Souperion

Heya everyone!
Here's an arrangement for full Orchestra of the Main Theme from Starfox, the original SNES game.  The music throughout the gameplay, I felt, was very powerful in its harmonies and the staying power of the melody in this piece in particular.  This version plays out in the End Credits, and I felt the piece was deserving of being raised from 16-bit format to a full Orchestral palate as it had so much to offer.
Disclaimer - Original music is by Hajime Hirasawa. Images are in-game footage and artwork.
 

I finished my new original song "Virtual Quest 1". It's kind of futuristic theme, composed with video games, movies and animations in mind. This is my first release where I use synth and orchestral elements together.
Here is the song:
 
How did you feel about this song? I'm very interested to hear your thoughts about where you would hear this kind of music. 

This first impression is probably influenced by your background there, but I get a cosmic vibe. And it is stellar (puns for days!) It invites the mind to wander into the grand beyond, where things are strangely familiar. The beginning build up conveys grandeur and splendor, followed by the almost pensive, uncertain second phase. A good atmosphere for thinking. Very nice work, I would enjoy encountering this in a VG or video/film/movie.

I like it. The delay sounded a bit odd at a few parts (0:30 - 0:50), not really in a disruptive way, but sometimes the echo was in a strange timing with the notes. Regardless of that, I love the performance. It conveys a delicate passion with a thoughtful atmosphere. Nice work!

Hey guys, I figured out how to play Aerith's theme from FF7 and decided to make my own rendition of it. You might notice a few Zelda theme cameos in the piece, they are intentional. Preset used is ShrineCX2. Enjoy! 
Aerith's Theme.mp3

After almost a year lol, I finally finished it. Working on different projects here and there helped to really bring to this to something I'm super proud of and hope ya'll like it. Hope to actually see this on the website but I'm gonna have to figure out how to change the actual CT samples used. 
It'll be on itunes/ apple music and Spotify in about 3 - 4 days. DL available on Soundcloud as well. 
 
Artist - EchoGhost616
Spotify - EchoGhost
Youtube - Echo Ghost

"Nothing crazy", indeed. The instrumentation is excellent, pulsing with vital energy and expressive delicacy. The piece evokes plenty of nostalgia while adding a depth of feeling with artistic flourishes that are breath taking. The only thing that I might critique is that the second to last time the sea SFX comes in (2:28), it cuts off a bit abruptly. Still, an excellent composition!

Soundcloud:
A simple remake of one of my favorite Zelda tunes.  Nothing crazy done in the remix; hope it brings back some good memories!
-Juke

Excellent emotional progression. You do Koji Kondo proud.

I wouldn't mind going down as one of the "Guests." I would like to jump onto this project, if you'll have me. Technically, I'll be collaborating with Wassup Thunder on a piece, Shiver Star from Kirby 64. Kinda a gentle, synthy orchestra thing. Real original, doing an ice world song for Christmas, I know, but we'll do our best for the fans.

Well holy shit balls, Batman. It's that time once again! Time to start thinking about Christmas as the temps climb to 100ºF+ around the country and people wax nostalgic about when it was cold, while forgetting all the bitching they did regarding how cold it was. The snow, the ice, the wishing it was warm again... you know, the usual mid-January stuff. And it's in that spirit... sort of... that we take our first step in getting this year's project underway.
 
 
SO! This project is open to any and all OCR members, regardless of whether you're a posted remixer or not. And now, the details...
When's The Project Deadline?- December 20th, 2019 at 11:59 P.M. EST.
This is now a REALLY hard, non-negotiable deadline, since it's very close to Christmas. We've had lots of last-minute entries and updates over the years and, to be perfectly honest, it shouldn't be that way. With months of time, having to hold off as long as possible for people made things pretty hectic for myself and Dyne in the past. Treating this project like a college paper that doesn't get worked on until the last minute got annoying rather quickly when it kept adding up to lots of hurrying year after year, with last second updates to artwork and retagging/reuploading things. As such, you have until one minute before midnight EST on December 20th to get me the final WAV or MP3 of your song. After that, you're shit outta luck until next year. I need time to do everything, including possibly making a little website to host this project if Dyne isn't online for one reason or another. So this deadline's set in stone... PERIOD.
What Information Does The Coop Need?- When you send me your final versions, I'll need what name you want to use (real or remixer handle) and the name of your remix. Please, come up with something when you send me links to the file, rather than just giving me a file called "ff6-owa-v3f.mp3" and nothing else. You don't have to tell me what song you're remixing, but I do need a name. Plus, if you have a website you'd like to pimp, supply that as well and I can add it to the MP3 tags.
What Can Be Remixed?- Any song, really. Traditional Christmas carols, video game music, published music by a signed artist, music from TV/cartoons/anime... whatever gets your heart racing and into that Christmas spirit. This isn't an official OCR album, so you can draw from more sources than just VGM. Plus, you can take a non-Christmas tune, like the Main Theme from Space Harrier, Stage 6 Mission 2 from Metal Head, or I Defend STM from Truxton II, and turn it into a Christmasy one. So know that it's not limited only to songs that are Christmas-like to begin with. All that said, do keep in mind that if you want to submit your song to OCR later, you'll need to keep this site's guidelines in the back of your mind. But for this album, you can take it in just about any direction you want and get as crazy as you'd like (but please, no "Silver Bells" done in farts or something).
How Long Can My Song Be?- As long as you want it to be. There are no restrictions on this, so whether it's 1:30, or 9:51 with a five minute guitar solo ala Metallica, it's all good. But again, if you want to submit your song to OCR later, keep their guidelines in mind.
What Genres Can I Remix In?- Again, the door's wide open here. Rap, Metal, Pop, Piano-solo, Orchestral, Jazz, 8/16-bit, Barber Shop Quartet, A capella, Death Polka... it's up to you where you want to take it.
What Format Should I Submit My Song In?- WAV or an MP3 of at least 192KB/s quality. I'll be tagging the MP3s and making MP3s from any submitted wavs, so you don't have to worry about that. But, if you'd like your website to be in the MP3 comments section, be sure to give it to me when you submit your song.
How About A Little Music To Get Us In The Mood?- To help everyone along, here's a YouTube list of Christmasy tunes made by Ocre a number of years ago...
https://ocremix.org/community/topic/32727-an-overclocked-christmas-~-now-recruiting/?tab=comments#comment-676914
What's The Website's Address Again?- It's got a new home at... http://williammichael.info/aocc/ This album will still be downloaded there as well, as Dyne will continue to host the albums on his site.
How Do We Contact This The Coop Person?- If you've got questions, comments, concerns, want feedback, or your track is done and ready to be sent to me, you can PM me here on OCR, or send me an E-mail at thecoopscorner@gmail.com. Just be sure you remember to include a link to your remix.
 
So yeah, there you go. You've got over five months to get something done for the lovely people of OverClocked Remix and the billions of listeners around the world who've become followers of our project.
Good luck, have fun and make everyone some Nice Work™!
 
Artists involved thus far...
The Coop (director, cover artist and remixer)
Lampje4life (remixer)
TheChargingRhino (remixer)
PlanarianHugger (remixer)
Seth Skoda (remixer)
HoboKa (remixer)
Pinksou (remixer)
Souperion w/Wassup Thunder (remixer)

Hey guys,
Here is the newest uploaded video to YouTube, this is the Orchestration of "Song of Healing" from Majora's Mask by Koji Kondo.  As the original music only used piano and strings, I attempted in this arrangement to start off with the original scoring, then add more instruments for effect. There then follows a developmental part where the music builds up to full orchestra, portraying the blissful sense of relief upon being released from torment or unhappiness, followed by the original thematic material in contrasting groups of instruments to round the piece off, with a fragment of Zelda's Lullaby at the very end.
(visuals are original artwork and in-game footage)
 
 

Hey, no problem L.T.W. I looked up the game a bit before responding to this, seems well worth the time. And that OST, though. I'm not much of an authority on the system, but Madeline's Ascent seems pretty complete to me. If you want to get a more experienced ear on it, set the status of this beauty to "ready for review", wait a week or so, and pm a workshop evaluator for a more professional listen. Or just submit it, what have you got to lose?
Keep mixing, this is good stuff!

Hey, no problem L.T.W. I looked up the game a bit before responding to this, seems well worth the time. And that OST, though. I'm not much of an authority on the system, but Madeline's Ascent seems pretty complete to me. If you want to get a more experienced ear on it, set the status of this beauty to "ready for review", wait a week or so, and pm a workshop evaluator for a more professional listen. Or just submit it, what have you got to lose?
Keep mixing, this is good stuff!

Haven't heard something like this in a while! I might have to check out Celeste some more. More importantly, this is impressive. I hardly noticed that it lasted 7 minutes, it's very good at dominating one's attention. I'm no authority on rave style, but I am loving the inexorable arpeggios and piano-like synth. The little sound bits that vaguely resemble an alien infant babbling (sfx from the game?) were a bit strange at first, but more or less add to the sparkling, yet dark, mood of the piece. Even without memories to the game, it tugs at something in the mind. Nice work!

This remix has been a work in progress for a long time. I wanted to mash together a number of favorite tracks from the Donkey Kong Country and Land series of games. I had a lot of trouble getting things to work well together and ended up pretty much abandoning the project (very disappointed). I decided to swap out a few instruments for the new FLEX synth in FL Studio and managed to at least finish the thing.
It is definitely not at the quality level where I would have liked it but I don't want to really continue working on it either. I'm posting it anyway. I still find it personally enjoyable
 
PS: ever since I started sharing tracks on OCR I've been having this nagging voice in my head that keeps saying "They're sure to point out the lack of humanization". This is one of the toughest things to get right for me and I don't need the added pressure from voices inside or outside my head Now, no one is actually putting that pressure on me; its just my insecurity. I'm trying to let it go, as well as weird ideas of supposed expectations people have of me.
 

I appreciate the feed back, Eladar. I've long since stopped working on this, but it's good to have more of an idea of how to make instruments sound more alive. Thanks, and good luck with your piece going to the Board!

Liking this new draft, Souperion. I like the harp at the lower registers during the early sections better, and another new detail I'm fond of is the extra harp part that's harmonizing with the original one at 1:08 now. It's a small change, but to my ear it sounds much richer than before, to the point where I wish it would go on a little longer. The more touches like this you can include in your tracks the better - interesting harmonies and counterpoint can do a ton of work in elevating your arrangements and stirring emotion in your listeners.

Listening to version 2 and 3 back to back, I have to say the velocity and note placement changes are pretty subtle and aren't making a huge difference for me. I notice them here and there though and what you've done does help. To expand a bit on what I said before about humanization - there's a lot of other elements to it besides velocity/timing of individual notes. As an example, if you're crafting a MIDI-driven distorted guitar performance, pitch bends at the starts of certain phrases for emphasis and satisfying vibrato on the tail end of your sustained lead notes can be really impacting. A thing that's helped me a lot with learning how to humanize MIDI stuff well is to look up a bunch of Youtube videos of people playing the instrument in question live. Listen and watch real closely to the many techniques they use to vary up their performances, and you might be surprised how much you end up noticing that you never did before.

It comes to my mind now that I wish there were places you could add glides or vibrato on your leads for interest but to be honest, this might not be the right piece for it. Your flute lead is pretty synthy and might not lend well to such flourishes. Keep all this in mind for future pieces though; it's good stuff to think about when you're still writing your parts and deciding on instrumentation.

The vibraphone sounds good sample-wise and I wouldn't say it's out of place, but I'm also not sure it's bringing everything to the table that it could be. For instance from 1:17 to 1:48 it sounds to me like it's often mimicking the non-sustained higher string notes pretty closely and I find that I want the strings/vibraphone to be better-differentiated in their roles. I can't say I'm noticing much delay on the vibraphone either, I think that may be getting lost in the mix. Some EQ work to create more space to hear the nuances or simply exaggerating the delay effect might help if you want it to be more apparent.

Finally, something Rozovian mentioned to me recently on my Volcanic Glass thread might be helpful to you. It's not necessarily productive to spend too much time refining a single piece. I'm going to be wrapping up Volcanic Glass as soon as I can and submitting it so I can get a judge panel review and see what I learn from that. The reality right now on the OCR WIP forums is that official evaluator reviews are very rare due to lack of staffing/time, so you might consider wrapping this up and submitting it soon now that it's been a few months. In the meantime you could start another piece and put everything you've learned while working on this one into practice from the beginning. Just some food for thought.

Best of luck!

Sounds a lot more natural now. I can't think of anything that needs more humanization. Does the vibraphone start at 2:21? It sounds okay, but gets better with higher notes. The genre would be orchestral, in my opinion. I can't think of anything else right now. Sounds awesome! Very fitting for the setting.

Update Patch #3!
This is my attempt at humanizing the track, including both note velocity and placement. There's some more arrangement work too, including the harp's introduction and some more contrast in volume. And I've started conservative efforts with panning.
Right now, the concerns are thus: am I on the right track for humanizing this thing (is it making a difference, sounding better); is the vibraphone working (is it's delay satisfying, is it's timbre itself cohesive with the piece); what the heck genre would this even be; and what else am I missing?
Thanks for listening!

It certainly feels a fair bit more alive and less stock-like. I'm noticing some jarring notes here and there, especially during the first minute and a half. I'd suggest looking over where you are putting the emphasis (extra velocity) and balance it out ever so slightly. I'm still an amateur at the craft myself, and there are a LOT of subtle nuances to figuring out how to make a piece like this feel living. But I think you are on the right track. Try making the emphasis variation a bit more subtle to avoid those blaring parts (EX: right at 38, the high note, right at 44, right at 49.) If it still feels like the particular part needs some emphatic statement, try making it a chord or some other ornamentation. Study some piano solos for ideas. I'd suggest a few: JJT's The Flood Plain, Jormungand's Dark Star Scherzo, and jdaster64's Cocoa 'n' Cookies.
You're getting somewhere with this, keep at.

For all the people lurking along: we just cleared our final deadline and have a total of 29 completed tracks now! Next steps are getting these tracks mastered and then package everything up and send it over to OCR staff for the next steps later this month.
We'll keep on updating the thread with further info as we go along. Stay tuned

Never thought I'd find a cover of this song, especially such an energetic one! I can make out the source very clearly, and the synth(s) used for the melodies are captivating. The piece is crisp and spritely, with plenty to say in 2 short minutes. I wish it was longer, but it does feel finished at its length. Very nice work!

It's a little tough to gauge an idea's viability with just a midi-esque demo, but I think that the stylistic concept alone merits an attempt. Give it a shot, you've got an interesting idea here!