WillRock

Sounds good man! Very well mixed, simple but very deliberate sound design, some neat personalisation on the leads and overall just a chill rendition. Production critiques...that opening arp felt a little exposed and dry by my ear and I wish the track had a little more variety in it's sound design. One more different lead synth would probably help with that. As it is, it feels just a little more static than it could do, but overall this is solid. Btw they're nitpicks, you can take them or leave them hahaha. If you wanted to try submitting this to OCR as it is, I'd give it a shot. If you were serious about getting posted I'd consider throwing a little more variation in your source repeat in the last 40 or so seconds just to be safe, but this is pretty solid stuff!

By the tail

Ok so I'm going to say something a little controversial here? Maybe? I feel like you're overthinking this a tad. Copyright... your music is copyrighted from the moment you create it, getting it "copyrighted" is just an official documentation of ownership. Besides, are you planning on suing them if they copy you? You know? I once saw a comment from Lemmy about people stealing/copying your music, and all he had to say was "I'd just do it back!". I mean Jimmy Page got Sued for copying the riff in Stairway To Heaven but the guy waited 45 years because he had more to gain the longer he waited to sue. I don't know how much you need to take that stuff seriously at this stage. My honest to god advice? Stop worrying about the logistics of it. It seems like you're aware that you're not going to make much money, so try not to spend any at this stage that you don't need to. No reason to go out of pocket needlessly. Look at Distrokid, CD Baby or Tunecore for distribution, get it distributed on Spotify etc, post it on bandcamp, post it on youtube (distribution will do that anyway but you're better off doing that yourself imo). One thing I would consider if you're serious about getting it out there - look into a label to get your music promoted, if you want people to hear it. There's a few in the VGM community like Tiny Waves and Gamechops depending on the genre, and there are some in other places you can look, again, depending on the genre. You can talk to them about copyright issues if you get a label interested in your work. But ultimately? Just get it out there. Don't worry too much about what if scenario's at this stage. Get it on distrokid and bandcamp, release it, tell your friends about it, see what happens. Maybe that's bad advice, but that's my take.

So I decided as a bit of an experiment to listen to some of the older remixes on the site, and i've been going through them chronologically. As you can imagine, there's a lot of... variable quality tracks - much of it is amateurish and/or dated yet many of them have a charm to them, and there's some decent stuff, some novelty tracks, some have some cool humour to them... but then this one came on and I'm kinda shocked. This sounds like something that could have been posted to the site 10 years later. Sounds like a professional, well mixed, very ambitious remix that's executed incredibly. Yeah it almost shows it's age with some samples but it's so far ahead of everything else that you barely notice. Listening to this along side everything on the site today, I think it's easy to take this for granted because of how the quality of fan arrangements has improved over the years, but this was posted in june of 2000, which is absolutely bonkers. Virt really was showing everyone up even twenty years ago huh.

Ah yes - that's my bad there, my theory is ever so slightly rusty hahaha. My original point still stands however

I'm late to the party on this one but I want to throw my hat into the ring and point out I never ever once considered this song to be in a minor key. The song starts out in C Major, it's the opening of the piece and stays in the root note chord for 8 bars, so the introduction is 100% in a major key. However, that synth part during that section puts a lot of emphasis on unresolved chords - the chords in that opening riff have an Em to Dm little riff going on, before going up to F, then back down again to Em and Dm, with Dm holding over the C root chord, which leaves some serious tension because you're expecting it to resolve to C, and it doesn't. Then it goes Dm, Em, F twice, then there's one more F chord, before it resolves on Em to finish the sequence - all over that C root. The interesting thing about the E chord is that over a C root, that creates a Cmaj7 chord, which is a very cool little jazzy thing - it's a C chord with a B on the top - it's SO close to resolving because that B wants to be a C really, but it just doesn't QUITE get there, which leaves that tension just there enough while giving things a decent resolution to the progression - however, it leaves things a little unfulfilled, which is why you don't feel "happy" when hearing it. Another song in the Key of C that is undeniably happy with similar ideas is Metropolis Zone - that also has some cool synthy chords playing over a C major Root - but the different there is that both the beginning and ending of those little riffs start and end with a C major chord - they unquestionably resolve completely, which makes them sound more...fulfilling? Well either way, that's the difference between why you're feeling sadder about Green Hill. Then of course, the piece plays around with that F-Em-D-C chord sequence over that popular melody (Which is a descending sequence - much of Green Hill Zone is descending, which has been already pointed out, which I agree adds to the whole sad feel - you want something happy, move upwards and resolve with straight major chords, forget sevenths!). On top of that, you've got a cool descending arp thing in the background, which is doing descending sevenths of all those chords. So that sequence starts with F major yeah? You've got an arp thats going E-C-A-F in the background, and it's doing the same thing for all the chords in that section. So you've got a feeling of unresolved tension constantly - those chords play around a lot with F and E, but even when it resolves to C major at the end, because it's keeping that seventh in there, it's not quite resolving properly in the ear of the listener - it's very pretty, but it sounds sad. Basically, the reason you're feeling melancholic when you listen to this song is because of all the unresolved tension created by the chords and backing elements. There's probably more to it than that but yup, throw some sevenths in there and suddenly everything feels slightly sadder.

It's probably not the best one (I haven't gone through all the OC Remix albums) but I always had a soft spot for Project Chaos. Is it perfect? No, it's got a few misteps, but it's got some absolute bangers on it, many of which still hold up 15 years later.

This isn't actually a Rhapsody, what were you thinking???

Alright, i'll bite and post some stuff. Probably more well known since I don't delve into the depths of Power/Melodic Metal but here we go: Always loved this one just because its such a brutal assault of metal and doesn't try to be anything else. One of those silly, uplifting power metal songs Well known band but I think this is one of their better album cuts Something a little more unknown, more "normal" metal than power metal but the riffs and duel guitar solos are awesome. (there isn't a decent upload of this song outside the album upload - 4:58)

You guys who named me as inspirational <3 Ok when it comes to remixers that inspired me from OCR there are 3 people who instantly pop in my head - @Sixto, @bLiNd and @zircon. Sure there are other remixers I could probably name but they were some of the most striking remixers I found here from an early age and helped shape my own style. Also, this is going to sound super corny but you can't have a question like this and not mention @djpretzel - Sometimes I don't think people give him enough credit, creating this site - When I joined in what? 2008? The site had already been going for 9 years, from what I have been told, the site had a HUGE surge of popularity and influence long before I even knew the site existed - when I joined it was pretty much the only place where there appeared to be a community based on this stuff, and from what I can tell, its one of the first of its type. How many of us would be where we are if djpretzel hadn't founded OCR? Honestly? What is the video game remix scene without him? If thats not inspirational, I don't know what is.

I wanna quote this for emphasis - Marketing is the name of the game and while I know that, I don't pretend to know what i'm doing, (I don't have a clue lol), so naturally my music doesn't reach as wide an audience. Zircon - he might even deny it and say he was "lucky" I dunno, but he seems to have a pretty good amount of success with a lot of things he does, be it music, plug-in creation or game development and I can only assume that he has some business knowledge others simply lack, or (just as likely or perhaps not exclusively) he just has the right mindset to figure out how the world works which allows him to more effectively navigate his way around the industry. I remember talking to Tee Lopes about it - he told me luck had VERY little to do with it - that he just seemed to see oppertunity where others didn't and went through doors others just couldn't see themselves. I'm not saying luck doesn't play a part but you have to put yourself in the position to be lucky in the first place. DJ Cutman - everyone says "he's a business man who worked hard to get where he is" and sure but many don't know his secrets and how he got there, just that he did. I'm sure there are some factors at play that help these things and assuming its just luck is stupid. That said, not everyone is DJ Cutman, not everyone is Zircon and we have to manage our own expectations based on our previous experiences. Just because one person can pull it off doesn't mean everyone can, otherwise we'd all manage to get there. Sadly, a small amount succeed and leave the rest of us in the dust. Thats just the way these things work

mmm, if I can expand on your point without derailing too much - When I started remixing, my thought process was "people who hear my remixes will be interested in what I do" - which generally isn't the case in my experience. Yes, you get people who follow you and what you do, but in general, people will just stick to where they want to be. People who find me on youtube stay on youtube, people on OCR stay on OCR, people on New Retro Wave stay there etc etc. The mistake I made was assuming that people were interested in ME, but they're just interested in whatever site I use to promote myself. Suddenly, instead of having a bunch of "WillRock fans" i've got OC Remix fans, New Retro Wave fans, Ubiktune Fans, who just happen to know about my stuff, but not enough to REALLY look into me and what else I do. As a result, it feels like i've got a selection of split up mini-fanbases who like specific things I do in specific places, and then there's the 1 in 100 who actually follow me. I actually remember James Landino discussing how to become popular and he said something similar to this: Stay in one place, and become known for something very specific and corner that area. Don't split everything up and get disjointed groups of people listening to your stuff who don't really know or care about you. I put a LOT of effort into my OCR rep so as a result, i'm much more known for my remixes, and as a result, my originals suffer because I can not promote them here, not in the way I would like, and my original stuff is a bit spread out due to issues getting my stuff released where I want. I would say its not silly to try and figure out what it is you want to do because that opens you up to different fanbases and if you don't force your stuff in their face, they won't look your way. You have to be as visible as you can be and if you try and spread out too much, you won't be visible anywhere

Yeah idea of ownership can get a little questionable sometimes. You can of course go too far the other way - "This piece of music isn't mine because I didn't make the guitar I used in this from scratch and I didn't record it with a microphone I made, or record it with a mixing desk I made. I did do that for THIS track but the individual parts I used for building all this stuff I bought on Ebay. Then there's this track, where I used my own human voice, but it uses notes that other people have used before. This note (A3) is used in at 543,520 tracks i've heard so far, i've been counting.. I must use my own tones." Being silly now, but its certainly an interesting topic. Anyway, don't want to derail any further, carry on

I dunno, Going to play devil's advocate since I do have some different opinions on this - While I personally would say my mixes are my own to an extent (after all, I throw plenty of original content into my remixes), I wouldn't go as far as saying what we're doing are collaborations by any definition. When I'm working with another remixer on a track, or working with a friend, that to me is a collaboration. it has to be agreed on and both parties need to have some sort of impact on the final product. This idea that you think of "all artistic creation as a collaboration" - its a nice idea but to me, thats not the way it works. If they can sue you for copyright infringement its not a collaboration imo. I also disagree with your second point for one reason: I agree with that you can bring your own ideas and people can be derivative with their original works etc etc but I think there's more to it - and that is what gets written down on paper. Something i've noticed doing both remixing and composing is that when you do remixes, your name gets lost in the shuffle because at the end of the day, its not yours on paper is it? Most people who aren't familiar with the artist already don't listen to a remix on OCR and go "man this DarkeSword remix is awesome" they'll go "Man that Wind Waker Remix is greeeeeeeeat lets find some more", because to them, the ownership is still on the original composer/game franchise. Its the same with some labels - I mean... other than DJ Cutman, who can you name from GameChops? What I DO know is the label has an abundance of crazy popular Undertale remixes. Who made them? Dunno, I know Ben Briggs did that super popular Tem Shop thing, that said, I know Ben personally. Beyond that... Now if I look at original works, its different, I KNOW the artists behind many original stuff on their labels because the name isn't obscured by other info, and the mentality is different - Most official remixes are credited first to the original composers and it might say in the track title who remixed it. I've seen stuff on spotify created to the original artist and then realised later its actually a remix made by someone else. Says so in the remix title but it went over my head. To most people, I feel like ownership goes to the person who composed the original work, not the person who remixed it, so I can appreciate it when people say remixes aren't their "own". I certainly don't feel like my remixes are my own work anymore, not in comparison to the stuff I made from scratch, and I feel like when people are listening to my own music, it is more personal as a result of that, both for me, and my fans.