zircon

Album is now #2 on Bandcamp.com! Pretty cool, so thank you for all the support Also, the album is on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/unearthed/id516739283 However there was an error and tracks 10 and 11 are duplicates. This should be corrected soon but in the meantime I can send you the correct version if you purchase on iTunes.

Thanks for the kind words all! Sappharad: OK, fair enough; but relatively speaking, maybe 0.1% (or fewer) of my fans were aware of that contest and participated, so the number of people who knew about and downloaded the remixes is fairly low - plus they weren't lossless, like they are on this release. I suppose previously unreleased properly would be more accurate

Unearthed - new zircon album! Hey everyone! I'm very excited to announce the release of my latest album "Unearthed", available now at Bandcamp! This is a compilation of 14 tracks I've written over the last five years, all never-before-released on an album. From dance and vocal trance ("Just Hold On", "Shadows", both feat. Jillian Aversa) to heavy breaks and dubstep ("Devil's Spirit", "Firewall") and chill atmospheric cuts ("Over Easy", "Cubic Movement"), there is something for everyone on this disc. Buy now for $5.99! Also included on the album are previously unreleased remixes by Big Giant Circles and Skrypnyk of my songs "Mindbender" and "Warhead" (respectively), two excellent tracks that definitely deserve to be heard. There's also a new mix of "Star Trails" featuring the violin talents of Jeff Ball. "Unearthed" is available at Bandcamp as lossless FLAC digital for $5.99+, or you can preorder a physical copy for $8.99+ship. Physicals will ship in 1-2 weeks, and in the meantime you'll receive a digital copy as well. Thank you to everyone in the OCR community, and the site itself, for helping to build me up as an artist, both in terms of my production skills and fan base. I really appreciate your support and hope you'll enjoy this album!

Here's the pic:

Actually some of the most popular video game cover bands are not licensed, so the legal angle, while definitely important, certainly hasn't prevented Armcannon, the Megas, the Oneups, etc. from performing. In fact I know of several specific bands endorsed directly by the game companies whose songs they play, without technically being legal/licensed. But have we considered some kind of label, either for commercial VG arrangements, live performances, and/or original music...? Maybe

Close call for me. Sounds like 90s trance, which is nostalgic. The sounds are, thus, dated, and could be improved, but they (mostly) work. I agree the violin-type lead is weak. But mainly those orchestra hits are brutal. Use something else. Also, some of the sounds seem out of time, like they were sloppily played in. Plus around 2:50 things get muddy with the new bass synth. Make sure to go in and quantize everything. Otherwise I think I'd pass it. Also things get too busy at 2:54 so take another look at that with the two basslines going on. NO

Production is muddy/sloppy - too much bass, synth timing sounds wrong in several spots. Lots of cheesy Eurotrance type presets, doesn't really fit in with the more serious mood the track has sometimes. Arrangement is really cool, I like the overall idea, but the sounds need to be better and mixing needs improvement. NO

Look for Yamaha Clavinova Piano.

Yeah, Windows 7. I didn't change any drivers so no idea why they would just fail now. I did try uninstalling/reinstalling from Windows, but no luck. Also the wireless adapter appears to be not working anymore (detects networks, hangs on "Identifying" forever)...

Yeah, USB mouse works fine.

I have mad respect for Deadmau5 as a producer. He deserves his success. That being said I feel like he sort of 'phones in' some of his tracks with basic synths, clean 4 on the floor kicks, simple repetitive hooks... maybe that's label pressure but I wish he would push outside his own comfort zone more.

Clearing out some stuff Jill and I have that we no longer need. All items are in excellent condition unless otherwise noted. StudioProjects VTB1 tube/solid state preamp - $100 Nice preamp with real tubes (there's a knob to blend 'em) and both mic/line level input. We have a more expensive preamp now, so we don't need this, but it was quite well reviewed. Droid Eris android smartphones 2x - $75 each or $125 for both Not the latest and greatest smartphones out there, but these are still quite functional. Great if you want a smartphone but don't need to run the latest flashy apps. Supports 3G, google maps, internet browsing, gmail, etc., comfortably. Fender Squier Affinity Strat w/ soft case - $125 A good electric guitar for practice, backup or if you are just starting out. Panasonic HDC-SD60 Video Camera - $300 High definition video camera/camcorder with SDHC support, 35x zoom, 1080p recording resolution, 60fps, etc. Very nice camera. Yamaha RM-50 Drum Machine - $50 Rackmount drum machine with multi-out/edit, 1000 presets, etc. Nice piece of equipment. Roland RSP-550 Signal Processor - $200 Rackmount multi-FX unit. Excellent for studio recording as it has reverb, delay, chorus, distortion, multiFX, all that fun stuff.

My Toshiba Satellite M305-S4910 laptop (purchased May 2009) has been holding up pretty well. But recently, I booted it up and the touchpad did not seem to be functional. I navigated to the mouse drivers and the window showed "Error 10", device not functioning. I tried uninstalling + reinstalling the driver from the Device Manager, restarting, etc., no luck. Any ideas for how to fix?

Irelia is still really strong. She is one of the most well-rounded champs in the game; magic damage, true damage, physical damage, a gap closer, a slow/stun, natural tenacity, etc. It is very hard to prevent her from snowballing since she's naturally tanky with pretty high damage output. Hitting her sustain was probably the right move.

Lovely mix. This is one of my favorite themes from Skyrim and you did a great job making it your own while still retaining the beauty of the melody. YES

Yeah, probably, but I need to catch up on other stuff first.

Sorry I dropped the ball on this guys. To be honest when I signed up I didn't realize that it was starting basically immediately. I didn't get home from GDC until Sunday and had days of catchup/followup emails, then had to do my taxes, then had inlaws over... I just had no time this week. My WIP was about 35 seconds and I stayed up until 4am working on it (1-4am last night was the most free time I had). So I'm disappointed, but more than anything, I'm sorry I 'wasted' a slot Good luck + have fun to everyone else, though!

How is this off topic in any way? Moved to Community.

Medleys in and of themselves are not automatic rejections, but they do tend to lead to lazier arrangements, which is why we usually discourage them. Most times when people try to use a bunch of source themes they end up just doing short 'covers' of each one, loosely blended together one after the other. Basically if you're using multiple sources, you should have a musically interesting reason for doing so. Just throwing in two random sources isn't particularly interesting, but if you are weaving things in and out and personalizing the arrangement with variations and original material you should be OK.

No, since I voted "Yes" on espergirl. I can't speak to how other judges vote. But also, I think this thread has been valuable in helping judges think about how they view chiptunes. They are already acceptable.. we don't have anything in the standards disallowing them. We discourage things that frequently constitute weak production, and 'basic tones' would be one of those things. I mean, if you actually read the standards, we have other similar examples. We try to discourage things that tend to lead to bad production, like distorted recordings, overuse of drum loops, common presets, and so on. But every mix still gets evaluated on a case by case basis.

That's good! That's the exact type of thing we're looking for, so I think we're on the same page now. Writing a normal dance (or whatever) remix using chip tones instead of more advanced synths is not interesting and that's what we're trying to discourage. The remix should take advantage of the production style and make a statement. Replacing all your synths with square waves does not an interesting chiptune make. We reject boring guitar covers and plodding preset-laden trance remixes for the same reason. Phrased another way, THIS mp3 is not the kind of thing we were trying to discourage with the standards. What we're discouraging is stuff like these: Arrangement aside, these have no reason to exist with chiptune instrumentation. And I think you would agree on that.

Here's my double post with comments. I want to preface this by saying I don't really care whether something is for actual hardware or not. It might be an interesting factoid or technical feat, but it shouldn't have any bearing on the piece of music itself - in MY opinion. If I make a piece of music and use some elaborate production techniques, but the music isn't particularly interesting, I don't think my use of elaborate techniques excuses that. May be a radical view, I don't know. I care more about the final result than anything else. Keep in mind these are just my personal opinions, and I'm focusing more on the production aspect as opposed to composition. Alex Mauer - Zenith: I think this is pretty basic in terms of how it uses chip sounds. I also don't find the piece that interesting in terms of melody, rhythm, harmony etc. Phlogiston - Night Jam: The highly articulated leads here are really nice. Just like how vocalists and guitarists can add extensive articulation to their instruments, so should chiptune artists. The varied rhythms and (apparent) change-ups in time signature are also very cool. Norrin Radd - Four Lights: The rhythms right off the bat remind me of Meshuggah. Love the complexity and chaos there. To me this is basically like a subgenre of metal in chiptune production form. At the same time, I feel like the barrage of rhythms masks the relative sparseness of the texture. I guess by the end I was getting a little tired of it. virt - Plasmatextor: Great articulated leads, writing, etc., it's virt.. so what would you expect? That being said I don't think the use of basic chip sounds for powerchord-style parts is particularly interesting. The second half is where things really get good. Bit Shifter - Particle Charge: Like the Alex Mauer piece I find this one to be kind of basic. A perfect example (to me) of something that would have sounded just way better with non-chiptune sounds. I don't think the chip elements really add anything here. Hally - Sprite Bells etc.: Not a big fan of the first one. Sort of abrasive/annoying to me, either due to production or composition, hard to say. The second piece is more interesting mainly because of the great soloing. Third piece is back to the same kind of issue as a few of the other tracks; I just don't find faux-guitar rhythm riffs that enjoyable in chiptune form unless there are some really interesting rhythms going on. RushJet1 - Exam Slam: I like the composition. But, to me this is another one where I don't really feel that using chiptune production enhances the piece. It's solid, but I could imagine this same composition arranged for other ensembles and being more enjoyable that way. Some stuff like the big arpeggios at 1:40 might not translate perfectly but I could even imagine this for funk band. Naruto- AI Bomb: Here's a better example of using (what I think are) authentic techniques to great effect, with the lovely articulated leads and arpeggios. Some nice rhythm writing and using of panning too. The overall composition may not be my very favorite but the production is cool. Zan-zan-zawa: This hits me as abrasive and muddy. The different timbres mush together in a way that doesn't really work (again, IMO!) and despite using some chip-specific techniques like fast arpeggios, the end result is not too enjoyable for me. It does get better later on when the instruments spread out more in pitch and polyrhythms are added, but even so, I think the production is messy. A shame because there are a lot of ideas in here that I think sounded pretty cool. Lunar - Labyrinth: I like the use of an expanded palette of tones (being a relative newbie to chip production I hadn't even heard of the "FDS" channel/track). Good stuff. chibi-tech: Maybe one of the best articulated leads I've heard yet. It almost sounds like it's talking. I like the way the production really compliments the composition (or maybe it's the other way around?) But sounds like it could be a trance/dance hit. Awesome use of faux-effects, sidechaining etc. It's like Justice. Love it!! Definitely my favorite one yet. Zabutom: Hard to go from chibitech to this, since to me this production is a lot more basic. Not bad, and some nice sequencing/pitch tricks, but nothing too special production-wise either. FearofDark: I like how big this sounds thanks to the phat drum samples, thicker harmony parts and arpeggios. Maybe just my bias for more layered pieces talking Creative and enjoyable. Tony Thai: Production-wise the leads are nice here but the harmony is a bit blocky and could just as well be done using traditional instruments. I'd love to hear this piece with a small fusion ensemble for example. I don't feel that it needs to be chip, or that using basic timbres really enhances things (despite the lead sounding great.) Shnabubula: Well, you saved the most interesting case for last, since this is an arrangement of something I already know quite well and have played in a band Needless to say your production is excellent. I think it's a creative interpretation of a well-known standard, adapted in a way that really suits the instruments. If I were to judge a chiptune on OC ReMix, I would use some of the same criteria mentioned here: * I like hearing advanced techniques in sequencing and DSP. Just like a solo acoustic guitar piece should often do a bit more than basic strumming, so a pure chiptune should flex its muscles and utilize a variety of techniques. * Since you have limited polyphony, the importance of the lead instrument(s) becomes pronounced. Thus, I find that having a more exciting lead with soloing, vibrato, pitch bends and other articulation is much more preferable to a basic lead. * I don't like when it sounds like just a 'normal' track (for lack of a better descriptor) that happens to use chiptune sounds. I'd say the same for arrangements in any instrumental ensemble. If you adapt a piano piece for big band, you should make full use of the big band, otherwise what's the point? In other words, a pure chiptune should have a reason for existing other than for the sake of novelty or popularity. * Since tonal variations are harder to do given the limited palette of tones, adding more interest in rhythmic writing / polyrhythms, intricate sequencing, etc. go a long way to keeping a pure chiptune piece fresh. * Using an array of additional tones/samples like Blitz + chibitech did also really helps to keep things fresh, interesting and unexpected. Again, this is all just in my opinion but maybe it will lend some insight in how I would personally judge chip remixes. Of course, keep in mind arrangement is another bag of chips entirely. You could do all these things but if it's a super-basic coverish arrangement it won't matter.

True, the goal of the site is to celebrate, appreciate and elevate video game music as an art form. And if we didn't care about that we wouldn't collectively pour tens of thousands of hours into working on the site, judging + making remixes, expanding the database, making projects, etc. We wouldn't have discussions like this. We're always looking to improve, but in the meantime, please don't get angry or upset because we haven't reached the (perhaps impossible) goal of being the perfect site (which we never claimed to be). Lord knows there have been internal initiatives and staff projects that have been going on for years, all with the goal of making the site better. Yes, it's very interesting, no doubt about that. But at the end of the day, what's being asked is that we make special rules and exceptions for a production style, because that production style is popular. And you just said yourself that a large portion of people who enjoy/make it don't even have the VGM connection, which sort of weakens that case. As for the long list of tracks you posted, not sure what you expect us to do there. Contrary to what people think we don't judge remixes based strictly on production, so how can you expect us to judge that original music when we're missing half the picture of what the site is about - arrangement? That being said, in a little bit I'll listen to some of these and give my thoughts.

Absolutely! There isn't one single production standard that can possibly be applied to every genre, and it would be impossible for us to judge with just one. For a heavy metal remix I want the guitars to sound thick, wide and loud, probably providing some excellent rhythmic drive. For an ambient remix I would probably not want to hear loud, overbearing rhythmic elements. So we already make that distinction. But is "chiptune" a GENRE or a production style? I know plenty of people who make chiptunes and hate when they are referred to as a genre. You can have jazz chiptunes, funk chiptunes, rock chiptunes, dance chiptunes, etc. Hard to argue that, right? So what you're really asking is for us to have different production standards for different production styles. And that gets a little harder. Where do you draw the line? Like if someone made a crappy dance mix with basic saw & square synths mixed with lame drums, I don't think anyone would want us to give that a pass just because it has an intentionally basic style. Or what if someone wanted to sub a mix with all FM/Genesis sounds which can get REALLY harsh REALLY quickly? When do you say "OK, I get that this is an intentional choice, but it's too abrasive for me"? Believe me, guys like you, Sam, Jake, George & Jonathan, etc., all make amazing-sounding music in various chiptune production styles. But the point of the standard is to prevent people from saying their weak/poor production style deserves a pass just because it's intentionally poor.

Man, I don't really understand where all your anger is coming from. RELAX. Step back. Stop getting so upset. OCR isn't the be-all end-all of video game music and never has anyone on staff claimed otherwise. You have the founder of the site coming into this thread and explicitly saying that Sam should resub Espergirl. I voted YES as did other judges. You're building up this thing in your head that OCR, either in terms of its staff or community, just hates chiptunes and will do anything to bar them from getting passed. That just... isn't true, and assumes really bad faith on our part. How many times does it need to be said that there isn't a "rule"? And again, did you see the part where I (and other judges) YESed the original Espergirl, not to mention where Dave said it would be worth subbing again? Again with the assumption of bad faith. All this hostility directed at OCR when you have pretty much the entire staff saying that we DON'T hate chiptunes, we ARE willing to reconsider decisions and we WANT folks like Sam to keep subbing their stuff. It's like you guys are desperately looking to create drama where there just isn't any to begin with. We don't sit in some dark room plotting about how to destroy chiptune music and reject submissions. I have FX4 queued up as we speak.