big giant circles

I second that. Jamming with Brandon was a blast! Glad someone thought to capture at least a portion of it.

speaking of Martin Leung, I was backstage talking to him Saturday night trying to convince him to submit a dang remix or three Not sure if he will, but it'd be pretty cool.

battleship anyone? OCR style?

because of your position, or because the noob won? (don't feel too bad man. could have happened to anyone. q-pa's pretty sexy, after all)

these are all somewhat backwards in posting order, so bear with me. 1 - back ashore after our rowing attempts 2 - burke lake shot 3 - ditto 4 - yours truly 5 - yours truly again 6 - ditto (the wifey took these) 7 - djp, his lady, and palpable 8 - ditto 9 - real folk blues did a much better job rowing than i did 10 - djsammyg, bahamut, and dragon avenger 11 - ultimate frisbee 12 - ditto 13 - more ultimate 14 - ditto 15 - ditto 16 - pre concert from our seats

alright. all of my pics are uploaded. thumbnails and links to follow later today. i've got some things to do first. after i'm done, i'll definitely have everything uploaded by tonight. between myself, escariot, harmony, jose, and taucer's video camera, we should have some killer footage

so.... very......... t...i...r...e...d.............. Larry and I had and incredible opportunity tonight. The meetup was fun. Hope lots of pictures ensue shortly. Not now, though. I'm utterly exhausted.

Hey, haven't really had a spare moment thus far to get on here and send some official get-well-wishes. Andy, it breaks my heart that you had to miss this man. I know it meant a lot to you. I know I speak for everyone that attended when I say that we all thought of you and hope for your speedy recovery. Don't fret too bad, I'm sure there will be another one of these in the future, so just look forward to that rather than regretting things that we can't control. You're a good guy, bro.

talking to wes about this right now. this isn't necessarily the case. you'll miss hanging after rehearsal, yes, but we'll still probably get to do something before or after the concert. have faith, bro

super bump on the FAQ. Everyone who's attending needs to re-read it. There's a bit of a change (for the better, I think) on the itinerary, and it's pretty well finalized at this point.

Alright, as a disclaimer, I'm not very smart when it comes to technical stuff like this. Hence, why I am posting here. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. So. Can anyone tell me the difference between these two RAMs? Other than one says "1G" and one says "1GR" at the end, which I have no idea what difference that makes based on the specs. Anyway, This one - http://www.directron.com/kvr667d2s51g.html and this one - http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Kingston-Technologies-1GB-DDR2-SDRAM-Notebook-Memory-KVR667D2SO1GR/sem/rpsm/oid/155057/catOid/-12993/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do See, I originally bought the latter in store and upgraded my iMac, and it works fine. Well, I found the former, and figured it was the same thing. So I bought it, and then my computer won't start. It doesn't work coupled with the first stick, and it doesn't work on it's own. According to Apple, these are the specifications http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303084 Am I missing something here? Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Also, does anyone want a stick of said RAM in the 512MB size? Works perfectly fine, but I have no use for it.

ouch. that sucks

i think it's only fair that whoever rides with those who have cars etc help pay for their parking.

Alright, first track was eaten by googlepages. Let's vote on this new one. First order of business: /me gets out flame thrower and points at RTF for chiptune section. Just kidding. Actually, I thought it was pretty cool. In fact, the short-and-sweet is I pretty well dug the whole track. Id did drag on a little longer than I would have liked, but it's pretty chill, and I don't really have any gripes re: production or level of actual source usage. And though the drumloop may have been a slight bit overused (something I'm usually pretty miffed by) Mr. Fox countered that concern with his effectiveness in changing up the lead instrument appropriately throughout the track, and this maintained listenability (is that a word?) of the track. The lead varies from softsynth intro to square at 1:30. Then from square to some kind of pulse-ish lead at 2:10 or so. Filtered monoglide comes in at 2:30. Vibesynth coming in to play along around 2:50. Then the aforementioned chiptune section around 3:28 for the switchup. Tags back to pads under chime lead. Softsynth back into the ring at 4:07. Aaaaaand, seems to more or less repeat the cycle there. So there's roughly 7 or so different lead sounds, coupled with a pretty funky bass, I'm going to go ahead and throw in my nod of approval. Could be a little shorter, but still a cool track to bob your head to while driving to nonetheless. YES

If I may get on my pedestal and rant for just a second: I don't mean to be a doom-sayer here (as I'm definitely in agreement that this is an awesome track) but would any of you YES'ers mind spelling out specifically WHERE and WHAT the ties are? A moment to explain why I seem so adamant about this vote. I'm not trying to sound like I'm the only person who puts forth effort, as I know we all do what we can to carry our weight on the panel, but seriously. I feel like what the hell is the point in having submission standards and guidelines to begin with if we're just going to throw out YES votes because a track "sounds hot" or is the same "mood" or solely based on "production and execution." An OC ReMix strikes a balance between creatively reworking the original composition and paying attention to mixing and sound quality, and is thus judged accordingly in both of these two areas. Any incorporation of non-game music (mainstream, classical, etc.) should be very limited and should never carry significant portions of the mix. So there we have it. As of this exact moment, I don't feel like there are liberal ties... I feel like there are NO ties. The bassline is different; the melody is different. The only thing that remains constant between source and ReMix is the key. I've done my homework (on the mix). I'm also human, and prone to err. If someone will do me the honor of pointing out how I'm missing such "obvious" connections, I will be more than happy to reconsider my vote. I mean, seriously. How many of you would have known EXACTLY what this is a remix of had it not been stated in the thread? *EDIT* Upon numerous additional listens, I will go back and correct myself when I stated above that there are NO connections and say that I DO in fact believe there are tentative connections, but I reiterate that it's too much of a stretch when I can't even recognize without dissecting and listening and re-listening a thousand times to justify the arrangement and level of interpretation. And once more for the record let me remind everyone that this is otherwise a really awesome track.

that would be dave they're not any more expensive than if you were to go to someplace like johnny carino's or the olive garden.

FAQ update. A few more meetup details. Particularly the location of Friday's dinner, which is also the 2nd meetup time and place. Wear your OCR shirts!

Happy b-day, man!

ya rly. 10char

does anyone have any specific and completely unanswered questions at this point? please make them known now so i can work on an answer before next week.

As far as I can hear by comparison, despite the style being extremely similar in the ReMix to what the original's are, I still get the impression that the ReMix is more like a separate movement on it's own, and there's some lovely partwriting and composition otherwise. Samples could be better, but they're certainly nothing to sneer at, and I tend to be picky when it comes to samples. I'd say this is well enough above the bar. YES

soon. within the next few days.

well, i suppose i don't care at this point if the threads merge. the reason i created the 2nd is because with like 20+ pages of people talking about how much the concert is, etc, and nobody really mentioning particulars about the meetup itself or an itinerary of any sort, i created a second. i've tried to keep all questions answered in this the FAQ thread. btw, darke, hope you can attend, buddy! that's awesome!

Arg. It's tracks like this that make me hate what we do. Let me echo Larry's sentiments that the track is undoubtedly badass. However, BT himself could submit any of his original tracks, and they'd be just as badass, but unfortunately, that's not the only prerequisite OC ReMixes have. I'm totally cool with a track taking a more liberal form, Wingless's mix is an excellent example, my own FFA Wendel mix is another. However, there are at least points in mixes such as those where there are obvious, undeniable references to the source material at some point(s) at least. Not to sound argumentative, but I've got to wholeheartedly disagree with Vig that such references are present between this source and ReMix. The source and ReMix are both in A flat minor, and for the entire duration of the track, the bassline and chord progression follows the pattern E, Eb, db, Eb, E, Eb, ab (where "b" = flat of course). My music theory is a little rough, but in a minor key, I believe that translates into 6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 5, 1. Now then. The original source chord progression is ab, Eb, ab, Eb, Ab, db, Gb, B, E, bb dim, Eb, which translates to 1, 5, 1, 5, 1, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5. So compare them one over the other: Orig. - 1, 5, 1, 5, 1, 4, 7, 3, 6, 2, 5 remix - 6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 5, 1 Now then. That being broken down, let's talk about the melody. I'm not going to spell out the melody from either one here, obviously. I'll just flat out say that I had a difficult time at best recognizing the melody in the remix as the melody from the source. And I've played the game through about 3 times. So I'd like to think myself fairly familiar with it before I had to sit and listen to it 50 more times to see if there was something I was just missing as I read the YES votes. Also, in the remix, the actual melody chimes in from :54 until about 1:48 and then again from 3:21 until 4:04. So for a track that is 261 seconds long, the melody (which I've mentioned is not blatantly recognizeable) appears in approximately 97 seconds, or in other words, roughly 37% of the track. This, coupled with the completely different bassline and chord progression = a bit TOO liberal as far as I'm concerned. OK. So now that I've sat and deconstructed the track, let me make it completely clear that there is no particular mathematic formula I use to determine the validity of a track as an OC ReMix. I don't normally do this (break down tracks in such a manner) for a couple reasons (right now mainly because this vote at this point has taken up over an hour and a half of my morning) but because I still want to say that I'm fine with a mix taking a more freeform or liberal turn in terms of interpretation. Your Skala mix is a wonderful example of that in which it follows the general theme and progression of the mix but still finds it's own way to go nuts and emit some really cool and unique vibes while clearly remaining associated with Schala's theme. I'm confident that if you released this track and sold it for profit, and claimed it entirely as your own, and then sent free copies over to the good folks at Nintendo without anyone ever knowing it was a ReMix of Mario RPG's Sad Song, you'd be completely free from any legal trouble. I'm not entirely certain that Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, or Yoko Shimomura would recognize the theme. I'd wager that 98% of the people who will or would listen to this would hear what I hear, which is a really chill and enjoyable IDM track on it's own. At best, I'd say you could say this is a song "inspired by" Sad Song, but I just cannot responsibly vote in favor of this as an OC ReMix. Always a pleasure to listen to your stuff, Skryp. I don't mean to sound harsh in my vote, but I do feel the need to strongly clarify the reasoning behind my vote. If you don't care to tweak it, and at the very least more heavily implement the original melody to a more significant degree then I'd be more than thrilled to throw a YES your way. Otherwise, at this point, all I can say is good luck with the rest of the vote, Bro. NO

Hmm. Some nice ideas here, and this tune could be a pretty moving piece with the right touches applied. Unfortunately, it does in fact lack some of the elements that would give it that power otherwise. Not to say this is a bad track, but I'll provide some examples to (hopefully) clarify what could bump this one up the ladder so to speak. The overall volume is too consistent, which takes away from the tracks potential to really grab the listener by the [insert sensitive body part here] and take them on an emotional, story-telling journey. Had there been more intense builds, with more swooshing/swishing swelling effects etc, that could have helped tremendously. The individual instruments themselves are OK, but as I see it, synths are MADE to be TWEAKED. That's the beauty of them. I realize that technically you can run a filter pass or a flange or something over any audio now, but nothing cries out for modulation and effect manipulation like a steady synth texture. There's plenty of delay going on, but I want to encourage you to whip out that "Edit events in piano roll" feature, Shawn, and go nuts from note to note. Make it to where even if the listener has an idea of where you're going to take the textures, but once in a while throw them for a good loop. Retain control of the direction of the track. Try to avoid that dang "autopilot" tendency that so many electronica artists have such a rough time with. I hope that makes sense. Finally, the drums were a little too sparse overall. I don't ask for everyone to try to write OMFGLISTENOMYBADASSDRUMLOOPS!!!!1!11! but at the same time, try not to let the percussion wear thin. In this case, a simple bass kick and a click-ish hit just kind of ran out of gas, is one way to put it, I suppose. The piano at 1:57 and at the end was beautifully arranged. I wish those segments had been extended as I would have loved to hear more of that throughout the track. As far as the production goes, the piano sounded a little too distant throughout the track. I understand the whole idea behind wanting to use your reverb to achieve a desired effect, but perhaps it could have helped to eitehr A) automate the reverb saturation from time to time or layer it with a 2nd piano patch with less reverb, and then work on phasing the two in and out of each other appropriately to bring the piano out more into the open, so to say. Anyway, I like the melodic direction of the track, and on the arrangement level, I didn't have any real beef with the piece. But in order to bring this one into the green, I'm going to summarize with the following: -More dynamic detail. Intensify the builds through detail to spatial FX and (when appropriate) more dense instrumentation. -More use of FX automation. -Please, write some more of that awesome and beautiful piano stuff. -Thicker and (when appropriate) more intense drum textures and accents. Always glad to hear your music, Shawn, and I sincerely hope my comments (and the rest of the J's) provide you with insightful feedback that will help you continue to hone your abilities. NO If you want to take a stab at implementing my suggestions, then I'd love to hear a resubmit. Otherwise, remember, it's your track, and if you're happy with it, then that's what matters anyway.