colorado weeks   Members

Anyone opposed to the idea of me doing a cover for this? I have an idea. It'll be pixel art like my other stuff, but no game characters or funny/goofy scenes.

Voting Guidelines
Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game.
In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance):
The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 3 Remix Pack (MP3).
For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 3.
Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey II
The Last Soul Labyrinth IV - Petal Bridge [Dungeon: 16F-20F] Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey III
Go Straight Labyrinth VI - Cyclopean Haunt Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey
Shinobi Reverse Labyrinth V - Lost Shinjuku [Dungeon: 21F-25F]

@colorado weeks I'll shoot you a DM shortly, so we can chat about it. ♡

Col!! ♡ My girl! *hf*
That'd be awesome! I've only fluffed around with web design before but it's certainly not my wheelhouse, so having you on-board for that would be great!
Also need some soundboarding with art designers on what to do with the cover art and website art. I was considering pixel art and some form of yearly theming. But this year is free-form, so I wonder what we can do for that! I'm also happy to let others chip-in with art designs yearly, to showcase what people can make outside of just music!

halloween album??? sign me the HELL up!!!
if you're still looking for a dedicated website i can handle hosting/web design!

Howdy! :) 🦇
Some of y'all know who I am, but in case ya don't: 'ello, 'ello--the name's VQ. Bit nervous writing this up, but here goes!
Many here (including myself) have participated in (or know of) @Dyne & @The Coop's lovingly done, yearly [Unofficial] OCR Christmas Album, and I'd like to try and implement / propose something similar for ALL HALLOWS' EVE! 🧡 Out of every holiday in a year, Halloween has always been my all-time favorite, and it's a shame to have noticed not many artists or communities hold much weight for that time of the year--outside of any compos that chime-in for it as one-offs--and I'd like to give the opportunity for music inspired by Halloween, or that present "spooky vibes" to be freely envisioned and showcased for that special date! :D
Here's the deets!

Voting Guidelines
Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game.
In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance):
The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 2 Remix Pack (MP3).
For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 2.
Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey III
My Little Baby Cityscape - Engrave Thy Name and Go Forth Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey
Alien Power Strife - Rapture [Normal Battle: Final Floor] Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey II
Ending Return of the Heroes [Ending 1]

These are just going to be first impressions from voting, so take this all with a huge grain of salt!

The City Is a Warm, Dead Waste: I love the variety here! It reminds me of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin in some ways, it doesn't surprise me to see a few Team Whip alumni on this one! Guitars are kickass here, and there's a monster amount of synth variety too. There's a solid amount of cohesion with the sounds chosen here, though I'm somewhat less sold on the arrangement itself - lots of great ideas but I think it'll take me some time to grasp where the arrangement is actually taking me. I think there's some reverb fine-tuning to do here, a lot of the elements feel overly boomy, which takes away some of the bite from elements like the drums. Other than drums/guitar, I actually surprisingly can't pinpoint individual elements contributed by each artist - there's a lot of sounds that feel like they could have come from anyone, which is pretty neat!

🏆Duel of the Shifting Sands: Ooohhh, 8-bit plus! I'm not surprised at all by that, but I'm not used to hearing it with all the extra bits and bobs, and I gotta say... I dig it! A lot. I think there's untapped potential to process the chiptune elements a little more dynamically, but overall, the blend works pretty damn well. 3:02, hell yeah! This is a great way to drive this home. I was on the fence about which track would get my vote, but this section really clinched it for me. Overall, I saw a huge amount of potential and TONS of great ideas thrown out from both entries in this duel, but this track feels like like it has the edge in terms of focus and cohesion.
 
🏆Seven Fists Under the Sakura Tree: Motherfucker, you guys are not playing around. This hits IMMEDIATELY off the rip. That fill at 1:06, excuuuuse me? I think this has a bit of the same "washiness" that I noted in "Warm, Dead Waste" where there's just a little bit less clarity to the mix than I would like, but I don't think the track suffers too much as a result. Ok, and now we go into something completely different at the end that somehow also works? I was trying to write out my highlights as I went along, and I just couldn't keep up. The sound choices, writing, production... y'all are crazy for this one. This is going directly onto my Smash Bros. playlist. This is going to be hard to beat. 
Sakura Wa Karenai: Ok, so that's how you're gonna play this. The production on here is IMMACULATE right off the jump, I can hear some strong DJ Mokram influence on the world instruments, then some psytrance beats come in and I immediately know who's at the helm. The production on here feels a little tighter, but I'm waiting for the moments like Team Rage had in their entry that REALLY knocked me off my feet. Oh, there's 2:06 - that's more like what I'm talking about, but it still feels like you're holding back on the energy levels. We've still got time to go though, so we'll see where this goes. 2:42 really jumped out at me in a completely different way, but it was a powerful moment with the entrance of vocals and that beautiful FM piano. The sound design in this section is off the hook. OH BABY SHUFFLE RHYTHMS now we're cooking. Ahhh, this matchup is TOUGH. There's so many brilliant ideas here and there's actually quite a bit of connective tissue to bridge them all together, but will say that the energy management falls just a little short of my hopes. The mix is incredibly clean, from the instrumentation to the mixing/mastering, but it feels like there was room to push the intensity further. I still loved this a ton, and you gave the other track a serious run for their money, but Seven Fists takes the crown in this matchup for me.
 
🏆Only Trust Your Mix, Techniques Will Never Help You: this title sounds like something I would hear in an incomprehensible Youtube Short production tutorial, I'm curious what the title alludes to! This starts off with some pretty straightforward but catchy, bright rock that reminds me of old Sonic Adventure music, the lead performances are top-notch. I don't feel like this track was as ambitious as the other ones from Team Rage in terms of ideas, but it feels like perhaps the most cohesively-executed of the three, and just because it's more focused, doesn't mean that it's any less impactful. The seagulls are a nice touch too, reminds me even more of Sonic Adventure when we hit that part. Crazy breakdown at the end, this was really good!
You Make the Sun Shine (In My Heart): Aww, so cute! This is definitely the hardest matchup so far just by virtue of the fact that each entry were clearly going for different things. The other two matchups, although executed very differently, ended up going for relatively similar energy, but this is the kind of diametrically-opposed matchup I love to see from GSM. The lead vocals are confident and fit the bill really nicely - some slightly awkward moments where the lyrics and the melodic phrasing don't perfectly sync up, but that's to be expected on a short timeline when you have to add your own lyrics to the equation. Across the board, I'm hearing brilliant synth riffs and excellent sound choices. I love the vocal harmonies that I assume colorado weeks contributed? 3:25 onward to the end of the song is when everything really clicked for me <3 The area where this struggles for me is the mixdown - it doesn't feel like it's quite baked yet, specifically in terms of relative volume levels. The lead doesn't always feel like the lead, and there's certain elements (like the synth bass at 2:40-ish, for example) that feel inexplicably louder than everything else. There's also several elements that don't quite feel glued together with appropriate level of bus compression or reverb to really give this a sense of place. When both tracks are full of great ideas but in totally different ways, I need to fall back to execution, and in this case, I have to trust the mix from Team Rage.
 
There's no dead air this round, every team brought the heat in terms of concepts and energy! Execution was a little more of a mixed bag, ultimately I feel like any of these matchups could have been swayed with different levels of polish on the execution, which means that you all hit the mark in terms of blending the sources well. I am well familiar with the time crunch element of GSM, and it does tend to play out tougher for more ambitious, multi-genre concepts that will always take longer to polish. Even though I ended up generally voting for the tracks that felt tighter and maybe took a few less stylistic risks, it's not for lack of enjoyment of the more ambitious ones! If you didn't get my vote here, it just means that I thought the song needed a little more time in the oven - everyone did excellent work and I enjoyed it a lot! 

This was a super fun showing! Just writing down stuff I've brought up in the discord and listening party:
- I helmed (arranged, produced, mixed) the lion's share of Dead Waste. seph was super helpful in spicing up the guitar parts I wrote and doing some extra textures/transitions. H36T did stems for piano and female vocals, Ronald did some dark ambient synths/FX, and I consulted with josh and Moebius on drum part-writing and mastering, respectively.
- both the gf and I thought the ocarina in Shifting Sands was a soprano sax, lol, but after the drop I can hear it better.
- Shifting Sands is also the most VVVVVV-sounding thing JSA has done, imo. The low end profile right before the drop kicks in is great. Xaleph(?) did a great job with the mixing.
- "Seven Fists" is the punchiest one this round, imo. I joked with seveneyes/alex that he was gonna master it to -7LUFSi and it came out to -6.9. "Dead Waste" and "Mix" both sat around -10 to -11LUFSi (different people mastering). Its Run, Lola, Run-sounding transition is awesome.
- I'm pretty sure all of Team Streets was floored by the Etrian!Sakura arrangement. It took us a while to figure out the flow of ours, in part because the Cherry Blossoms MIDI was formatted as triplets instead of "true" 6/8 or 12/8. The buildup/sound design in the intro is great.
- I also had no idea Weeks also did the low vocals during the breakdown in Etrian Sakura! Her range is crazy.
- Moe's time changes were super fun and Moe/josh overdubbed seph like three or four times in Mix. Moe also schooled on josh and I by making one of his transitions a seagull when we were trying to arrange it with drums or guitar, lmao.
- Sun Shine (In My Heart) has some good vocal balancing for the time-crunch. I also can't hear "Azure Sea and Sky" without hearing the lyrics now. I joked in the listening party that Moe should have stuck like 30 seagulls in his to make it a fair fight.
I also thought it was neat how many credits each track had - it seemed like each team member had a hand in nearly all of each others' tracks. Looking forward to Round 2!

good job everyone
 

These are fucking bangers. I am glad I got to finally listen to them.

Wonderful job to both teams. <3 Kinda funny how I can directly distinguish who is in what team, just based on the sound palettes, techniques used and their individualistic motifs from previous work of theirs!! It's a highlight to hear everyone's hearts and passions and skills mingle together to make something this unique, and both series' OSTs are pretty crazy and gives such a weird, lively, and wide variety of possibilities to the imagination on arranging a remix! So, kudos to the series selection, source choices and the end results!

Look forward to more, and remember, no matter the result, these are fire and I was thrilled listening to each and every one of them (several times over.) :)

Voting Guidelines
Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game.
In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance):
The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 1 Remix Pack (MP3).
For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 1.
Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey
Fighting in the Street Labyrinth IV - Sandy Barrens [Dungeon: 16F-20F] Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey II
Never Return Alive Scene - Wings and Cherry Blossoms [Event: Ones with Wings] Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey III
The Poets II Cityscape - Between the Azure Sky and Sea You can also use this thread to leave comments about the tracks. Remember to be kind and constructive. Thanks for listening, and thanks for voting!

Hey just so you know, this whole "they don't care about privacy anymore" is 100% fucking nonsense. Mozilla does not say that they can use your data however they want. This is also part of the terms of literally any site you upload anything to; the service needs to say "you grant us the right to do things with your work so that our service can actually function." For example: uploading a picture to Bluesky? Bluesky asserts the right to transform your work so that they can generate a thumbnail of the picture you uploaded.
That's what these terms always mean. It's never about a service or a piece of software asserting ownership of your data. It's about you granting them a baseline level of permissions so that they can actually do the things you need them to do with the data you give them. This type of "company is stealing your work" scaremongering makes the rounds every few months in art communities and every single time someone has to clarify that companies are not stealing your work.
Mozilla is not claiming ownership of your work. Mozilla is not throwing privacy to the winds.
Instead of watching a clickbait video that perpetuates the same stupid misunderstandings, maybe go directly to the source and actually read what Mozilla has to say about it?
Also, Brave is the second-to-last browser you should be using (behind Chrome). Brave has engaged with scummy shit such as:
Replacing ads on pages with its own ads and taking a cut Putting their own affiliate links in search suggestions Installing a VPN on Windows without notifying users Numerous partnerships with cryptocurrency firms If you want a reliable browser that's not Firefox, there are plenty of options like Orion, Waterfox, Ungoogled Chromium, Arc, etc.
Brave is not it.
EDIT: But also just keep using Firefox.

Howdy, folks. You may recognize me as Zack! on the OC ReMix discord. I've been enjoying OCR since roughly 2002, and a few months ago I was reminiscing about the OCR podcast in its various incarnations and how much I missed them. I voiced this in the 25th birthday hangout, and @Liontamer encouraged me to get off my butt and just restart the pod.
So I did. Check it out here: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2445308.rss Ad-free, not trying to make a single cent off of this, and I keep the language tame so that you can listen with kids if you want to.
I'm very much an amateur at this, hoping to get better at it as I go. I learn a little more every recording and editing session, so fingers crossed a few more of these and thing will be half decent. If you're reading this, episode 2 is out, so go grab it if you're interested. I'm aware that a few of the voiceovers sound, well, awful. I had the wrong mic selected, didn't notice until edit time, and I have a cold now so my voice is all funny. I figure you guys can deal with a couple minutes of webcam mic.
The format is roughly news, new remixes with my worthless commentary on them, some random segment that strokes my ego, and then one final Russian Remix Roulette track. I remember them rolling a die and playing a RRR track on the very first incarnation of the OCR pod, and I wanted to keep it going.
Question for the powers that be: any objections to me using the OCR logo as the pod's thumbnail?

Eighteen of these. Eighteen years. Holy shitballs, Batman!
Another album is in the books. This year we have seven songs of various moods, genres and tempos, all set for everyone to listen to and as you get deep into the holiday spirit. While we wait for Dyne to update the site, I'll be hosting the zip file. Once he's done, I'll change the link here to go there. Make sense? Good.
A big thanks to the remixers who joined up, and to Dyne for hosting these albums for yet another year. And on behalf of everyone involved, Merry Christmas!
https://williammichael.info/aocc/

Mr. Coop? HA HA! Fuck... now I feel old.
 
You've got four days to finish it and send it if you want to get in on the action. The deadline's 11:59 PM EST on December 20, 2024. If you submit it, make sure to let me know what the remix title is.


And don't worry, Mokram, Souperion will be there with us.

Don't try to throw the OCR mission statement in my face and think that that somehow proves your point. Nowhere in that mission statement does it say that we need to treat all forms of music in the world equally, regardless of whether it was written by a person or generated by a machine-learning algorithm. That's not there. We are dedicated to the appreciation of and promotion of video game music as an artform. This has, for the last 25 years, meant recognizing that the composers who wrote music for video games created art. They are artists. They are human beings who made thoughtful decisions about the music they wrote. They created with intent.
Can you use machine-learning tools to create artwork with intent? Sure. I pretty clearly stated in the announcement that I don't have a problem with machine learning as a technology, but that I don't want people to post music on OCR from services that trained their models on music that was not provided with consent from the artists who created that music. The technology is not the problem; the people building these services using resources they're not supposed to are the problem. These folks have not figured out how to build these services without plundering the collective creative works on the internet. No thanks.

put me in coach!!
 
EDIT: won't have availability this fall for GSM3, unfortunately. but i look forward to seeing all of your tracks!

Moulin Rouge anyone?  I suddenly felt the compelling urge to don a suit and dance with a rose in my mouth, should I be concerned?

I entered the PRC as AlexSmith. I just want to say thank you to Rexy for hosting the competition. And thank you Bundeslang for the dedication to continue to host it. Although I haven't entered in recent years, I had a lot of fun making music for this competition and appreciate everyone who entered.

You already know I'm in!

I'm in!

If life permits I'll jingle dem bells. 🎄

count me in for holiday cheer :)

It's July 7th. It's time for the Summer, baby. We've got heat, we've got humidity, we've got all the things needed to make you feel sticky... and not in a good way. But don't worry, I've got something cool for you.
Yepper, it's time to start recruiting for the next An OverClocked Christmas album! We've got over five months before the due date, so let's see how many people are interested in taking part for the seventeenth entry in this (usually) happy, seasonal project.
As per the norm, this project is open to any and all OCR members, regardless of whether you're a posted remixer or not. You want info? I got your info right here...
When's The Project Deadline?- December 20th, 2024 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 for the remix. 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, or attach it to your message.

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)
The Vodoú Queen (remixer)
colorado weeks (remixer)
Dj Mokram (remixer)
Souperion (remixer)
Seth Skoda (remixer)
Lampje4life (remixer)
NarnianWarrior (remixer)