AngelCityOutlaw

I've been wanting to do a remix of a boss theme from Metal Gear Rising. Wouldn't have a WIP till the end of the month though. Too much other music stuff goin' on.

So something weird has happened a couple times now. I've had my Line 6 POD hooked up to my computer and I've been jamming away when all of a sudden it will freeze and then I'm staring at a blue screen of death. I never had this problem until recently. I can't imagine it being a RAM or CPU issue given the fact that it will happen when there is nothing else going on; just me playing guitar. Perhaps I'm just melting the computer's face?

You compose an original piece and then look for other melodies and content from other pieces that you can incorporate into yours. Much easier process than trying to wedge your way into an existing arrangement and figure out how you can add your own stuff to it.

We totally need to form an internet metal band called Twisted Metalheads. We'd do like, remixes of the old singletrac games.

Darkstalkers Castlevania Resident Evil 3 and Revelations Silent Hill 2 Twisted Metal Clive Barker's Undying (super under-rated game) Amnesia Legacy of Kain and this

I was wondering how many posts we could go before someone mentioned Victor Wooten.

The best resources? Music itself. Specifically, jazz, funk dance and often rock/metal music have kick ass basslines. Really, anything that is very riff and rhythm driven. In most rock music, the bassline is played by both the bass and the guitar; the guitars usually harmonize lots of the intervals in fifths or thirds. Be careful with that one though, as that often works best when there is no melody over-top of it. You can create the same effect as really rapid chord changes thanks to the dyads having no third! Anyway, a good bassline is one that outlines the chords, has a great rhythm AND compliments the melody. You should be able to hear the rise and fall of the chord changes just by the bassline alone. Reading about the different kinds of non-chord tones and counterpoint are very useful for this. Keep in mind, styles of writing bassline is also genre dependent. Here are some of my favorite basslines across various genres: Those are the first few that come to mind. Check out that third one especially! Mixture of bassline and leads on one instrument! That last one is the same bassline throughout the song, but Oakenfold still manages to keep the song interesting thanks to Britney's sexy vocals. EDIT: Also, read about "hocket". Just google search these terms or wikipedia them to gain a basic understanding. Basically, it just means when one melody is split/shared between two or more voices. A simple example would be a piano plays half the melody and then rests and a string section continues the melody! With a bit of practice, you can use this to switch up what instrument is filling what role on the fly. Very useful, just don't over do it. EDIT 2: This is also useful to know.

Interesting points that I never thought about before. For me, over the past year I've worked on 3 remixes that have been submitted. All of which are collabs. The most recent was that FF track with Argle and the other guys. I'm hoping at least one of the tracks passes just so that I can say I contributed to the music on the site. Other than that, I don't plan to sub any more remixes; possible exception would be if there was a cool album project I could join. For me, it doesn't matter anymore how many people listen to my music or what kind of exposure I get as I've learned that in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't make a difference. My reasoning for no moar subs is that it takes a long time and the arrangement visions OCR has for its music. Now, I want to make it clear that I'm not bitching about either of those; people have lives, they get lots of submissions and they have a vision/standards for the remixes on the site. All of that is totally understandable and fair. But, I can't really justify the effort to make an "OCR" style arrangement of a track (which can sometimes be limiting as you start doing things just for the sake of meeting arrangement standards and not because it meets YOUR vision of the track) only for it to be voted on six months to a year later and posted who knows when after that. All of that time I could spend on composing originals (I still want to write my own album like I've always wanted) or if I do VGM arrangements, I don't have to worry about whether or not it will pass or fail anything and then have to re-do it and do the process over again. Like I say, I'm not complaining about it, but I don't think I'm the only person who feels that way. I mean, there are people on this site who still do music, but haven't submitted anything to OCR in a long, long time. I can't imagine "abandoning" the site though. This is easily the coolest online music community I've seen. I've gotten more useful advice and heard more awesome tracks than any other music forum I've been on.

I just wanted to share this little story that happened to today involving FF and linearity. This guy was buying a Final Fantasy XIII strategy guide because he's, "At the beginning and lost. I don't know where to go and the game doesn't tell you. There is a map, but that doesn't help much." I almost burst out laughing. This is a game that is notorious for being a straight line the entirety of the game and he's lost. Now, I'm not trying to sound like a hardcore gamer douchebag, but getting lost in FF XIII is as bad as getting lost when your destination is the house across the street.

Good old CPS2 sounds. I really do believe that the music composed with the CPS2 hardware is some of the best VGM ever. EVER

I get the ambient sort of vibe you're going for, but I don't think it works that well here. In fact, I don't think purely ambient sorts of remixes of music with as much melody and rhythm as the source tune ever work that well. The reason there are so many dance mixes of this song is because its style is quite suitable for that genre. Anyway, it's probably because of the tempo, but I can't really identify the melodies that easily at all. The track is very ponderous, doesn't have much in the way of melody or harmonic progression, total absence of percussion. I also think that low pad or bass sound is too loud. In a nutshell, I get what you're going for, but the approach isn't nearly musical enough in my opinion.

Happy Birthday!

Speaking of DOA5, .

Yeah, it's tough as hell to make a living with music. I worked with an awesome musician from Colombia. He worked for Def Leppard on their Hysteria world tour and then opened in front of 10,000 people for the Finnish band Stratovarius. Two weeks later, he was washing dishes in a restaurant. The only time he made a living at music was from around 2003-2008 when he toured with a band here in Canada playing 200 shows a year. Doing so cost him being with his wife for half of her pregnancy and the first six months of his kid's life.

If I composed music for Bioware, OCRemix is probably the last place I would be hanging out on a regular basis too.

That is a damn good quote.

Alright, I added the final composition to the first post.

I actually like most of Tekken's music from 5 onwards, but I like psytrance music so...That Snoop Dogg track is fucking terrible though.

Well, I expanded the composition. It's now 3:30 and has some new parts added. I'll share it once I improve its mixing and add in some of the sound effects.

Get ready for the next battle, Dissidia.

Thanks for listening and the tips, Kristina. I'm writing more to it now. Also going to be recording some car sounds for it. A friend of mine has one of those tricked out Japanese tuner-cars so we're gonna record some engine sound and stuff.

Yeah, I'm gonna expand this into a full track. I feel like some Ridge Racer could be added to this. Although, I've done lots of remixes lately. Perhaps this should just be total original.

I sent you a Bloodlines update, Chernabogue. I think (I hope) you will find it most interesting.

Thanks for listening, Gar. A lot of my original tunes are inspired by the city at night. I love night-time driving through big cities or even more so, driving just outside of the city and parking on some hill that overlooks the city at night. As a drummer once put it when we were driving late at night coming up over a hill and the city was off in the distance beneath us, "I love this. It's like we're looking down on a galaxy." I also think even this short tune proves to me that I still write best with good old fashion notation lol

Here is the finished composition. https://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/aco-slipstream-queen