MindWanderer

Results are in! OA moves on to the hero finals, along with Gario and Wildfire. The hero finals will again be a simple 3-way matchup, where each remixer needs to use all three sources. Jorito achieves a clean sweep of the Dracula Bracket, earning 4 points. PlanarianHugger and TheShaggyFreak tie for last place and earn one point each. The source for the Dracula Bracket, Round 2 is Sorrow's Distortion from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia! Again, anyone who wants to participate should submit a remix using that source and their own. Both deadlines are 2 weeks from now, March 23. Get remixing!

When trying to recruit for CastleMania, Slimy went over some sample pro wrestling theme songs I sent him and replied, "It sounds like I'll need to get some worse orchestral samples." And he was absolutely right, and not just about the orchestral themes. These are professional songs, and, while I'm not a judge, I would be grossly surprised if anything on their level of quality passed the OCR bar. They're largely pretty awful from both an arrangement and a production standpoint, and mostly from a creative standpoint as well. When CastleMania is completed, I'm confident that the main thing that will make it unrealistic as a pro wrestling music album is that the quality will be way too high. Unrelated: I think we're geared towards being OK with repetition because the objectives of an OC ReMix are very different from what we'd expect in other music. Music with lyrics, which is what we're mostly familiar with, all but demands a repeating structure, where only the words change, except for a bridge. OC ReMixes with lyrics often follow that pattern as well, and don't get dinged for it by the panel. EDM is, obviously, intentionally repetitive. Orchestral (including film scores) actually comes pretty close to OCR expectations, since it's largely about variations on a theme, but using an orchestral arrangement style for rock or electronic music is counterintuitive. It makes sense, though.

Donald is in it? I always liked the fact that he wasn't. In addition to having an even more incomprehensible voice than the nephews, he's kind of obnoxious. And is it my imagination or is Webby a lot older in that pic?

So do I. I used to save templates as plain text files; now the closest thing I can do is save as RTF. I can't imagine why this would be a security issue, unless you have something like a [javascript] tag. Seems odd.

Just read through that, and it appears to describe what an album needs to be finalized, not what it needs to be moved from R&C and become an official project. Am I missing something?

A lot of the women's themes are so autotuned you could probably pull it off... but I have found a few examples of diva themes sung by men. (example, example, example).

WWE uses the word "diva" to refer to all women in the industry. I didn't know this until just now, but apparently it applies to not just its female wrestlers, but managers, announcers, etc. Before 1999 it meant something else. I'm flipping through a bunch of WWE diva theme songs, and I'm not seeing a whole lot of consistency. Most have female singers or rappers, but some have males and some have none. The genres seem to vary about as much as the men. So I'm not sure what you could come up with that would be appropriate for CastleMania in general but not for a diva.

Shanoa and Medusa are already claimed, so we're already geared up for at least one Diva match! I'd still like a tag team match as well, if that sparks anyone's interest. The Mummy Men, the Creature and Igor, and the Lecarde sisters are premade teams, but if someone wants to build their own heel team with other monsters/villains, that'd be cool too. For faces, one could do Soma and Julius or John and Jonathan Morris logically, but any combination that strikes someone's interest is fair game. I just insist on them being same-sex for the sake of verisimilitude with the whole wrestling thing. (Otherwise, Grant + Sypha or Jonathan + Charlotte would make the most sense.)

I have 10 claims already, but no theme song and only one optional villain, so if everyone does what they've already claimed, we're looking at a minimum of 15 tracks. September is almost certainly out. On the other hand, if it'll be a few months before you'd have a chance to get started, you probably shouldn't claim anything just yet. Hopefully you'll get a chance later down the line, though!

Yeah, since there were so few entries in round 1, the gap in points will definitely be surmountable even skipping a round.

Hugh is the rival, not the protagonist; he doesn't really have a theme. I was hoping for a villain luchador from a visual standpoint; our wrestler would simply be wearing a mask that resembled the monster he or she was named after. Riddle, In Search of the Secret Spell and Den of Worship are the sources that seem like good matches to my ear.

I have to admit, after hearing OA's CCoI remix this week, which included Heart of Fire, I'd certainly be excited to have him work on that, too. A WillRock/OA collab that included Evil's Symphonic Poem would be my dream scenario here. There aren't many pro wrestling themes along those lines, unfortunately. Perhaps you could collab with someone? HeavenWraith has offered to contribute guitar work to someone else's mix, but doesn't have time to do something on his own. Divine Bloodlines? You got it!

I heartily concur, even if it's just a bridge or something, it'd help the mix stand out.

LOL... well, that's two of my three reasons for not putting OA down for it resolved. I can't argue too much; while Evil's Symphonic Poem is his official theme, I personally like Heart of Fire a lot more. (Plus, bending over backwards a little bit to get Will on board? Totally worth it.)

Self-employment income is moderately complicated, but not horrible. And professional tax preparers are absurdly expensive. The middle tiers of TurboTax and H&R Block software have been perfectly adequate in my experience. (Unfortunately, the basic versions don't handle self-employment income.)

Castlevania: Cacophony of Incarnation 2016 Voting for the Dracula Bracket, Round 1 is open until Wednesday, March 9 at 12:00 PM PST. See the competitions calendar for your timezone. I was originally going to have voters rank their top three entries, but since there are only three entries, please simply vote for your single favorite ReMix of the three. Participants, you may vote as you like; if in doubt, vote for yourself. Download the remixes! Sources: Plant Castle, 1591 (Ripe Seeds) Munitions Factory, 1917 (Iron-Blue Intention) Crumbling Tower, 1691 (Wicked Child) Moonlight Nocturne

Castlevania: Cacophony of Incarnation 2016 Voting for the Simon Bracket, Round 2 is open until Wednesday, March 9 at 12:00 PM PST. See the competitions calendar for your timezone. Participants, you may vote as you like; if in doubt, vote for yourself. Download the remixes! Sources: Entrance, 1797 (Dracula's Castle) Dungeon, 1691 (Heart of Fire) Entrance, 1691 (Vampire Killer)

Victory in the Soma Bracket, Round 2 goes to Wildfire! Magnetic Ether and Supercoolmike move into the Dracula bracket. Remixes for the Simon Bracket, Round 2 and the Dracula Bracket, Round 1 are up! Sadly, we got only 2 entries for the former and 3 for the latter, but it's enough for a vote. Voting threads will go up shortly.

Let me put you down just for Alucard for now. I'd rather have just one claim per person until they've turned something in. Also, I'd like to see if anyone wants to tackle Evil's Symphonic Poem, since that's Death's main theme, before falling back onto one of the alternative themes. There's also a good chance that this fictional event will match Alucard and Death up against one another, and I'd prefer their themes not be by the same remixer. Excellent choice, absolutely!

Normally I don't like voice clips in songs, especially this many. Usually they're really hard to make out, too. But this is genius, and well-balanced. I was grinning broadly when it got to "With the lemons." Really catchy, too; an unexpected but extremely welcome departure for Chimpz.

Got it! Selections are getting a little heavy on "faces" (heroes). Anyone still thinking about diving in, it's be nice if you took a look at the "heel" (villain) list first.

Done! Although Death's main theme is also from Lament of Innocence, and Death is one of the 4 characters I really want to get covered. If you'd prefer Leon, though, that's fine, it's an awesome piece of music that I'd be happy to have included. LoI is actually the only 3D game in the series I ever had, and never quite finished it. Absolutely!

CastleMania is new and in particular need of electric guitar work! We'd love to have you aboard!

I have an idea for something I'd really like to see tackled for a secondary theme song, but ideally it would be country western. I'm sure I can find a guitarist and arranger somewhere, but a singer with a nice Southern drawl is another thing. I can't recall hearing that anywhere on OCR before. Anyone know someone who could handle that?

So, I finally listened to these two songs. Sure, they're very similar, but they're extremely minimalist. Very basic kick-hat percussion with two alternating chords and simple spoken-verse lyrics. One could easily come up with something like this without having heard the original. I often hear songs that are highly reminiscent of other songs where there's no plagiarism going on, and that's with songs that have actual melodies. Just had one this week in CCoI where wildfire somehow managed to create a remix that "obviously" made use of a song she'd never heard before. So I'm strongly inclined to believe this is a coincidence.