Sagnewshreds

Hello OCR!
We have a very special remix contest happening this month over at dwellingofduels.net, involving crossover with OCRemix for the upcoming Final Fantasy III [NES] album! All entries for this month are encouraged to be submitted to OCR after the voting phase for consideration on this album, and will be fast-tracked through the OCR judging process!
Any song from the FF3 soundtrack is allowed (note: this is the Japanese release of FF3 on NES, NOT the game known as FF3 in America which was for SNES). There are a few songs that are more 'preferable' from the soundtrack and do not currently have representation on the album:
Crystal Cave Battle theme Crystal Room Opening Theme Return of the Warrior The Way to the Top Cute Little Tozas Sailing Enterprise Veggies of Geseal Castle of Hain The Requiem Swift Twist Good Ol' Fellows In the Covert Town Salonia Deep Under the Water The Invincible Forbidden Land The Dark Crystals  
What is Dwelling of Duels?
Dwelling of Duels is a monthly VGM cover competition. Competitors submit redone versions of game music and the entries are voted upon by the community. Entries must comply with the rules, briefly put as following:
The song must follow the current month's theme The song must be previously unreleased The song must not be shorter than 2 minutes The main instrument must be played live Check out our full rules page for more info on how to enter! Deadline for submissions is September 28 at 06:00 PM Eastern.

heh.
 
so last year, after months of working through it, i came out to my wife as a transgender woman and let her know that it was important for me to transition. she struggled with it for a while, but we've been together since high school and have two kids and are ridiculously co-dependent (and being married to a woman is not a deal-breaker), so we're doing pretty well. after meeting with a therapist, i began hormones last fall, and l, since then, I've come out to most of my friends and family to universal support and acceptance. which has all been great.
 
despite my almost entirely positive experience, the whole process has been an ordeal emotionally. I've been working through a lot of internal issues, relitigating a lot of my past experiences, worrying about the future, struggling with myself, etc. I'm not out at work yet (though I'm planning on coming out in the next few months), so that's been another big, soul-crushing source of stress and anxiety.
 
it's been a big change and more big changes will continue to come, even as much of my life remains stable. I'm so much more anxious and stress-filled, but still relieved and excited not to live dishonestly carrying this burden.
 
how bout with you?

Possibly Imposter Syndrome?
No one is a harsher judge than themselves.

Man, its been a while - first off I'd like to apologize for everyone for dropping the ball on this. I could not give this the attention it deserved ultimately, especially after embarking on my career almost 5 years ago. I'm in a good place now, but way too exhausted & busy to do much except maybe build websites, my domain of expertise.
I'm glad to see that it has sped up to completion over the past year! I am excited to see what everyone has whipped up  .

@Gario, in his own words in a remix thread in the workshop:
How horrible.
It got me wondering what methods and procedures the judges use when judging. Do you use the resub tag, when, when not, why, why not? When do you say conditional and when do you say resub? What are your dealbreakers? What if there are random fart noises in the middle of an otherwise excellent track?
Larry has his stopwatching and 50% standard for assessing source content. What else do you guys have?
Similar to our meet the evaluators, can we have a meet the judges thread?

@Thirdkoopa I can take electric guitars and/or bass if you still need peeps. Won't be able to record anything until June though. 

just checking in; still alive, still working on the track, should have an updated WIP sometimes this week. sorry about vanishing...

So we're in April already, and I'd like to remind y'all that we have a new deadline coming up. The next deadline is April 30! Also a reminder, if you don't check in with an updated WIP or neglect to tell us if you can't make the deadline, we'll unfortunately have to drop your claim. So don't let that happen and check in with us, ya hear?
@Blake Inc. and @PabloComa are in the clear for this deadline, they already reached out to us with their status for this check-in.
Really looking forward to seeing the first WIPs from @Sagnewshreds, @JonnyAtma, @Fishy, @dannthr, @HankTheSpankTankJankerson, @HeavyViper and @Kylok. Don't let us down and in stead amaze us with the coolness you'll bring!
Also looking forward to updated WIPs from @zykO, @Rexy, @audio fidelity, @Harmony, @djpretzel, @Jorito, @Kylok. You're off to a great start, so keep it coming.
And of course a shout out to @Hylian Lemon, @Chernabogue, @Sbeast, @Starphoenix, @Thirdkoopa. You guys are nearly there and it'd be awesome to see you bring your track to its completion.
Lastly @Yami and @RebeccaETripp expressed interest in claiming a track. If you're still interested, don't forget to stake your claim
There's 3 weeks left to that next deadline, so plenty of time to bring the goodness!

I seriously think this is a pretty genius approach to a tune that has been done a million times. Still comes out sounding funky fresh.

Me, Drumultima, and two scholars not on OCR (Dana Plank and Michael Harris) have begun playing through Final Fantasy VI while we talk about what's interesting in the music as we go along.  The first quarter or so of the game is done and posted to YouTube here -- join us Thursday, 2/9, at 9:00 PM EST for the next session (likely to include the opera scene).
Any particular things you're interested in hearing us muse over between leaving Narshe after Terra flies off and departing for Thamasa (as far as we're likely to get next time)?  Let us know!
EDIT: Our second session is up on both YouTube and Twitch -- we got as far as the escape from the Magitek Research Facility.  Doug couldn't make it (thanks to the Northeast weather) so we called upon Julianne Grasso to sub for him.

Kind of a broad question that spans many different sound chip manufacturers but usually it's because of the limited polyphony that the old sound chips were capable of.  Taking the Genesis for example the yamaha 2612 sound chip that was in that system was only capable of six simultaneous voices.  That's 6 channels that needs to be split between music and any sfx so chances are the game at any given time is hitting the maximum amount of polyphony it can handle.  Now, if a game uses a "pause"/"unpause" sound effect that requires a single channel to play.  In order to play the sound effect something has to go at least for the duration that the pause sound effect plays at which point the missing voice can come back in. 
You can usually hear this throughout a lot of 8 and 16 bit games when a lot is happening on screen, parts of the background track are dipping in and out.  Juggling your different voices in an effective way that doesn't detract from the game was a necessary skill to have for a game composer back in the day.  
 
 

80s FTW!~!!!!!1

Songs are up! 37 main entries and two alts!
http://dwellingofduels.net/duels/16-12-80s-vs-90s/
If you happen to be at magfest, come to the listening party (Thursday midnight, panel room 4). Listening party will also be streamed on 8bitx.
You can vote using the sliders on the duel page. Deadline for votes is January 7th, 4PM EST. Send the votes to dodsongs@gmail.com.

Hello! As you may or may not know, MAGFest is happening soon, and just like every year for the past decade, we'll be having a special month over at Dwelling of Duels, with a live listening party at MAGFest! Exact details about the listening party to follow.
The tradition is to pick a unique and interesting theme for the MAGFest duel, and this time it's...
80s vs 90s Month

That's right, we're pitting two awesome decades against each other! Which had the better video games? Which had the better music? Which had the better video game music?
All of these questions will be answered this month. Artists can chose either the 80s or the 90s, and remix songs from a game (or multiple games) released in that decade. Featuring games from both decades in a single entry is not allowed. Other than that, all standard rules apply: http://dwellingofduels.net/rules/
 
Now, what makes this duel special, other than the live listening party, you ask? Well, we're happy to announce a partnership with Impact Soundworks! Top 3 artists (or groups/bands) will each get one library out of the following: Super Audio Cart, Shreddage Bass 2, Shreddage Guitar or Shreddage Drums. Fun fact: Shreddage Bass 2 was recorded by the ocremix artist, bass virtuoso and the person with the most DoD gold medals, Tony Dickinson a.k.a. Prince uf Darkness! But wait, there's more: entrants will be able to get a 10% discount on all Impact Soundworks libraries!
 
So, get your instruments ready, start making some music, and enter the duel! Deadline for submissions is January 3rd, 2017 at 1PM EST. Send your entries to dodsongs@gmail.com. If you come to MAGFest, be sure to drop by the listening party (80s or 90s fashion not required). We promise it's gonna be fun, as you can see in this video: 
 
For those not familiar with DoD:
Dwelling of Duels is a monthly (or sometimes bi-monthly) video game music remixing competition started back in 2003. The focus is on live instruments: each entry needs to have a main instrument played live. A theme is picked for each duel and all the entries have to follow the theme. At the end of the month, listeners vote for the songs and a winner is decided. To this day, there have been:
- 2778 entries, from
- 1070 games, by
- 714 artists, in
- 154 duels, having
- 167+ hours of music!
http://dwellingofduels.net/

Yeah... I'm not going to delay my track's release any longer. Strader wants to include it on a separate release, cool, but I'm not going to keep it in limbo any longer because of stupidity. 

THE VOTES ARE IN! THE WINNER HAS BEEN DECIDED!!
 
 
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#1 WASD - Turrican - Turricane Huelsbeck - above average -0.05 #2 LONELYROLLINGSTARS - Splatoon - SPLATATOUILLE - above average -0.06 #3 SuperFX - Tetris - Tetris Theme - above average -0.23 #4 sigmabeta - Chrono Trigger - Wings that Cross Time - above average -0.38 #5 Demonstray - Sonic & Knuckles - Guy Manctuary Zone - average +0.34 #6 Careless Juja - Bastion, Kingdom Hearts - Hollow Bastion - average +0.32 #7 Soniferous - Chrono Trigger - Trial and Errors - below average +0.13 Voters: 16     WASD comes out on top by a hair!   I want to thank everyone who entered, voted, attended the listening party live or online (despite the online stream being delayed a bit, #blameWill). If there is another MAG Labs/Classic, this might be something we continue doing! (though with more notice for bands to enter.) <3

Alright, the 9/12 WIP has passed us by. Thanks to everyone who turned something in. The other project leads and myself are going to take a few days to take stock of where we're at, and decide how to move forward. Within a week we should have a more substantive update. Cheers.

Put together a teaser of some of the music on the album. Check it!
 
 

Remixers, we still want track notes and bios and things like that. We have some. From surprisingly few of you.
And if you're concerned that we might be mastering and including the wrong version of your track, get in touch asap, preferably with a wav of the track. Long-running, big projects managed by amateurs, sometimes have problems getting the right file in the right folder. So that has probably happened here at least once. 'Nuf said.
Next project I'm running will require wips and wavs and things to be properly marked with versions and dates and stuff. And all communication consolidated to one place/format. And a much smaller project. Like, three tracks total.

YOOOO, WE'RE IN EVAAAAAL
Tracks are 98% done, the art is PHENOMENAL, and everything at this point is on DaMonz, me, and staff. It's been a long road, friends, but WE'RE ALMOST THERE. Thanks for all your hard work everyone =)

Totally fine with OCR doing whatever they want with mixes of mine that make it past the judges, but I don't have any posted yet (mostly doing tracks for album projects, but I have a few DoD entries I touched up that need to be finally submitted to the panel) so maybe it doesn't matter

Still debating bringing a set of bagpipes to MagFest.

i'm just here for the musik.

Anybody want to go to Magnolia Festival?

http://magfest.com