Skyline Drop

I suppose it really more than anything depends on your budget, both in regards to time and money. Outsourcing the music duties is pretty much common practice for a lot of filmmakers (how many directors do you know also write the music for their movies?), and while I don't know the exact nature of your project, I don't really see why you couldn't do the same if you had the means available to you. It's also totally fine to ask someone else to produce your music and explain to them what kind of vibe you want for them to create. I don't know how typical it is to dictate parts to someone for that purpose, though; I imagine some might take it as a bit of a slight to their talents that you won't let them develop their own themes instead. I dunno, though. That said, if you feel you have the capability to do it yourself, maybe just give it a try. Saying "it takes too long" or "someone else might do it better" sound like more than good enough reasons to hire someone else to me, though.

I'm just gonna save everyone a bit of time and say the obvious Pokemon choice now and get that out of the way.

I love hearing a bit more live ensemble work here on OCR every now and then. This arrangement had a fun groove to it, and worked surprisingly well despite reducing it to five parts. Not sure about the timing of some parts, and I wasn't too sold by the toms at the end, but otherwise, seemed like a lot of fun!

This seems like a really sick idea. I'm a sucker for these bombastic rock opera type things. It's crazy how many musicians they've gotten onboard for this, too. Holy cow.

I really need to get around to playing both of those series. I've heard pretty much nothing but good things about them.

This was a neat little video, and there were some interesting parallels that I had missed in previous playthroughs, but dear God, that guy needs to work on his VO. Every line sounds so forced.

Real talk, I'm not usually a fan of solo piano music, but this is really, really solid. I like a lot of reharmonization you've got going on. My only real critique is that I think you spent a *tad* too long on some of the fancy rolls and such. It tended to break up your phrasing a hair more than I'd like to hear myself. I'm mostly just nitpicking at this point, though. It's a really great interpretation all around. Nice job

You broke into the solo at just the right time. I was very concerned you were just gonna play another round of the chorus, so that's good that you stepped into a different direction. I'm gonna disagree with timaeus222 here, but I actually liked that you brought the main theme back in at the end. It rounds out the arrangement a bit, and is a bit of a jazz band cliche, but it's stuck around this long because it works. With regards the arrangment, the only thing I'd like to see is a bit more of that riff you played at 2:37. It was a cool little lick that kind of showed up out of nowhere and didn't really get enough spotlight in my opinion. I think it'd be cool to bring it back once more at the end as a little personally stamp to end the song. I personally think the drums - well, mostly the cymbals, really - are a bit too washed in reverb, but that's probably just my crummy headphones.

Maybe it's just crappy headphones, but the drums still sound a little squashed to me. I'm not sure you've fixed all of the issues. Try dialing everything down a little bit rather than just adding limiters, or something. I'm not really a mixing expert, so I'll let someone else explain it better. The arrangement runs a little long, in my opinion. It mostly sticks on the chord progression and feel of the A section, which gets a bit grating after a while, in my opinion. After maybe 70% of the song, I was getting a bit bored of it, so you may want to write a bit of a changeup there. That would be pretty integral if your plan was to submit to OCR, in my opinion. At 2:20, you play the intro riff again, and I really feel like after that, it should go into a completely different feel just to break up the monotony a little bit and inject a bit more personal flair into the arrangement, especially since the feel of your take on it is so similar to the original track. I like your idea with the ending, but I'd try to do something to build the dynamics a bit more with each repeat of that last phrase. Maybe the second repeat, change the chord progression and instrumentation a bit, then vary up the drum pattern a bit so it builds more into the ending. All in all, it's pretty solid from what I hear so far. I like it.

So I've decided to take a shot at arranging one of my favorite video game themes: Ryu's Stage from SF2. I went full out orchestral from this arrangement (a risky choice since I'm using mostly default Mixcraft instruments), and took it a lot more slowly and somberly than most other takes on OCR. The structure of the arrangement is a bit wacky mostly because I was trying to throw down ideas while I still had them and get something listenable before bed. Comments and criticism very much welcome. Edit: I'm smart. Totally forgot my link to the track: https://soundcloud.com/skyline-drop/shotokan-brotherhood-ryu-stage

LTTP 2? YES! YEEEESSSS!

I watched some people playing it on Twitch.tv a couple days ago. It's really got a similar feel to the more recent Mortal Kombat games (which I guess goes without saying, considering the developers, but still). Honestly, I just kind of want to wail on Superman for being such a douche in the first season of Young Justice...

My first submission to the panel was a remix from MMBN4. Got NO'd pretty decisively if I recall. Pretty crushing XD Maybe I'll dust that off again and take another stab at it. It's been a few years...

Maybe it's just because I'm a wind player, but I have real issues making any real progress with songs if I don't start by fleshing out a melodic idea before anything else. Curse you, monophonic mind's ear! In regards to topic, the best advice I had heard was to put subtractive EQ and filters on pretty much everything. Sometimes you just can't get a track to sit well unless you trim away a lot of the excess.

Huh. When you said "bamboo sax," I was certain you meant one of these. But that thing seems pretty cool, too. On the subject of cool saxophones,

This would be really cool, I think. It'd be a nice parallel to how some producers will livestream their sessions or give walkthroughs of their song projects.

Man. Nintendo/Game Freak are trying to sap me of all my money, it seems. This looks really good.

I really hope that's not the final design. Looks like a real hassle to handle.

Oh, yeah. I guess that is coming up. Welp, time to bust out my copy of Starfox 64 and marathon mode it for a bit.

I completed the survey. Lots of open-ended questions on it, which should make for some interesting results, I think. I tried to be specific but also concise for your sake. Hopefully this all pans out for you. The world could use some more academic research in game music specifically.

I'd give my life not for honor, but for this ReMix.

This is spectacularly sick. I thought the 'mic check' sample was a bit campy, but in a fun way.

I'm gonna side with this, I think. When you learn to express yourself verbally, you do it by imitating speech you hear around you long before you start to consciously break down the grammar and syntax behind it. It can be worthwhile to learn to express yourself musically in the same manner.

Man. I don't know why I keep getting so surprised by how funky these songs are. At this point I should just expect it.

I filled it out, but I swear if this leads to another Legends 3 incident I'm gonna wreck somebody.