colorado weeks

Very difficult question. I will not answer with Bundeslang.
So many different styles and genres. Favorite is also a very hard term, I fill this in as personal like the most (and genre helps with this). Still (to mention one name) I go for one of the names in the beginning of the contest: Sir Nuts.
Perhaps we can do a contest/round one day (maybe a yearly free round or something like that), who knows...

Like many here, I owe so much to this compo. T'was a tremendous proving ground to help develop musicianship and meet amazing artists, but also a beacon of hope encouraging me to come back to music times and again in spite of hardships. ?
If you feel like keeping the flame alive once a year, that would be awesome and mighty kind of you. I'll most definitely partake. ✨

I'm really excited - we have some cool stuff planned ahead!

It's a huge pleasure to be fulfilling this role!
Over the coming weeks, you'll be seeing my mug replying to your posts in the workshop and (if I'm doing things right) I'll be providing you with means to make improvements to your writing, arranging, and/or mixing. Can't wait to hear more of what y'all have cooking out there!

I'm happy to announce a couple of staffing changes here at OCR. First up, I wanna welcome @Hemophiliac to our Judges Panel! Hemo's been putting in the work for the last few years as one of our Workshop Evaluators, and has also stepped up in the past few months to handle a lot of the visualizers for the remixes you see on our YouTube channel. He's an active presence in our community and has a lot of helpful advice in the Workshop. We're glad to add him to the panel. Look forward to getting some fresh new NO votes on your tracks!
Speaking of Workshop Evaluators, a few months ago we retired our Ready for Review process in the Workshop because we felt that it was a cumbersome extra layer of evaluation prior to submitting to the Judge's Panel. Our Evaluators did a lot of great work over the years but we're retiring that role. In it's place, we're introducing our new team called Sages! Sages are active artists in our community who'll be in the Workshop giving feedback on remixes, posting tutorials, and coming up with their own ways to revitalize and energize the Workshop. Our three new Sages are @Xaleph, @pixelseph, and @paradiddlesjosh!
We're glad to have some fresh faces on staff, and I'm personally looking forward to seeing what these folks have in store for us.
-- DarkeSword

This round is another hard one to vote! Both teams brought forth polished mixes and executed really creative ideas.
Infected Waters: Psytrance heaven! The gated vocal, triplet transitions, and distinct sections make this a wonderful listen. The Bloody Tears motif from Purification comes through strongly even with the syncopated line, and the Maridia theme holds tightly throughout the piece.
Pure Zebes: Enya vibes proudly on display! Despite having zero melodic correlation to it, this piece would feel right at home in RuneScape - I’m attributing that to the instrumentation (flutes and strings and pads over light percussion). Both themes are strong throughout; the 3/4 meter helps bring both ideas together.
Livin' Out Our Last Days: It's Metroidvania but if the Gorillaz did it! I love nothing more in a mashup than taking the structure of one piece and applying the melodic and harmonic content of another to it, and this track does exactly that - Feel Good, Inc is clearly the template here. I'm hearing Overture in the "theme"/verse riff and Tallon in the choruses. The organic instruments (guitars, bass, and vocals) are well performed, and the mix is tight.
Cruisin' Down Overture Blvd in the Depths of Tallon Traffic: Synthwave magic! That Tallon bassline rides through the whole piece and never once gets stale. Love the way the melody trades Overtune and Tallon back and forth, and the little chromatic splashes here and there keep the lead interesting.
Smoke and Marbles: Live jazz club sound! Great mix on the quartet throughout - the lead trade between piano and guitar on the Marble Gallery theme is brilliant. Bass and drums hold the groove tight. Environmental Mystery as the bridge is another brilliant choice for such a short source.
Gallery of Mysteries: Progressive metal time! Periphery and Tigran Hamasyan meet a sort of Darude vibe on the intro. Lots of time signature shifts for those wanting to count - 4/4, 5/8, 7/8, 5/16... math music nerds, get in the comments! Love the use of Environmental Mystery as the arp throughout the piece.
---
Great job everyone! As with round 1, I can't wait to see these pass the panel!

Thoughts on the round 1 entries:

Red Harvest vs. Wir Sind Team Peitsche: This one was really close but in the end it came down to production execution.  Both arrangements were very good and mashed up the sources in very creative ways.  I really liked the last section of Wir Sind Team Peitsche with the group chanting.  That was a great way to bring everyone together onto it.
A couple specific notes on Wir Sind Team Peitsche.  The brass in the first 0:36-0:58 is very "blatty".  Would like to hear more humanization on that section for the orchestral samples. 1:53-2:32, I didn't even notice there was chiptune elements here until multiple listens.
Red Harvest: 0:41-0:50 the melody for Brinstar here is very washed out, like when you turn the wet on reverb all the way up and dry all the way down.  IMO it got very buried here.
Adrift Eternal vs. Back in Cold Blood (Dracula Flow): Difficult to vote for a "joke" track.  When I say that I mean, the track was for laughs rather then to be taken very seriously.
Back in Cold Blood: The production on the background work is pretty clean and stands on it's own pretty well.  I know I mentioned it on voice to you, but changing to the Alucard audio at 3:18 of the way through was a good choice to keep the track moving forward and preventing the Dracula Flow bit from being stale.  Good call on the change.  Some percussive elements ping-ponging left/right are a little disorienting.
Adrift Eternal: This is starting to sound like the modus operandi of Emunator at this point.  I have no idea who contributed what on this.  Electronic cinematic take on both themes seamlessly transitions back and forth between sources.  Very well done.  At 4:23 it's suddenly major for some reason did feel a little odd, but I can understand wanting to change the color at the end of the piece to bring more energy.
The Heart of Atlantis vs. No Castle for Old Belmonts:  This was the toughest call of the 3 pairs.  For me I chose No Castle for Old Belmonts due to how the melody was interpreted, used, and embellished upon.  Both had good production, and it came down to arrangement/usage.
The Heart of Atlantis: The organ echoes of the guitar such as at 2:07 and 2:43 were a little awkward for having close intervals in a low register, makes them get harmonically muddy.
No Castle for Old Belmonts: I don't know why, with the title I was expecting this to be country song-like "Take me home country roads".  The bass is a little muddy, sounds like someone humming doubling the bass in the first ~minute or so.  Not sure if that is a production issue or recording thing.  The guitar playing from 2:57 to the end is fantastic and I absolutely love the embellishment here.  Whip sfx towards the end is fitting and I'm surprised I had not heard it in any of the other tracks at this point.  Production could have been a spoiler on this one, but I preferred the arrangement here.

man i would love to be part of this but my schedule might be packed! if anybody's interested in a collaboration partner born before 1999 i'm down!
edit: stuff i can contribute as a collab partner can be seen on my OCR profile!
edit 2: if anybody's down for collabing with me on a Deep Rock Galactic or a One Step from Eden remix please hit me up! i would love to do arrangements of either game and i will move heaven and earth to make time in my schedule to do one, but i might need some help!

so, shout out to Hemo and HoboKa letting me know on two separate occasions during MAGFest (sorry, the internet was bad!) that my silly little city pop romp won this round of PRC. thank y'all so much for the love! it was my first time attempting the genre for a track from a silly game that meant so much to me. i'm sending all of my love to you, suspended on silver wings! you all did such amazing tracks.
i've been thinking about my winner's pick for quite a bit. while it was tempting to suggest another city pop-leaning piece (lookin' at you, hazure02!) i wanted something sentimental, something to spark inspiration while we're all feeling sentimental.
my source pick is "the afternoon streets" from kingdom hearts, by Yoko Shimomura.
midi download link (VGMusic): https://www.vgmusic.com/file/12681e383f82817929690513b1ea8f39.html
hope to see you all around! keep making bangers!

Did a quick mix from the source selected by Colorado Streets. Perhaps anyone else can do a remix as well.
Bundeslang - The Afternoon Song (Kingdom Hearts 3).mp3

@Hemophiliac consider us even for "Steeling Hearts" ?
but in all seriousness, i loved "You're Not From This Town!"

@colorado weeks I would LOVE to do Deep Rock if my schedule allows!!
(Would also like to do my own if I have time)

@Hemophiliac consider us even for "Steeling Hearts" ?
but in all seriousness, i loved "You're Not From This Town!"

@aeroprism i'm game for revisiting this, transposing this to a more comfortable key for you is no issue at all! thanks to all the judges for your insight!

@Hemophiliac consider us even for "Steeling Hearts" ?
but in all seriousness, i loved "You're Not From This Town!"

man i would love to be part of this but my schedule might be packed! if anybody's interested in a collaboration partner born before 1999 i'm down!
edit: stuff i can contribute as a collab partner can be seen on my OCR profile!
edit 2: if anybody's down for collabing with me on a Deep Rock Galactic or a One Step from Eden remix please hit me up! i would love to do arrangements of either game and i will move heaven and earth to make time in my schedule to do one, but i might need some help!

This really encapsulated the warmth and inclusiveness of Mr. Rogers.  It brings so much joy and happiness to me when I listen to it that I can't help but smile.
I'm really glad you kicked my butt in the third round of the compo with this, and I'm glad it's on the front page.

I’m game.
if this starts running, make sure to look into mastering (and a mastering engineer) and take enough time into account for judge evaluations, revisions and post production. The two months you listed are probably on the short side for that.

Glad to see this one finally make the light of day. ...Well deserved.
@aeroprism @colorado weeks
I had expressed before in GSM1 how much I loved this song, and I'll reiterate it again here. Congrats to you both, esp. Seb, for becoming a new ReMixer. If y'all do revisit it (and hope so) would be lovely to hear the extra take.
GL. HF. Hugs all around. Nice work. ♡

Hey all! Just some quick updates I wanted to let you all know about.
Site & Forum Updates
If you're an artist, your forum profile now includes a link to your artist page. This also shows up in your little profile box when you post threads. I've been doing a couple of small style and layout tweaks to forum listings in an effort to reduce some whitespace. Guidelines for certain forums have been moved out of the announcements module to the forum's internal rules setting. You'll see a relevant link on forums that have specific guidelines. I did a pass on forum profile fields and deleted a lot of obsolete data (like the field for your ICQ number!). There are a couple of new fields too, like Pronouns and Discord. Make sure you head over to your account settings and keep that profile updated! Tagging has been disabled on forum threads for regular members. We (the staff) weren't seeing a lot of sensical or consistent usage, so we're in the process of cleaning those up. We may revisit forum thread tags later with predefined options. The Ready to Review process in the Post Your Game ReMixes forum has been retired. It served us well for a couple of years but after a while we found that people were not engaging with it, and it felt like another bureacratic layer to the submission process. We've gone back to the older, more open-ended format where you can just post your remixes for feedback. A similar process in the Recruit & Collaborate forum has also been retired. Vote counts on submissions in the queue have been moved out of thread titles and into tags for the purposes of some internal tooling I'd like to try, so you won't see those anymore on the Currently dashboard and I worked on fixing how that data gets pushed to the dashboard, so you'll still see vote counts. Upcoming Events
Do you have OPINIONS about REMIXES? Join us this Thursday at 8:30PM EST on Discord where we run the first-of-hopefully-many Review Bombs! We're going to get a listening party going for OC ReMixes that have gone the longest without having any reviews and rectify the situation. I've heard of Metroidvania, but METROID VERSUS VANIA?! This Friday, we're kicking off the second run of Game Set Mash!!, our long-form team-based remix competition. This run features music from two legendary franchises: Metroid and Castlevania, and two teams will compete to see who can make the best Metroidvania Mashups. They'll have two weekends to get their tracks done, so check back at the start of February and get your votes in! Speaking of competitions, I'd be remiss if I didn't shout-out the People's Remix Competition, which just ended a legendary 20 year run under the stewardship of @Bundeslang. I remember back when PRC started back in 2003 (!!) and it's been a rock solid staple of OC ReMix since then, with a lot of musicians in the community developing and honing their skills through their participation. Absolutely incredible work from everyone involved over these past two decades. Make sure you check out the thread for the last round!
Well, that's all from me for now. I'm still getting a handle on how everything works and fits together here, but slowly-and-surely we're going to continue to inch OCR ever-forward. Thanks!
- DarkeSword

Massive respect to everyone who reviewed every track from this huge round! Wow! Thanks for all the nice comments. I sure intend to finish my track. It would be nice to get posted in 2025, come to think of it ?
I'm proud of every wooden spoon I've received from PRC! (And I'll be honest, my ego is inflated seeing myself so high up in the hall of fame ?) Such good times! Once again a big thanks to Bundeslang for running the compo for so long.
Congrats to coloradoweeks! That's some saccharine Shimomura right there ?

so, shout out to Hemo and HoboKa letting me know on two separate occasions during MAGFest (sorry, the internet was bad!) that my silly little city pop romp won this round of PRC. thank y'all so much for the love! it was my first time attempting the genre for a track from a silly game that meant so much to me. i'm sending all of my love to you, suspended on silver wings! you all did such amazing tracks.
i've been thinking about my winner's pick for quite a bit. while it was tempting to suggest another city pop-leaning piece (lookin' at you, hazure02!) i wanted something sentimental, something to spark inspiration while we're all feeling sentimental.
my source pick is "the afternoon streets" from kingdom hearts, by Yoko Shimomura.
midi download link (VGMusic): https://www.vgmusic.com/file/12681e383f82817929690513b1ea8f39.html
hope to see you all around! keep making bangers!

so, shout out to Hemo and HoboKa letting me know on two separate occasions during MAGFest (sorry, the internet was bad!) that my silly little city pop romp won this round of PRC. thank y'all so much for the love! it was my first time attempting the genre for a track from a silly game that meant so much to me. i'm sending all of my love to you, suspended on silver wings! you all did such amazing tracks.
i've been thinking about my winner's pick for quite a bit. while it was tempting to suggest another city pop-leaning piece (lookin' at you, hazure02!) i wanted something sentimental, something to spark inspiration while we're all feeling sentimental.
my source pick is "the afternoon streets" from kingdom hearts, by Yoko Shimomura.
midi download link (VGMusic): https://www.vgmusic.com/file/12681e383f82817929690513b1ea8f39.html
hope to see you all around! keep making bangers!

so, shout out to Hemo and HoboKa letting me know on two separate occasions during MAGFest (sorry, the internet was bad!) that my silly little city pop romp won this round of PRC. thank y'all so much for the love! it was my first time attempting the genre for a track from a silly game that meant so much to me. i'm sending all of my love to you, suspended on silver wings! you all did such amazing tracks.
i've been thinking about my winner's pick for quite a bit. while it was tempting to suggest another city pop-leaning piece (lookin' at you, hazure02!) i wanted something sentimental, something to spark inspiration while we're all feeling sentimental.
my source pick is "the afternoon streets" from kingdom hearts, by Yoko Shimomura.
midi download link (VGMusic): https://www.vgmusic.com/file/12681e383f82817929690513b1ea8f39.html
hope to see you all around! keep making bangers!

Hello!
I'm a newbie who goes by the musical alias of Lunios. It's wonderful to check out the forum after acknowledging OCR for donkey's years now, and I can say this is quite a vibrant place for someone to hone their musical skills. I'm just a novice composer who creates things for the fun of myself and my peers. While on the sidelines, I'm pursuing an underground career in the electronica and acid niches. I submitted a piece about a week ago and felt a little anxious to say hi, but it would be disrespectful if I didn't, so I decided to write this up!
I'm a young face here, but in the time I have been around, I've been inspired by djpretzel and his works towards founding Overclocked and GMI, making the recognition of VMG and its remixes wide for the public hence how I found out. (Ps: I hope Pretzel succeeds in his future endeavors after moving on from OCR). Anyway, enough of me ranting on. Closing this up, I'm happy to dabble in this community and see what new works come from it.
So yeah, see you around!