jnWake

Super short but nice. The intro melody is eerily similar to the one found in Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze's intro.

This is very pretty. I love the flute writing with all the tiny flourishments that make it seem more real and emotional. I'm definitely not an orchestra expert but most samples seemed very believable and well programmed. As a negative, the arrangement is a tad repetitive but it's so pretty that it's hard to be bothered by that.

I like how you slightly changed the rhytm of the original for the base riff. I don't like how long it repeats for though. At 0:50 you introduce the main melody of the song but don't change either the synth or the drum pattern so, as a listener, it doesn't feel like much has changed. Hence, I'd suggest you look into changing some synths here and there and add more percussive elements. For example, you could try a higher pitch for the melody while keeping some of the synth bass and trying some variations to the drum pattern. That section's melody is fast paced and somewhat erratic so having such a slow rhytm with it doesn't gel well IMO. At 1:23 you do a drum breakdown of sorts, but sadly it doesn't have much effect since most of the attention still goes to the synth bass. I'm not exactly sure what to suggest for this part though. The synth string samples are very low for most of the song, a nice exception being the 1:56 section where they shine. It feels very refreshing to not have a gritty saw being the lead so that part is my favourite of the arrangement. IMO, this is the kind of stuff you need to focus on. A cool bass supplementing the rhytm and a fresh soundscape for the lead. I have to point out that the tuning of the synth string is a bit dubious, especially on the first note of the melody. Is there some bending going on? Overall, I feel this has potential. I like how you rearranged the melody for the intro but didn't like the lack of variation in the drum patterns/synth usage. Section from 1:56 to 2:27 is the strongest one since the slower synth string melody is a great complement to the calmer mood you're going for here. You just need to figure out how to make the 0:50 melody fit into the mood you're going for.

Nice intro, the wavy synths are pleasant and remind me of Mega Man 7. When the bass and drums join it's pretty energetic and cool. I don't understand why the bass is so low at the 0:36 mark (and for a while after). The arrangement loses a lot of steam there before regaining it at 0:56. Nice rhytm change at 1:13, although the snare sounds kind of weak here. Overall, I like the overall tone. Synths are pretty cool and there's lots of energy. For my criticisms, I think you're changing from sections and ideas way too much. It wouldn't hurt to repeat some of the melodies or sections a few times. You can try changing lead instruments or even the key if you really don't want straight repeats but it currently ends very quickly and no melody has time to stay in your head.

This is a pretty cool style for the source material! Really gets you in a dancing mood. I'll echo the volume complaints. Brass is too loud and completely drowns the drums. I think adding some bass to the arrangement wouldn't hurt either.

This always hovers over my head when composing so I intentionally try to put unexpected things into my songs, like key changes, non-traditional chord progressions and stuff like that. However, it's very easy to overdo it and end up with stuff that sounds terrible in an attempt to sound unique. I guess the easiest way to avoid this is to listen to different music and get as many inspirations as possible to avoid being too influenced by few sources.

New starters are pretty cool. Litten looks cool and stands out from the rest of the fire starters with so much black. Rowlet is cute and looks funny, the twisting head animation is amazing. Popplio looks so derpy that I can't help but love it. The circus seal theme is awesome too. Bat legendary is awesome. Looks so majestic. Lion looks like a true force of nature but I don't dig the design that much.

I'll share some of the bands I listen to: Tesseract is progressive djent metal band... Or something like that, I get confused by genders often. Anyway, they are characterized by weird rhytms and cool vocal harmonies. Some of their songs have growls and shit like that but they've slowly moven away from that. Andromeda is a progressive metal band that usually makes very technical songs. The one I link above is one of their ballads where the singer shines. Their instrumentals are pretty good. Finally, while most people in this thread have probably heard of Symphony X, I want to share what I feel is their most underrated song: Rediscovery part 2 is one of my favourite metal songs. For the first minutes the song is quite calm and hopeful but then turns darker before having some of SyX's stranger riffs. For some reason this song isn't very popular (unlike some of their other epics like The Divine Wings of Tragedy and The Odyssey) and I believe they have never even played it live. A shame for such an incredible song.

You almost nailed it timaeus! "Vio" isn't used for 1st person. Anyway, I also remember this one from the workshop. It's a very pretty arrangement with nice playing. I feel the guitars are a bit too bright but that's just nitpicking. Awesome job!

If anybody has an spare Dakrai code I'd really appreciate it. Can't get one in Latin America.

I'm working on mine too... Not that close to completion yet but in the works!

Hahaha this is great. Someone should balance this by covering this song: Maybe I'll do it in the future, but I can imagine a metal remix of this being awesome.

I'll do my best to reach that WIP date. Just need to get some good inspiration...

I have a separation of 3. It links me directly to Uematsu lol. Btw, I'm blown away by the amount of info in MusicBrainz. It has everything about me, even the fact that I use different names here and in DoD.

Hopefully someone takes my idea of OCR Secret Remix Santa for 2016 so that people too far away like me can easily participate

Oh, technomanga is a silly "meme" here from some guy that complained that OCR made too much techno or something like that.

Hope you guys enjoy the mix when the album releases. To my surprise there aren't many Chemical Plant Zone remixes that aren't "technomanga" so I went for a funkier/rock approach.

Pretty neat articles about Undertale here: http://jasonyu.me/undertale-part-1/ http://jasonyu.me/undertale-part-2/ They're like an extended version of DrumUltimA's posts.

I don't even want to post my first remix here. It's awful haha. At least my songs sound decent now. I'd link my old Guitar Pro tabs if mysongbook.com was still alive though ;_; My original music isn't that bad.

Someone should do Threed from Earthbound. It's a very pretty theme!

I've always been obsessed with avoiding repetition in my songs, long before I met OCR. However, that's something I would like to change since many great progressive bands actually use repetition a lot! Some Genesis or Marillion songs have sections that simply build off a base for long without getting stale and that's something I'd learn to do myself. For example, The Invisible Man (by Marillion) has a section (beggining at around 6:30) that lasts like 3 minutes and has the same guitar riff playing through it all the time yet it's very progressive thanks to changes in the other instruments, particularly the vocals and keyboards. OCR did change my music a lot though since before OCR I only wrote music using Guitar Pro. I used to post my compositions in MySongBook (a tab site) actually!

Copying melodies is fine and all but if you really want to learn to play keyboards you should take care of finger positioning, especially when you're beggining to play. It's very common to see people who use like 1 or 2 fingers to play because they never learned proper positioning. You should also take care of your wrist positioning since a wrong one can be pretty hurtful. Your hand should never be below the keys, and you always want your fingers arched down to play the keys (like the 1st pic below). Sadly I don't have any book to recommend but I bet there are plenty tutorials on YouTube haha. I'd recommend watching stuff on hand posture and finger positions for scales and stuff. Of course there's also learning how to play with 2 hands at the same time but most exercises should cover the basics of that.

If this progresses nicely you should try contacting the VGCW (Forums and Wikia). It's a videogame character wrestling league and features Dracula as one of the main wrestlers (he's actually the champion now). Last episode also teased Alucard. I think you could make a nice collaboration with them!

So this is an album of village themes in general right, not limited to RPGs?

There was (is?) a Paper Mario project that's unofficial (I believe?) but I'm not sure what its status is.