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Loopy's an iOS application that allows you to set tempo and meter and then record loops of specific lengths. Once those loops are recorded they immediately play back and you can record more loops over top of them. The loops can then be turned on or off, which allows you to arrange the parts you've recorded. There won't be any special rounds between blocks. We are doing 3 blocks, back-to-back-to-back. The final round will probably be the same as last time: a two-week mixing stage with all team members collaborating, using their three Robot Master tracks and that round's gauntlet theme. Things can change though; my head is always swimming with ideas.

God Bless America. Anyway, I want to discuss another thing I'm seeing with novice mixers. A bit of a disclaimer: I'm going to talk now about my own approach to arrangement, and hopefully that will help you. I know that a lot of people can approach arrangement in their own way, and that's fine, but I want to talk about this because I want people to use these competitions as a learning experience. On with the show. Sometimes when I listen to entries from newbies, there's a sparseness there that really hurts the track. The issue ends up being that what I think of as the four basic elements of a song aren't present. Years ago I wrote an essay called "The Four Man Combo Approach to Arrangement" which explained how to make a full arrangement using the analogy of a four-man jazz combo. Because that analogy is not particularly relevant to everyone here, I'll paraphrase and be a bit more general. Generally speaking, there are four basic elements to a song: lead, accompaniment, bassline, percussion. When you have these four elements represented, you can achieve a basic fullness in your arrangement. Not coincidentally, basic NES music (like Mega Man songs!) follows this pattern. You've got your two pulse waves (lead and accompaniment), triangle (usually bass), and the noise and sample channels (usually percussion). The lead is obviously the melody; it's what everything else is built around. It generally sits in the middle or upper register. The bassline works with the percussion to establish the rhythmic "feel," but also lays down a foundation for the chords and harmonics structure of the piece; it generally sits in the lower register (i.e. bass). The percussion is there to establish the tempo and the general rhythmic "feel" of the track. You can do this without percussion, but more often than not this is the easiest way to do it. I'm talking about accompaniment separately because I feel like this is the one that people often overlook when starting out. Accompaniment can be a lot of things: sustained chords, syncopated chords, arpeggios, etc. The important thing about the accompaniment is that through the chords (and in tandem with the bassline), it gives the melody context. Accompaniment helps to establish the harmonic feel of your song; it lays out your chord progression and establishes key and tonality. These are really important things, especially when arranging melodic music like you find in Mega Man games. Now, when I talk about having the four basic elements of arrangement, I'm not telling you that you should only have four instruments in your track. You can have as many instruments as you want, but generally speaking, all of those instruments are going to fit into the specific roles. You'll have a couple of lead instruments trading on the melody or playing counter-melodies and embellishments, you'll have some strings or piano or brass or synths laying down your chords as accompaniment, and then you've got your bassline providing a solid foundation for everything to sit on, and then your percussion tracks set up the groove. So I want you newer guys to think about this when you're writing your track. Are you establishing the chords and using accompaniment effectively? Is your melody clear or is it fighting with the bassline because it's just too damn low? Did you forget about bassline and accompaniment altogether? Play your song back for your teammates and ask them if they can pick out the four elements. Hopefully you guys will take this to heart and we can start hearing some fuller, more balanced arrangements. Happy mixing.

No rules against it, but I personally am not a fan.

Part-writing in this piece is actually super simple, masked by the sound design. I'm in agreement with Larry and Vig. I feel like this arrangement doesn't have much going on with it, and it's playing it pretty safe. Counter-melody writing it's very interesting at all, and you've got some dissonance issues at 2:37. Sounds are not jiving. Needs work. NO (resub)

You've gotta be really careful about mixing sources that are very short and attempting to expand them a lot. It's very easy to veer off in the realm of "inspired by" rather than sticking to "an arrangement of." When I tackle a short source, I usually try to grab another theme from the game to fill things out melodically. I feel like there are significant sections of this piece that, while not sounding out of place stylistically in say, a Metroid Prime game, still strays too far from the actual source tune you're trying to arrange. I really like this piece (the arrangement and production are fantastic), but I feel like it could use a lot more actual Metroid material. I'm not sure if you're up for revisiting this track, but if you are, maybe poke around the Fusion soundtrack and see if there's any strong melodic themes you can pull into this piece. NO (resubmit)

Mixing's a little iffy but like I said in another vote on another mix earlier today, nothing that's a dealbreaker in my opinion. I didn't vote on the previous sub, so I'm coming in fresh. This arrangement is pretty killer. Nice variation. YES

Just heard a preview of the round 2 entry from the Rush Riders. I hope everyone's bringing their A game, because the Rush Riders are.

I love the mood here. I agree with Jesse that it's pretty simplistic, but I think that all of the parts come together to really knock out a great dance track. I'm groovin'. YES

Love the big drums. Really cool. Nice glitchy and syncopation stuff. It's like Jet Set Mario, spray-painting fire flowers on the side of Koopa's castle. Turbo drums might have been a bit much though. xD YES

Vocal mixing is a little iffy at points, but nothing is a dealbreaker. Great arrangement, nice variation for such a long piece. YES

Way too loud. You need to turn down the volume on EVERYTHING.

I'm not "dragging Nintendo" into the conversation. This is the Wii U thread. Talking about Nintendo is what's supposed to happen here. The fact that Nintendo does not provide the options to play games that fall under the full range of ratings (either through first party or by aggressively courting third-parties) is a failure and it lends to their image problem as a "kiddie" console. There's nothing wrong with those E and T games at all (I'm a huge fan), but Nintendo is always thinking about innovation in hardware and control systems, and those innovations could really do a lot in the realm of M-rated games that people like and want to play. Quite frankly, Nintendo is a games company, and they should be able to cater to a wider demographic. The fact that they don't is not something to just roll over and accept, or to be proud of. Oh also, just to be clear, I own and regularly play PC, WiiU, 360, PS3, 3DS, and Vita games. I also have a PS4 on pre-order. I know all about what everyone has to offer.

No, those things are exactly what makes Mass Effect good. A game is more than just the part where you press the buttons. It is everything put together; it is scenario writing, it is art direction, it is sound design, it is gameplay mechanics. The Mass Effect Trilogy is a game about war and morality. If you don't depict war in a game about war, you have lessened the impact of the message the game is trying to convey. If you don't "buy into" it, then you're just ignorant. Rama spelled it out very clearly. As adults, there are times when we want to play games that deal with themes that are relatable. It's not about an obsession. It's about having variety. Nintendo isn't really offering that experience on the WiiU with fresh, new games, and that's not good.

Nobody said you did. You keep making all these straw man arguments. You keep talking about blood/guts/cursing as if these are the only things that M-rated games have. Stop doing that. You are wrong. Um, what? Mass Effect resonates with so many people precisely because it's good science fiction; the kind of science fiction that acts as allegory to explore adult themes, like the ethics in science, racism/xenophobia, the moral dilemmas that come along with waging war, etc. It's not required for a game to be good. Nintendo games that don't deal with these things are also good. But games that deal with adult and mature themes can benefit from doing so.Nobody is saying that they want "nothing but dark, unhappy, dramatic games." Again, you keep making these straw man arguments. Stop doing that. I'm still trying to figure out whose arguments you're actually trying to refute. Nobody here is saying any of that.The point being made is that as a first-party Nintendo rarely offers games that deal with more adult themes in an adult way (and I'm not talking about blood and gore, before you start going off on that again). Acquiring Atlus will help them with that (see the aforementioned Persona 4), but the worry (a worry that I don't share, mind you) is that Nintendo may neuter what Atlus does by trying to scale-back the mature content in their games. Anyway stop making all these out-of-the-blue straw man arguments.

That is one six issue storyline from a very long, 80+ issue comic book series called Superman/Batman. There's no one story about Superman and Batman. The characters have existed together in the DC universe for over 70 years. There have been many ongoing books and mini-series about the two of them working together. In fact, the two characters are paired together so much that there's a special name for them when they work together: the World's Finest (and if you add Wonder Woman into the mix, they become known as the Trinity). Also for all you people that think Superman sucks: never speak to me, ever.

Or c) going to make the experience much better. Mass Effect 2 for example really benefits because there are many times where you play through conversations about ethical dilemmas. Games with a strong, integrated story element can become incredibly engaging pieces of entertainment because we, as gamers, get really dig into the ideas and themes presented to us. One of my favorite gaming moments is arguing with Mordin Solus about the ethics of the Genophage. This isn't a click-through conversation either; it's a role-playing opportunity where the player is allowed to pick and choose his or her arguments. More to the point, Atlus's Persona 4 also deals with a lot of mature themes; the deaths of loved ones, sexual and gender identity, issues relating to relationships and self-confidence/self-worth; the game is amazing and engaging for dealing with all these things. Nintendo could benefit from picking up Atlus; having Atlus's games on Wii U could really bring variety to the console's library.

I really am not a fan of all the name-calling and general bitchiness going on in this thread. Everyone needs to step back and take a minute. Let's try to keep the discussion civil.

Let's try to get a full 14 mixes this week, people. We came so close in the first round.

Agree with Jesse. Very repetitive groove and the whole soundscape feels like this really dull drone. Game SFX are also super cheesy and don't really add anything to the piece, but that's a personal gripe. NO

Honestly not even feeling the arrangement here. It really just sounds like someone trying to play the Super Mario Bros. theme from memory and only really remembering most of the rhythm. I don't feel like the original Mario melody really comes out at all here. In a weird way it really feels too liberal. Performance is also pretty sloppy; lots of flubby timing issues that took me out of the flow of the piece. Needs work. NO

When mentioning the site in written interviews and other things, remember that we have official ways of referring to the site: OverClocked ReMix - Full name of the site. Capital O, C, R, and M OC ReMix - Abbreviates OverClocked. There's a space between OC and ReMix. ocremix - All lowercase, no space. Generally used for official account usernames, URLs, and anywhere else where capital letters and spaces aren't available. OCR - Three letter acronym for the site. Common mistakes/what not to do: Overclocked Remix - Needs capital C and M. OverClocked ReMiX - Never capitalize the X. OCReMix - When capitalizing, always put a space between OC and ReMix OCRemix - Needs a space between OC and R, and the M should be capitalized. OCRM - The M is not part of the abbreviation OverClocked - Don't leave out ReMix. overclocked_remix or oc_remix - if you can't use spaces, don't use underscores and don't capitalize anything, just use "ocremix" O-Clocked - just...no.

Cash is Cash and Change's new artist name. I thought you all might be interested in knowing that this week's theme was composed by Yasuaki Fujita. Fujita-san composed under the alias Bunbun, and was the main composer for the classic Mega Man 3 soundtrack.

Remixes are up. Check 'em out and vote. Remember to READ THE VOTING GUIDELINES before you vote!

Oh no, it's not against any rules. I'm just saying that, as a musician, you should really strive to sequence everything yourself if you can. These competitions are excellent opportunities to train your ear. On a different topic: one thing I've been noticing from some of the more novice mixers in these competitions lately is when you guys use both sources but don't bother putting them in the same key. Some of the transitions I've been hearing have been pretty awkward. Make sure you guys are making the effort to combine both sources into a cohesive piece of music; this more often than not involves determining a common tonality. If you don't feel like you know how to do that, or even what that means, ask your teammates, ask in the workshop, or ask here. This core of this competition is learning how to arrange music, moreso than learning production techniques. There's a certain degree of music theory that you should be picking up and utilizing as you continue to arrange two pieces of music together every week. Good luck.

Not really tough love. You should be able to figure these songs out by ear; they're not really that complex. I didn't realize that people were actually using MIDIs for these competitions; I wish you guys wouldn't, actually. It's very important as an arranger to be able to listen to stuff and understand things like melody and chords just by listening. I certainly hope that nobody is copy and pasting MIDI data from preexisting MIDI files. You should only be using those for reference if you are.