y'all people in Europe, Article 17 is something that you wouldn't need to concern yourself with, unless you were a web host, so if for example you had an arrangement posted on OCR and the copyright holder had issue with it that would become OCR's problem and not necessarily yours. It's a part of the whole non-exclusive publishing agreement you (supposedly) agree with when you send stuff to us, after all.
I did a touch of homework on how copyright works in the EU. They establish a few exceptions to copyright laws, which unfortunately does not include artistic interpretation. However, they DO allow each country to include their own separate exceptions to copyright law, of which in the Netherlands (where you're from, I believe) they include another exception saying something altered for artistic purposes (like, say, arranging VG music) and distributed shall not be considered a violation of copyright law, unless the original artist explicitly pursues the artist (and now distributor, under Article 13) staking claim to their work's copyright claim.
So for you, I believe you're legally in the clear, if you want to go arrangin' VG music, as long as the original artist doesn't come after you themselves. Hope that helps!

Well to get started, you may look into the US legal system's definitions of "Fair Use", which allows for the use of material if it's used for educational purposes, parody, or sufficiently transformative, AND if there is no profit involved in redistributing the material. It's not a bulletproof, anything-goes silver bullet for all things remixing, but it is often the justification used for the distribution of rearranged music on OCR.
If you have questions about the whole process, the basic wiki for fair use (and it's links) are a fair place to start, as well as looking at OCR's FAQ section and our content policy section (OCR has a lot of experience dealing with this very issue!).
Again, there is no silver bullet, and honestly things are resolved on a case-by-case basis, but in general that's the blanket justification for arranging VG music, which most companies understand and silently comply with.
As far as the asshat who is stealing YOUR music, there is no fair use justification for stealing your material and claiming it as their own. You made it, you have a defacto copyright on the material, so if you want to go through the effort you could get Soundcloud to remove it. Up to you, but yeah, that guy has no right to take your music as-is and simply claim it's his.

A remix I made for the Pixel Mixers CV Tribute Album. Used the melody from CV2 Dracula's Castle theme and made a song. Complete with original lyrics!
 

Uh, when I click on your link, I get a minute long acoustic number of a fella singing along to the LOZ main theme. Which is very visionary of you, and charming. April fools, everybody?

Well to get started, you may look into the US legal system's definitions of "Fair Use", which allows for the use of material if it's used for educational purposes, parody, or sufficiently transformative, AND if there is no profit involved in redistributing the material. It's not a bulletproof, anything-goes silver bullet for all things remixing, but it is often the justification used for the distribution of rearranged music on OCR.
If you have questions about the whole process, the basic wiki for fair use (and it's links) are a fair place to start, as well as looking at OCR's FAQ section and our content policy section (OCR has a lot of experience dealing with this very issue!).
Again, there is no silver bullet, and honestly things are resolved on a case-by-case basis, but in general that's the blanket justification for arranging VG music, which most companies understand and silently comply with.
As far as the asshat who is stealing YOUR music, there is no fair use justification for stealing your material and claiming it as their own. You made it, you have a defacto copyright on the material, so if you want to go through the effort you could get Soundcloud to remove it. Up to you, but yeah, that guy has no right to take your music as-is and simply claim it's his.

Comparing the two, there does seem to hold more variety in the lead portion, with some more animated lead work to help alleviate some of the static elements that were present in the previous version, along with a greatly improved drum part (with all of them fills to keep things interesting). I still think the EQ range is constricted, but there was a clear effort to improve the mixing to make it easier to hear the important elements, at least, and the lead bitcrushed square has had it's upper EQ ceiling lifted notably. I was pretty borderline in my vote before, so I think I'm okay swinging this in the track's favor this time around considering the improvements made. It's a unique track I think OCR would be better off with rather than without.
As far as the overly bitcrushed style goes (as it was a complaint that arose in the prior decision) I stated my piece before and I'll reiterate: it's a stylistic choice from the artist that we shouldn't fault him for. The mix is certainly easy to hear everything even with the dirty instruments, so it shouldn't be seen as an objectively bad element in the track, even if it's not for everyone.
Just sayin'.
YES

Those... look incredible.

Guess what came in?

I can do Rumbling if you're looking for a simple orchestral arrangement.

Game:  Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 2 (fuck yeah!)
    source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOQ2MZ9QiYo     I was going through my itunes playlist and saw that this song had 134 plays, and I hadn't even considered remixing it. Well, time to fix that!    The original is about as perfect of a trance song can get, so I would need to take a left turn (while drifting hard, obviously) on the arrangement. Adding a metal edge and keeping the trance elements was a really fun revelation for me, meaning I could have a bunch of powerful and precise polyrhythms under the saws and pads, and it was a perfect match. Add in some trance-style breakdowns, a few solos, and an original section to compliment the already great song, and we are off to the races! In my pit crew was the ever-excellent Nabeel Ansari, who helped me tremendously in getting the exact drum sound I was looking for. I couldn't have gotten across the finish line without him!     More car-puns.   

Oh, and I guess I can add a new point to this whole discussion, one that isn't discussed much: PHYSICAL COPIES of said album.
This isn't required for any album to have physical copies at all. In fact, this is more of a personal choice for the director of the album if they want a physical copy. There isn't going to be some big Kickstarter like there was for FF6: Balance and Ruin for your physical album prints. I think that was a one time thing and a legal quagmire that I feel OCRemix isn't wanting to delve into anytime soon. But can any album have a physical release? I believe so! However, there are some requirements first.
1) The director must be the one who impresses on everyone from the outset their intention to make physicals after album release. Everyone on the OCRemix admin staff and those remixers and contributors to the project need to be aware of this intention and be agreeable to pitching in for the final product.
2) You will not normally see a simultaneous physical and digital release of the album. The digital will always come first and the physicals months later due to logistics and timing, etc.
3) The director is responsible, with their art director, in securing all front/back cover art and disc art for the album. However that happens, either you draw it yourself or you pay a commission for an artist to do it for you, it must be something available and provided for the physical prints.
4) Split your discs up early into track lists where the run times are 74 mins or less per disc to properly fit on physical CDs come printing.
5) After digital release, you'll most likely be working with DJPretzel directly and once your request for physicals is approved on OCRemix admin, they will be covering HALF of the costs. The other half must come from you, the director. This isn't cheap, and the Arcadia Legends album limited print run went close to $2000. So about $1000 needed to come out of my pocket. You can either dump the change all yourself, or get as many folks from those who contributed to pitch in equal amounts of money to add up to your half. However you slice it, you need to provide it.
6) It is generally considered a good recommendation that you order enough for at least two physical copies per contributor to the album. However, not all contributors will be able to or willing to pitch in for the cost, nor will all contributors be willing to respond and provide you with their physical addresses to mail them. (which you'll have to do and pay additional for shipping out of pocket) So it is up to the director if those who neither paid nor provided address get physical copies at all - harsh truth, but needed to be said.
7) Once ordered, the shipment will be split, you'll get roughly half, and OCRemix will get half to give out at their fest panels. Once you receive your shipment, it'll be on you to make good on promises made to all those wanting physical copies. Once those are sent out and you have a bunch left over, the director can do whatever they want with them, raffles, prizes, etc. Just don't sell them!
With all that out of the way, physicals are a neat novelty piece and a great reward for all the hard work for everyone who put effort into the project! It isn't ideal for every album, but the option is there if you wish to pursue it. Just know that you, the director, will be the one who foots all the work on this and covering cost when others come up short. So be aware of this!
Now for those interested, Arcadia Legends physicals should be finishing up printing this week and hopefully shipping out by this weekend! So for all those waiting on their contributor copies, it won't be long now when I get them and repackage them up and send them out!

@Gario thanks for the criticism I heard it as well and mean't to do something about it, but I've unfortunately lost my original project files for this remix. I will submit it and provide the source so sorry about that. 

EVAL
Oh, this sounds pretty kickin'. Production is clean, and the track sounds pretty kickin' to boot; almost sounds like it could've been in Persona 5, which believe me is a compliment (great freakin' soundtrack). Would've loved a source link, though; looking for an arrangement online on our own isn't too fun. I'm not sure how the arrangement connects with the source that I found, either - could be the case that I found the wrong source to compare to. A suggestion if you submit this: if you are confident that the source is certainly represented in the track (at least 50% of your arrangement being identifiable as the source, at least), provide some timestamps in your submission e-mail.
Minor criticism: on your faster instruments the reverb creates high frequency mud, which sounds like an unnecessary hiss throughout those faster parts. It's not something that'd sink the track on the panel, but it's something you could try to avoid in future arrangements by using less reverb on your more nimble instruments.
Aside from that, I think you should submit it, as long as you can provide the source in the e-mail as well as the timestamps I suggested above. Looking forward to seeing it on the panel.  

Excited to revive the momentum and glad to be on board! This album WILL be released in 2019!

What's Up Ladies and Gentlemen,
My name is Basic Human, Call me Basic.
I have a channel. So far only gaming related stuff, but soon also Music production, hopefully in the future some other content too.
I will be making the occasionall remix/remake of a vgm/vgm-related track.
Looking forward to hearing your work and reacing comments

I think this game would be perfect.

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I couldn't go into too many details in the e-mail, but ages ago (during the FF6 album kickstarter and release) Squaresoft got a bit touchy with their property - kickstarter money for a physical print is what did it - and they basically took a hard look at the site and all of the property it was playing around with. Got off pretty easy with just the samples being legally banned (still got the kickstarter done for a physical print, too!), but those were some pretty tricky times. It's why in the submission instructions we say no Squaresoft samples, and we do our best to respect that.
Every other company is all good, though, as long as samples aren't the only way people can recognize the source.
Figured a bit of interesting history to go with my rejection would be neat, since that incident is so old now a lot of newer members aren't even aware of it.

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I couldn't go into too many details in the e-mail, but ages ago (during the FF6 album kickstarter and release) Squaresoft got a bit touchy with their property - kickstarter money for a physical print is what did it - and they basically took a hard look at the site and all of the property it was playing around with. Got off pretty easy with just the samples being legally banned (still got the kickstarter done for a physical print, too!), but those were some pretty tricky times. It's why in the submission instructions we say no Squaresoft samples, and we do our best to respect that.
Every other company is all good, though, as long as samples aren't the only way people can recognize the source.
Figured a bit of interesting history to go with my rejection would be neat, since that incident is so old now a lot of newer members aren't even aware of it.

I've been following this remix for months now, and it just keeps getting better and better, but the breakout into variation I was expecting for at least two months just hasn't happened yet.  It would seem to me that you've built one hell of a skeleton for what can only be described as an intricate, chill, yet deceptively exciting ride, but in making it over eight minutes long, without more variation, both from the original melody, and your own ideas, it can only be that--a skeleton.  I think you knew that at one point, which is why Star-Stealing Princess of Zeal is over eight minutes long--you wanted to expand upon it, but something happened along the way.  Maybe you thought you had too many technical issues to work through and postponed the final work until you forgot you wanted to do it.  If this is so, then now is the time.  The core--the thing that gives your remix movement and power--is perfect--it's time to give life!
Although I hesitate to mention this after my earlier critique, it's better that you have the heads-up than get blind-sided by the judges later.   The use of CT samples could cause an issue for final submission, as remixes with samples taken from Final Fantasy games have been previously denied due to Square-Enix's overzealous use of attack dog lawyers. 
 
All that said, please don't take this as completely negative criticism.  Star-Stealing Princess of Zeal has had me at the edge of my seat since the end of November, and I've been waiting for it to take off once you ironed out the concept.  Personally, I think now is the time for you to really cut loose and have fun with it.  Keep the version you just posted as your baseline and just go nuts, man.  You'll figure it out.