MindWanderer

I've been poking around at a couple of albums in their recruiting phases. No time like the present to get started on that and kill two birds with one stone!

a) Joining a project is up to the director. They should have acceptance criteria listed in the project thread. The usual arrangement is that posted remixers are allowed to claim tracks as long as they meet deadlines; everyone else has to audition, either with a sample work of some sort or a WIP of what they have in mind for the project. Someone who just shows up and tries to organize a project will probably have a hard time finding participants, but nothing prevents you from trying. The process to get accepted as an official OCR project is fairly rigorous, but there's a lot to do before that's something you should even be thinking about; mustering participants and getting WIPs in will probably take months.

So it's more like a remix album of a fictional game's soundtrack? I'll start playing around with my idea and send you a WIP when I have something presentable. I may end up needing a fair bit of feedback and advice, but I'll try to polish it as much as possible first.

Also FFIX's battle theme is, I believe, the last FF battle theme to use the classic bass line for FF battle music used in FF1-6 (and for specific bosses in 7 and .Incidentally, the youtube link to this source in your track list posts is now broken. I don't see anything about any kind of unifying style, instrumentation, etc. mentioned anywhere in the first post, or in this thread. If this were a "real" RPG, there would be some kind of consistency in that regard. I'm seriously tempted to give this a shot--I've not yet made anything of sufficient quality for this, but then I've not yet spent more than a week or so working on one remix. If the style/genre restrictions, if any, match something I think I might be able to do, I'll start working on a WIP to audition. Edit: I notice there aren't any "location"-type entries on the tracklist yet. I'm thinking about working on something for "Beware the Forest's Mushrooms" or "Still, the Road is Full of Dangers." That way, if I come up with a WIP worth using, great, it could be worked in; if I don't, then it doesn't block off someone else from remixing a source they want. I have some very preliminary ideas regarding a combination of "Beware the Forest's Mushrooms," Dr. Mario 64 "Que Que," and SMW's "Forest of Illusion."

I've been following OCR almost since day 1, I remember downloading "Horizontal Armada" shortly after it was uploaded (and it's still proudly on my playlist). I think somewhere I may still have some MIDI remixes from the pre- and early OCR days. It's been a great ride, and I'm grateful to everyone who's helped make it so.

Sure. Feel free to suggest improvements. Speaking of this: There seem to be some strange effects of channel selection with some VSTi's that I can't make a lot of sense of. With some instruments, when a note in a lower-numbered channel follows a note in a higher-numbered channel, with no gap, it has some specific "blending" effects. In some VSTi's (Zebralette and TAL-Noisemaker), it's a way to get portamento to trigger without notes overlapping. In Synth1's arpeggiator, it can make the pattern become offset. It probably isn't a Reaper-specific question, but why does this happen?Edit: Fixed bugginess in previous version of custom action.

Amazing stuff. Downloading and keeping.

Stacatto violin is a bit dry--the velocity varies a lot but it still sounds a bit weak and artificial. The source is heavily interpreted, but enough of it is done "straight" that I don't think it will have a problem passing on those grounds. Ending is essentially nonexistent. Definitely worth submitting overall, though; if arrangement is your usual problem, you've overcome it nicely here.

Oh my God this stuff is turning out awesome. SWS is absolutely amazing--I thought I was adding it just for the new Actions, but it's a rabbithole of tools. Just started looking at sequencer_baby; I need to learn how to use that effectively so it doesn't just keep playing for the whole song. Automating the volume would work but seems like a crude way of doing it. Incidentally, I started with your "create folder" action and took it a few more steps for when I need a quick start on a compo: I made one action that imports a MIDI from a file, puts it all into one folder, colors it, renames it, shrinks it down, and opens up the I/O window so that routing is to the hardware MIDI is right there. Couldn't figure out any way to do that last step automatically, or to automatically strip all the CC items and stuff, but still this will be handy. One annoying thing, though: if you cancel one interactive part of the action, it keeps trying to do the rest and gets very confused (though Consolidate Undo Points makes this really minor).

I personally don't need an insane number of presets, I just wish they were organized and described better. Usually all you have to go with is a general category (lead, pad, atmo, arp, bass--and a lot of synths' ideas of "bass" is a lead or arp tuned a couple of octaves down) and a name that might be vaguely descriptive (e.g. "aluminum chickens," "organic galaxy") or not (e.g. "I love this one," "useless"). I either waste way too much time going through them all, or just go with one I used once before, or build something really simple from scratch.

Thanks! Looks good.sequencer_baby and arpbangzero make my eyes glaze over... those look like they need fairly extensive tutorials to make any sense of. At least, unless you have some idea in advance of what they're supposed to be used for.

Sweet. So if the Light bracket is battling Gilgamesh, who's in the Darkness bracket...? To keep things fair for Brandon, and give us more than one thing to vote on this week, we could vote on it.

Beautiful, just the sort of tips I was looking for. That'll help my productivity immensely. I've never used dual monitors at all before, so some of these ideas never would have occurred to me. Another action I make too much use of is H, the "Humanize" key in the MIDI editor. I know humanization != randomization, and randomizing is what it does, but in a time crunch it can be better than nothing.

5 to 2 isn't really close, but I'm cool with that. I'm just happy that so many people thought it was close, when I felt mine was totally half-assed. Very encouraged for next time, knowing that if I'd submitted something up to my own standards I probably would have won, and I respect the hell out of Garpocalypse. Hoping to get a rematch someday when we're both more on our game.

Fun stuff, this source needs more treatment. The opening lines repeat more times than I'd like, but that's what trance does, I suppose. I like the cowbell. Very dirty sound, like you're already listening to it on club speakers, again I'm not a big fan but I guess it's an aesthetic choice. Not much in the way of dynamics, except for one breakdown, even trance usually has a changeup every once in a while.

Not sure I'd call this an "orchestral" remix, it's a piano backed up by a handful of orchestra instruments. The piano sounds amazing, and is almost enough to carry this mix by itself. The violins don't sound so great, though--they're a bit mechanical in many places and need some EQ or panning to not sound quite so dry. The transition to the song's main hook is a bit odd--it has a bit of a buildup, but not enough to really raise the tension. I'd use either more buildup or, if you wanted to try something different, none at all. I know it isn't done, but the "ending" is almost cool the way it is. A measure of silence right there and then a crash back into the melody would be fun. This is shaping up to be a great arrangement, and I'm looking forward to more!

I'd also like to mention that if you have a "dream idea," don't start with it! Your early remixes are going to suck. Practice on remixes that won't be heartbreaking when you chuck them in the trash. I personally have a bucket of brilliant remix ideas that are all queued up in my brain for when I'm decent enough to get something past the panel.

Well, yeah. There are many ways of doing the same thing, and since this is a thread specifically about Reaper, an option that uses its native features seemed appropriate--especially when the suggestion on the table comes from an $85 plugin. Especially since Reaper is a prime choice for people who don't want to spend a lot on a DAW. Although, as I said, TAL-Filter can do this as well. And sidechain compression, and sidechain gating, can be much more powerful tools when used creatively.

So... this is basically a recording of the original, sped up, re-EQ'ed, and clipping? That's... pretty far removed from what is done on OCR. I don't think you'll get a lot of feedback. But for what it's worth, this sounds considerably worse than the original to me. The clipping/distortion sounds terrible, the highs are piercing, and the mids are muffled. If you want to practice your mastering skills without doing any arranging, I recommend starting [thread=44793]here[/thread] instead.

Cinematic Synthetic Drums is available as a set of raw WAV samples as well. Use them as-is or whip up an .sfz (my preference).Piano One is pretty popular, but there are lots of great piano soundfonts as well. Soundfonts are fine for triangles, too. Rock guitars are hard--the best free one I've found is part of Independence, but I get called out for using crappy guitar when I use it. I do really like Mini Dizi, Mini Erhu, and BTS Theremin--they're niche but sound great.

Great stuff, Argle. I'm installing a brand-new computer this weekend, so I'll get to put a bunch of your customization suggestions to use from scratch. It'll be a dual-monitor setup, so I'm looking forward to figuring out how to optimize my visual space. And actually, Metal Man's tip for how to quickly play back an imported MIDI without having to assign all the tracks to instruments was pretty great, too (although I haven't tried it yet). One suggestion: Can you organize the tips by category? E.g. Shortcuts, Display/Layout, and Features? I find tips that let me do completely new things much more valuable than ones that let me save a few seconds. Also, I saw this: You don't necessarily need an LFO plugin for this, since Reaper lets you use an LFO in place of an automation envelope. It's not as versatile as the LFO options that come with some plugins (I use TAL-Filter), but it's there, and, usefully, it applies to anything you can assign to an envelope. I particularly find it fun to apply an LFO to the LFO (useful for wobble effects).

I liked the thought, but the high-quality cocking sound followed by a muffled, low-fi gunshot was jarring. I imagine you ran into loudness problems with that.

Results! There were two entries and two votes, one for each entry. So Esperado, shadow24, Trism, and DusK share victory, such as it is. For myself, I thought both entries were pretty good; Trism's was a fun arrangement but I wasn't thrilled with the production (and it sounded like he agreed). Esperado's was a really solid remix all around, and I'd love to see it go through the workshop, I think it's a potential OCR candidate.

I have received zero votes, and the deadline is in just over four hours. Clearly interest is not high. I may start running these again if there's a lengthy dry spell in compos.

So... because I'm a noob, how do you create something like that? I'm sure it involves some moderately costly tools, but is it based on a ton of samples somehow, or is it yourself pitch-shifted and chorus'ed, or what?