Sir_NutS

That's fine.  Good luck to all the participants this round, I'm looking forward to listening to the songs!

On a second note I will be doing the stream today anyways.  I know we have some veterans in this compo but maybe some of the newer guys would be interested in watching.  I'll be working on a new track but I will be answering production questions mostly.  Well that is, the little I know about production.  But what little I know I would like to share it, so tune in if you want!.  If that's ok with you I will post an update when the stream goes up in an hour or two.

Streaming now at http://www.twitch.tv/sir_nuts/

That's fine.  Good luck to all the participants this round, I'm looking forward to listening to the songs!

On a second note I will be doing the stream today anyways.  I know we have some veterans in this compo but maybe some of the newer guys would be interested in watching.  I'll be working on a new track but I will be answering production questions mostly.  Well that is, the little I know about production.  But what little I know I would like to share it, so tune in if you want!.  If that's ok with you I will post an update when the stream goes up in an hour or two.

Well, I'm gonna be THAT guy.  

1-Vampire Killer (CV1)
2-Bloody Tears (CV2)
3-Beggining (CV3)

My branch needs more stacking please, not stacked enough, haven't touched the moon's surface yet.

I started something for this, I just hope I can set some time apart from gaming to finish it.

Well, I'm gonna be THAT guy.  

1-Vampire Killer (CV1)
2-Bloody Tears (CV2)
3-Beggining (CV3)

Well, I'm gonna be THAT guy.  

1-Vampire Killer (CV1)
2-Bloody Tears (CV2)
3-Beggining (CV3)

This is cool but I've come to dislike the elimination format as I have the amazing luck of people dropping out in all the compos I've been.  Still, I've been itching to remix some castlevania for a while, so maybe.

Hello OCR Community, I am very very excited to bring to you my upcoming first album, Silius : 0373.
 

 
This is a remix album of Sunsoft's hidden gem, Journey to Silius, which has a special place in my memory, and which had some of the best music in any Sunsoft game, and that's saying a lot!
 
This album is mostly a solo effort, but it also features collaborations with Jivemaster and Showroom_Dummy.  I am planning on releasing the album in a couple of months, so I thought I should share with you the amazing trailer (with great custom artwork) by The Coop.
 
Bringing this to you is a very special event for me, as it feels like OCR has brought me to this point.  WIthout OCR, this wouldn't be possible.  I am hoping to releasing this at OCRecords (fingers crossed!)
 
Let me know what you think, share if you like, and like if you like!
 
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sirnutsmusic
soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/sir_nuts
twitter: https://twitter.com/PMichaelMolina
 

My take on this is that it doesn't sound like town music.  To me, these kind of songs evoke the feeling of "home".  They evoke a calm, welcoming feeling of coziness which make people think of a homely place.  Since there aren't many games which have themes exclusively for indoor homes or houses, and rather have the town theme playing whether you are inside or outside, then people respond with "town" instead of "house" or "home" when asked where this theme belongs.  
 
To me, this same type of arrangement is used a lot in old sitcoms that were family-friendly.  You could easily put this at the start of a "Growing Pains"-style of sitcom and it would fit right in.  These sitcoms also revolve around being in a house, which most of the time have a welcoming and cozy appearance for the audience.  In trying to identify the musical characteristics that evoke this kind of image in people's mind from this themes we could also analyze the themes used by this kind of sitcoms as well.

It's funny that you chose this one as an example of a typical town theme, especially since it contains some elements like synthesized drum beats that usually are not found in town themes in JRPGs. Especially the beginning part gives me more of a "Save Screen" vibe than a town. Later on, the peaceful melody and selection of harmonies and melodic lines clearly is more "peaceful town", but still I think for example Kakariko Village from Zelda: A Link to the Past is a better example of stereotypical "town themes".
 
I think the main aspect of JRPG town themes is that there is no sense of threat audible in the music. The songs are usually downtempo, have some beautiful melodies played on serene, soothing instruments. They often have some kind of strings/pads for the chords to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere, and the chords are predominantly major ones. When there are too many minor chords in there it mutates more into a love/sadness theme, so the major chords play a major role here (no pun intended
 
Instrumentation is also a very important aspect, as town themes usually have little to no percussion in them. If anything, it's some light stuff like shakers or tambourines. There are of course examples like Secret of Mana's town theme, but that one also has a very happy vibe to it because of its jumpy melody and cute instrumentation. Generally the instruments are non-threatening in nature. Harsh sounds like electric guitars, heavy drums or deep basses/brass are usually left out to create a more natural, soft mood that doesn't feel too dramatic.
 
The song structure is also usually more predictable, so the player gets the feeling they know the place and there will be no surprises, and they can feel right at home without fearing any threatening dangers or battles.
 
I think those are the main ingredients to create a typical JRPG town theme that fits into all those classic games.

My take on this is that it doesn't sound like town music.  To me, these kind of songs evoke the feeling of "home".  They evoke a calm, welcoming feeling of coziness which make people think of a homely place.  Since there aren't many games which have themes exclusively for indoor homes or houses, and rather have the town theme playing whether you are inside or outside, then people respond with "town" instead of "house" or "home" when asked where this theme belongs.  
 
To me, this same type of arrangement is used a lot in old sitcoms that were family-friendly.  You could easily put this at the start of a "Growing Pains"-style of sitcom and it would fit right in.  These sitcoms also revolve around being in a house, which most of the time have a welcoming and cozy appearance for the audience.  In trying to identify the musical characteristics that evoke this kind of image in people's mind from this themes we could also analyze the themes used by this kind of sitcoms as well.

My suggestion is to focus on the concepts and not on the tools.  It's great to be familiar with one DAW, and in fact I would recommend to pick one and stick with it for a few years.  But concepts should be easy to translate no matter which tools you're using, and if you have a good grasp of the concepts you may switch between tools with ease.  If someone gives you feedback on your production, look for information on what causes these issues and what are the general solutions, not the settings you need to use for your particular tools.  For example, don't learn how the Maximus (I believe that's FL's Dynamics plugin) work, or use a bunch of presets for it.  Rather, read up on how dynamics processing works and you will master them all and easily understand (and find solutions to) the issues in your mix.

It was fun as always.  I'm looking forward to the next RMRB as I like all the classic themes way more than the sigma themes.  So long, and thanks for all the fish.

A shame really, I always enjoy ToN's tracks.

And like I said, if someone needs one, then the remixer should've done a better job there.  People like mazedude and schabubula do some of the most complex arrangements of video game music out there yet you can distinguish the source quite easily.  They don't writte essays for people so they can interpret their music.  Their music speaks for itself.  But like I said, to each their own.  I tend to ignore these when voting, regardless of whether I could hear the source or not.

To be quite honest, I find this practice pretty silly.  I never write this kind of second-by-second metric because music isn't meant to be treated like that, measured by a ruler.  I want people to listen to the music and never think of how much I used the source between mark 1:02 and mark 1:05.  Music should speak for itself.

A few points about what Darke said:
 
As a very active member of VGMix back in the days, I gotta say the problem with the voting in VGMix was that for lesser known or new people, they were less likely to get any ratings or votes than known people because most people were waiting for these known remixers to post something up to upvote it over everything else in a matter of minutes/hours.  Which in turn made new remixers/obscure games get buried minutes after posting.  Moreover, new remixers who posted less-than-great music, were much less likely to get reviews/votes on subsequent postings because people dismissed them as being bad, which didn't take in account that which each piece of music that one person does it's very likely that person will improve.  So the system was heavily weighted towards people who were already good and well known.  I don't think people got intimidated by the scores as everywhere you post music you will probably get feedback which, if you're new, won't be very favorable.
 
Regarding the suggestion about the votes I do agree with Darke that it's needlessly complicated.  What we need is an even easier voting system, something automated, as I'm sure could be something close to what Darke might have in mind.  If we have an automated submission system we might also have an automated voting system, a page with all the remixes for the round and the ability to vote on that same page as you listen.  That would be the easiest approach.

Like Darkesword said, ask for feedback, I know for a fact that there are a lot of helpful people around, I try to give feedback if asked, although I'm not the most knowledgeable person.  Even some of the stuff I've learned over the years has been thanks to the feedback from people in this very competition.  And believe it or not, I've learned quite a few things in this competition we are right now just by talking to the artists about their tracks and mine.

Please keep in mind that right now, the draft, the submissions gathering, the encoding, tagging, and uploading; the voting, vote collection, and tallying; it's all done manually by either you guys or by me. There's very little that's automated about this process for gauntlets, and it's why scoring hasn't gone up yet (I have spreadsheets to help me tally but it's still some manual labor on my part to get everything in there).
 
In my spare time, I'm working on a database-driven web application that will help me manage and automate practically everything having to do with the competitions I personally run on OCR. This is a large-scale, complicated software development project and I'm still in the data design phase of the whole thing. These kinds of ideas can certainly be incorporated into that, but it's a long ways off. I don't anticipate this application being done any time soon.
 
It's also worth noting that the more complicated you make the voting process, the less likely people are to vote at all. VGMix had a lot of these problems with their review system. They attached scores and weights to reviews (through meta-ratings on reviews) which ended up intimidating people from participating, which led to a total crash of the entire system.
 
Building the kind of things you're asking for into the current competition's scoring system is pie-in-the-sky; it sounds great and I understand the intent, but to be honest it's needlessly complicated for the purposes of this competition. If you're interested in detailed feedback about your track, please feel free to ask for specific feedback either here or in the Workshop forum.
 
Nonetheless, I appreciate the comments and aware that feedback can be an issue. Perhaps next Gauntlet we do (rest assured, we will be doing one next year), we can have a one-week break in between blocks where people can be encouraged to review and dissect tracks from the previous three rounds. Maybe setting up a separate review thread per round could also be beneficial next time.
 
On a related note, this December 18th will be 6 year anniversary of the first Grand Robot Master Remix Battle, which is the first of the large scale choose-your-theme competitions that everyone has enjoyed so much over the years. I'm happy to say that I've seen so many awesome artists who've either gotten started or gotten better by competing in these large scale events, many of them honing their skills to the point of going pro and making careers out of music. I'm not pretending to take any credit for any of that, but I will say that I'm proud of everyone that's given the compos a shot and have managed to push their skills higher and higher.

Apparently Rainy Turtloid has done so much cocaine he thinks the entire world is out to get him.

Jorito & Tuberz : This one hit me right in the funk.  fucking great.
 
EDIT: I really needed a top 5 instead of a top 3 vote this week.  Sorry ladyWildfire & Mak

Jorito & Tuberz : This one hit me right in the funk.  fucking great.
 
EDIT: I really needed a top 5 instead of a top 3 vote this week.  Sorry ladyWildfire & Mak

No pressure.

No pressure.