Phonetic Hero

I tried to keep this brief, but as you might know, that's not my forte.
FIRST, the facts...
On October 28th I informed staff that I was stepping down from my role as president/admin/owner/etc. of OverClocked ReMix, and on November 1st I also stepped down from the board of Game Music Initiative, the 501c3 non-profit organization that funds OCR. In short, I no longer feel I have the bandwidth to do these roles justice and to not only maintain, but advance, the missions of both projects. I will be working with Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword) to transition my responsibilities and ensure continuity of operations. The (excellent!) mix posted on Halloween was published without my direct involvement, subsequent posts up to the milestone #OCR04500 have been superbly executed, and I am confident that staff will continue the work necessary to operate - and evolve - OCR in my absence. I will be even less available than I have been, lately, so I apologize in advance for any lack of responsiveness.
THEN, the feels...
Where to even begin?
It's hard to encapsulate over two decades of history; omissions are inevitable. What began as a neat side project I started in my parents' basement in 1999 snowballed into something far beyond my wildest expectations, due to the blood, sweat, tears, and unbridled, rampant creativity that thousands of you have contributed. Much of this happened before social media was even a thing and before the platforms/services we now heavily associate with the modern internet had come into being; it was a frontier, and we were on it, and we took it pretty seriously because we knew how amazing VGM is, how creative arrangements could effectively convey and explore that vast musical landscape, and how a small fandom communicating via email, IRC, & forums could collaborate to build mighty, new things. We took it seriously, often too seriously, but we ALSO played more than a few rounds of Shaq-Fu at conventions, made some truly ridiculous (but always musical!) joke mixes, and developed internal circles of lore with our own memes & jargon.
NOT in strictly chronological order: there was some drama with now-legendary composer Jake Kaufman; VGMix entered the fray; we added a judges panel so it wasn't just me making stuff up; we released our first community album; the unmoderated forum birthed its own sort of... subculture; the site itself evolved to be database-driven and not just two giant dropdowns sorted by game/date; we posted mixes submitted by composers George "The Fat Man" Sanger and Jeremy Soule; we met/interviewed Hiroki Kikuta and Nobuo Uematsu; our album trailers by the incomparable José the Bronx Rican started blowing minds; we started appearing in person at Otakon, PAX, MAG, others - much love to all for having us; we bumped into Leeroy Jenkins at ROFLcon and gave him a hoodie; we started hosting from our own server and managing the technical side of things ourselves; thanks to Mr. Shael Riley (among others!), we got to remix the music for an actual Street Fighter game (!!); we released fifteen more albums...
...and then we turned ten, on December 11th of 2009.
Quite a first decade, and I missed hundreds of things I shouldn't have. Hundreds of firsts, some tragic lasts, and millions of memories that can't quite be conjured by words.
In 2011, we stood up for Fair Use at World’s Fair Use Day, an event organized by the non-profit Public Knowledge.
In 2012, we launched our kickstarter for Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin, it was taken down, we talked with Square lawyers directly for a couple hours and made the non-profit project structure clear & contractual, and we relaunched a successful kickstarter. That's not always how those things go!
We launched Game Music Initiative in 2016, creating an official 501c3 charity to formalize the finances around OCR and potentially support other VGM-related projects, too. On a related note, I’ve absolutely loved seeing OC ReMixes featured by charity speedrunners Games Done Quick (GDQ) - it’s exactly the type of thing I always wanted to see, that synergy.
Things do start getting a little quieter from then on out, and I think there are a ton of reasons for that, but it has been an incredible and improbable journey that I wouldn't have missed for the world. Thank you ALL for making it possible; OCR was always yours, I aspired only to stewardship of something I wanted to exist for everyone.
FINALLY, the future…
It's time - some would say past time - for OverClocked ReMix itself to be ReMixed.
That's the point, right?
Infinite permutation; endless possibility.
You don't always know the day, month, or even year when your influence on something starts holding it back, or when the waning amount of time and energy you can dedicate becomes a liability. That type of certainty is often elusive; it can be a difficult diagnosis to even contemplate, and you need to look for & listen to signs. In addition to just being too much of a single point of failure for OCR (sorry, engineering mindset), the last year I've been asking myself whether it was time to let go, and I think the answer is sometimes in the asking. I have been stretched thin, like butter scraped over too much bread, and that's when you leave the Shire.
Beyond representing what I genuinely believe is best for the future of OCR, I absolutely confess a personal wish to redirect reclaimed time & energy to my family and my own music. Being a husband to my wife Anna and being a father to our daughters Esther and Sarah is my meaning; I have always put them first, but now I can put them even MORE first. Esther just started learning trombone, so in a few years, expect a collab! Sarah is building her confidence learning piano & makes me proud every day. I want to write new music for them, and with them, and that requires more time than I've had.
I believe the principles that have driven us - embracing all games & all styles of music, emphasizing interpretation & creativity, offering both curation and critique, and providing a non-commercial platform for those who seek it - are truly timeless, but there are many ways to honor them.
I look to the new leadership/staff to galvanize, streamline, diversify, and re-imagine, within that immense space.
I'll be leaving them with some ideas of my own; please let them know yours. I ask the community to support them, embrace change, provide guidance, and be patient; I believe it will be worth it!
Thanks,
- djpretzel
 

Wes I fucking love your music, don't be so hard on yourself

MY MAN!!  This is SO sick dude, such a great remix.  You killed it on the arrangement, and your collaborators really took it to the next level.  Love this track man!

Hey thanks for the response! Sorry I didn't get back sooner. 
Thanks for all the feedback!
I did actually buy hardware. I found a video that tipped me off to what I needed.
The synth was plugged into my former Mesa Boogie DC-5 and recorded using a cellphone.
I perused the patches and really used my ears to find them. The synth is not a Roland or Yamaha.
It is a synth that is less than 21 years old.
I know what the Metroid Prime lead patch is but I actually recreated it in Omnisphere for that first track.
 
The choir patch IS from a Roland product. 1990s and Roland has a virtual vst of it on Roland Cloud.
Your Remnants track has drums that remind me of Phazon Mines somewhat.

Cool stuff man!  I have a bit of experience with Prime-inspired music myself, always great to see like-minded musicians 
I think that bass in the beginning of the first track could use some refinement, it strikes me as too dry and over-the-top for a MP track.  I also like plain sine waves without the layering for most of my MP leads, but that's more a matter of personal preference.  I think things sound a lot more cohesive at the 1:15 mark - aside from maybe some more percussive texturing, this part works great for me!
I think the second track works better for me overall, you've used the patches that were used in the MP OSTs really effectively.  I'm not sure I'd make the track as long as it is without much structural change, but if you like it, keep it!
If you don't mind my asking, how did you get access to the original synth patches used in the games?  Did you buy the old hardware or are you emulating things somehow?
Nice work, keep it up!

Ok, thanks for the clarification.
Though my eyes tend to glaze over after a bit (Antecedent Consequent Period... I mean... really), I do find it interesting when the practical application of music theory is discussed. For instance I saw a 12 min video on FF7's battle Fanfare and it broke down the different parts that made it a "compelling" piece of music. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH3RSAT3Asc
It sounds like the creator of this video has a similar idea of theory to your own. But I am kind of curious if you agree with his conclusions.

I was about to post those words verbatim.
I think John makes a lot of important points. They're the same points I've made in conversations over the years. If I could grossly paraphrase some of what John said: the further away music theory gets from talking about specific songs and musical phrases, the less useful it becomes.
But I do have one small point of disagreement. I think that music theory, even when taught as described above, can hinder creativity for some people if the person is learning music theory before they learn to play by ear. (Which is how most of us mere mortals have to learn music theory, unfortunately, so it's kind of a moot point.) How does it hinder creativity? Well, this is going to be a very academic point, but I'll make it anyway: music theory comes with a lot of assumptions that don't line up exactly with our cognition of music. So when we try to learn by ear, after having absorbed the lens of music theory, we're searching for certain "things" in the music that our ear would not otherwise have sought out on its own to form its own intuitive understanding. This doesn't prevent us from learning by ear, but it really slows things down, in my experience of seeing different musicians and finding out their history of learning. Not because there's anything wrong or totalitarian about music theory, but only because of human psychology.
Let me draw a comparison to language learning. Language learning has a lot of parallels. We all know they share some areas of the brain. But more importantly language and music also share a dual life. We have certain intuitive abilities surrounding both language and music, and we also have the more analytical, grammatical understanding surrounding them.
Let's take a sentence. One that a child may learn very early on in life. "Do you want some food?"
If you look at that sentence from a grammatical perspective (the music theory perspective), you've got an interrogative verb order with the helping verb coming early, you've got a second person singular pronoun, the verb, an indefinite pronoun, the direct (?) object. Etc. Etc. All of those things are true and are merely a neutral understanding, just like music theory's analysis can be true and neutral.
But the child learning its first language is not building their intuitive sense of language that way. They hear "dooyoowansum food." And their brain absorbs that, comparing it with similar sounds like "dooyoowanna" or "arrweegonna" or "izzhegonna" until a library of sounds is built by use, comparison, and contrasts. It's not an incrementally accumulated index of words and ideas, it's a network of compare and contrast through use.
Now, when we get older, we might learn a second language. Maybe in high school or college. And maybe then we actually do begin with the grammatical approach, the music theory understanding. In other words, we begin by learning the individual vocab words, the parts of speech, the conjugations. But it's important to remember that this is only the loading program for our intuitive language abilities. We are hyperconscious of the grammar at first (the music theory) until the intuitive abilities of our mother language expand their capacity to this new language. Then the grammar becomes secondary. Still true and useful, but a secondary understanding.
The problem with music is that some people never develop that initial intuitive relationship to music, and they get music theory instead. It's like a child trying to think through learning their first language while simultaneously thinking about the parts of speech they're hearing and using. Not wrong, per se, but not right either.
The trap is that there is an initial burst of satisfaction when music theory starts to make sense. But in the long run, if you haven't learned to play by ear first, you're slowing down your eventual ability to play and write by ear, in my opinion. It just makes you start searching for the wrong 'things' in music.
Unfortunately, the reality is that most kids will never have the obsession or support system to learn music by ear in early childhood. So we all grow up with what I consider a cognitive disabilities in music, just like a child underexposed to language activities would have speech/language pathologies. So we have to adapt education to that reality. And music theory is one of the main compensatory avenues we have. Humans are chatterboxes and sometimes we just need things to be legible so we can get by.
(Speaking as someone who started with classical piano/guitar, and went to college on a full music scholarship to study film composition, guitar, and ethnomusicology. But now I'm a dentist, so...)

The most succinct way I've ever heard it put is that music theory is DEscriptive, not PREscriptive, and it's stuck with me ever since (thanks Adam Neely!)

Wes I fucking love your music, don't be so hard on yourself

Wes I fucking love your music, don't be so hard on yourself

Wes I fucking love your music, don't be so hard on yourself

A couple years ago, I released Zest Quest, an original album about fruit planets. Since then, I’ve decided to make more music set in the same universe, and I just released number 2!
 
Expedition to PL21-13
 
It contains a mishmash of retro sounds with an emphasis on things that sounded purple to me, paired with a story about unpaid interns searching a swampy alien planet for a robot sent by their ancestors hundreds of years ago. If you’re into flavor text, there's a full description on Bandcamp, and the album download comes with a 5-page PDF of log entries.
 
The original concept for the album had no narrative context...but it turned out that giving it a story and connecting it to Zest Quest unleashed a rush of motivation. Now I’m looking forward to all the possibilities for fleshing out this universe. Hope you enjoy!
 

Super excited to have released my first album !
Definitely plan to keep improving my sound as time goes on, so any feedback is definitely appreciated !
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/storm-colors-of-sound-i/1462319459?app=itunes&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Spotify: 
Bandcamp: https://wifisunset.bandcamp.com/album/storm-colors-of-sound-i
The Tracks are in order with the Theme I had in mind for this album. Four songs with a Red tone to it, Blue tone to it, Purple tone to it, and lastly four Gold/White toned songs.

Daaaaaamn Jesse you killed it!  For sure the most polished vocal performance I've heard from you.  Great moves, keep it up, proud of you

I had the pleasure of writing the music for Chucklefish's Wargroove, a spiritual successor to old-school tactical games like Advance Wars:
Being a huge fan of tactical games myself, this was a bit of a dream gig and I'm extremely proud of how the tunes turned out.  Wargroove is available on Steam, Humble, Switch, and Xbox One/Windows 10 (w/ Xbox Play Anywhere).
The soundtrack is available on my bandcamp and on Steam as DLC (can also be bundled with the game for 10% off!).  It'll also be available on all major streaming platforms by the 15th.

Hope you love both the game and the soundtrack!

@AngelCityOutlaw Thanks man!  Just to quickly clarify, there aren't much of any RPG elements in Wargroove - it's much more like Advance Wars in that units don't gain experience or level up, and instead you build units each turn and have to understand which units are effective against each other.  Victory comes from toppling an opponents HQ or taking out their commander.  Wargroove also has a really good critical hit mechanic that relies entirely on unit positioning rather than chance (with conditions being different for each type of unit), so while it's pretty easy to pick up, the strategy gets absolutely wild.  It was really fun watching the beta testers go at it with each other and develop new strategies that I never would've thought of.

Wow dude, this looks and sounds fantastic.
Love me some tactical-rpg games.

I had the pleasure of writing the music for Chucklefish's Wargroove, a spiritual successor to old-school tactical games like Advance Wars:
Being a huge fan of tactical games myself, this was a bit of a dream gig and I'm extremely proud of how the tunes turned out.  Wargroove is available on Steam, Humble, Switch, and Xbox One/Windows 10 (w/ Xbox Play Anywhere).
The soundtrack is available on my bandcamp and on Steam as DLC (can also be bundled with the game for 10% off!).  It'll also be available on all major streaming platforms by the 15th.

Hope you love both the game and the soundtrack!

I had the pleasure of writing the music for Chucklefish's Wargroove, a spiritual successor to old-school tactical games like Advance Wars:
Being a huge fan of tactical games myself, this was a bit of a dream gig and I'm extremely proud of how the tunes turned out.  Wargroove is available on Steam, Humble, Switch, and Xbox One/Windows 10 (w/ Xbox Play Anywhere).
The soundtrack is available on my bandcamp and on Steam as DLC (can also be bundled with the game for 10% off!).  It'll also be available on all major streaming platforms by the 15th.

Hope you love both the game and the soundtrack!

I had the pleasure of writing the music for Chucklefish's Wargroove, a spiritual successor to old-school tactical games like Advance Wars:
Being a huge fan of tactical games myself, this was a bit of a dream gig and I'm extremely proud of how the tunes turned out.  Wargroove is available on Steam, Humble, Switch, and Xbox One/Windows 10 (w/ Xbox Play Anywhere).
The soundtrack is available on my bandcamp and on Steam as DLC (can also be bundled with the game for 10% off!).  It'll also be available on all major streaming platforms by the 15th.

Hope you love both the game and the soundtrack!

Having been the artist in this relationship many times, I'll tell you what my rates typically are: £20/$30 per hour. I'm a freelance professional artist and graphic designer of 10 years, so I like to think I have a relatively good nose for the going rates. Mine are considered to be on the cheaper end of fair in the professional sector. It can go up - especially in the city, or down with new graduates or students. but to be totally honest it depends on what you're willing to part with financially. And what kind of job you want
EDIT: Additional - Just don't use sites like fiverr - they're killing the rest of us! Good luck on your quest.
 

If only you guys put this much effort, emotion and dedication into practicing music...

So I watched the series (I think my fiancee and I binged it over two nights - not a long series, even at twice the length of the first season), and I'll say it's really good*.
*The anime is both quite slow, focusing on political intruigue and the emotional turmoil of the protagonists and antagonists, and at the same time quite fast, once the characters had time to be established the crew runs through the castle at an alarming pace. The action is great, though, and the character moments were really something to behold - even got a little teary-eye'd at the end (no spoilerz, bois).
But yeah, great season 2, and it's nice to see the anime gave some room for another season or two, if people really want it. At the same time, it could end at this point pretty comfortably - I'd be okay with it either way.
Good stuff here, we can forget the haters.

I just had a nergasm from the opening fight scene in episode 7 -- featuring an arranged version of Bloody Tears!!

I write for games full time, but I still see a lot to be gained from arranging.  So yes!  I still remix when I have the time.  I'll try to be concise for a change:
You get to make a piece of music you enjoy listening to (and perhaps learn what exactly it is you enjoy in a piece of music) You get to study that piece's structure, harmony, etc. and apply what you learn to your own originals (though I find straight transcription to be even more useful for learning) You get to practice strengthening your weak points without the pressure of writing an amazing original melody/chord progression/bassline/drum groove/whatever, since it's already done You get to learn how to reuse pieces of a track to improve your arrangement game (mostly for soundtracks or theme-related albums, but it's been extremely useful for me in a work setting) I think in terms of potential for musical growth, there's a LOT to be said about arranging, and I think the inspiration and forward momentum someone can get from an existing tune/game they love is also an important part of the remixing game.
For what it's worth, I don't find the "is it mine?" debate to be very useful.  Something I consider MUCH more important when I make a remix (or any piece of music) is "do I like listening to it?"
EDIT: I also think looking at building an audience in terms of remixing vs. originals is silly.  Those who will be interested in your originals will be interested regardless, and those who won't, won't - it's not a matter of "splitting your audience".  If a remix was what got the ears there to listen to your other music in the first place, it can only help