Official Fan Arrange ~ Doujin Thread Information
 

The worldwide unofficial fan-made VGM scene is becoming bigger and bigger everyday. I thought that, as a VGM oriented community, it would be about time to have that thread. =p

There are of course several scenes, though you could roughly talk about the Japanese doujin scene and the Western Fan Arrange one. Save for the particular commercial status of Japanese doujins though, they're basically the same: fans covering video game music.

Let's make this thread a directory resource to allow everyone to discover that incredibly vast and rich world. There are many gems to be found and it requires more effort than one lonely person could give to not miss anything. =)

So what do we do ? Submit links, talk about the artists you like, what style they play, what they cover. Tell us about that concept album they're doing on that obscure forum and about it's progress. Liked a recently released OC Remix track ? Tell us about it ! Again, we don't want to miss anything !

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Main Ressources

OC Remix ~ VGM Remix community
VGmix ~ VGM Remix community
Disaster ~ Doujin Music news site
Otokei Dojin Data Base ~ Doujin Music database
Black Angel ~ Doujin Music database
Dwelling of Duels ~ Monthly VGM live instrument driven arrange competition

Hey, would a mod mind merging my thread into this one? I'm too lazy to update/bump it anymore. :P

I thought it may be better to start anew so we can build something more coherent from scratch. Definitely hope you contribute though ... :eagletear:

Do you guys think we should arrange some kind of huge directory of individual artist sites or just keep it as news posts into the thread itself ? I think the latter could work but if you want to get on something more ambitious ... =p

Some random links to get people started ~

. Goat is an awesome guitarist and has released a complete Castlevania arrange album. It kicks a thousand asses and is available for free on his site as well as many other covers.

. Stemage launched a Metroid Metal project years ago, and offers a complete Metroid 1 album and several other Metroid covers on his site.

. Xoc has completed several albums as well, among which Gremlins 2, Mario World and Kirby themed ones. Get them here.

Keep them coming guyz ~

There's going to be plenty of releases from the Japanese side soon, with Comiket 73 approaching in another week.

Here's another doujin database that I've discovered: BLACK ANGEL TOP

Unfortunately it doesn't have extensive composer/arranger information like ODDB.

I am also interested in buying some of the doujin products. A guidance would be nice.

The web doujin specialized shops usually don't ship abroad. =/

You can try emailing the artists directly to arrange something with them, though. If that fails, there's the good old Yahoo Japan Auctions, but you'll have to pay a middle man since, there again, most sellers don't ship abroad. =/

Finally, you can find some doujin sellers on ebay.

*summons AkumuHau*

Oh, how about someone knowledgeable in the OC remix area tells us about the artists one shouldn't miss over there ? That place is huge and I know *I* lost track of anything a while ago. :3

You got my radio show that has western artists on as guests aswell as news on releases both in america/europe and japan

Liontamer is the head judge at OCR, he could tell you everything about OCR and it's people

I'll make a list later of noteable artists, just gotta eat all this christmas food and have a fat induced heart attack first

niki already listed some of my favorite Western arrangers. Stemage, goat, and XOC are all excellent.

One album I love is Noise Mutation. It has trance/guitar/etc. arrangements of SaGa Frontier & SaGa Frontier II music. I bought it during one of Secret Squirrel's obscure music purchasing drives, and it was well worth it. You can find the artists' site here: BEST OF SHAPE

I'll be back to list more if I find the time.

Just found out Akineko got a new site: ‚.‚«‚Ë‚±

Lots of new stuff it would seem. <3

They're all good?

...

Well, not that I aim to tow the company line, but I'd simply recommend DLing the torrents and going through everything. If you had to avoid stuff, it would be some of the really old material, because much of it tends to have poor sound quality and underdeveloped ideas. But as the site grew and the quality grew (with live recording being less costly and the sound quality offered to desktop musicians relative to price has increased), there's been a lot more consistency from track to track, from around early 2004 to now. Most material past mix #1000 should be pretty solid, and we're past 1650 now.

The problem with recommending that you sort by who has the most mixes or the games with the most mixes are missing those artists or games with fewer tracks that are just as good.

Easy recommendation is to search by games you like, then as you get more familiar with some artists that way, seeking out their other mixes.

If you need a list of names, I could always attempt to make one, but a lot of good people would be left off.

I downloaded the first 1000 torrent back in the days, and honestly couldn't listen all the way through because of all the generic trance tracks in it, which is something I honestly can't stand. However, I did find some gems in it, so with what you tell me I'm sure it would indeed require an in-depth investigation. Demands quite a lot of time though, heh.

OCRemix has some quality stuff but there is a lot of mediocre stuff there too, it's pretty much like any other place. Try Shnabubula and po!. And like, it's all dependent on taste too.

Anyway, VGMix is back up with an intermediate solution they call a little something like VGMix X. Still experiencing some hiccups, but back nonetheless, which is immeasurably cool. In celebration, I'm working on a Shadow of the Colossus remix to post there.

At least on this side of the ocean, desktop music has come a long way from generic, and IMO poorly produced electronic music. With that said, OC ReMix (along with any other major American doujin hub) has come a long way from ye olden days. I'd hate to say don't listen to mixes 1-1000, because there are a lot of gems there. But once you start going into 1001 and beyond (we're currently at #1665), you'll find a lot more diversity of genres, and consistently higher quality pieces of music in terms of arrangement and production. We currently have a torrent that goes cover OCRs 1001-1600, if you're interested in DLing that.

There's a couple of new remix projects that recently got released, in case anyone's interested!

Thieves of Fate - Radical Dreamers Remix Project

SPLUNK! - A Spelunker Remix Project

Listened to Thieves of Fate a few days ago, and it sounded pretty impressive. I might however just be influenced by my overwhelming Mitsuda bias; I loved a lot of his music from Radical Dreamers. There were a couple of remixes that weren't really up my alley, but on the whole quality is consistent here. Not sure if it's worth a look if you're unfamiliar with the game's themes, but definitely worth listening to if you are.

SPLUNK! is the latest remix project spearheaded by Joe Cam. It's a part of the OverLooked ReMix website, which is essentially a haven for random joke remixes that aren't meant to be taken seriously. You're not going to find quality here, but if you have a sense of humor that's anything like mine, you'll get some great laughs. Big names that any Western fan arrange followers will recognize are present on this project's artist list (Mustin, virt, po!, and Zeratul, to name a few), but don't listen to it expecting high calibre muzak. Some tracks are good, some are almost good, and a couple are inexplicably awesome. I found it was worth listening to because someone was brilliant enough to come up with the idea for a Spelunker remix project of all things. If nothing else, I recommend Mustin's "You Just Fucking Died". :tpg:

Arrange Stream is back!!!

<3 <3 <3