HeavenWraith

Hey, I sure hope this is one of those threads that are ok to be necro'd...
Question: I have a few remixes that are part of official OCR albums, but I was thinking of possibly improving them and submitting to the panel. Is it okay to do this?

The deadline is a bit tight, but I think I will have time for this. Sign me up for "Beat of Destruction" from Oath in Felghana.
I'll join the discord server in the near future.

The deadline is a bit tight, but I think I will have time for this. Sign me up for "Beat of Destruction" from Oath in Felghana.
I'll join the discord server in the near future.

Hey guys! We have finished polishing tracks (with the feedback from the judges panel in mind, of course ), and the project was resubmitted yesterday! Sadly, we had to drop a couple of tracks. Given this fact, I decided to change the tracklist bit. But hey, good news is that we've got plenty of amazing music left!  Hope the album passes the panel this time! @Chernabogue is working on the trailer for us, and what we have now is pretty nice, tbh. All in all, we're very close to the finish, so be patient and get hyped bit by bit

Count me in.

Probably most of the stuff I say has been said in one form or other, but since opinion sharing is encouraged and invited, I'll go right ahead.
I personally don't mind the change because, as (hopefully informed) people explained, from the pragmatic viewpoint it's the same - ads, no matter the form, help cover the cost of OCR-related expenses. However, I do understand why there are people who do not share this view, because I have come to learn that Youtube ads specifically is a very sensitive topic, both for video/content makers and those who watch it.
I agree with sir_nuts' statement "Perception != Reality", but I don't think the perception part should be looked down at as unimportant. This whole issue mostly has to do with the way community perceives this change, which has a huge impact on OCR (since the remixes are mostly produced by the community). In light of that, I can understand the staff trying to objectively test the waters and appreciate them encouraging discussions about the issue. This will provide them with knowledge of how to strike the sweet spot of both having high community morale/support and also reliably covering the costs (both of which I believe are extremely important).
I also think the official non-profit status would be a step in the right direction and restore faith of people who might've lost it during this event.
What I am a bit concerned about is the nature of Youtube ads. I believe they do make the music listening experience worse. @zircon asked whether ads on a page would be better than ads embedded in the video itself - I think yes, and significantly. I believe all the musicians here can understand how jarring an audible -6dB RMS ad can be while one is carefully and attentively listening to and appreciating music.
That's my opinion.

I haven't heard your work till now. I gotta say I really enjoy the progressive nature of it. Very cool ideas. I will be up for helping you with mixing, drum programming, and bass. I'll let you take lead and just give you feedback. But I'll be picky to get this right and we'll take this track to the next level. Liberi Fatali is such a critical track for the soundtrack, so its gotta be good. I can reamp your tracks so if you'll keep the dry recordings as well and that can give us options. I could do the same with orchestra, but you should just blend it how you like it. EWQLS should be fine enough but don't commit the ambiance. I'm not sure if they give multi mic placements only with the more expensive libraries. I can give you a lot of criticism on orchestration. In a rock format hinged on sounding contemporary though you really don't need the theory as much as much as an ear for what sounds right because so much gets lost in the mix. Feel free to message me with your thoughts and we can connect.

Plan seems good, but I think a thread in the subforum would be better than outdated IRC! Definitely need that live bass but you can get by with programmed drums. EWQL I like the SO percussion and the choirs are good, but I'd look elsewhere for the strings/violins, like LASS. The brass might be passable but there are better options, I personally don't have them though. 
This would make a great collab and would be the perfect opportunity for one, for something big. Hopefully we can sort that out. 
Not sure whether it would include writing to a midi, or compiling different peoples' midi writing based on a central tempo and key... but it'll be interesting to figure it out, and having a thread on the subforum will help a lot with accomplishing that, and we will get that sorted out
There's really only 4 left to claim?  

Oh boy, there's a lot to address...
I'm still in progress of ordering my thoughts and ideas for the Liberi Fatali remix so apologies if it's just incoherent blabbing, but I will try to convey what I have so far. The style of choice would be my usual symphonic metal (with experience from these four remixed tracks - putting this out here just in case someone looks at my posted mixes and thinks "I can see metal alright, but absolutely no symphony") with more emphasis on the symphonic part (including full orchestra and four voice choir) and I was planning to stick closer to the source this time around instead of going hipster with the source as I usually do. A rough layout of the song I have at the particular moment is this:
A rather drawn out ominous and menacing orchestral/choral intro build-up with lots of references to the source, slow chord progression with dissonances (particularly in brass). Guitars/drums/bass come in, tempo picks up, this part is more of a cover/rearrangement of the source with alterations. A bridge section with various instruments exchanging melodic and con bravura solo sections? Not entirely sure, haven't thought too much about this yet. Reprise (see point #2), leading to climax. A rather sudden drop in energy (just like the source tune on its final chord), orchestra closes off the piece. I am very welcoming to the idea of collaboration because, frankly, this is a very ambitious source to work on plus things I have in mind will require a ton of effort to pull off, so division of work would help a lot. There are a lot of things to do, and just to list a few...
Composition - I imagine this would be a rather step by step process where people can listen to drafts, give feedback and improve the piece. Orchestra - I am using EWQL orchestral VST, which is sufficient, but there may be better alternatives that other people have. Additionally, if there's someone, who has a lot of experience in orchestral articulation and humanization, his/her input would be invaluable and make the piece a lot livelier. Choirs - again, I an using EWQL symphonic choirs, but I bet there are great voices out there to fill the role. Or just better choral VSTs. Drummers/bassists - both of these I usually have programmed, which is sufficient in most cases, but it's always better to have live recordings. Guitars - guitar is one of my main instruments, but there's really a lot of stuff to record, including double-tracking, solos, solo backings, dives, clean chords and arpeggios, etc. etc. Mixing/mastering - while I enjoy the challenge and I was getting the hang of symphonic metal mixing recently, it's a huge load of work and require hours to get it right without pushing important instruments into obscurity, I'd be very happy if someone helped out with this. Ultimately, we would need some kind of place to chat and polish ideas, like an IRC channel, but that can easily be arranged at any point.
Let me know what you think of this plan. Currently I'm on holiday abroad until the 10th and might not be checking for replies every day, so bear with me.

Oh boy, there's a lot to address...
I'm still in progress of ordering my thoughts and ideas for the Liberi Fatali remix so apologies if it's just incoherent blabbing, but I will try to convey what I have so far. The style of choice would be my usual symphonic metal (with experience from these four remixed tracks - putting this out here just in case someone looks at my posted mixes and thinks "I can see metal alright, but absolutely no symphony") with more emphasis on the symphonic part (including full orchestra and four voice choir) and I was planning to stick closer to the source this time around instead of going hipster with the source as I usually do. A rough layout of the song I have at the particular moment is this:
A rather drawn out ominous and menacing orchestral/choral intro build-up with lots of references to the source, slow chord progression with dissonances (particularly in brass). Guitars/drums/bass come in, tempo picks up, this part is more of a cover/rearrangement of the source with alterations. A bridge section with various instruments exchanging melodic and con bravura solo sections? Not entirely sure, haven't thought too much about this yet. Reprise (see point #2), leading to climax. A rather sudden drop in energy (just like the source tune on its final chord), orchestra closes off the piece. I am very welcoming to the idea of collaboration because, frankly, this is a very ambitious source to work on plus things I have in mind will require a ton of effort to pull off, so division of work would help a lot. There are a lot of things to do, and just to list a few...
Composition - I imagine this would be a rather step by step process where people can listen to drafts, give feedback and improve the piece. Orchestra - I am using EWQL orchestral VST, which is sufficient, but there may be better alternatives that other people have. Additionally, if there's someone, who has a lot of experience in orchestral articulation and humanization, his/her input would be invaluable and make the piece a lot livelier. Choirs - again, I an using EWQL symphonic choirs, but I bet there are great voices out there to fill the role. Or just better choral VSTs. Drummers/bassists - both of these I usually have programmed, which is sufficient in most cases, but it's always better to have live recordings. Guitars - guitar is one of my main instruments, but there's really a lot of stuff to record, including double-tracking, solos, solo backings, dives, clean chords and arpeggios, etc. etc. Mixing/mastering - while I enjoy the challenge and I was getting the hang of symphonic metal mixing recently, it's a huge load of work and require hours to get it right without pushing important instruments into obscurity, I'd be very happy if someone helped out with this. Ultimately, we would need some kind of place to chat and polish ideas, like an IRC channel, but that can easily be arranged at any point.
Let me know what you think of this plan. Currently I'm on holiday abroad until the 10th and might not be checking for replies every day, so bear with me.

I'd like to get my hands on "Liberi Fatali", in case it's still available. Will probably be challenging, but I think it'll be lots of fun to work on that source.

As an addendum to the advice given above, I can offer some info that might help out you with this task - whammy bar affects all 6 (or 7/8) strings differently, e.g. if you lower the bar so that lower E is one tone down, the high E would be like 1/4-1/3 tone down (this probably also depends on the string gauge). Either way, when whammy bar is applied to a chord, it creates a dissonance between the notes, which is a very important characteristic of the whammy bar sound. The dissonance is very pronounced if you're using a distortion guitar sound. Just, if possible, try to apply pitchshifting before distortion in the plugin chain.

As an addendum to the advice given above, I can offer some info that might help out you with this task - whammy bar affects all 6 (or 7/8) strings differently, e.g. if you lower the bar so that lower E is one tone down, the high E would be like 1/4-1/3 tone down (this probably also depends on the string gauge). Either way, when whammy bar is applied to a chord, it creates a dissonance between the notes, which is a very important characteristic of the whammy bar sound. The dissonance is very pronounced if you're using a distortion guitar sound. Just, if possible, try to apply pitchshifting before distortion in the plugin chain.

As an addendum to the advice given above, I can offer some info that might help out you with this task - whammy bar affects all 6 (or 7/8) strings differently, e.g. if you lower the bar so that lower E is one tone down, the high E would be like 1/4-1/3 tone down (this probably also depends on the string gauge). Either way, when whammy bar is applied to a chord, it creates a dissonance between the notes, which is a very important characteristic of the whammy bar sound. The dissonance is very pronounced if you're using a distortion guitar sound. Just, if possible, try to apply pitchshifting before distortion in the plugin chain.

As an addendum to the advice given above, I can offer some info that might help out you with this task - whammy bar affects all 6 (or 7/8) strings differently, e.g. if you lower the bar so that lower E is one tone down, the high E would be like 1/4-1/3 tone down (this probably also depends on the string gauge). Either way, when whammy bar is applied to a chord, it creates a dissonance between the notes, which is a very important characteristic of the whammy bar sound. The dissonance is very pronounced if you're using a distortion guitar sound. Just, if possible, try to apply pitchshifting before distortion in the plugin chain.