Corran

:D I r winnar? It's too bad I hadn't played SO2 when I signed up for OCR like last millenium, I totally would have had Dias Flac as my screenname. At VGMix too.

Oh yeah, there is also that! I forgot to mention, I also own a copy of Star Ocean 2 imported from Japan, just for fun. I actually have been meaning to play it just to see any differences. Oh and having played Star Ocean 1 both on the SNES and the new remake, I really don't think it's better than SO2. The plot isn't as engaging and the items and item creation isn't as refined (or over-refined, as in SO3). Also, the completely random last quest to go kill some random dude, that was annoying. Actually for me the worst part about SO1 is the bonus dungeon (only in the remake) that takes all of 2 hours or so to beat, compared to the huge, days-long cavern in SO2 (and 3 I suppose, though I didn't like that game enough to do it).

Okay, this is now on the "things to do before I die" list. :D Haha, well yes I am a huge Sakuraba fan too. I own some of his other soundtracks (Valkyrie Profile, Tales of Phantasia, etc) but mostly I just buy games he composes for.

I am of the opinion that I am the #1 Star Ocean fan ever. Star Ocean 2 was the first RPG I ever played. And it was by accident. My best friend let me borrow a PSX one day and left the wrong game (I wanted to play Capcom vs. SNK or something? just because it had Megaman in it). Needless to say it was love at first sight. Since then action RPG's have been one of my most-played genres of games. I quickly bought a PSX and my own version of SO2 (I don't know how I lucked out on finding one used the first time I went to a Gamestop to get it. I've only seen it maybe once again afterwards, and not complete!). I imported both Star Ocean 1 for the Super Famicom and modded my SNES to play it and Star Ocean Blue Sphere for the Gameboy Color. I own every soundtrack ever done for Star Ocean 1-3, including the arrange albums and the ultra-rare original Star Ocean 1 arrange album (ebay, $100). I bought both Star Ocean 1 and 2 for the PSP upon release day. I bought and finished SO3 (but out of that whole game only enjoyed the music ). I have arranged several tunes from Star Ocean 2 (and 1, kinda), and even included quotes from various SO tunes in my other remixes (see the end of my Cave Story remix for example). I also own all the Star Ocean 1 and 2 mangas from Japan, the entire anime both in Japanese and English, a ton of miscellaneous fan items like guide books (both english and japanese) and even a couple anime movie screens. Star Ocean 2 is pretty much the epitomy of gaming for me. I guess that's ultra-nerdy but hey, I love it. As for Star Ocean 4, well I don't own a 360 and don't plan to anytime soon. However I will buy it on release day just because. And my cousin has a 360 and I might trade him my Wii for a few weeks to play it, even though I have very low expectations. Square just lost the magic when they took over the franchise after SO2. Anyway, there's my story...

Wow, I'm glad that there is so much interest in the project! And wow, an official OCR album, good exposure!

Hey K-wix, I was just going to mention that while I might not be so active on the forums this time around due to a hectic life right now, I'll be around as much as possible and of course will make all deadlines. I'm working on it right now actually...

Hahaha, awesome, thanks for noticing Rexy!!!

Okay you guys who seemed interested, where are you?? If I can't get musicians I'm afraid the project is dead in the water. Let me remind you the pieces are written and ready to roll. The project is outta my hands, so I really need you!

Forum is done! http://destinysway.myfastforum.org Just a little more info concerning the album: my official name for the album is "Destiny's Way," which is the title track as well. Hence the forum name. As I might have stated it will be completely acoustic (no keyboards or electronic instruments). Pretty much all the arrangements are done and I'll post some of them up on the forum ASAP. Please join if you are interested, either in playing something for me or just hearing the completed project. I am really serious about getting this done and look forward to a really fine product!

Oh and the forum is done, just tweaking it. Will post it soon.

Yeah, I do know the copyright implications. I honestly don't think it would ever garner enough interest to make a CD release viable, but let's just say that if it's becoming a viable interest I will do what is necessary on this front. I mean, a finished album given away for free is better than an unfinished CD that was going to be marketed, you know?? Edit: Now this is just a brain storm: if I sold blank CDs all nice and packaged, and the buyers burn the free download, wouldn't that be nice and legal?

Great! I'm glad to see some interest growing. I'm going to put together a private forum in a few days and get down to business. About the recording thing: I want this to be 100% professional sounding, and as a recording engineer myself I have pretty high standards (see my website in my sig). But that doesn't mean you've got to have $10,000 worth of equipment. Pezman, your setup sounds just fine. For percussion, I specifically need: triangle, tambourine, and wind chimes. But if your interested I might be able to write a few more parts in with various percussion - I actually just thought of a good place to put some bongos. dPaladin, let me know if you are able to get access to the recording setup and if you'd be able to play the piano parts on a grand and record it. I think this will be the hardest thing to get so if you can do it great! I am in my last semester of college so I know how that is - luckily I know all the right people and could get access to a Steinway B in an auditorium any day I want. sillythewilly: so you are still learning to record stuff? I might be able to talk you through some stuff and maybe even loan you some gear - let's keep our options open. By the way, let me reiterate that if you live anywhere close to GA I might could meet up with you and do the recording myself. I figure there's gotta be a few people from GA here. Thanks for the interest!

I am first interested in finishing the album. Only if there is a big interest will I even think about "releasing" it, though it would probably be more along the lines of "make a donation, get a free CD!" with downloads available (the incentive is to have a fully packaged CD).

So this is a cross-post from VGMix because I still need more participants. I've written a whole album of arrangements from various games - Final Fantasy, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Cave Story, Star Ocean, Tetris, Fire Emblem, and others. It's all finished and ready to be recorded. I am playing flute, alto flute, and piccolo on this myself. The instruments I need are: Acoustic Guitar Acoustic Bass Drum Set Miscellaneous Percussion (I might not need this since I can play triangle, etc. myself ) Grand Piano (no uprights please - I want the feel of a grand) Oboe Violin Clarinet possibly but I might try to play it myself. Just need to practice You need to be able to record yourself in a professional manner and be willing to work up potentially hard music. If you happen to live within a few hundred miles of Houston County, GA (about an hour south of Atlanta) I can record you myself. Depending on the success of the album and how it turns out, their may or may not be a CD release in the cards. I run a recording business and can do full CD packaging and production so I can release this "professionally" if there is interest. I would try to pay the musicians if possible if this happens. Please respond here if you are interested. I plan on making a private forum for all of the musicians involved to work with me on the tracks. I also want the track list to be primarily a secret until release time. Thanks!!!

I'm always interested in truly acoustic tracks here, and you've arranged a favorite of mine. I can deal with the performance issues and tuning, BUT what I really can't deal with is the recording and post-processing. The cello barely sounds like a cello. It almost has a violin quality; too much high-end, and where's all the low-end (yes I know it was in a higher range)? There is also about 300x too much reverb on everything. I'm not sure what your recording was made with, but you could stand some better recording techniques or better equipment, or both. The quality of the music is fantastic in general but the recording quality is just a real let down. Also, very short and the ending is "meh". I don't mean to be harsh, but to me, this sounds like a "WIP, version 0.5". As in, you've got a great arrangement started and here's a super-rough demo to show a friend. Now you need to extend, polish, and then do a great performance with some great recording equipment. I wish you were near me, I'd offer to record it myself.

This has been an ongoing debate for years, especially in the hi-fi community. Recently I read a thread that had some great technical info about it here: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/303715-why-do-some-think-vinyl-sounds-best.html . It's not a hi-fi forum, more of a recording engineer forum that I frequent, so the discussion isn't so biased. Frankly, it's a hard comparison. The most important thing to remember is that engineers had to specifically change their recordings to make it work on vinyl. Basically the highs and lows had to be attenuated so that they wouldn't cause the record to mistrack. Also, there was no ridiculous compression like on most music these days due to the same thing. The "sound" of vinyl is mostly the changes done to make it just work on a player. On the other hand, you can put exactly what you hear onto a CD. The limitation of a CD, though, is resolution. The "compromise" made was CDs having 16bits/44kHz sampling rates. This is much lower resolution than pure vinyl. Currently, we can record at 24bits/192kHz, which is closer to "real" life with extended high frequency pickup, faster transients, etc. Anyway, you can't use these hi-bitrate/sample rate files on a redbook CD though. Forays are being made into different CDs to play back higher-bit rate files, such as SACDs. Anyways, sorry to ramble. It's an interesting topic. The current state of the music industry is quite complex, especially with the main form of transmitted music being mp3s, which are terribly lossy and sound terrible compared to most things. We even use it here!

D'oh! I payed about $15 each for the Greatest Composer's series sets. But they were in brand-new condition so I can't really complain. I'm really tempted to ask you to like take some pictures and stuff...but that's too much work. Plus I don't have any money to actually buy stuff right now.

Dang, and how much classical stuff do they have? My Goodwills never have classical stuff... I wish I could go through them, I'd probably buy a bunch.

Overcoat: Maybe you can hook me up? It seems NO one down here bothers to try to sell classical vinyl. The rare times I find it it's usually really expensive because the people think it's rare or something (??). I generally pay $2-$3 per record unless it's something I really want, what kind of prices does your place have?

Another thing I like about vinyl is the lack of tracks. You put it on and let it go...no skipping tracks or anything. It's great how bands made each side of the record an experience in and of itself, unlike a lot of CDs these days. Pink Floyd's "Animals" comes to mind especially.

I have been collecting vinyl for a couple years now. I have about 3-4 dozen classical records from various composers/orchestras. The pride of my collection is these Time Warner "Great Composers" series that have 4 records of that composers greatest works. I've got Stravinsky, Debussy, Prokofiev, and several others. I also have many classic rock albums, including Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc. I find it really hard to find good quality classical music on vinyl (since no one buys it). A couple months ago I found a really cool record shop but the guy had just GIVEN AWAY 90% of his classical stuff because it was taking up too much room (hundreds, 1000s of records). I was pissed.

That's why we are, like, trying to remake the whole site? VgmixX was never supposed to exist, it was supposed to be Vgmix3, which has all of the good aspects of vgmix plus more. This is an odd thread. If you guys really want to discuss the future of vgmix, go to the #future channel of irc.vgmix.com and discuss it with us! I'm usually around at night, and some others often (soudou, zyko, etc). IF you want to discuss OCR's WIP board, I'm pretty sure there is a thread for that somewhere...

Exactly...and that's exactly our goal.

Well I don't come here often, but during the times I have seen vgmix mentioned it seemed some members had a dim view of vgmix, though I don't know if it was their own feelings or from "hearing about it" from others. I'm not saying the staff here trashes vgmix all the time. It's more of a holdover from the past. A lot of younger members know something went on that wasn't pretty, and some assume there is still issues.

well at the #future channel that won't be happening. No one talks in the main #vgmix channel anyways.