Jorito   Members

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

Wow, that's great! I'm one of the lurkers following this album project with enthusiasm since Terranigma is one of my very favorite RPGs. 2019 (maybe 2020?) looks promising for fans of JRPGs with albums like this one and the others for Lufia II and Golden Sun. Thank you very much for all the great music as usual, I wish you all the best!

Congratulations everyone!!!

I always encourage album artists to submit their track to the OCR panel for evaluation independently. You don't even have to wait until the album is released; just mark in your submission email for which album it is, and staff will take care of it.
With regards to your other question, the album director(s) get to pick a handful of tracks (usually 5) for the mixflood that will be posted to promote the album. These 5 tracks will be vetted by OCR staff (they have to meet the bar of course) and typically will be published in 2-3 batches in the first week of the album. Any other album tracks that you see getting posted are always individual submissions by the artists themselves; as album directors we only choose the handful of tracks for the mixflood. As always, what tracks get posted when is up to OCR staff discretion of course.
And to answer the unasked question: I don't know yet which tracks we will select for the mixflood  We will do our best to select those 5 tracks that we feel represent the album and the game best, and of which we think they'll promote the album best, but since not all tracks are done yet and me and Trism haven't discussed this yet, we don't have a selection narrowed down right now.

@Jorito Just submitted my track.
By the way, I was wondering, if we want to submit our track as an actual OverClocked Remix track, how do we do that when it's already attached to an album project like this?
I know that in the past, when a new album is released, some (but not all) of the tracks are also released as individual OverClocked Remix tracks. Is there a way to submit it in tandem with the album so that they would be released together if accepted by the judges?
 

As a fellow user and a fan of your OCRs, I *need* to check out what you are doing with Renoise

Hello all.
I just released my new Goa Trance album, Flight To Europa with my new project A Flying Dryad. This means that Reunion is back and open for submissions, but I don't know how active we will be. Our hiatus lasted almost 6 years so most artists who contributed before have probably moved on by now. 
I made the album using Renoise Tracker, so it's NOT like the stuff you're used to hearing from me. I've spent most of this year working on the album so it would be cool if you would check it out. If you're interested in Goa/Psy that is. Album can be streamed on youtube or downloaded from bandcamp (name your price).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJvmJRLb_cI
https://aflyingdryad.bandcamp.com/releases
http://platonistmusic.com/reunion 
cheers
Jonas 

And...
The vision of the site has always been to have a big enough tent for both; we could have fewer headaches, and probably more followers, if we stuck to popular games, or genres, or gave flagrantly disproportionate emphasis to either, but then I'd have to punch myself in the head every day and die w/ regrets, etc.

I have read the comments on the youtube, and one comment really stuck out to me that I think explains why it is so divisive, mainly relating to the philosophy of creating new arrangements of video game music.
The comment, let me find it:
So this is probably the largest difference in the way I process game music vs how I think others do, mainly in the general public who do not produce music actively (casual listeners). This isn't a right vs. wrong issue, this is really more of a perception and philosophy difference/disagreement. This is healthy and should happen in any community that isn't toxic.

For the most part, game music for me is divorced from the game it comes from. I have been told on some of my previous work (back before I had an internet presence) that "this doesn't sound like a battle theme" or similar comments. At one point I did a stripper tempo swing version of Megalovania from Undertale. It went really slow, just to play up the sleaze. For the most part, it was *destroyed* by people who heard it, almost like I committed blasphemy.
OCR is full of creative arrangements, but the whole line is accessibility. For the most part, if you did a calm, ending theme as an upbeat 80s synthwave track, nobody would really complain about it because they can relate to the style. Something much more classically oriented that's out of left field like this doesn't really give much to relate to (unless you listen to a lot of music in this style). It is kind of like listening to some avant-garde jazz and not enjoying it because you don't really listen to a lot of it and don't really "get" its nuance (I am like this with most of the more distant subgenres of metal, for example).
When I do arrangements of game music, almost always I'm trying to do one of two things, and you can hear this from the things posted on this site.

1. Have some fun with a tune I really enjoy or remember fondly, combined with writing some fun stuff to play (Cazador, Journey Never Ends, unrelated but everything I do for Materia Collective falls under this category). This usually ends up being very relatable for most people.

2. Experiment and really push myself in something I'm not familiar with, or explore a style of music I enjoy (Protoman, Reflecting Pool, As Blew the Winds). These are mainly used to develop my skills, and I really don't give much consideration to the audience or making it an way that it means anything outside of itself. This is where the disagreement lies.

So in the most sincere way possible, I REALLY don't care that the Mario fanbase wouldn't listen to this and be reminded of Mario. That wasn't the point. That wasn't even close to the point.

How's the evaluation going?

Here’s your friendly directors again with a quick update. We just passed the last check-in, and we received some promising WIPs! Also a few tracks were finished and mastered, and some other tracks are on their way to be finished. All in all some great progress (thank you, all!) and now it’s onwards to the final deadline end of this month. Good luck to all the remixers wrapping up their tracks, looking forward to it!

Hiya, I did a Future Bass/EDM arrangement of Cid's Theme from Final Fantasy 9 (for the Pixel Mixers FF9 album Beyond the Mist), featuring @Earth Kid on vocals. It's a bit different from my usual stuff and there's frog sounds in it, so what's not to like?
 

Here’s your friendly directors again with a quick update. We just passed the last check-in, and we received some promising WIPs! Also a few tracks were finished and mastered, and some other tracks are on their way to be finished. All in all some great progress (thank you, all!) and now it’s onwards to the final deadline end of this month. Good luck to all the remixers wrapping up their tracks, looking forward to it!

While it might seem things are dormant here, there’s actually quite a lot happening behind the scenes!
First of all, we’ve set the dates for the final check-in and the final deadline:
Final check-in is August 31.  Final deadline is September 30. Tracks will no longer be accepted after this date. We’ve been in touch with the remixers still working on their tracks and confirming their participation. Lots of good progress has been made, and I expect we’ll see a handful of new finished tracks this month!
Also, we have a few new claims!
@Rozovian claimed the Boss Fight track Fredrik Hathen claimed the Underworld track @Jorito claimed the Resurrection theme medley So all in all, plenty of good stuff is happening. Hope to see a lot of promising updates and final versions over the remaining weeks!

Hi all!  I'm not around here much these days, but some of you know me for my game covers and performances at MAG, PAX, etc.  I'm going to be performing a bunch of game tunes at an in-home live-streamed performance on September 21.  Mega Beardo will also be doing a set.  http://twitch.tv/vikingguitar. Here's the FB event if you want to join up:  https://www.facebook.com/events/518637968908370/
 
Thanks, and sorry to spam!
 

 
 

Hiya, I did a Future Bass/EDM arrangement of Cid's Theme from Final Fantasy 9 (for the Pixel Mixers FF9 album Beyond the Mist), featuring @Earth Kid on vocals. It's a bit different from my usual stuff and there's frog sounds in it, so what's not to like?
 

The playlist episode is also a rather nice way to (re)discover some remixes (and I am not just saying that because I’m in it).

While it might seem things are dormant here, there’s actually quite a lot happening behind the scenes!
First of all, we’ve set the dates for the final check-in and the final deadline:
Final check-in is August 31.  Final deadline is September 30. Tracks will no longer be accepted after this date. We’ve been in touch with the remixers still working on their tracks and confirming their participation. Lots of good progress has been made, and I expect we’ll see a handful of new finished tracks this month!
Also, we have a few new claims!
@Rozovian claimed the Boss Fight track Fredrik Hathen claimed the Underworld track @Jorito claimed the Resurrection theme medley So all in all, plenty of good stuff is happening. Hope to see a lot of promising updates and final versions over the remaining weeks!

While it might seem things are dormant here, there’s actually quite a lot happening behind the scenes!
First of all, we’ve set the dates for the final check-in and the final deadline:
Final check-in is August 31.  Final deadline is September 30. Tracks will no longer be accepted after this date. We’ve been in touch with the remixers still working on their tracks and confirming their participation. Lots of good progress has been made, and I expect we’ll see a handful of new finished tracks this month!
Also, we have a few new claims!
@Rozovian claimed the Boss Fight track Fredrik Hathen claimed the Underworld track @Jorito claimed the Resurrection theme medley So all in all, plenty of good stuff is happening. Hope to see a lot of promising updates and final versions over the remaining weeks!

Yuuuup; gonna get moving on getting this into evaluation this weekend, so stay tuned, y'all!

I work at a library and we have a weekly podcast called the All the Books Show. This week, we talked about music we listen to while we read and I did a few supplement episodes about Overclocked Remix.
The first was an interview with Liontamer (Larry Oji) about the site, it's history and mission, ect. It was a lot of fun to do and I dug all the behind the scene stuff I wasn't aware of. Larry can just name remixers like a machine.

The second was an Overclocked Remix playlist episode I put together with my co-host, Nic. That was a lot of fun to do.
 

Done Might tweak the mastering a bit and the very end, but it's usable as-is @ 3'30" - fun!

Preface:
I am a formally trained musician. Went through public school band from 6th grade through high school, got 3 undergrad degrees in music (education, horn performance, and classical composition), and am almost finished with a master's degree (classical and jazz composition). I finished my undergrad with 214 credit hours and am currently 23/31 hours through the master's degree. I am a professional performer (classical and jazz), and a high school band director, but have taught theory and private lessons and classes on guitar, bass and piano. I have performed in almost every genre that uses live performances, on many different instruments.

I see many discussions about the importance of music theory, and honestly most of these discussions disappoint me, but not in the way you would think by the preface above. All musicians fall into one of two categories - Music theory is necessary, or Music Theory is unnecessary. There are no other categories, although there are subgroups.
I'm going to start off by saying, that by far, modern music theory is one of the worst taught classes in the history of classes. I put it below most high school Spanish classes. If you compare the standard expected of music theory students to that of a standard biology or English class, it is almost laughably low. I don't know many classes where it is not only normal, but understood by the *teachers* of a class that half or more of your students are going to not learn the material. This is absolutely absurd. Further than this, I don't know of any creative art other than music where the system of organization used to understand it is emphasized so heavily as rules.
 
Let's give an analogy to help this sink in.

You're in an English class, studying Shakespeare. You're learning about the plays of Shakespeare, but it's communicated that the traits that were used in Shakespeare's style of writing are the rules that dictate how books are written, and if you don't follow them, you're wrong. Right off the bat, you should see some red flags with this. "But what about Earnest Hemingway? He breaks the rules here, does that mean he's not a real author?" "Yes. He broke the rules, so he doesn't write real books."
This is about how music theory is approached by many teachers. If you see this, and understand that this is not what music theory is supposed to be, you'll see why almost all arguments against it fall apart really hard.
 
So what is music theory?
Music theory IS a form of analysis. It is a way to listen and analyze music and understand what's going on. It's a way to learn music, and a way to communicate music.
Music theory IS NOT a bunch of "rules" that tell you how to write music. It IS NOT a way for classical musicians to point at things they don't like and say "this is worthless." If it is used that way, it's used very wrong.
Music theory IS a way to compare styles of music to see what is similar and different, and be able to understand what makes an unfamiliar style of music relatable to styles you are familiar with.
Music theory IS NOT tied to or directly related to sheet music. If you don't read sheet music, you are no less of a musician. Theory actually doesn't have much to do with notation on a fundamental level.
 
You know how I mentioned I used to teach guitar classes to high school kids?
When I taught guitar classes, I taught theory. But I didn't say "we're learning music theory today, here are the rules." It really was more like this:
Let's listen to this Johnny Cash song. Let's learn it, do this now. Alright, how is it similar to <song we learned last week>? These chords here, are they the same as <other song>? Yes. This is called a 12-bar blues progression. Let's look at it. The class learned 25 songs in the next week.
Because we had the framework of what a 12-bar blues progression was, and the theory behind it, we went from learning one song a week, chord by chord to 25. We learned 25 songs that used the 12-bar blues progression. This was music theory applied directly to understand music better. We then did a quick lesson on lyric form (the rhyme scheme and whatnot) of most 12-bar blue songs, and I had them write one. There was no lack of creativity here. They could write a song then teach it REALLY easily because everybody had the common language and framework.

Further than this, in similar ways, my students could play in all 12 major AND minor keys. They could figure out how to finger chords they didn't know. For example, this chord is an Ab major 7th chord. How do you finger it without looking at a chord chart? They knew what notes were in that chord, and what do do with the strings to get that chord to happen, and then they remembered the fingering.
 
This is what music theory is
If you're looking at my description and saying "But you didn't teach music theory." You're wrong. I gave them the same written test that I gave the students I was just teaching theory to. They did just as fine as guitar students as the ones who were specifically theory students. Test scores showed very little deviation when compared. This is how music theory is supposed to be. Music theory is the inner workings of music, and why things sound the way they do. Music theory is the reason I can hear a song I've never heard before, and learn it in a short period of time. Any time you hear a song and go "That's the same chord progression as <different song>" you're using theory. If you write music AT ALL, you're using music theory. You may not think that's what you're doing, but that's what you're doing. If you know that *this chord* followed by *this chord* sounds good, but don't know what those chords are called, you're still using theory. If you know that writing a song using the form "Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus" makes your song make sense, you're using theory. All musicians who produce music are using theory whether they know it or not.
The advantage of knowing theory is that you can talk about music in a consistent way and help others understand either the music you write, or the music you like. If you hear something I write, and really like it, I can tell you EXACTLY what I did to create that sound and where I got that chord progression/texture from, so you can learn more about it.
 
You know how I mentioned that I have degrees in composition?
I have a degree in composition, and am almost done with another one. I took 14 theory classes in my undergrad. The same 4 intro classes, and 10 specialized classes (such as jazz theory, 20th century analysis, 18th century counterpoint, and electronic music). In all of these classes, the professor (a composer) would ALWAYS have us listen to the piece before doing any theoretical analysis on it. It didn't matter if it were by Bach from 1730, or if it were by Charlie Parker in 1950. We listened to it and thought about how it was similar and different to what we knew. The analysis ALWAYS fit what the music was doing. If we were analyzing a Bach chorale, we looked at it using the style tendencies and traits that defined that style. If we were analyzing a Charlie Parker tune, we looked at it using the style tendencies and traits that defined that style. We didn't do this with one set of rules and traits for both styles, unless they were similar enough where we could do that and actually make sense of that.
As a composition student in lessons, if I wrote a piece in the style of Glenn Miller and his big band, we would look through Glenn Miller sheet music and listen to the charts to find out "Why does it sound the way it does, and what can you do to get that kind of sound in your pieces?" If I wrote a piece in the style of modern, 20th century classical music, we would analyze pieces of classical music from the 20th century and find out why they worked. Then, when writing a piece, I could express myself in that style.
The argument that music theory destroys your creativity is valid only if you're viewing music theory as a set of rules that you have to follow. If you view any creative adventure like that, your creativity will be stifled. However, if you view it as a series of tendencies and style traits that make music sound the way it does, it frees you to write in any style you want, authentically, and express yourself. As a composer, I write a lot of music that blends jazz, fusion, and classical. I write things I'm proud of and think are pretty creative. But they are that way because I know how to look at music I like and take things from it and use them to express myself.
 
THIS IS THE WAY MUSIC THEORY SHOULD BE TAUGHT AND USED. THIS IS WHAT MUSIC THEORY IS AND WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE USED FOR.
 
One little side note
If you're using your knowledge of theory to say that somebody else is not a real musician, or they don't know what they're doing, or that music has rules, shame on you. You're giving formally trained musicians a bad name. Alternatively, if you are one of those people who brags about not knowing theory and tries to flex on the people who say you need to know theory, you're as big of an ass as they are.
 
I hope that my little essay here has helped you understand a new perspective on music theory and why I feel the argument against it is not particularly valid in most cases.
 

This is so good.   I had to stop what I was doing at work so I could actively listen.  I feel like I need to hear it again. 

Do you like Valkyrie Profile? Do you like Death Metal? If so, then this is THE album for you.
Here is a commercial explaining what this is:
Here is one of the two currently released songs. A new song comes out every two weeks until all 9 tracks are out.
Enjoy the music. Thank you for your time.