Jorito

Very melodic & catchy! I could really go for some more of this genre 

**CANCELLED**
Interested in picking up this project? Drop a DM to Trism
ALBUM PROJECT: Paths Less Travelled: Secret of Evermore
Project Director:
FINAL COMPLETED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: TBC
PROPOSED ALBUM RELEASE: TBC

Current Remixers: NyxTheShield, rebrained, Manji, djpretzel, brink-of-time,
about:blank, Dj Mokram, Argle, TSori, Siolfor the Jackal, theconsoloist, Trism

Current Performers: Trev (violin), TSori (trumpet)
Sound Designers/Audio Support:  Chimpazilla
STATEMENT REGARDING JEREMY SOULE HERE
- PROJECT CONCEPT -
Howdy folks, we’re back! Hot on the heels of the previous album, we’re raring to go at another. We’re doing Paths Less Travelled Volume 2!
For those who missed the first instalment, PLT is a series of albums paying homage to overlooked and underrated games from yesteryear. Whether it be from poor marketing, limited localisation or plain bad timing, we celebrate the gems that undeservedly missed the limelight.
Volume 1 covered a little-known game, originally available only in Asia & Europe, named Terranigma and was RELEASED in December 2019. The game we’ll be bringing to the forefront this time is:

Secret of Evermore is an RPG released on the SNES by Squaresoft on October 1, 1995. With gameplay and a menu system reminiscent to the hugely successful Secret of Mana, it featured real-time battles, ring-shaped displays, and the ability to switch control between characters. This is where similarities ended. Unlike its similarly-named cousin, Secret of Evermore is unique in that it is the only game developed by Squaresoft of America, a small studio beholden to the Japanese parent company. Secret of Evermore was their first and only title. It did not receive a release in Japan.  While the game was generally very well received by reviewers upon its release, it was criticised for not being even similar to Secret of Mana in story or art direction, an expectation likely exacerbated by their similar game titles.
Secret of Evermore is a curiously dark tale following a cinema-obsessed boy and his dog as they fight their way through a virtual world gone awry, filled with characters and locations from the neolithic era to the far future. Think The Goonies x Last Action Hero x Bill and Ted in 90’s RPG form. And the dog can shapeshift. You should play it.
This game also marks the debut of Jeremy Soule, who got the job straight out from composition studies on the back of a demo cassette. Jeremy has gone on to score and compose music for modern classics Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (amongst many, many others). His debut directly utilises environmental and ambient soundscapes to emphasise the feelings of loneliness and exploration. This technique was hardly ever implemented in gaming at the time; and was used to great effect alongside the more traditional music to be expected in an RPG; using the sound of nature to actively enhance an already atmospheric score. 
Here is a link to the selected soundtrack. The track order has been randomised: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKu09f66XIaTvXnXFQUPFQvY0NoxjlcpL
And here’s a link to the midi files. Unfortunately they have slightly different titles: https://www.khinsider.com/midi/snes/secret-of-evermore

- WHAT WE NEED -
GENERAL ROLES
▪Arrangers/Remixers: This is where the bulk of the recognisable work will be. We need folks to claim tracks and conjure them into beautiful remixes.
▪Live Musicians: Performers who are experienced with any type of instrument and have a high-quality recording setup. We would like to get quality live performers on remixes in every instance where remixer's sample quality “isn’t quite there”. Put simply, there are Quality Control standard requirements for the official OCR stamp
▪Cover Artist: Speaks for itself, really. We need someone to create art for the album.

- THE SPECIFICS -
Claiming & Auditioning: All remixers wishing to claim a track should PM me or comment on the thread about any they are interested in and we'll go from there. If you are not a posted remixer, please PM some of your completed work. It needn't be a remix, but something that demonstrates the quality of your skills. Once a track is claimed, a first deadline will be set that is reasonable. We're keeping it casual at the moment, stricter requirements will be implemented as the project progresses. While we want to do this right, there’s no pressure early on. However. If nothing is heard from you in a reasonable time after contact is attempted, you will be dropped from the project and your track will revert to ‘unclaimed’.
Genre Guidelines: There is no genre one should adhere to when remixing tracks for the album, A central theme in the album, as with the game, will be the use of environmental effects. You are NOT required to use any of that stuff in any way, but we WOULD like your blessing to allow us to implement some at the mixing stage. Now hold on! We very well may not, but if we do, it will be with soundscapes created specifically for the album; and used both sympathetically and subtly, to convey a greater sense of atmosphere to the album overall.
If you’ve got a specific idea for a track, by all means run it by us, We’re open to ideas.
Flexible Deadlines: Deadlines will be handled on a case-by-case basis at first, and based on the preference of the remixer, we're not trying to rush things here. Try to maintain contact with us, We know things are scary in the world at the moment. We’re really easy.
 
- CORE TRACK LIST -

Black - Unclaimed Track
Red - Track Claimed, no submission
Orange - Concept Submitted
Yellow - WIP submitted
Green- Significant WIP submitted
Blue - Finished Track submitted
Purple - Finished and Mastered Track
Main Title - theconsoloist
Storekeepers
Boss Theme 2
Pirates of Crustacia - djpretzel
Elephant Graveyard - Manji
Boss Theme 1
Fire Eyes - about:blank
Intro Credits
Freak Show!
Merchant in the Cave
Horace - Argle
Collossia Chamber 1
Ivor Tower Side Chambers - TSori
Pyramid - Dj Mokram
Control Room
Ivor Tower Town - brink-of-time
Ivor Tower Castle
Podunk, 1995
Puppet Show
Final Battle Carltron - Siolfor the Jackal
Queen Bluegarden
Collosia Chamber 2 - Trism
Tinker
Ebon Keep Town
Escape
Ebon Keep Castle - NyxTheShield
Omnitopia Surface - rebrained
Fields of Gothic
Flying
So… all that’s left to be said is welcome aboard and get claiming!

This is excellent. Thank you!

This is one of those covers that you could totally play in a crowd and not a single person would have a clue that it was a VGM cover. Awesome work!

I think I remember having a hard time understanding the vocoded vocals, and maybe the very end could have trailed on for a little longer, but that aside... Tuberz did a great job on his lead vocals. The funk guitar riffs were a nice subtle touch, and the slap bass and drums playing off each other throughout helped keep this arrangement engaging!

Thought it would make sense to post this here: 
Yeah, another remix of your track, @Jorito 
Love this track a lot, btw. I've been listening a lot of vgm-related synthwave stuff lately, and this is just so good! Nailed it as always
 

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Love it! so fun!!

Whooo boy, those orch hits indeed ("what about their legs...they don't need those..."). It's so funny to think they were cutting edge at one time because nowadays they instantly date the music they're in. There's some New Order stuff from ~'86 that has them. Must've sounded like the future at the time.
Anyhow, I don't know Terranigma, but this ReMix is slathered in so much cheese that I can't help but...stick my finger in it. Or something.

A few things that work very well for me:
I only take the lead stuff (melodies) from the source track and forget about the rest (e.g. chord progressions, basslines, etc.).  Up-front I usually already have an idea for the genre/style I want to do, and I usually try to push myself to try new things and make the genre different from what the source track uses (e.g. make an orchestral Megaman track in stead of a more stereotypical rock arrangement) Arrangement structure is flexible; why stick with the exact structure that the source uses? No problem in turning the B section into a verse section, the C version into a chorus and use the A section as a solo, for example. In general, I write like 8-16 bars and then think "okay, I can either go more intense or less intense from here", make a judgement call based on that, and just run with it. Try to make it an organic part of your process and just treat it as an original, I guess (there's a reason I call my remixes "originals with stolen melodies"). Hope this helps some.

A highlight of the album. Beautiful!

******PROJECT UPDATE #9******
And with the except of one remixer doing some polish critiques on a track, we basically have 8 tracks complete now! We're over halfway done! And with the next deadline looming at beginning of March, we are expecting to see a bunch more nearing completion or almost there! But that's not the biggest news....
As of right now, This album has been GREEN LIT FOR OCR ALBUM STATUS!
Yep, that's right! This will be an official OCR release just like Arcadia Legends was! So soon, this thread will move on over to Projects soon when either @djpretzel or another forum mod can get around to doing it.  Big kudos to all the hard working remixers on this project, this album is looking to be a fantastic collection of pulse-pounding music set to one of Rare's underappreciated gems!

Proud to have worked on this project.  Everything I've heard so far is outstanding.  And once again Jorito blows us all out of the water ...But seriously, everything and everyone associated with this album rocks.  I highly recommend grabbing "Paths Less Traveled". 
Also, big thanks to Trism, Odai, Chimpazilla, Jorito and others I forgot to mention for helping coordinate the album.  Wish I could've done more, but this album CO stuff is a bit above my paygrade (and attention). 
See you guys for Soulblazer and/or Illusion of Gaia (Not a spoiler, sadly)

Probably old news at this time, but just wanted to post here to send the congrats and thanks to all those involved on this amazing tribute album. Terranigma is not that kind of game you hear covers/remixes of everyday, yet you folks did the whole soundrack! Even the tracks that were of minor importance in the game are very well arranged and very appreciated the effort.

Many of the melodies from the game holds a special place in my heart as I remember playing this game when I was a kid, oftentimes getting stuck and resuming the game few months or years later, then getting stuck and trying again... and it was not until I was a teenager that I finally beat it.

You don't know how awesome it was to hear such melodies and themes in such a different way. Especially the most rock/metal-oriented tracks, since I'm a metalhead (that Dark Gaia Battle in metal sound so EPIC! And it seems the "band" formed by Jorito and Tuberz strikes again with an amazing remix full of metal but other things too), but all genres and styles are very well done (that massive collab with the overworld theme, for instance. And the cementery / ghost city, the several orchestrals with female chorus, the several jazzy arrangements... all is done very well!).

Thanks a lot for all the time and effort poured on this project

Same as Jorito on point 1, although I won't just take the lead melody, but other elements in isolation. A cool bassline can be a lead melody. Or vice versa.
I'll then iterate on whatever elements I want to use, over original backing, or in isolation. It helps to be able to play an instrument here, even if you're not very good at it, as it's much faster to iterate on the parts you're using that way. Just improvise, jam, mess around, and you'll come up with a lot of cool ideas that you'll want to incorporate into an arrangement. This is why my arrangements end up a bit loooong.
Then it's just a matter of tying them together in a way that makes sense. Sometimes I do that well. Sometimes... not.
Making "originals with stolen melodies" (great phrase) is a good way to break away from the structure of the sources. You can start from a rhythm not found in the original and add elements from the original to it, and adapt them as needed, or write new material to support them. A new rhythm goes a long way to preventing a remix form being too much like the original, even if chords and melodies are the same.

A few things that work very well for me:
I only take the lead stuff (melodies) from the source track and forget about the rest (e.g. chord progressions, basslines, etc.).  Up-front I usually already have an idea for the genre/style I want to do, and I usually try to push myself to try new things and make the genre different from what the source track uses (e.g. make an orchestral Megaman track in stead of a more stereotypical rock arrangement) Arrangement structure is flexible; why stick with the exact structure that the source uses? No problem in turning the B section into a verse section, the C version into a chorus and use the A section as a solo, for example. In general, I write like 8-16 bars and then think "okay, I can either go more intense or less intense from here", make a judgement call based on that, and just run with it. Try to make it an organic part of your process and just treat it as an original, I guess (there's a reason I call my remixes "originals with stolen melodies"). Hope this helps some.

A few things that work very well for me:
I only take the lead stuff (melodies) from the source track and forget about the rest (e.g. chord progressions, basslines, etc.).  Up-front I usually already have an idea for the genre/style I want to do, and I usually try to push myself to try new things and make the genre different from what the source track uses (e.g. make an orchestral Megaman track in stead of a more stereotypical rock arrangement) Arrangement structure is flexible; why stick with the exact structure that the source uses? No problem in turning the B section into a verse section, the C version into a chorus and use the A section as a solo, for example. In general, I write like 8-16 bars and then think "okay, I can either go more intense or less intense from here", make a judgement call based on that, and just run with it. Try to make it an organic part of your process and just treat it as an original, I guess (there's a reason I call my remixes "originals with stolen melodies"). Hope this helps some.

A few points worth noting:
The site's UVP is the incredible game music arrangements. The community has been valuable for many of us, but it is secondary. The vast majority of the users on the site never even touch the forums. I'd imagine most of the people who still use the forums have for years. Those that have left, as others have mentioned, probably just got too old/busy. With that said, most major music sites don't even have forums. Maybe they have a subreddit, but not a forum. YouTube and Soundcloud killed OCR's community momentum, not the changes to the site. Gone are the days of finding MP3s on P2P networks. You don't have to have your own web hosting or submit to VGMix/OCR/whatever to share your music on the internet.  The internet is social. A lot of people don't like it, but a huge portion of the internet does. This is where blogs/pages/whatever would need to come into play. If you want to build a large internet community, it has to be a pseudo-social network. The vocal minority will hate it. The top sites on the internet right now are either social media (instagram, reddit, facebook, twitter, linkedin), "video sites", YouTube, which is a mash-up video and social site, and then Amazon, Wikipedia, and search engines. Forum activity has dropped, but Discord activity is booming. "Booming" may be a bit of a stretch, but it's far more active than IRC was when it died. That's because Discord is used by a lot of people and the age range is like "13" to 40. It's just most accessible.  And if you want talk about user experience, I can take this a bit further:
The web is dead. Web traffics across the board has dropped drastically in favor of mobile apps. This is partly also why social communities and focus'd web/mobile apps have become popular. People do not sit and traverse large chunks of content anymore. People consume content in short bursts, "micro-breaks", on commutes, in shopping lines, on the toilet. It's not true for everyone, but it is for the vast majority of the planet. There's no room for noise and visual clutter. Anything that keep that comes between a user and the content their looking for is noise. Noise makes users go elsewhere.

Rama is on the ball here.  Look, I'm one of the oldest members around here, been using the forums since they were a thing.  But things are changing, and just like physical letters, forums are very niche nowadays.  And even the forums that are still up with a strong community, have streamlined things a long time ago, so forums themselves are a different beast than what they were a few years ago.   I'm hoping the admins can still find a way allow for personalization of their posts, or some way for people to show their art that fits better with a modern design.  

Even though forums are largely dead, I still appreciate that we have them here still, and I appreciate also any attempt at streamlining/modernizing them.

As @Abadoss proposed, we do have the profile block/column with the avatar image where we can add some (not a ton) of additional info - I'm thinking specifically a star for featured artists, linking to artist profile on OCR, and then also icon links for the more common social media networks, i.e. Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube, Facebook. Blogs were nixed at the time because Invision's implementation didn't have, of all things, global categories, which were deemed relatively important. They're (finally) adding those in the next major point release, so it's time to reconsider how/whether we'd do that.
IPS *does* have a gallery module, as well, which we *could* enable - in addition to giving visual artists a place to show off their stuff, it could be used for WIP artwork for album projects, etc. Interested in your feedback on this @The Coop, mostly in terms of whether it'd be worth it & have some value?
To echo what @DarkeSword wrote, we're moving forward as-is, but we're also going to be making a host of other changes. Strong feelings will be had, I'm sure, but to me a lot of this is long overdue and we need to try what we can to leverage the forums & integrate them with the rest of the site, along with a redesign. When the dust settles and we see what's what, anything & everything could be back on the table, but the same design concerns would likely apply.

Wow, I'm shocked this track has no reviews yet! Well, I have to say, this is really really good   Definitely one of the best folk tracks I've heard in a while. It's a kind of song I could easily associate with a leisure stroll through a town/field/forest, and I guess that makes perfect sense. And, hey, there's accordion - hooo boooy, do I love it! This world really needs more accordion, especially in any piece of VGM, hahah. 

Another solid track from Jorrith! And also amazing work by both collaborators - the vocal work is simply beautiful, and those guitar solos made the chills run down my spine  Certainly super authentic 80s sound overall - nice work!

Into the Door was among my favorite pieces from the game, and you've created a compelling story with these sources. The longing of new life infused with an anxious uncertainty, a stunning accomplishment with what were meant to be songs of new life. Well done, all of you. 

God, I love synthwave. Not crazy about the vocals, though--especially those high notes.

I've mulled over this topic since it happened, and I just keep coming back to the same conclusion: forums are dead. Traditional forum software on the internet is few and far between now. Most communities have moved to "discussion"-style systems like Discourse (not to be confused with Discord) or Reddit. Not that every site should be reddit, but how ridiculous would reddit look if every person had an image signature? Or even a text one. Removing visual clutter makes it easier to quickly navigate the conversation. Images on the page, especially large ones, should be meaningful and representative. Watching 2-3 people discuss something in a conversation and seeing the same 3 images in different patterns is not particularly meaningful. It's excessive.
I do agree it's nice for users have more customization/personality/whatever, but I don't think it would come from forums signatures. It would come from a organized and utilized user profile. Custom avatars are good. Banner images are better. Invision does a pretty good job of supporting both of those, but it's really base-level. Heavy text, low imagery. Very data, no flavor. Do I expect that to change any time soon? Ehh. Do I think reactivating image signatures is the right move? Almost definitely not.