XPRTNovice

I just want to say that in the first couple of hours of the release, I've had 155 hits on my website. The most I've ever had in a single day due to any of my writing publications was 145. I fail as a writer I should just give up and become a permanent Theophany contributor. In all seriousness though, this album is amazing.

FFXIII killed my childhood

I think it's amusing, and you can win an iPad http://8dio.com/?page_id=11196

I would say yes if not for 2 notes that are below my range. Sorry

I just came upon this thread. I want to contribute, but probably not until I'm done with a bunch of albums. I am a huge point and click adventure fan and QFG/KQ were the staples of my computerized youth. The first track I will do will have something to do with QFG 2 and it will be called "Where the F&@# is the Money Changer?"

Alright, good advice. My current mic inventory is an SM58, an Audix i5 (basically an SM57) and the MXL 990 991 condenser package. I like the sound I'm getting with the i5+991 combo.

Woot Jersey! I grew up about an hour away from there and used to go down there for band/choir events all the time. I don't know that I'll be able to make it, but everyone who goes is required to have a slice of pizza for me.

Thanks guys! I'm thrilled to finally be a part of the OCRemix community

Native Instruments is giving away DRIVER and some TRAKTOR sets for free right now.

Thanks - I'll run a test with my acoustic. I just was wondering if using one mic without a preamp and one with a preamp is going to defeat the point.

It's cool man, I'll keep the beard so we avoid any potential confusion.

OA - your stats and mine are creepily similar. I haven't had them measured in a while, but last time it was 165 lbs 69 in 24 BMI 10% body fat

As most of my music purchases go, I found a deal on a Behringer MIC200 tube preamp so I bought it on a reflex. It is a single channel (looking at the picture, I thought it was two channel, oops) and it has a bunch of presets as well. It's a really simple little preamp that's perfect for my really simple studio. For those of you that record live a lot - do I want to be using this every time I record anything live or are there situations where I don't want it at all? Also, I have a two-mic stereo setup that I use especially for guitar, since the mic position on the neck of an acoustic will pick up radically different freq ranges than at the end of the body, so that brings up a second question of whether or not it's okay to use a preamp on only one of the two mics, or if using a non-preamped mic in conjunction with a preamped mic will negate the benefits. Just looking for some sagely advice.

Alright...we'll see when you roll up to magfest in your pimped out Fiat with chrome rims n' shit.

I hear there's some sweet guitar and mandolin work on there, somewhere I'll be giving this a signal boost whenever/wherever I can.

I bought one of Bahamut's scalped badges and will be seeing you all there.

I miiiiight be interested...I've never played before and I don't have a whole lot of free time...

This is tangential, but I'm curious as to why you think FFXIII was aimed at that age group. To me it felt like a 15-18 year old game.

Thanks for the opinion Swifthorn. Joe Juba's review in Gameinformer basically called The Last Story lackluster, saying that "in a genre where so many games are mediocre, it shouldn't have been this hard to make something above average". I think his problem was that it was just another JRPG. I was really disappointed when I read that review, because in the past he and I have linked up almost 100% in our opinions of games. I'll have to put Xenoblade and TLS in my queue though.

I haven't checked this thread in a while; looks like we're moving, albeit slowly. We need more bones! A few days ago Shinra Shuffle came up in my playlist for the first time. If you haven't heard it yet, you need to: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01847/ It's basically what I envisioned Wiesty talking about, and that makes me love the idea even more. I have an idea for a big band ballad arrangement (if you've played big band stuff before you know exactly what I mean) for Eyes on Me. If I ever get around to it, I'll jot it down and see what we can do with it. I'm really curious how this is going to work with 17 people recording on different equipment, but Im still all for it. Keep recruiting! BONES! WE NEED BONES! Oh, and if you want to give me like 1500 dollars, I've always wanted to buy a bari sax....

Old Thread...rise from your grave, to save my daughter! [/obscure Altered Beast reference] So did anyone ever play this? Thanks to my move I'm way behind on my games, but I heard absolutely amazing things about Xenoblade Chronicles and absolutely abysmal things about The Last Story. Did anyone play TLS or both of them?

So, I had a remix bypass the panel and get accepted in April 2012, and I was curious about when it was going to come out. I could really use the million dollars it's going to make me. Also - and this is a legitimate question and not intended to be snark - what is the process you guys go through that gives you such a huge backlog of remixes to post? To an outsider it might seem like step one would be: post remix on website, but I know there's more to it than that. Again, not trying to sound impatient; this is genuine curiosity about the work that goes into posting.

This. I was thinking, though, that VGM hasn't beome more acceptable as much as it has come in line with mainstream/modern music. If you were to fire up the FF6 OST in your car tomorrow and blast it at a stop light, you'd probably get some weird looks. But if you were to fire up the FFXIII OST, you'd get a different reaction, mostly because people would have a hard time distinguishing it from something they'd hear in a movie or on the radio.

Look, I'm not a statistician, so please spare me the standard deviation and epsilon null-hypothesis stuff. I was just curious so I crunched some numbers. Really, I was wondering about the more modern FFs and why nobody really bothers with them for the most part. If you look at total amount of remixes across the board, they rank this way: Final Fantasy II 1 Final Fantasy XIII 1 Final Fantasy III 2 Final Fantasy Legend II 2 Final Fantasy Tactics 2 Final Fantasy X-2 2 Final Fantasy XII 2 Final Fantasy Mystic Quest 3 Final Fantasy XI Online 4 Final Fantasy Adventure9 Final Fantasy V 20 Final Fantasy X 22 Final Fantasy IX 23 Final Fantasy 30 Final Fantasy VIII 30 Final Fantasy IV 47 Final Fantasy VI 85 Final Fantasy VII 104 7 is the clear top dog, with 6 and 4 following behind (albeit at pretty big margins). It looks like 1994-1998 were Square's "golden years" when it comes to people being interested in remixing their music. But that really didn't take into account the fact that modern FF soundtracks have been available for less time. So I ran another comparison, this time comparing years on the market vs. remixes made. Again, from least to most, here is MIXES/YEAR Final Fantasy II 0.09 Final Fantasy Legend II 0.09 Final Fantasy Tactics 0.13 Final Fantasy Mystic Quest 0.14 Final Fantasy X-2 0.20 Final Fantasy III 0.29 Final Fantasy XII 0.29 Final Fantasy XIII 0.33 Final Fantasy XI Online 0.40 Final Fantasy Adventure 0.41 Final Fantasy 1.30 Final Fantasy V 1.43 Final Fantasy IX 1.77 Final Fantasy X 1.83 Final Fantasy IV 2.14 Final Fantasy VIII 2.14 Final Fantasy VI 4.47 Final Fantasy VII 6.50 Again we see 7, 6, and 4 close to the top, with 8 now inching in there as well. Almost every game that has a remix ratio of 1 per year was on SNES and PSX. I used the North American release dates for these stats, so there's some wiggle room there and it skews the charts in FAVOR of 1, 2, 3, and 5. However, since you can see they still didn't really make the top of the charts, it didn't matter that much. After looking at these stats, there are a couple of thoughts I had about why there is a clear bell curve basically between 1994-1998. 1.) The soundtracks are fucking awesome. This is my personal opinion, but I think Uematsu was at his prime during this period. He used themes to develop characters, something that didn't happen prior to this time period and really didn't happen afterwards (Final Fantasy VIII seemed to have a less character-oriented soundtrack and a more environment-oriented soundtrack. I don't know that I could whistle Quistis' 'theme', for example). Psychologically, if you become connected to the characters, you also, in a Pavlovian kind of way, become connected to the music. Those character themes became intensely personal, and therefore they fuel remixers' passions. 2.) The GAMES are fucking awesome. Again, personal opinion, but if you draw your finger down the top of the list you are basically listing my favorite games in order of preference. Having thoroughly enjoyed the games, we are more prone to want to attach ourselves to their soundtracks. I also have a particular hatred for Final Fantasy XIII, and the fact that the evidence proves its inadequacy is part of my confirmation bias. 3.) The age group of the majority of the remixing community. I gather that most of this community is between the ages of 22 and 35. I could be totally wrong, and I have no real evidence to support this, but I'm going with it anyway. That fact alone puts us at prime video-game playing age between the years of 1994 and 1998, when most of these games were coming out, before life sort of got in the way of chlidhood fantasies. This ALSO means that the games released during this time have the nostalgia effect associated with them. Remixing a song from this period tickles the same response as talking with an old friend about that time you threw eggs at cop cars in tenth grade. 4.) The character of the sound tracks for the top games. If you go to the NES Final Fantasies, themes are necessarily simplistic, and aren't as inspiring. You don't have a lot to "pull out" and play with - you have a melody and maybe some harmonies going on. (If you look at Zelda series remix statistics, I think you'd see the same effect). The SNES/PSX era had more complex themes, but they still had themes and variations and melodies that you could latch on to. By contrast, I couldn't really hum a tune from FFs 11, 12, or 13, partially because I have only played them once, and partially because the soundtrack is way more ambience-oriented than the SNES/PSX era. It was really sort of impossible to have ambient background music using SNES technology. Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts after taking a look at this. I'm interested to hear what the rest of you think about it.

I'm an experienced clarinet, alto saxophone, and guitar player with my own recording stuff. Let me know if you need anything.