zircon
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Posts posted by zircon
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This is a bit off the topic but the thing that gets me is how the developers of some of these obscure indie games get upset over not becoming an multi millionaire over night. They'll complain about consumerism/capitalism when it doesn't go their way. The truth of the matter is that when you put your game or ideas out to the public, it's up to complete scrutiny no matter how much they may think they're right and everyone else wrong.
It's funny that you say this, since many people on the GamerGate side seem to have a very hard time with that concept. You actually hit the nail on the head. When you release a game, you're opening yourself up for critique. That's freedom of speech at work. You're simultaneously complaining about games journalism critiquing games for sexism, racism, etc, but in the same breath saying that indie game devs shouldn't complain when they're critiqued. Huh? Double standard much?
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We're getting off-topic, but the game industry is far more diverse than the film industry in terms of geography and budgets. The film industry is centered around Hollywood which has an overwhelming influence. On the other hand, blockbuster games can (and do) come from all over the place, many of them from relatively smaller studios. And when it comes to critical praise and acclaim, indie studios tend to be the ones getting universal praise... everything from Cave Story and Journey to Crypt of the Necrodancer.
At any rate, I don't even see where you're disagreeing with me. Yes, many AAA games aspire to be like movies. What does this have to do with Toad's post?
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The game industry isn't some amorphous mass though. It's a collection of tens of thousands of developers and publishers on a spectrum from one-man teams and student projects to AAA studios. So when you say that "the game industry" has been trying to do something, you have to be more specific. If you mean AAA studios have been trying to make more and more cinematic, Hollywood-esque experiences, I'd agree with you 100%. But these are actually the mainstream games and not the ones you & Toad are (probably) disparaging.
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People online get harassed every day. They don't all magically get a following and lots of money. Anita & Zoe have created (and continue to create) media that lots of people find valuable and important. Whether you agree with that content or not is beside the point. They were creators before they came into the spotlight for harassment and they continue to create after.
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Angelcityoutlaw: You have no idea how nonprofits work.
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Keep in mind you're hearing the synth sound through a mic which colors things and changes the frequency balance, 'roominess' of the sound etc. Is there a studio recording of this?
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What you've described sounds exactly like it's "dying". What else is substantially decreased activity because there are "better" alternatives and a shift in public interest supposed to mean? It's like saying "Sure, people don't really go to video stores anymore, but that doesn't mean they're dying. There are still some left, but with a smaller customer base. Most people just prefer Netflix now, is all."
Nothing that's "dead" ever truly goes away most of the time as far as technology is concerned. When I worked for a movie company, brand new movies we'd get were often sent directly from Dreamworks or whatever on VHS. So VHS still around...but it's definitely a dead format.
But as I said, OCR on YouTube and social media is thriving. We've been putting out lots of great albums and remixes almost every day and YouTube is now a major way that people consume that music (we went from ~400k views per month to ~1m per month). OCR is not just these forums, it's an organization. The organization is not dying.
- Garpocalypse and timaeus222
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I really think a big part of it is the rise of social media and YouTube. Forums - in general - are way less popular than they used to be. Facebook and Twitter have supplanted forums as a way to have discussions. Not to say that all forums are dead, but any younger remixers are going to be from a generation where forums just aren't really a thing. From what I've seen, the forums that are still thriving tend to have an older audience and are not frequented by young adults, teenagers, etc. (which is what many of us were when we came here.)
What has also changed is how people listen to music. There's been a dramatic shift away from downloading MP3s and having a music library, to just streaming your music. YouTube is one of the top, if not THE top, places where people discover and listen to music. OCR's presence on YouTube is very significant with over 100k subscribers and 40m views. If you're consuming your music on YouTube, you're going to leave a comment there and not bother to register on a forum. There's nothing wrong with that, though the nature of YouTube does not lend itself well to in-depth reviews.In short, OCR isn't dying. The decline in activity on the forums can be seen across many forums as people move to social media for discussions. Also, people aren't leaving as many reviews here because many more people are discovering and listening to ReMixes on YouTube.
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My understanding is that covers aren't fair use since they're derivative work. Getting a mechanical license allows you to publish and sell covers, where a sync license allows you to do the same for videos. At the end of the day, every company's terms of use varies though
Fair use is basically an affirmative defense to copyright infringement. Whether something is fair use or not depends on four factors which are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. These factors include how much of the original work you used, whether the new work is transformative, whether it's a commercial use, etc. You can read more about the factors here.
Therefore, whether or not a cover is fair use can't really be said with 100% certainty, but we can make an educated guess as to whether a use would be 'fair' or not based on those four factors. *Generally* speaking, the more transformative a new work is, the more likely it is that the use would be considered 'fair', but again, it really depends. I'd argue that almost any cover of a song is inherently transformative.
Before I get into licenses, it's important to understand that there are two copyrights in music: the copyright for the song, and for the sound recording. These are treated differently. When you produce or record a cover or arrangement of a song, provided you didn't use any material from the original sound recording, you're making use of the SONG copyright but not the SOUND RECORDING (SR) copyright. The new sound recording is yours.
With that in mind, a mechanical license is necessary to distribute a cover or arrangement because while you have the SR copyright, you don't have the SONG copyright. The term 'mechanical' in this context refers to the distribution of the work via digital / physical media. If you've created a COVER song of a work that has been made available to the public via an album or single release, you can obtain a *compulsory* mechanical license without permission of the copyright holder, as long as royalties are paid. Sites like Loudr.fm can help you with that.
But let me pause for a second to say that if you're distributing a cover or arrangement for free, chances are, you'd be covered under fair use. That's how we look at it with OCR. On the other hand, as soon as you start trying to sell that arrangement, you'd better get a mechanical license.
Now, "derivative work" is a very specific term. By and large, in this context, it generally refers to the creation of a new work that directly takes from an existing work. The most common usage when talking about music licensing would be creating a sound recording based on an existing sound recording. For example, making a hip hop track using samples from existing songs. There is NO compulsory mechanical license for derivative works.
Doing a basic cover is not actually creating a derivative work, but drastically changing a song (changing the "fundamental character", as the law says) might qualify. However, just because something is a DW doesn't mean that it can't also be fair use.
Then there's the topic of sync licensing. OK. The right to synchronize a musical work to an audio/visual medium (film, TV, video..) is an exclusive right of the copyright holder. So technically, even if you made a licensed cover song, you would need a separate license to actually sync that cover song to video. BUT, think about the following: Fair use can cover the entire scope of copyright usage. This includes sync. For example, playing clips of a movie while adding critical, educational, or satirical commentary is something done very commonly, and is often considered to be fair use. If you're making a free cover on YouTube, chances are that your use is indeed fair.
Also consider that there's a bit of a grey area that most copyright holders don't seem to be sticklers about. By the strictest letter of the law, even a mechanically licensed cover requires a sync license if you were to then create a video and upload it to YouTube. However, I'm not familiar with any cases offhand where a copyright holder - who is being paid mechanical royalties - has taken issue with anyone doing this, provided the video itself is original. The idea of sync licensing tends to be of more concern with for-profit TV shows, movies, ads, and video games, not YouTube, which generates minimal if any profit even for commercial videos.
Bottom line: I'd say don't worry about it at all if there's no money involved.
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Doing a VGM cover song on YouTube, without monetizing, is *probably* fair use. It's not very different than what we do here at OCR. The fact that there's a video attached doesn't change much, unless you're using a lot of game footage, trademarked characters, etc. Again, still probably fair use, but maybe slightly murkier in that case. Either way, it's not something I would spend much time worrying about if you're not monetizing or selling the music.
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Maybe the best virtual guitar solo I've ever heard, done using IBZ
https://soundcloud.com/isworks/shreddage-2-ibz-drums-revenant-by-brendon-williams-ft-brandon-morris -
I'm just using Guitar Rig 5 but ReValver is great, as is TH-2.
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Depends on the articulations you have loaded, the 16bit pitch with all articulations is 1gb on the dot. Disable portamento and tremolo and you're down to 730mb
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I think the leads on my "Ai wo Torimodose" demo hold up pretty favorably to the V-Metal demo there. It's all about pitch bends and vibrato mixed with portamento slides. Keep in mind though I'm also not a guitarist, unlike the guy who wrote that demo, so I might have missed a bit of the nuance in the playing/sequencing
(Also, IBZ is 1/3 the price...)
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Other cool stuff:
* Disgaea 3 and 4* FFX/X-2 remaster
* Dragon's Crown
* All those other weird NIS/Atlus JRPGs
Being the most powerful handheld it definitely gets its fair share of cross-platform releases. For whatever reason I just don't play a lot of console games these days, but if there's a handheld version I'm way more likely to play it, and you'll get the best experience with those on Vita as opposed to 3DS (if 3DS even gets the port at all.)
On the topic of PSP though, I maintain that it is the BEST retro emulation handheld by far. It's so awesome for that with the nice big screen, great buttons, USB connectivity, and the ability to even hook it up to a TV in HD if you'd like. It handles basically anything 16bit era or before flawlessly, which includes the entire NES library, GB, GBA, SNES, master system, Genesis, numerous arcade games, DOSBOX, and much more. Not to mention it plays the entire PS1 library as well without worrying about disc loading times! -
How tall are you / got any pics? Also what's your chest routine? 2 days of chest a week with good volume should give you good results IF you're eating at a surplus and resting well.
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We can do licensing, but we're only looking for arrangements of video game music and not popular music, film, tv, etc.
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Yeah there are some seriously godly combinations now. I think that's not the ONLY good set though. I managed to finish my 6 piece dashing strike set first, currently running 4pc Innas 6pc DS using RROG in the cube and Cindercoat for my armor mod. With this combo I can effortlessly clear GR <40 and just cleared 41 solo with 20 seconds to spare. I need to get Focus/Restraint, better amulet, and an actual weapon mod (mine is garbage now) but after that I'll be in even better shape.
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Bardic don't forget - dual wielding the weapon that doubles your EP damage, and the one that doubles the number of strikes. Then you use the weapon mod in the cube to halve the cooldown, using the physical skill, for a 7 sec cooldown (BASE) on SSS...
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Damn, 9% with that bench? Awesome.
That does remind me of a gym story.. last week I saw an utterly insane display of strength. Strongest guy I've seen with my own two eyes. This guy must have been like 6'4 / 300. He gets under an incline and does 22 reps with 3 plates. Then the next day he does 57 (!!!) reps on a decline bench with 2 plates. Absolutely unreal. He was moving the weight like there was nothing there at all.
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Does this group even lift anymore?
Who achieved a goal recently? Who is still recovering from an injury? Who is finally injury free and back on track (me)? Who is getting so swole their friends are becoming concerned for their health?
Still got my facet arthritis here, but it's doing a little better. Still killing it 3 days a week and then 3-4 days of intense cardio plus 1-2 miles of daily walking. Started at 182 and currently at about 177, I want to get down to the 160s again but this time with way more muscle mass
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The new patch looks SO. GOOD. Basically adds like 50 new batshit passives for every class and 3 more slots. SIGN ME UP
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OverClocked Records is proud to announce the upcoming release of "Rust and Effervescence", the DEBUT full-length orignial album from OC ReMixer Omni-Psyence. To celebrate, we're releasing the full stems for the atmospheric, vocal electronic track "Stardust" and launching a REMIX COMPETITION starting today!
THE ALBUM
Releasing on July 27th, Rust and Effervescence is the debut album from progressive electro artist Omni-Psyence, whose work you might know from OCR and albums like Harmony of Hunter. Featuring 14 tracks of hybrid electronica with influences ranging from synthwave to psytrance and even cinematic soundtracks, Rust and Effervescence will take you on a synth-fueled emotional journey.
Also featured on the album are friends and collaborators Anba, Tera Catallo, and Vivien Lalu, each bringing their own amazing and unique style. With over one hour of music over a year in the making, this debut release is not to be missed by any fan of introspective electronic music.
You can help support and promote the album on release day by joining our Thunderclap on social media. It's easy and free:
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/28606-rust-and-effervescence?locale=en
THE TRACK
Stardust (ft. Anba) - 90 BPM, E minor
https://soundcloud.com/omni-psyence/stardust
THE STEMS
Instruments: https://app.box.com/s/n1iwrpi8or75l5eqszi5ulvrpn512l84
Vocals: https://app.box.com/s/q1pqjrd3fzj0933zmn2oqxwxto4v53ij
THE CONTEST
We want to hear YOUR remixes and arrangements of Stardust. Anyone can enter! You can use the stems provided above to get started, but feel free to write your own new parts from scratch, or by ear. All genres are welcome, from EDM to metal.
The contest begins today (July 20th) and ends in two weeks, on August 3rd, 11:45PM EST. We'll announce the wniner one week after that, on August 10th.
When you finish your entry, you can email it to the artist himself (seifer7979 (at) yahoo (dot) com), CC to Mason Edwards (mason (dot) edwards13 (at) gmail (dot) com)
THE PRIZES
The producers of the top three tracks will win some great sponsored prizes provided by:
* VSTBuzz.com - Insane weekly music software deals, up to 90% off one sample library, plugin, or soundset each week!
* Impact Soundworks - Virtual instruments designed with composers in mind.
* OverClocked Records - The video game community record label.
1st Place: $100 gift certificate for Impact Soundworks libraries, $50 coupon for VSTBuzz deals, $25 coupon for the OverClocked Records store.
2nd Place: $50 gift certificate for Impact Soundworks libraries, Business of Music Licensing e-book (fantastic!), $25 coupon for the OverClocked Records store.
3rd Place: The Sampling Handbook (upcoming ebook!), $25 coupon for the OverClocked Records store.
Good luck! Let us know if you have any questions!
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Currently finishing up a round of Prednisone which unfortunately is ALSO messing with my lifts. Took like 30 pounds off my bench :/ But I'll bounce back. After that I'm going to be on Celebrex for awhile. I can't take most OTC stuff because I'm also on blood thinners, and many NSAIDS have bad interactions with those. Otherwise it would be Ibuprofen errday.
Computers for Composing
in General Discussion
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I admit, I upgraded from W7 to W10 and it went OK. No compatibility issues and I do use almost all major plugins...