Jorito

I basically do it for 2 reasons: show you guys where I used which parts of which source (which is helpful for voting if you're not fully familiar with the sources) and I'm considering submitting (some of) them to OCR. For the latter a source breakdown + an idea of the amount of source reference (like timaeus did in percentages) helps out the judges and it also gives you an idea if you have enough source usage in there (if you don't have a lot of source usage, chances are the judges won't accept it)

Alright, now that FF9 is out, I hope the staff can give the album a listen.

Glad people enjoyed my vocals this round. 
I had to make sure that I reprised my vocal role again. And what Tuberz song would it be without a blatant ripoff of another fantastic song. 
10 points for anyone who gets the reference. 

Submitting now cause timezones be fucked yo. 

It's vst; unfortunately Joe (XPRTNovice) was too busy to help out on such short notice. The sax is from NI Session Horns Pro, the solo alto sax.
 

Guess I was too subtle  For completeness sake, here's 4 sneaky references:
the intro (0:00-0:03) lead the chorus (e.g. 1:03-1:32) has a 'never gonna give' backing vocal; also heard in the break starting from 2:17 the last verse (3:01) has 'never gonna give you up' backing vocals; probably too subtle to hear the last verse also has this sub lead that plays the 'Never Gonna Give You Up' chorus lead  
I'll get it cleaned up after-compo (there's some timing issues and the mix needs some more TLC) and submit it to the judges to find out what they think about it.

And don't feel afraid to get Tubed; as long as he gets fed funk, he is happy

It's vst; unfortunately Joe (XPRTNovice) was too busy to help out on such short notice. The sax is from NI Session Horns Pro, the solo alto sax.
 

Guess I was too subtle  For completeness sake, here's 4 sneaky references:
the intro (0:00-0:03) lead the chorus (e.g. 1:03-1:32) has a 'never gonna give' backing vocal; also heard in the break starting from 2:17 the last verse (3:01) has 'never gonna give you up' backing vocals; probably too subtle to hear the last verse also has this sub lead that plays the 'Never Gonna Give You Up' chorus lead  
I'll get it cleaned up after-compo (there's some timing issues and the mix needs some more TLC) and submit it to the judges to find out what they think about it.

It's vst; unfortunately Joe (XPRTNovice) was too busy to help out on such short notice. The sax is from NI Session Horns Pro, the solo alto sax.
 

Guess I was too subtle  For completeness sake, here's 4 sneaky references:
the intro (0:00-0:03) lead the chorus (e.g. 1:03-1:32) has a 'never gonna give' backing vocal; also heard in the break starting from 2:17 the last verse (3:01) has 'never gonna give you up' backing vocals; probably too subtle to hear the last verse also has this sub lead that plays the 'Never Gonna Give You Up' chorus lead  
I'll get it cleaned up after-compo (there's some timing issues and the mix needs some more TLC) and submit it to the judges to find out what they think about it.

A lot of fun songs this week, good job everyone! I was loving the playlist order too... wildfire's track felt like a natural extension of Maverick Astley's   #funkbias

Man. I've been loving working with Eino and Jorito. These guys are amazing. 
I only wish I was better at including them in my tracks.
I feel like team Maverick Astley is a competition almost. We all compete to see who can be the most whacky, but still coherent and impress the others. 
I really love it and I really have to thank you for giving me this opportunity Darke. <3 You're the bae. xoxo

Man, now this one is a lot of fun! So much groove, and that organ! Digging the Kirby voice clip and the background vocal interjections in the second half. Lots of energy, I love it! Great Mix, man.

Hm, choices choices. I like the idea of a full OCRA album, but not so much opening it up to all ps1 games. That IMHO will lead to the typical games you see in OCR's top listings (FF, Chrono Cross, Megaman, you know the drill), which is cool but not for this album I think. 
 
What I found interesting about this album is that you limited it to the less remixed games, games with only 1-2 remixes. How about a compromise between the two? Make it an OCRA album, but don't target it to the 20th anniversary per se. Name it something like 'PS1 Lost Gems' or 'Forgotten Treasures' or something. That would keep the pressure off you to do the release properly (as the album deserves) while still sticking with the album concept. To OCRA or OCRI doesn't really matter to me, but with OCRA you maybe get a bit more exposure, which is always cool.
 
$0.02. 

Because I screwed up and didn't check the file names as thoroughly as I should have.
 
Once the competition is over I will be going through and verifying and redoing all the tags and file names to make sure everything is completely correct, and will drop an archival release of the whole competition.

Apparently Rainy Turtloid has done so much cocaine he thinks the entire world is out to get him.

Jorito & Tuberz : This one hit me right in the funk.  fucking great.
 
EDIT: I really needed a top 5 instead of a top 3 vote this week.  Sorry ladyWildfire & Mak

This album is AMAZING!

I'm eager to read all about evktalo's insanity and how the story unfolds. How many people will be slaughtered (tuberzd), how many Doritos are eaten and how the hell did they end up in this band called Maverick BeAstley? Guess we'll find out in the new episode! Hope it doesn't involve Hacksocks singing weWillRockyou at loud volumes and throwing NutS at Usa people.

Hey Shariq, are you still planning on tallying the votes and posting the standings? It's somewhat discouraging not being able to see the results after each round. Just curious. Thanks!

Quick impressions! Had to travel this week so I haven't had much time to listen to stuff.
 
Es-cop-pay - Nice mood! Production values are good and the voice sounds super clear. If I'm getting the source usage right it's pretty creative. Arrangement feels very repetitive though.
 
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Maverick - Nice intro, some of the samples seem of slightly low quality but I dig the vibe. Neon Tiger with the wah lead sounds cool. I like that you used most of the X8 theme in different parts of the arrangement. A tad short though. With more development I'd have definitely voted for this one.
 
Subtle Haystack Tibulation - What the hell is this title haha. I like the use of guitars to give the source a rocking style. I think they could sound more powerful though. The rhytm in 1:21 is weird, seems like the drums and guitars are in different time measures and it sounds odd. In the 2:14 section I feel it gets way too crowded and notes start clashing way too much... Overall it has creative ideas but it seems you tried to cram way too much stuff in here. The moody Never Gonna Give You Up in the ending is amazing haha.
 
Straight Outta RAGE - Not feeling the RAGE in the intro haha, but I dig the relaxing mood. E. Piano sounds sweet. Very creative use of the sources and definitely one of my faves so far. One thing I didn't enjoy that much were the crushing or whatever effects in the drums. They were nice at first but they get tiring fast. Awesome change to the piano break. Second half drags on a bit but the song is very good overall.
 
Palace of the Beast - Nice! Feels like I'm playing a PS1 RPG here haha. Guitar kind of breaks that feeling a bit but the menacing mood is cool. Great use of Slash Beast with the brass, I like that you actually changed the melody to fit the chords (something that many people forget to do and end up with clashing notes). The song then continues with similar but awesome ideas. My favourite of the round probably, very creative use of both sources and great production. If forced to nitpick I feel the drums have too much reverb for the style you aimed for.
 
Chiral - As usual, bringing the funk! The leads sound awesome. Production is clean and the arrangement is fun. However, and as much as I dig the song, I felt other entries used the sources better (maybe just by being longer songs haha), so this isn't getting one of my votes.
 
Beached Whale in Miami - Nice staccato synths. Sadly, this is ridiculously short... I guess it could be a pretty cool song if finished.
 
Requiem for a Reploid - Someone had to make a dramatic song eventually! At 0:23 I almost thought you were going to use Metal Gear Solid's theme haha. Orchestra sounds very nice and chords are very interesting. Mixing Shield Sheldon into such a dramatic mood is a bit hard though since that song is so happy sounding. It fits sometimes but other times it doesn't fit that much sadly. I really like how this sounds, production is clean and instrument selection is great. The usage of Sheldon's theme around 2:20 is very very nice. It reminds me of the PS1 Rayman game (the first one). For the outro I thought you'd go with a super crescendo using that last Sheldon melody so I was a bit disappointed with the calm finish haha.
 
Victory at the Palace of Rejects - For some reasons all your songs sound very similar haha. Production is clean but the arrangement lacks some exciting. To put it bluntly I feel the percussion is very lacking and even boring. Actually I believe this is what usually puts me off about your songs. Leads are fine and have some interesting ideas but drums and bass tend to be slow and without much variation. You should experiment more with that to give your songs a more exciting edge.
 
Leap of Faith - Bass is surprisingly low for your songs Brostock! Awesome rocking mood as always. Your lead playing has been getting better and better lately, especially your vibrattos. The intro riff and it's repetitions are very cool, maybe my favourite riff of the round haha. Overall this is classic Hakstock, nice guitars, cool bass, rocking mood and fun leads! I have to say production seems worse than in your other entry haha. The drums, to be specific, sound less powerful than I'd expect.
 
Rise of the Sigma - Another dramatic song! Some nice chords here. Probably my fault but I barely hear Spark Mandrill. which is weird since it has some pretty recognizable melodies. I like how this sounds but I feel it's lacking in the source usage area.
 
As usual, voting was rough.

Yes, I will try to get things up to date this weekend.

Definitely more on the tactical side but a great game: Valkyria Chronicles.

I believe I can shed some light on this, by providing a little bit of their backstory:
 
   The illegitimate offspring of a 12-person jury and a Dorito chip, Jorito spent much of his childhood convicting marijuana aficionados while simultaneously providing their sole source of nourishment. He had difficulty making friends as many people feigned interest in him solely to satisfy their munchies. But Fate had more in store for Jorito than simply staring out from jury boxes at white people with dreadlocks. Indeed, Fate Johnson introduced Jorito to Rick Astley changing his life and the world forever.      Jorito wanted to be everything Rick Astley was--everything that everyone around Rick Astley was. He started hanging around schools in a tan trench coat and sunglasses, serving alcohol to empty auditoriums whenever school was out. For some reason, the police didn't like this very much and tried to arrest him. He attempted to wall-jump off a chain link fence to escape, but the police still captured him. The convicter became the convicted.      The warden had it in for Jorito. Having lost his mother to unhealthy snacks, the warden took his chance at a bit of revenge placing Jorito in the same cell as the deranged killer, Tuberz McGee. Tuberz had a host of untreated mental illnesses, all of them contributing to his extreme violence. Perhaps most dangerous of all was the violent rage he entered at the sight of uninjured people.      Jorito entered the cell cautiously. The heavily-muscled Tuberz appeared to be asleep. Jorito stepped as quietly as he was able, but a loud crunch sound resulted anyways. He cursed his Dorito heritage. Tuberz awoke to the noise and looked right at Jorito.      "You look yummy. What's you? A 12-person jury or Dorito?"      "Both, actually."      "You mostly look like chip." Tuberz didn't enter a violent rage at the sight of Jorito, despite Jorito being uninjured. Jorito concluded McGee's rage must activate only when he sees pure-blooded uninjured humans.      "So, uh, what're you in for?"      "Man laughed at Tuberz. Man got tubed."      "Oh, well that's uh...uh..." Jorito stammered.      "Then jury convict Tuberz but Tuberz escape. Jury got tubed."      "...An entire jury!?"      "Then another jury convict Tuberz, but Tuberz escape again and tube them too!" McGee's anger seemed to grow with each word. His steady drool turned into a turbulent sputter. His veins bulged and his face reddened.      "You know, I consider myself much more Dorito than the, uh, other half of my parentage..." Jorito hoped his quaking fear didn't show on his face.      "TUUUUUUBE!" Tuberz punched a hole into the wall with steroid strength, ripping out a metal pipe with tremendous force. He proceeded to demonstrate violent "tubing" motions with it, reenacting his myriad murders.      "Uh..."      "Tuberz HATE JURIES," he shouted, unable to contain his rage, before his eyes glazed over and filled with tears, "and.....and juries hate Tuberz. Why they hate Tuberz?"      "I don't know. I, for one, like you a lot."      Tuberz paused his bawling. "You like Tuberz?"      "Yes. I think you have a terrific personality."      McGee appeared dumbfounded by Jorito's claim and stared at him blankly, ".....All of them!?"      "All of wha--oooohhhh....yes, all of your personalities."      "Tuberz like you too. Tuberz help you escape."      "You can do that? How?"      "Tube." Tuberz proceeded to break down the wall with his fists, revealing a chute, probably intended for laundry. Tuberz ripped a hole in it large enough for a person to fit through. "You go in now."      "Hold on. Let's say this takes us outside. What will we do then? If we don't have a plan, we'll just be caught and jailed again."      "We go see my friend, Evktalo. He help."      "Ok, I just hope he knows we're coming."      "He know. He wait for Tuberz," McGee said, before lowering his voice to a whisper, "But Tuberz must warn you something about Evktalo."      "What's that?"      "He completely insane."   (To be continued in Part 2.)
 

If you're talking about modern video game music, you're not likely to make it _better_, even after yours of experience. But making it better shouldn't be your goal, either. Your goal should be to make it your own. Have a listen to a few remixes of recent games and compare them to the originals. You'll find that the remixes are often in a new genre, have a new mood, or does something very differently.
 
With older source materials, especially chiptunes and their like, they were limited in polyphony, instrument realism, and mixing. Those are easier to just upgrade, but that's not nearly as much fun as taking the melodies out of them and putting them in a new context, be that a specific instrumentation, genre, mood, rhythm, or something else. You can look at the different remixes of the same source to find how people have used the same melodies to different results.
 
Another way to approach it is to think about your skills, your sound, the kind of music you can make. What source would be a good fit for that? Some remixers are guitarists and most of their remixes rely heavily on guitars. Some remixers are club-oriented producers, and make music that'd fit the club scene. Some remixers mostly just play piano. Some remixers make orchestral arrangements. Some remixers are real-life jazz bands. Some remixers make things more like covers. Some remixers twist the source so it's barely recognizable. Some remixers play cello and make chiptunes. Whatever your skillset, whatever the style of music you make; what would be a good source to remix in that style?
 
A very educational approach is to pick a style (eg Pendulum) and try to remix something into that style. It'll teach you structure, it'll give you a reference track to compare production and performance to, and you'll be forced to adapt the source in different ways to make it fit. Some melodies are easier than others. The theme from Halo would be easy to adapt to almost anything. Some sources can be very difficult because what makes them recognizable is the style more than the melody itself, like the strange scale used in the Left 4 Dead games' music.
 
If your thing isn't "better than Koji Kondo" but instead "what if x... had lyrics" or "everything can be a waltz" or "all synth, all original synth patches" or something like that, you've got your own thing. Do that instead. Have many things of your own to try, and see which ones work. In my case, it's been chopping up the source, and basslines. Mostly.
 
This isn't an exhaustive list of ways to remix things, either.

A different mindset that I take with this that others are going to disagree with:
 
If you don't know how you want to remix something, don't remix it. Trying to force a track where you have no idea what you want it to sound like is not an organic process.
 
Get better at writing and learn how to wield different styles effectively. Make sure you *enjoy* these styles, too. If you know what a style sounds like, you're more likely to be able to hear a certain song and imagine it in that style, and that ability is the foundation for starting your arrangement. In my experience, arrangements that were born out of request or specification (I need to remix [insert name here] tune for project/compo/because I like it) always paled in comparison to arrangements born out of initial ideas ("The Fire Emblem theme from Smash Melee, but cranked to 11, and with orchestral part writing in the bridge!")
 
That's not to say you can't have inspired ideas in projects/compos/picking your favorite tunes; you definitely can, and you should enter compos to exercise that. But even in compos, I've had a few instances where I simply just was unable to think of a clear idea on what to do and was essentially forced to output a grinding of the gears, so to speak. I had to completely revert to mechanical, theoretical understanding without enjoying what I was writing and just do "the melody" and "the other melody" and "making sure the harmony is correct" and "adding cymbal transitions" and then mixing it together. I've also committed to projects and then left after picking a cool source and not actually thinking about how to arrange it.
 
This runs true in many other mediums of creative output as well. A similar sentiment is shared in screenwriting. The top screenwriting books will always tell you that you have a hot concept if you can describe it concisely while capturing the essence of it and differentiating it from what's already out there.

Giving you guys a 10 minute lead this week because I might be busy at exactly 5PM.
 
This week's theme is Cyber Maze Core from Mega Man X5.
 

Hm, choices choices. I like the idea of a full OCRA album, but not so much opening it up to all ps1 games. That IMHO will lead to the typical games you see in OCR's top listings (FF, Chrono Cross, Megaman, you know the drill), which is cool but not for this album I think. 
 
What I found interesting about this album is that you limited it to the less remixed games, games with only 1-2 remixes. How about a compromise between the two? Make it an OCRA album, but don't target it to the 20th anniversary per se. Name it something like 'PS1 Lost Gems' or 'Forgotten Treasures' or something. That would keep the pressure off you to do the release properly (as the album deserves) while still sticking with the album concept. To OCRA or OCRI doesn't really matter to me, but with OCRA you maybe get a bit more exposure, which is always cool.
 
$0.02.