Skyline Drop

So nobody's commented on this, which is a shame. I thought it was really cool and learned some interesting tricks.

Solid! Thanks a bunch.

So I'm thinking an alias change is in order (after like eight years using the same one). I'd like to change my name from "SiriusBeatz" to "Skyline Drop." Kudos to anyone who catches that reference.

Well, I hit play on this one before even starting to read the write-up, and needless to say I was really surprised from the get go. On OCR, we typically get music in one of the 'holy trinity' genres (electronica, rock, or orchestral). I don't think I've heard bluegrass on this site yet, but if this is the first venture into that genre, then it sets the bar quite high. Nice work all around!

I'm listening on laptop speakers, so I can't comment much on production, but I really like the arrangement. I think it was suggested earlier that you bring out that filtered lead a bit more at the start, and I feel like it could still stand to come out even more. The higher notes speak much louder than the lower ones, though, so make sure to check that, too. If the harmon-muted trumpet thing doesn't pan out, you might be able to make the sax a bit more believable with a few pitch bends ('scoops' so to speak) and a bit more vibrato on the longer notes. It's pretty good for what I assume is a soundfont, but you know how difficult to emulate solo winds are. I personally found the percussion a little bit lacking in terms of punch, dynamics, and part-writing, but there's enough going on otherwise that you don't really notice unless you're the type of guy who neurotically listens for that stuff. A lot of it seemed like straight-ahead patterns, and I'd like to see a little more development and variation in them - particularly after 2:29, which I feel is the climax of the piece.

So I'm just gonna say f it and lay claim to a track on this project. I liked this game way too much not to at least take a stab at it - and since classes are wrapping up soon I should have time to throw an arrangement together much more quickly. Put me down for Crystal Caves, I think. Kind of want to try a Frank Ocean-type contemporary R&B interpretation.

you take that back

Yessss! So glad that people are getting together for a project on this game! Had such a blast with this one back in the day... maybe I'll try and put a track together for this one...

If you make the transition between the two convincing enough to sound like a paired piece rather than a pair of songs played in sequence, it might be okay. There isn't actually a rule against medleys; there's a rule against medleys with poor transitions.

I don't think OCRemix has an explicit lower bound in regards to song length, but given that expansion on a given theme is a really big criterion for submissions, I doubt it'll go through. I'm still amazed that that song is still up. I guess djp has a nostalgic sense of humor.

I don't *consciously* avoid learning anything, really, I don't think. I just don't really learn anything without putting it into practice a bit first, and so the stuff I use regularly gets internalized faster until I have the mental capacity to explore other concepts.

I don't think there's any one right or wrong answer here. Like, if the arrangement is mostly dark and pensive, adding a ska breakdown in the middle wouldn't make much sense thematically, so you might not want to adjust the accompaniment for the solo quite so much, or maybe just nix the solo entirely. On the other hand, if you've got a more energetic arrangement with a lot of rhythm and groove to it already, you could much more easily get away with that kind of genre shift. I guess what I'd suggest is do your best to keep a degree of consistency with the feel of your music, but don't forget that it's your music. Unless you're explicitly expected to reproduce a certain style (for learning purposes or as part of some contract), I don't see why you should sweat taking a few liberties.

I was wondering who'd be the first one to make that crack... No, but I honestly feel the same about a lot of choral music. I'm not much one for the homogeneity of timbre that you get in purely choral music, and unless the director picks some really wacky arrangements, you typically don't get much in the ways of interesting rhythm. That said, I think you might have an easier time appreciating it if you go into it with a bit more open-mindedness, and don't really analyze or search for depth or meaning in it and instead just appreciate the texture that all the overlapping vocal parts create, you dig?

One quick way you can expand on a shorter source is by first breaking it down to smaller fragments (A section, B section, etc.) and then repeating them with slight variations. For instance, say the source is only about 30 seconds long, and you can split it into 3 distinct musical "ideas" each about ten seconds long, so it has the original structure ABC. You could take the easy way out and just double the length of each section by repeating it: AABBCC. Now you have 60 seconds of music, but it's kind of repetitive and maybe a bit jarring with transitions. So you choose to develop the idea a little bit differently with each repetition. Now you have AA'BB'CC'. Still 60 seconds long, but a little bit easier on the ears, and it doesn't require too terribly much added composition on your end. You can add a little bit more development by introducing the A section with a little intro, maybe like 20 or so seconds long, and then add a variation of that to the end, so now you have IAA'BB'CC'I'. The original source is still the primary focus, but now you've got over three times as much music in your arrangement - and that's without visiting any part of the source more than twice. If I were going about it, I'd probably take something more like this: IAA'AA''BB'BB''AA'A''CC'CC''AA'AA''I' That arrangement requires at least two developments on each section of the theme, but also makes it considerably longer and more firmly focuses the arrangement on one central melodic idea, which can help to give it a bit more direction.

This is actually really cool. Music theory has never really been something that I struggled too much to get, but there is a lot in here that I had not really considered in much detail, too. I'll definitely take a deeper look later when I'm not theoretically supposed to be in lab...

While it's true that different music genres have their own idiomatic approaches to arrangement, I think there is something to be said about having your own stamp on your solos. I wouldn't fret too much about trying too terribly hard to play directly into genre conventions in most cases.

Zircon was one of the first artist seeds I added when I started using Pandora. I don't have a station based on him alone, though.

I'm on the NA Server. IGN: SiriusBeatz, just like on the forums. It'd be a lot of fun to play with some OCR folks sometime.

Sadly, I'm gonna be in New York for a ballroom dancing competition that weekend, but as a fan of game music, orchestral music, and a former member of GSO, I'm gonna recommend that anyone who is in the area check it out. These guys are a whole lot of fun.

HOLY COW NITRONIC RUSH WAS SO MUCH FUN. Totally picking this up when it's out.

I guess androids do, in fact, dream of electric sheep. /obligatory Blade Runner reference

Warwick has already been nerfed a few times in the past. His W used to be a global attack speed buff, and Q used to heal for 100% of the damage dealt. Even as it is now, it's pretty impossible to harass Warwick out of lane as long as he's got levels in Q and enough mana regen to use it.

I'm really glad to see this arrangement getting posted. I was a member of GSO in 2010 when the second and third parts for this particular version were recorded. I had a blast being a part of this, and it makes me wish I had more time so I could go back and be a part of more

I don't really know how much I agree with this. Corki has almost just as much as Graves does; big AoE damage, a solid escape, an awesome steroid, strong laning. Corki comes with better poke and (in my opinion) higher kill potential in lane (that armor shred+true damage) if you play it right, but Graves is tankier and has stronger burst damage. Cait also has the unique ability to pretty much auto-win lane thanks to spammable long range harass and strong zoning abilities in her traps and passive. Tristana and Kog are pretty much tied for the strongest late game (mostly due to their insane steroids and huge range), which, in most comps, are what you pick AD carries for, anyway. Heck, Tristana has 2 two disengages versus most carries' one. It seems to me like the AD carries are the most balanced champion role in the game right now.

This thing vanished from the front page of the forum pretty quickly, so I'm gonna go ahead and give it a bump with a new WIP. Version 2:http://tindeck.com/listen/kqsi