Some questions about the submission guidelines

[GSO]

I don't really understand the arrangement part of the submission policy:

1. Arrangements in any genre of music (e.g. techno, jazz, rock, classical) are acceptable, so long as the genre itself does not conflict with any other arrangement criteria. 2. The arrangement must be substantial and original.

• Submissions must be different enough from the source material to clearly illustrate the contributions, modifications, and enhancements you have made. Acceptable arrangement often involves more than one of the following techniques:
  

• Modifying the genre, chord progression, instrumentation, rhythms, dynamics, tempo, or overall composition of the source material
  
• Adding original solos, transitions, harmonies, counter-melodies, lyrics, or vocals to the source material
  

• Taking the original game audio and simply adding drum loops or using an existing MIDI file and assigning new instruments does not qualify as substantial or original arrangement.
  
• Submissions should be long enough to convey arrangement; generally, this requires at least two minutes of material.
  

3. The source material must be identifiable and dominant.

• While interpretation and original additions are encouraged, arrangement must not modify the source material beyond recognition.
  
• The amount of arranged source material must be substantial enough to be recognized.
  

is there anything else besides just taking a midi and modifying it and just having nothing but beeps and blips that will not qualify as music?

please help because i don't really understand this part of the rules.

[prophetik music ⚖️]

arrangements on this website take on many forms - for example, take a listen to some of children of the monkey machine's chrono trigger remixes (one called 'ruined world', i think, comes to mind).

beyond that, i have no idea what you are asking. music is music - it's progressive, and it takes on many forms. nothing but beeps and blips can be music - take a listen to mario davidovsky's early electronic works, i think electronic study no. 3 is a good example - as well as a midirip. the issue is whether or not it's appropriate for the site.

if you make a song that isn't just a midirip with drums, that has a clear attachment to the source material without ripping it off completely, that's a song appropriate to this site.

[Fishy]

All it's really saying is don't just make a cover of the music. Starting with a midi only means that your tempting yourself into a less creative arrangement.

To be right for OCR, you have to alter the music in way that makes it personalized by changing any/all of things mentioned in bullet points 2 and 3. Just to be straight there's nothing wrong with doing vg covers and they aren't bad music, OCR just isn't interested in them.

[GSO]

thanks. that really helps.

[Verdegrand]

Hi,

So I am thinking of submitting some piano stuff to OCR sometime, and I would like to at least not screw up in regard to the submission guidelines, so I have quite a few questions because I am not sure about some things:

First of all, it says that the arrangement must be substantial and original. It counts different instrumentation as a technique for an acceptable arrangement. So, let's say there is a piece from a game, and it is not looped. Would reproducing it on the piano as faithfully as it is possible for me without many more modifcations to the actual musical content count as an acceptable arrangement? Also, it says that an acceptable entry would be at least two minutes long. If the piece itself is shorter than that (around 1:50), that would obviously constitute an exception, or am I mistaken here?

Now for another question for other pieces. Can there be an exception to the 8mb rule? What if I would like to make a piano medley with many different themes which would be around ten minutes or longer - if I had to size the mp3 at around 8 mb, I would have to downsample and the quality would suffer a lot. (I have understood that medleys need to be set up in a way that they sound continuous.)

Also, if I submit something to OCR, can I still use it in any way I see fit (upload recordings of it to YouTube, use it as a soundtrack for self made fan videos etc.)?

Many greetings

[Doni]

submission question:

I've got a few tracks which are pretty much ready for submission... can I submit these rapid fire or must I wait until my current sub is accepted or dissed? I'm on a bit of a production rampage and would like to minimize sadness caused by waiting for my next submission to enter the cue...

I've read the sub rules over and over and I think it says I can only sub one track at a time. It's unclear to me whether that means 1 track per email or 1 track in the cue at a time.

Any help would be much appreciated! Feel free to copy, paste and flame if I missed something obvious

Thanks

[Nekofrog]

Three weeks between submissions.

[Emunator ⚖️]

1 track submission a month is the rule last time I heard. If you're collabing, you can have the partner submit it for you and it won't count against you, but you've got to have a 1-month buffer period in between each song you send in.

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Nah, Nekofrog's correct, it's 3 weeks between submissions. And 1 submission per email. (Good luck!)

[Doni]

Excellent! So then my sadness shall only be limited to periods of 3 weeks! How splendid!

Thanks for the swift replies all

[nickflavor]

hi everyone, first post! hope i chose the right forum for this question:

i'm thinking of doing a mix of 'ai no uta', which was originally written as a song to be used in the japanese commercials for pikmin, BUT!, was also later used in smash brothers brawl. does this fall in technicality for acceptable mixes?

also, does anyone have any information on who composed this? the wikipedia says satorou iwata directed the video but doesn't site a source. that seems unlikely to me, but it does seem logical that nintendo would use one it's own composers to write this. thoughts?

thanks everyone.

[Liontamer ⚖️]

i'm thinking of doing a mix of 'ai no uta', which was originally written as a song to be used in the japanese commercials for pikmin, BUT!, was also later used in smash brothers brawl. does this fall in technicality for acceptable mixes?

I can only answer the first part, but, no, that source tune would be outside what we could accept. It has to be music created for the medium of a game.

[big giant circles]

that being said, feel free to remix it anyway and you can post it in here: http://ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=19

[TGH]

Alright, so I sent a submission email the other day and I just realized now that I. . . posted the wrong link to the source track. It's a link to a completely different source. I'm an idiot X(

Does anyone know how I would rectify this situation effectively? Or if I even can?

Thank you,

-TGH

[Bahamut]

Send another email to submissions with the corrections.

[Algamest]

Um, i accidentally emailed a submission without the mp3 attachment, i don't know why, i'm an idiot... So i immediately resent the email with the attachment, is this going to cause any problems?

[OceansAndrew]

nope, we got your back. You are good to go

[Algamest]

Great ^^ thank you very much

[Phrygian_Gamer]

First and foremost, if this has been answered somewhere else and I haven't found it, sorry for the irrelevant question.

On the Submission Standards and Instructions page (http://ocremix.org/info/Submission_Standards_and_Instructions) point 2 under the "Instructions" Section states:

"Wait three weeks between submissions. Submissions received more frequently than this will not be evaluated."

Does this specifically include re-submissions or new submissions?

For example, is this to stop people from flooding the submissions inbox with multiple copies of the same remix? Or is it to stop individuals who might have a back-catalog of remixes from flooding the inbox? Or both?

Again, if this is answered somewhere else please let me know, I'm still really new to the site and want to be sure I don't start treading on toes.

Thanks!

[timaeus222]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's a recommendation to stop people from flooding the inbox like you thought. Believe it or not, there *are* a whole bunch of ReMixes getting submitted, and more than people looking in from the outside may think. The back catalog is huge. There's at least half a year's worth of submissions not evaluated yet. Liontamer talked about this on one of the OCR Talkbacks (whichever one that was).

If people have resubs, I believe they should still leave time between submissions out of etiquette.

Edited June 8, 2014 by timaeus222

[Rexy ⚖️]

Going by experience, I believe that resubs don't count in regards to the waiting period - usually they can be fast-tracked on a by-track basis, which would explain that the to be judged queue has some fast-tracked resubs long after the date the panel has reached to begin with.

I hope that (kind of) helps, though I'm open to be corrected.

[Phrygian_Gamer]

So what you're saying is that in the case of someone resubmitting something that was initially denied, the judges can expedite the process on a case-by-case basis, but the 3 week waiting period between submissions of original/new remixes is more courtesy to try and keep the flow of judged remixes consistent?

And yeah, I remember that episode of the talkback where Liontamer was discussing how many remixes the judges had to process. I thought that was something to do with when the remixes were posted, not necessarily when they were approved or turned down.

Either way, thanks for getting back to me so quickly guys, I really appreciate it!

[MrKyle]

Just wanted to check and see what the 1,2,3 of this would be.  

 

If you have a remix that was accepted but conditional upon correct encoding, do you just email the updated file to the Submissions inbox like a resub, or is there a different process?  Sorry, I wasn't able to find the directions for this situation.

 

Thanks for any help!

 

Cheers,

 

MrKyle

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Just PM me a link to it.

[The Gatherer]

Hey everyone, I'm new here, but I've been a fan of this site for years. I finally made a song so the judges could check it out and filled all the information required, but forgot to attach the song in the email. Should I wait or do I resend the message with the song attached?