Unknown Pseudoartist   Members

Hey! I released this thing this Friday and just though of posting here, in case anyone were interested and brave enough to listen. It's hard to define in musical terms and labels, but I'd say it's mostly metal but also many other things. This time perhaps moving closer to folk and cinematic elements, and musically softer and more emotional than in previous 2 original releases, while still some moments of aggressiveness. Oftentimes moving under a pretty dark atmosphere and using some ambiance stuff (using my own recordings of [real] birds, rain, etc). Lots of melodies, maybe sometimes somehow catchy, but also plenty of riffs and more stuff. Lots of stuff happening all the time, so not a single second of boredom or repetitiveness. I'm personally happy with the balance I got this time, since it's kinda experimental and chaotic but also pretty melodic and accessible enough, not moving too much into any of both extremes. Most of these tracks were originally done for quick compos in ThaSauce (OHC and 2HTS specifically), which I know many people from there is active here too, but with all the later improvements, extended arrangements, etc which took a lot of time to get to the current point. I also experimented a bit with the visual artworks for a style that is both silly and scary, using photos of my dear kitty Kira in some abandoned buildings I seen during my walks in the far outdoors. Also somewhat combining elements of genres like metal or goth along with hip hop (because the graffiti style text and logos in combination with the many ones that were already in the background pics) despite the lack of hip hop elements in the music. The idea and concept, for both music and art, is closer to that of the depths of the underground scenes in a 2000s internet full of passionate folks than that of today more superficial scene with more experienced and technical artists that aren't that much for fun anymore. It's that kind of spirit and special charm that, even before I ever dared to try anything of my own, just got me hooked up back in the times as a curious teen exploring this old good cyber-world. An internet that had plenty of shit in more social and ethical terms and which was far away from ideal, but definitively a lot of cool and special stuff that unfortunately got lost in favor of the more superficial stuff and the hegemony and dominance of big corporations and algorithms. And yeah, it's all fake (MIDI) instruments but REAL feelings! Just try and listen without fear :) But enough talk; have at you! You can listen and download all the tracks in Bandcamp (a few bonus/extra tracks included if you download. It's free!): https://unknownpseudoartist.bandcamp.com/album/a-third-placeholder Also linking to the album's page in my own website, since it's getting closer to finished and properly manageable, and it has more organized info and stuff about each individual track there: https://unknownpseudoartist.com/discography/placeholder3/ I hope someone likes :)

Hey! Honestly I didn't read 100% of what you wrote yet, but I seen you posting similar walls of text regarding concerns on music production, and the kind of crussade you are going is interesting, to say the least. People may agree or disagree with your thoughs, and may like or dislike your own mixes and stuff. But at least you are questioning these things and going your own way with them, rather than simply pretending to fit the current trends on whatever works or sells best, and that's an attitude I personally applaude. My own concern with the so-called loudness war as a musician now is more about a simple fact: to make mixes that sounds good and clear can be hard enough, but to make it to sound good and clear AND also loud as heck... definitively not a comfy thing. I'm not fond of mixes that are too much dynamic either, since it can be annoying (as a listener) to listen to music that can be totally quiet at a moment and extremely loud at another moment. It's just not a pleasant experience when you have to keep fingers at the volume buttons to adjust it. But everything sounding hella overcompressed and loud can be a headache for real, and so I totally understand and even relate to the special charm on older productions, even though oftentimes that might be a bit too raw. Funnily enough I see the exact opposite trends on other media forms, like movies, series, animes, etc. When people is talking you have to rise volume because you can't hear the words right, but when action happens your ears are screwed and have to decrease it. It's like they assume everyone watches stuff in a home cinema, but that's a pain when you just use an ordinary computer in a small bedroom with regular 2.1 speakers and living with more humans at home in near rooms.

If no problem with that, I'd be glad to join this album too, for the first time. After all, there's no strict quality controls or anyone being nitpicky with mixing on this one, right? :D You say any source is okay, even if not VGM, but just asking: are original compositions allowed, too? Because it sounds more tempting to try something original but influenced by good weather (aka cold and snow haha). If this is only about arrangements/remixes of other things, the source I'm thinking of is "Ary" from Tales of Phantasia. The original is slow and chill as heck, but I'd love to try something a lot faster and upbeat, in the style of the so-called "doujin" artists from the 2000s like I-Chu, Akineko, U-Gen, etc. I can totally see the vibe fitting this style and still fitting the theme, kinda sounding like some weirdo is having fun running with a skate all around the streets of an empty city because everyone is busy at their homes with family and stuff, just a funny concept I'm toying with mentally :D

Well, good news regarding my track: I already managed to assemble an awesome team of performers to join! 2 guitarists (for rhythms and leads separately), bassist, drummer, clarinetist, keyboardist... that'll be like a real great band. I got some progress with the video already, which, sure, not a requirement for the album at all haha but I'm doing it more of my own, as a kind of concept thing to better show the ideas. Basically inspired by classic horror movies in general and Nightmare on Elm Street in particular. All is going really well so far and everyone involved has plenty of time, so unless shit happens last minute, I have some good expectations with it. Excited to see what everyone else is cooking as well :)

Not exactly the genre you are looking for, but I did an arrangement of the same source a few months ago. It's more of a pop punk with smooth intro and lo-fi interlude, tho haha. More Illusion of Gaia covers (or of other Quintet games) are always welcome, in all kids of styles, moods and whatever. These games deserves ALL the love! Hopefully someone else will make something closer to what you are asking for :)

Hey! Your nickname sounds familiar. I especially remember you from your stuff in Vampire Variations. Nice to see you back :) Also this track sounds nice. MIDI Metal FTW! Simple and raw, just what sometimes we need. I can see that fitting pretty well in an early 90s shooter game like Doom or Duke Nukem.

Hey! No problem! It's not like we all have to always give quick replies at all. As to add my track in the tracklist... that's up to you, if you think it's worth it. Maybe I could help on other things too, like web development/design, which I have more experience in than with music making haha. Or with artworks or anything requiring image or video editing, which I do a lot too even though not a pro on these subjects either.

Oh, nice, I don't know how I missed this project, but I love the idea! I just love creepy stuff (how creepy that sounds like! haha) Maybe a bit late, but I have a very rough WIP for a track that I think it'd fit this album pretty well. It's a dark/horror/creepy/whatever arrangement of the boss theme from Terranigma, highly inspired by that annoying boss, Bloody Mary. Terranigma's anniversary is in October too and I'd love to make a video with it once it's finnished, so the plan is just ideal. So far it's 100% MIDI but the structure has plenty of progress. I'm pretty confident with my arranging skills and ideas but everyone in the VGM scene seems to hate my mixing haha, so since this project seems not to be that nitpicky it'd probably be just fine. Still accepting help from performers or even in mixing/mastering if anyone is interested, tho. I can share the latest WIP as reference if that's needed.

Kweh! Or maybe more conveniently to say "meow!", I dunno. Yeah, that baddass kitty artwork you see above is the album's front cover. And the title... all started when the gray baby was yawning at the moment of taking that photo of her. That inspired me to try some silly ideas for a hypothetical album cover artwork. I used "The Placeholder of Something" in the logo and a nice person (who might prefer to stay anonymous) told me: "I hope you use that title in an actual release sometime". So, why not? So in April 1st 2024 I released a quick and short collection of new original compositions with that name and artwork. And more recently, for the April Fools of this year, I repeated the action. This one I'm posting here now is bigger and longer, tho. And a lot more varied. Basically I guess we can call that as very synth instrumental metal with a wide variety of influences ranging from folk to electronic, now also some ambient and more. Sometimes cheesy, sometimes agressive, always weird. Not suitable for trves, but if you are open-minded enough and you like variety in metal and you give more importance to ideas and originality than to budget and production, you might definitively enjoy this thing. This is pretty much the kind of stuff you'd expect to find in a day of random browsing on MySpace or Soundclick profiles, or in the 128k MP3 links on a personal artist static HTML site in the mid-late 2000s. The pure essence of amateurness in the best way. That wasn't intentional but it just happened. I guess I like the underground sides of art and everything too much, and not into the mainstream and the crowds and masses at all. Each track has its own story behind its inspiration, and many of them were also started as a participation in the quick compos of ThaSauce (OHC and 2HTS specifically). Just takiing a moment to show my gratitude to that community and the nice people on it for their acceptation and their lack of MIDIphobia. This period of time, especially for most of 2025, got me in a time when my main hobby and source of joy was taking long walks in the outdoors, exploring interesting places as far away from human civilization as possible and staying there with no more company than the sound of the wind and the (real) birds. That sure had some influence in the compositions and the vibes. And so I also though of using and editing some of the photos taken during my routes to make individual artworks for each track as well. A nice way to combine both music and visual art, I guess. And I have to plans to extend that to full videos for each track in a future as well. Anyways, stopping the boring wall of text for now... if this description didn't scare you yet and instead you have some interest to hear what I'm talking of... you can get the full album collection of demos for free (just put 0 as price) in Bandcamp. Includes 3 bonus tracks and the full artwork. https://unknownpseudoartist.bandcamp.com/album/another-placeholder-of-another-thing Alternatively I also uploaded the full thing to Youtube in a single semi-static video. Basically toying with silly ideas to make the ubitiquous "visualizer over image" format a bit more dynamic and fun. You can see the metal kitty dancing there with her Flying V guitar! If, despite all odds, you dared to listen to this thing... please, let me know what do you think! :)

That's nice. I moved to "the dark side" around 1 decade ago and the classic "black font over white background" always burns my eyes. If the classic version is still available for whoever prefers that, I see absolutely no problem. I personally love the typical 2000s forum aesthetics in this theme particularly too. Simple but effective. As a funny fact, I use a Firefox extension named "Dark background and light text" to adapt any site to this format. Maybe because some inconsistence between the HTML colors and the background images, the classic OCR theme didn't work well with the Default mode, so I had it configured to invert colors in order to get the dark theme experience. So when I checked OCR today that's how it looked like, since it kept inverting colors :D (obviously I have it normal now)

So... a few days ago I released which happens to be my most complex VGM Remix album so far. 11 covers, remixes, arrangements or whatever of 11 (or 12 if we count some hidden track haha) different tunes from this amazing soundtrack. Musically this is pretty varied but always with metal as the main base. Featuring a lot of talented performers in all tracks, some of them also active in OCR. You can listen to or/and download the full album in Bandcamp (it's "free or name your price", so just put 0 as price. Or ask for a download code if you want to add to your Bandcamp collection) https://unknownpseudoartist.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-phantasia-a-metal-tribute-to-tales-of-phantasia Alternatively you can also listen to the full album in Youtube in a single static "video": Anyways, if you can find some time to listen that'd be nice There was a huge ammount of time, effort and passion poured into this thing and I thin it's worth it. I hope you like :)

This is an interesting topic I've been thinking a lot of lately because the recent hype with AI generated music got me in a time when I just released my first original music album. Since I'm still learning and lacking of experience the results aren't that great so some people might prejudge that and assume it's AI, even though actually I manually wrote every single note in the pianoroll. But it was a pleasant surprise to see you all pointed at exactly the points I'm concerned of. It's not about results but more about the process. Nowadays AI generated music might be still mediocre, to say the least, but even if it eventually got real good... there's something special about the satisfaction of simply having your work done after all the time and work spent. You kinda grew with your works in a way that it makes them more like friends you build memories and stories with, and when you finally see them ready to be published you feel like you accomplished something you can be proud of. It don't matters if the compositions or arrangements are bland, if the mix sounds horrible or the genres/styles are not everyone's cup of tea. It's your work and you love it and want others to enjoy it just as you enjoyed the process, with all its moments of both tediousness and happiness. And then you keep learning and being able to do more and better stuff as you keep trying and doing more and more of that. If all you did to get it done is just writing some text line in a web/app form, however... where's the story? Where's that special feel that may connect both artists and listeners? That work ends being nothing but some randomly generated product, very much like any of these old Flash avatar generators. Music making can be often too hard and frustrating, especially if you are under disfavorable conditions of some kind (like lacking proper tools, dealing with ancient hardware, being in some kind of depression or any mental craps that makes everything even harder, etc), so I can totally understand people loving the idea of having access to such a task with just asking some cold and emotionless AI. I'm all into making things as easy as possible for anyone to show their creativity to the world, actually. But making things easier is one thing; and I can see how practical AI tools can be to just ease some parts of the process; but for the end-product? That's a totally different thing that does nothing good for creativity but rather the opposite.

Hey, it's sad to see this is the end for PRC. I'd really like to be involved more. On the other hand, these 472 compos full of cool stuff won't be in vain; that's a lot of stuff for everyone to enjoy forever, so thanks everyone for so much of good music! Also thanks a lot for the reviews! Some of these were unusually long and detailed, and it's helpful to have more opinions like that from people who really took the time to listen to everything with full attention. I'm glad some people even considered mine worth giving some vote considering you can vote only 3 songs. I'm used to get into the latest places in compos like DoD and PM so that's somewhat refreshing, and even more so since that was a solo work with no actual talented artists recruited haha. I'm aware that while often having good and interesting ideas for arrangements I still suck at mixing and I think of that work more as a unpolished demo than the actual finished product. In a future I might have someone playing guitars and flute and maybe more improvements in drums programming and backing synths so that will sound a lot better.

I have a couple of WIPs I started this month and was considering to submit as bonus/alt entries, but I hesitated to do because, unlike the one I already submitted, these weren't done with PRC in mind but more like "I got the inspiration to start this and gonna do it", so that'd feel like I'm spamming the site for merely self-promo purposes. Still since I see the compo is open again I might consider sending them today, tho. I also hesitated to recruit artists (instrument performers specfically) in my track because, for what I see, nearly all tracks are solo projects done by one single artist. But just seeing/listening to Vodou Queen's track and the awesome musicians involved and that sounds real nice :)

Hey hello everyone! I'm not sure if this is the proper place in the forums to post this, as it looks like everyone is posting individual tracks rather than full albums. I remember seeing some people posting announcements of their own new albums in Anouncements but obviously I'm not that important as to deserve posting there, so just decided to do it here. In case that was inappropiate, please mods just move this whenever it belongs. So, well... for anyone who never heard of me before (most likely the makority of people here), basically my "career" into music started in totally accidental ways: it was never my intention to make actual music or remixes or whatever but just ruin it, replacing the beautiful, catchy melodies by silly humming vocals that sounds like a chocobo singing in a bad day. Most of that stuff was early the original source with lead instruments muted, or random midi files from vgmusic. However, eventually as I kept doing more of that I learnt a lot of music arranging, production, etc. And most surprisingly, some people in some place of the net (Dwelling of Duels, mostly) liked my sutff and "asked for more of that". So then I got involved with actual artists and collabs and more and more complex stuff that was totally out of my initial aspirations of simply "giving people something to laugh and have fun with". And so I kept doing more and more attempts of serious stuff too, with the extreme luck of counting with a bunch of talented artists willing to play for me. And so here's that new album I posted just a few days ago with all my new stuff since August (with a few exceptions for next one). That's 17 tracks, almost all of them VGM covers/remixes from both obscure and mainstream games, but also a couple of non-VGM ones and an original one. And just wanted to share this with anyone who might be interested to listen. Please note that I'm not any expert or pro or anything in my own roles, so don't expect awesome stuff, but still totally listenable and maybe even enjoyable stuff, I guess. A few tracks are kinda demo-ish (ie: the first track lacking real guitars because some unepected incidents at its creation time, so that thing that sounds like guitars are actually amped harps!) and while tracks 1 to 9 sounds kinda decent enough, from 11 to later it's just me and my synths/samples, without anyone collabing, so that may sound a bit "too midi-ish" but still trying interesting stuff and ideas arrangement-wise. Musically I'd say it's mostly metal as base, but lots of elements ranging from folk to industrial. Some weird stuff and some too agressive and some too smooth, kinda varied stuff :) In any case, I hope somebody listens and like something of this. The whole album is available for free download at Bandcamp, where I have a lot more of stuff too (but beware: while this album is kinda "serious" there's some really silly stuff if you check into the past stuff!). https://unknownpseudoartist.bandcamp.com/album/no-birds-allowed Thanks in advance :)