WillRock

Yeah well. You're nicer than me

Or you know. One of us could support more than the other. THAT WOULD FIX THE PROBLEM RIGHT?

Rock music has always had the issue of evolving through heaviness. We've now hit that point where its reached its full potential on that scale imo. At least within the realms of being commercially viable. The reason bands like Nickelback get hated on is because they are not innovating the style in any way, but its radio ready and easy so we get subjected to it. Its stuff we've heard before. Its boring. When Led Zeppelin came out, they were innovating. Metallica were the first mainstream thrash metal band and brought a new ferocious speed and sharpness to rock/metal, but notice that it wasn't until the black album they hit their commercial peak. They had to dumb down to appeal to the full on masses, at least in terms of commercialism. I feel like bands like Pendulum are keeping rock alive in some form but its obviously starting to die out cause honestly? We've heard everything now, the only way forward is through fusion styles and rock is such a purist thing that some people won't even accept that. Rock can only go so far and now, anything new would probably not be deemed commercial enough to make an impact. Anything commercial enough, we've heard 20-30 years ago at this point, or its just a repackaged "heavier version" of something we've heard before.

I have done the unthinkable. I have sold out and got myself a PATREON PAGE. https://www.patreon.com/willrock07 So... Whats the deal? The deal is - I will be posting new stuff! AMAZING STOOF. Stuff that will find its way to Patreon FIRST! Before anywhere else! Plus I will be posting WIPs, which I won't be posting anywhere else. I tend to have unfinished tracks that go to the scrap heap so you'll be seeing that stuff as well! Plus there's rewards like signed copies of albums, remix requests... But perhaps most importantly... As a general rule, I try to keep my fans as happy as I can. I want to make a living out of music, but I want to give my fans as much as I can as soon as I can. I strongly consider OCR to be a large part of the reason for WHY i'm as successful with music as I am, little as that may be, and I reckon quite a large chunk of my fanbase and friends are here... so if you enjoy my music, please consider helping me by pledging a small amount. Its for a good cause! ^-^ You guys are all awesome. Thanks!

I actually saw a fan petition to bring back George Lucas to direct the next film. Not kidding. Yeah i'm not taking any criticisms seriously anymore.

Well daym. Like... that explains it! Thank you! I never even noticed it! Unintentional on my part, I've done it before but I guess the moon theme is too popular for it to go unnoticed. That said, I guess this ends a long standing debate. Its offical. VARIATION IS ANNOYING, OCR is clearly wrong in asking for it and the standards should absolutely be changed effective immediately to not include any variation whatsoever for the good of not being annoying to people

First instinct here is that the mixing is a bit off - The drums are completely buried, boost the volume and compress the kick/snare a bit to give them a bit of punch. Sometimes things are too exposed, like that Pulsewave stuff at 1:07. Seems to me like you've got the right idea of where to level things mixing wise because everything that requires the focus is right, its just you've over done it a tad. Also, one or two of the samples aren't great but with better mixing you might be able to make up for some of the sound design flaws. Sometimes the arrangement just... stops. I suggest you either remove them or try to edit them in some way cause atm, it just sounds like the track has stopped, then it starts again! It puts you out of the mood a tad. Also, some of the instrumentation isn't quite fitting with your aesthetic in terms of reverb. The pulsewave for example... no reverb at all. It sticks out in a bad way cause the rest of your track isn't as dry. A lot of critique there for ya, sorry if I seem a tad harsh, it is a good track but it requires quite a bit of work to get it up to OCR level since thats what you're aiming for. Keep working at it

I'm probably ignorant but I haven't heard of a single one of your examples XD Why Double Dragon? I was looking it up and noticed it had a lack of remixes. I actually didn't expect THIS to happen when I mentioned it in staff, but imo, its a landmark title in video game history with some insane music that deserves more remixes than it currently has on OCR, and apparently, the staff agreed with me Sure, there are other games that have a sad lack of remixes (Pokemon was completely unrepresented when I joined OCR, something I thought was awful) but yeah, maybe this can be a thing that happens every now and then just to give some of those under remixed games some love?

This is awesoooome. I do wish the chiptunes were a little louder tho. As cool as the piano is, it drowns out some of the cool little chiptune sections and things feel a little lobsided mixing wise to me. That said, I can not fault the arrangement, its bonkers, so many cool updates and variations on the source tune. A great concept that works very well. Nice work man!

Glad you guys are enjoying it! Regarding the arp, its sequenced to the beat exactly, its not out of time at all. Its got a very small amount of delay on it but that wouldn't put it ahead of the beat. Don't know what you're hearing guys, sorry

haha i was also being tongue in cheek. No worries bro

I pride myself on being able to sequence guitar like synth solos, and doing "fake whammys" is something I like doing. Whammy Bars basically just lower the pitch of your guitar. You can go up in pitch as well but going down in pitch is generally what its used for since you can go so much further down than up - About 12 semi-tones down is about right. In my experience, I prefer using the Pitch Bend Wheel - You CAN use legato (thats what I use for "hand bends) but Pitch bending allows for so much more control over what you're doing. Plus, if you're careful, you can use LFO on the pitch while you're using the Pitch Bend to create descending vibrato, which is quite cool if done properly. If its not fast enough vibrato tho, you just end up fucking up your nice downward pitch bend so you gotta be careful. But yeah, the thing is, a LOT of people use harmonics when doing whammy dive bombs (going down about 7 semitones or more) cause it sounds cool... I have a synth with a formant shifting dial (In the Malstrom Graintable Synthesis Synthesizer in Reason) which emulates those harmonics. Sometimes I'll change the oscillator volume balances to help create a more interesting sound (with distortion, you can get weird effects from any sort of timbre changes). Honestly? My biggest piece of advice to you is practice practice practice. I don't know of any VSTs that produce that magic sound you're looking for but I know you can do it if you just work at it. I'd also suggest you try transcribing some guitar parts that use a lot of whammy stuff - slow it down, get those little details so you can figure out how to sequence it realistically. I did this some time ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoGiyzPYbvs - Its an 8-bit version of Eruption - I think its fairly accurate altho I did mess up the tapping section a tad with the amount of triplets compared to the original, but there are LOADS of whammy tricks in here I was able to recreate using the methods I mentioned earlier in the post. Hit me up if you want some more detailed info on it, maybe I could show you what i'm talking about since words only take you so far

Rule 1: NEVER try to suggest "less remixes is ok" for any reason whatsoever.

I fully indorse this so much that I'm probably going to do something. Silly to complain and not do something about it right?

I have to say, this is something that annoys me about the Star Wars fandom. Its to the point where they will never be happy now. The originals raised the bar so high that everyone expects - no, DEMANDS - the impossible and cry bloody murder when they don't get it. This movies "backlash" (if you can call it that) just proves it - play it safe to try and show people you can do a "true star wars movie" and it gets bashed for being unoriginal. Do something a little more out there and people critique everything else about it. To keep this fandom happy, the next movie will have to be incredibly well acted, flow flawlessly, be funny without being cheesy, have no CGI but not have unrealistic puppetry (The phantom menace proved that one with Yoda), have NO plot holes whatsoever, be different enough to not rip off the OT, but not too far that its "not star wars anymore" be well written, etc etc. Honestly, this film did a FANTASTIC job of keeping as many people happy as possible considering what the fandom has come to expect. The prequels, while hardly masterpieces were not as bad as people make them out to be imo. Hell, Revenge of the Sith is up there with Return of the Jedi. But people expect SO MUCH that when something a bit lackluster comes out, they whinge, and bitch and cry and moan and completely ignore the good points of said films. Its sad.

Dude were are the 80s butt solos and the big beats. What is this "atmospheric" stuff. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. Oh well. At least it has reverb \O_O/ According to the Chimp I still need to tell you its perfect so its fucking perfect NOW ARE YOU HAPPY cause seriously this is fucking good bravo *claps*

Dude was a one off and a legend. A black day for Rock/Metal - hell, music in general.

The acting was odd in the prequels. REALLY subdued. Half the acting is expressionless (Knightly and Portman as the queen in I sound so fucking monotone, computer speech has more expression than what they gave their lines) - this includes people like SAMUEL L. JACKSON so I 100% agree that was Lucas's meddling there. I think in some cases like Ewan McGregor's it worked (disagree he was bad in the prequels, he totally nailed Obi-wan imo and captured the essence of Alec Guinness's calm portrayal from the original trilogy, but I guess they're all a bit like that so thats the problem? I dunno.) But then you've got fucking Palpatine who hams it up and delivers what imo is one of the greatest villain portrayals ever, which quite honestly,elevated Episode III to a highly entertaining movie for me, at least compared to I and II. I'm curious if he just ignored Lucas and Lucas was like "ok I trust you" or if it was intentional to make him stand out more or something... really odd.

I did say its my opinion... er... sorry for having an opinion you disagree with? My bad if I offended you or something, last thing I want to do is upset people haha. Music is all an opinion at the end of the day. You have every right to disagree but try not to take it so literally yeah? Music is so subjective after all. Now, back to the film in question?

Yeah I can see that. Learning the force - maybe she's just good at that. As for sword fighting, we don't know her backstory so maybe she's had some training there already. Like you say, I get it but the mary sue claim is OTT in this instance. Subpar Williams is better than 99% of other film composers best work imo. I do agree that the soundtrack didn't have anything new grab me (I just assumed its cause I only heard the music in the film, I've not analysed the soundtrack) - but John Williams at his best is so fucking good that he's got one HELL of a rep to uphold. And its not like he's in his prime right now, he's 83. My Grandpa had forgotten I was his grandson at that point The fact he's composing at all is AMAZING imo and should be commended.

So I consider myself a Star Wars fan. Not a diehard, I'm not into the EU like... AT ALL so I went in with no knowledge of what happens after Jedi. Enjoyable film! Gary the Stormtrooper Finn was a very welcome edition that I thought gave the films a new and really cool perspective the other films didn't show. Also, this film managed to show the overwhelming destructive power of the "first orders" ships from a first person perspective. Have we seen that before? Don't remember it from the other films. As someone who doesn't have a raging hard on for the original trilogy, I found the clear nostalgic vibe slightly distracting. Wished it wasn't just trying to pay homage throughout the entire film. There were so many references to the original trilogy that my dad said at the end "they've run out of ideas!" which is clearly missing the point but if you're making people think that, you've gone a bit too far. Also, there are complaints that Rey is a mary sue? w/e \O_O/ The homage stuff imo was mostly evident in the villains (lol at the palpatine knockoff - hope he's better fleshed out later) but I actually liked Kylo Ren. His character being like Darth Vader made sense in the narrative, and you could tell even before he took off his mask he wasn't like Darth Vader. The audience laughed whenever he had a tantrum attack, which is so at odds with Darth Vaders cool and unemotional persona. Its kinda like what Darth Vader was probably like immediately after Revenge of the Sith, which gave me the impression he was a young kid who was in over his head. I really liked that about him. Also, I was sat there thinking "WHY DO YOU HAVE A MASK YOU TOOL. YOU'RE NOT THE REAL DARTH VADER" which also felt intentional. Talk about being so weak you have to wear a mask to be convincing XD. He and Finn imo carried it - I Did like Rey but she was a bit of a "standard heroine" kinda like Luke is in the original films. As for the original trilogy characters cameos... nice to see them again. Han Solo was pretty cool. I'm looking forward to an aged Luke Skywalker next film. Oh and of course, the music is incredible. John Williams has a magical quality to his music that just elevates any film he helps score and he brought it once again. I hope he'll be able to do the whole trilogy.

YEEEEEEAH \^w^/

"DJP, what do the forums say about Liontamers Popular Contributor's level?" "ITS OVER 9000!!!!! *breaks forums*"

Cool Arrangement, really nice dynamic shifts, great mood building, some production issues, other judges pretty much covered all the bases... w/e, gets my WillRock stamp of approval - LETS GO Also, wanna say hoboka - Nice work on improving your craft over the years. This is swell. YES

Biggest tip: Try not to not be an asshole. Your partner has his own legitimate ideas too. Give them room to voice an opinion if you choose to collab with them and listen to what they have to say. If you don't, you'll just end up alienating people. More generally, have a vision. Don't be like "I want to collab with you for no reason!" Assign roles. Maybe one of you is the arranger and another is an instrumentalist. Collabarations are usually two people together working their strengths to create something greater than the sum of its parts. In my case, If i'm not the arranger, I'm either laying down guitars or synths, cause thats where my strengths are Most importantly, COMMUNICATE. So many collabs end up getting fucked due to misunderstandings. If someone collabs with you, don't take it for granted and remove their contributions without at least telling them first because they will not want to collaborate with you again. Those are my two cents. If you communicate and have a good balance with sharing ideas, collabing can be a fantastic experience. However, you've gotta be a little careful sometimes. People are touchy, especially when it comes to their music. Just treat each other respectfully and their shouldn't be a problem.