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It's sequenced. I used Sonar Music Creator 2005 (I love its Amiga-like staff view), and the piano virtual instrument I've been using for what feels like forever. I wrote it (like all of my piano stuff these days) on two tracks; one for the left hand, and one for the right (keeps the whole "third hand" thing away most of the time ?). I played with the velocity and the tempo a lot in the program, trying to capture what I was picturing in my head as I listened to what I'd written as I went along; giving it tempo changes in areas where I believed they would feel good/natural. I've also tinkered with the EQing for the piano over the years, to try and make it sound a bit nicer to my ears (it's harsh sounding without the EQing), So yeah, it's not me performing it. It's just me trying my best to make it feel performed.
And thanks for the compliments, djp. Scary to think it's been nineteen and a half years since my Darius remix was posted, huh?

Damn, the lead synth work here is stellar! There's so much going on that's worth highlighting, but this is an element that immediately jumped out to me. Crazy arpeggio fills all around. You really committed to the syncopated rhythms with some very aggressive gating on nearly all of your instruments, which gives the mix a tremendous amount of punch during the breakdowns. The guitar work is such a fantastic way to bring this home.
Absolutely sick work.
YES

Yeah I had fun listening as well - good stuff!

Oh shit dude, good to see you again!
I'll definitely check this out

EDIT: loving this whole thing!

I have to say I really didn't expect what was going to happen at 1:25 but then it happened and I was happy. This arrangement is supremely weird in the best kinds of ways. 
My major issue with the piece is basically what many of the judges here have already said; the piece feels thin and underdeveloped. When we DO have the full ensemble, we get good balance and mixing, even if some of the timbres are a little stale, but the in-between stuff lacks depth. It doesn't have to remain powerful - it's that contrast that helps us appreciate the big booming parts - but if you listen to the first minute and a half, and the last minute in particular, it feels like we're just missing a huge part of the sound spectrum. The drums in the beginning feel sparse, as well as the lead, kind of like you were sketching the skeleton of the piece but never gave it the rest of the muscle and fat that go with making a full body, an analogy that I am going to depart from now becuase it's kind of gross. 
My suggestion might be that if you ARE going to make the choice to be intentionally thin (and I am assuming here) then make it. This tune reminded me of a Trigun track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-9iDfnBxLA - if you listen around 1:10, you hear this thin drum sound in the background with a full flute over it, but the arranger there made a clear choice, so the listener isn't confused. 
This is a good piece, and definitely exceeds the OCR bar in many ways. With some polishing, it would be a clear post. 
NO (resubmit)

Hey folks, it's been years (decades?)!
I'd stopped doing music for a while but got back into it recently and made an instrumental rock guitar album with strong retro video game influences.
Allow me the shamelessly plug it @:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1J4ORYXownWtYqcNjVevdm

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/album/un-autre-adieu/1681984400

YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/search?q=Pascal+Jette+Un+Autre+Adieu
Or delete this if this is against guidelines ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Extensive vocoder... and it's NOT @Jorito?!?
So much fun! The sax solo put it over the top, for me, but the whole thing is just a blast. The glitching/record stops at the very end are a little less 1970's/disco, but very much in keeping with the mix title, and the hook reminds me a little of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky". I was coincidentally JUST playing this (gorgeous, creative) game, and while I will always remain a dog person, it's a unique & extremely well-done experience.
Amazing to think that composer Nurykabe had a Faxanadu mix posted wayyyyyyy back in 2009; time flies!

Super-fun follow-up to @TheManPF's debut mix; I love the creative, fearless arrangement style & willingness to shoot for novel juxtapositions!

Great write-up from @Liontamer on an absolute standout track. I try to avoid superlatives of this particular nature, but for me this is going to be my definitive arrangement that I think of, for this source. I've always loved the melody, and I've always found the lyrics to be a strange oscillation between poetic and... somewhat odd. This version makes everything fit together, for me, makes all the pieces click in a way that I feel like I've somehow always needed... at one point I wanted to do my own country western vocal take (!!) on this, which I still think could sound good & is a genre equally underrepresented in the VGM arrangement scene, but some of the appeal there would have overlapped with the appeal here: taking Uematsu's timeless ballad and giving it a bit more longing, placing it geographically further south, giving it air & sand & wood & fire, making it come from somewhere a little deeper & a little further...
Congrats to @CNDR, @Jorito, @Earth Kid & @chriskaudio - quite, quite, quite good; the type of arrangement I will think of & trigger related neurons whenever I think of the album itself, by proxy.
You simply must give it a moment!

After this reconsideration, we've clearly concluded that we're not accepting this submission. In the thread thus far, prophetik said he agreed with MindWanderer that this didn't meet 4.3 of the Submissions Standards. DarkeSword was saying 4.3 didn't apply here, but DarkeSword & Gario said it failed 4.1.
We then talked extensively in #judges about how to address this and came to a consensus. I'll do my best to summarize the conversation here with key excerpts (edited for clarity).

Regarding section 4.1, we concluded that the format of story narration or audio book isn't accepted as a "genre of music" due to the focus of the experience not being its music:
Regarding Section 4.3, and its purpose, “dominant” refers to the expectation that the arranged VGM is the “most important, powerful, or influential” component of the presentation; this would apply whether it's contrasting 1) the amount of arranged VGM vs. non-VGM composition or, in this case, 2) the arranged VGM vs. the non-musical story narration as the primary focus of the audio. With this piece, djp felt the approach did conflict with both mentioned parts of the existing arrangement standards -- primarily 4.1, and then 4.3 to a lesser extent -- then suggested added clarification to the Standards to address this:
DarkeSword emphasized that the Standards issue here had nothing to do with acceptable source material (Section 3) but rather whether this arrangement format was permitted (Section 4):
DarkeSword proposed an added clarification point excluding narration/voiceover-focused content by name as part of section 4.1, which djp and I edited. As this submission conflicted with two aspects of the current arrangement standards, this added point isn't a new exclusion, but now codifies the reasoning behind not accepting this type of presentation. I also added "rap" into 4.1's examples list of acceptable genres to make very clear that it remains an accepted music style. Usage of lyrics with rhythms and/or musicality (e.g. beat poetry) that integrate with the music is (and has always been) allowed. We then had the panel weigh in on the final wording, which was accepted by the entire group:
The revision of section 4.1 is now live in the Submission Standards:
4. Arrangement
     1. Arrangements in any genre of music (e.g. techno, jazz, rap, rock, classical) are acceptable, so long as the genre itself does not conflict with any other arrangement criteria.
Submissions must have a primary focus on musical elements; this excludes extensive focus on narration/voiceover (e.g. audio drama, audio books).

Great write-up from @Liontamer on an absolute standout track. I try to avoid superlatives of this particular nature, but for me this is going to be my definitive arrangement that I think of, for this source. I've always loved the melody, and I've always found the lyrics to be a strange oscillation between poetic and... somewhat odd. This version makes everything fit together, for me, makes all the pieces click in a way that I feel like I've somehow always needed... at one point I wanted to do my own country western vocal take (!!) on this, which I still think could sound good & is a genre equally underrepresented in the VGM arrangement scene, but some of the appeal there would have overlapped with the appeal here: taking Uematsu's timeless ballad and giving it a bit more longing, placing it geographically further south, giving it air & sand & wood & fire, making it come from somewhere a little deeper & a little further...
Congrats to @CNDR, @Jorito, @Earth Kid & @chriskaudio - quite, quite, quite good; the type of arrangement I will think of & trigger related neurons whenever I think of the album itself, by proxy.
You simply must give it a moment!

@Subz1987 Actually, @Liontamer found out what the real issue is - special characters in filenames that aren't encoded right, which are causing issues on Apple devices. We will be updating the zip shortly to address this.
UPDATE: zip files on all three mirrors updated with filenames that should no longer causes issues on Apple, etc. devices!

@Subz1987 Actually, @Liontamer found out what the real issue is - special characters in filenames that aren't encoded right, which are causing issues on Apple devices. We will be updating the zip shortly to address this.
UPDATE: zip files on all three mirrors updated with filenames that should no longer causes issues on Apple, etc. devices!

Preview Final Fantasy VIII: SeeDs of Pandora: https://youtu.be/WVx6a1JHaDk Download Final Fantasy VIII: SeeDs of Pandora: https://ff8.ocremix.org Torrent: https://bt.ocremix.org/torrents/Final_Fantasy_VIII_-_SeeDs_of_Pandora.torrent To talk about SeeDs of Pandora, I feel I should start with Secret of Mana. It was my first RPG that I have ever played and it sparked the flame to play more in this genre. It ultimately led me to playing Final Fantasy VI (III at the time) for the SNES. I was hooked on the RPG genre and I wanted more Final Fantasy. Sadly, Sony had moved on from Nintendo at this point and all the cool new games, VII, VIII, IX, and more, were released on PlayStation systems - systems I was too young to have money for with parents who weren't willing to shell out more for additional consoles. So it would be near a decade before I had a chance to play Final Fantasy again and this time it was on the PC with the PC ports of Final Fantasy VII and VIII (strangely, IX never got one). And of course, my first Final Fantasy played was VIII. Coming back to the series after being gone from it for so long was like coming home and Final Fantasy VIII just seemed to be this perfect welcoming party of a game for me. I loved its characters, its world, and its music - the battle/junction system and card game would grow on me later.
Fast-forward to now and I was given the opportunity to direct a defunct FFVIII OC ReMix album project. It was attempted once, but for reasons, it fell through. I was offered, due to my experience in directing Arcadia Legends and Mizar Attacks!, the chance to direct and revive this album - being the last Final Fantasy of the PlayStation era not to have an OC ReMix album. Directing an album isn't easy, especially one of this magnitude that could easily reach 40 tracks or more. I mean, it took us 3 years to finish Arcadia Legends and that was 36 tracks! Enter Jorito, my co-director and essentially my lifeline throughout this entire process. If it weren't for him, I highly doubt this project would have gotten off the ground, let alone finished in record time. It was his insistence and push to give the entire album a year's timeline to complete all claimed tracks - a decision that paid off well and gave incentive to remixers to strive to complete their claims in record time! Jorito is just as much a director as I was on this project and is truly the star MVP of the album.
Despite having a solid directing team and the backing of OC ReMix to revive this project as an official album straight out of the starting gate, we still needed a solid vision for the project. We could have gone the traditional route and just do a chronological ordering of tracks from the beginning of the game to the end and let remixers decide what theming and genre is best for their claimed tracks - or we could go a more unique route and create special, themed groupings of tracks. Taking inspiration from the Spectrum of Mana album, directed by Nate Horsfall, I divided up FFVIII's soundtrack into three distinct styles:
CALM - Chill and slow remixes that had a cultural bent either via arrangement or unique instrument use that gave visions of a specific culture.
CRAZY - Toe-tapping, floor-thumping, heart-pounding beats and fast, frenetic energy in remix form.
GOOFY - Songs that are remixed in ways you would not expect, for example taking a waltz and making it death metal. Constantly surprise the listener and betray their expectations.
With the vision set, we recruited far and wide for remixers and artists. The unique flavoring of the three discs drew interested creatives to the project and helped nurture fantastic remixes and artwork. It was around this time, as musicians flooded in to claim tracks, that we might have more finished tracks by the end than the planned three discs could handle and thus the further theming of the album began to revolve around the three Gardens in the game: Balamb, Galbadia, and Trabia. However, the need for that fourth disc loomed and the only other option left which made the most sense was the Lunatic Pandora (or the Pandora) disc. With these themes locked in, the artists went to work straight away and created some fantastic pieces that matched the original vision. With the help of Jorito, it was an amazingly smooth experience and we managed to get a complete album finished in just over a year's time with a whopping 69 tracks!
But wait, there's more! In the 11th hour, weeks before we were to submit the album to OC ReMix, ZackParrish, among others, spearheaded a crazy last-minute bonus disc with 11 more tracks (get it, 11th hour?!) to cover any last, remaining songs on the OST the core album couldn't. It was a fun, insane rush to the finish line and with a final tally of 80 tracks in total, we have officially broken the record as of 2023 as being the biggest album ever produced out of OC ReMix! We are kings (and queens)! Kudos to all the talented people who helped make this album a reality! It was a joy working on this and seeing it come together.
Finally, one final note to you, the listener: If you are expecting these remixes to adhere close to their original inspirations or to have faithful adaptations of well-known and beloved tracks, then this album might not be for you. The intent with this album was to embrace the remix aspect of OC ReMix fully and to interpret the original melodies in ways you might not have heard before. Our goal is to provide something new and transformative with these songs. So go in with an open mind and know that this listening experience was carefully crafted to take you on a journey (I should know! I ordered the tracks specifically to flow in a way that felt natural). We hope you enjoy this album and may it always rekindle your fond memories of your time playing Final Fantasy VIII.
From the SeeDs of Pandora team to you: Happy listening!
- Darkflamewolf
I've been hooked on JRPGs and Final Fantasy in particular since discovering SNES emulators back in the late 90s, and that hasn't changed since. The very first console I owned was the original PlayStation (PSX), and the starter game I bought with it was Final Fantasy 7. And of course two years later I also made sure to get myself a copy of Final Fantasy 8. To this day I still distinctly remember the "WTF is going on" near the end of the game and, whatever the story was trying to tell me, it flew right over my head.
Fast-forward about fifteen years, and I got into VGM remixing and became an active member of the OC ReMix community. So when an album project got started to remix the Final Fantasy 8 music, I of course had to join and make a track for it. Unfortunately that album initiative got stranded early on in the process, something that always left me feeling a bit sad. At the time I was just wrapping up the OCR Secret of Mana album and was in need of a break, but I always kept the FF8 album in mind to potentially pick up as a (co-)director later. Given the sheer size of the OST I didn't want to do it alone though. So the idea got shelved for a few years.
That is, until Darkflamewolf randomly brought up the comatose FF8 album on the OC ReMix Discord in August 2021. We started talking about the album, djpretzel pointed out that I had expressed interest in helping out a few years before, and after a few chats we decided to team up and rejuvenate the Final Fantasy 8 album and make sure that the only missing OCR Final Fantasy PSX game album got the tribute it deserved. I did have one specific aim though: I wanted to get it done in about a year, because I know how much work these album projects can be and how hard it can be to keep people motivated long enough to create and deliver their tracks. All set and done, we outlined a rough planning, Darkflamewolf sketched out a compelling vision and tracklist suggestion for each disc and came up with a title, I started recruiting far and wide (apparently being in the VGM community for a while and doing lots of collaborations is a good way to build a network), and we were off to the races.
And boy, what a journey it was! We managed to interest a lot of people from the VGM community, with a good mix of OC ReMix veterans, people from other communities, and newcomers. We created a Discord server for the album to help coordinate things (not a small feat with I think in total some 70+ people), many fun conversations were had there, and the setup overall led to a positive, supportive environment that made the whole experience very enjoyable. And of course I would be amiss if I didn't mention the collaboration with Darkflamewolf; we worked really well together as a directing team, each of us with their own areas of expertise and roles yet always united to get the album done and cheering all the artists that joined us on this journey. All in all it was a very smooth experience, and I think all everyone involved should be very proud of what we've achieved together.
I hope all the fun and joy we had while creating this album for you shines through, and that you, dear listener, enjoy this fresh new take on the music of Final Fantasy 8 as much as we enjoyed making it.
- Jorrith Schaap (Jorito)

At first I thought the track had the word "Tip" and not "Trip" and I was laughing so hard at the joke. xD
 
Love the remix though, it's a fun trip through memory lane for me. As I played this game as a kid.

This is an interesting approach to arrangement that we don't really get often. The instrumentation feels almost identical to the original, though it's been clearly recreated with a pretty meticulous attention to detail. The end result reminds me a lot of Juke's approach with tracks like "Vacation in the Mushroom Kingdom" or "Our Home" where much of the personalization comes in the way that you interweave a number of other sources into the arrangement. This does feel a bit more like a medley but ultimately feels cohesive enough to pass muster on the arrangement. The Yoshi's Island theme is the only instance where the transition feels jarring, but you tie it back to the main arrangement by bringing in some of the Mario Kart tune at the same time. 
The whole mix definitely feels squished and messy, but in a way it almost kind of works? I feel like I'm listening to a maniacal live band play in a small pub somewhere, so the mixing doesn't feel entirely out of place for me and almost contributes to the live jam band sound. 
The organ solo rips, by the way. Nice work on that. 
I was fully prepared to vote NO on this when I first heard it but the more I engaged, the more I came around to it and appreciated all the subtle things you did with your arrangement. I'm glad to have flipped here, it's fun on this side
YES

@Liontamer got the writeup but I wanted to chime in since it's @DCT (!!) - great to see/hear new music after a hiatus, and that electric guitar solo was sweet!

I came in to say almost the exact same thing. Big picture, that choir isn't a major or even necessary part of the mix, but taking the time to add those articulations is a really cool touch, some real above-and-beyond stuff. And it blends so well with the piano.

I'm usually not that into this style, but this is some really excellent work. Definitely will be coming back to this mix regularly.

Absolutely love the synth brass leads on this - just the right analog warmth, buttery, uses the range well... melancholy meditation on some absolutely stellar source melodies. Feels like a different vibe than many of @Hemophiliac's other works, but absolutely clicks.

I was born in 2009, and this song actually slaps. 23 years and going strong. Man, was I born in the wrong generation...

checkout this remix tho!!
 
no one can do it betta!

Extensive vocoder... and it's NOT @Jorito?!?
So much fun! The sax solo put it over the top, for me, but the whole thing is just a blast. The glitching/record stops at the very end are a little less 1970's/disco, but very much in keeping with the mix title, and the hook reminds me a little of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky". I was coincidentally JUST playing this (gorgeous, creative) game, and while I will always remain a dog person, it's a unique & extremely well-done experience.
Amazing to think that composer Nurykabe had a Faxanadu mix posted wayyyyyyy back in 2009; time flies!

To be honest I also just yoinked that idea from a Youtube video where it was explained as the orchestra following the conducter who is also not a perfect metronome. Same thing still applies if you don't have a conductor but your partner instruments to follow.
This is what the tempo looks like from start to finish. There's really no pattern to the changes, and that's kind of the point. Just an avarage target tempo that the gets played around.

 
And while I was in the project anyway, this is what the violin's automations look like during the climax at around 2:52. From the top it's bow speed (think volume), vibrato amplitude, vibrato speed, bow pressure and bow position between bridge and finger board. So yeah, this is where those 30 hours went...

His eyes open!
As soon as I saw the title I wondered what kind of ReMix  would reference a TNG episode that way.
Unintentional Star Tek pun or not, this is a fantastic effort by @suikun.  Keep the good stuff coming!
 
 
 
 

Thank you! You definitely should, by the way. It's some of the best music I've heard that puts a modern twist on Japanese folk music. There are some really groovy tracks on the N64 games that I often put on for a nostalgia trip.