[SotW] Song of the Week - WEEK 123 Voting/WEEK 124 Nominating

Not sure how popular NES stuff would be around here, but whatever, this is a great track from a game I never knew existed (it was never released in Europe, so that's why, otherwise I most certainly would've owned it back then).

New nomination:

Title: Scotland Theme (NSF rip)
Game: Duck Tales 2
Platform: NES
Company: Capcom
Year: 1993
Download link!

I don't know who composed it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

This round was very easy to vote for, since there were really only three tracks I liked, and I absolutely loved them to death.

I have to admit, cutesy gamepop and intricate ballads are my fucking WEAKNESS. Anything with melodies that sound like... Well, like Nostalgic, will instantly melt my cold, bitter heart. I can't help but love this stuff, it's just too bloody sweet.

I mean, I can talk "music theory" about how difficult it is to compose something with a moving, catchy melody, and a progression that's both familiar and surprising (this one is a little more familiar and a little less surprising, but listen to something slow from Dream Theater or Stevie Wonder and you'll know what I mean) and whatnot, but in the end, this is just one of those things. It sort of defies rational explanation.

So yeah, the cutesy gamepop is also represented with the amazing Maruan Series track. Definitely a keeper there, I totally love it.

And finally there's the F-1 Grand Prix track, which is just really good I think. It's thick and sultry like Crash Landon said, and I don't really mind that it's short and cuts off at the end.

The other tracks... I guess it makes voting easier? But seriously, I'd love to hear some of the stories behind these nominations (particularly iXion and Demon Stone).

3 points - Maruan Series 1 Umihara Kawase Shun ~Second Edition (Game Rip) - BGM 3
2 points - Perfect Selection Konami Shooting Battle - Nostalgic (Trigon)
1 point - F-1 World Grand Prix (Game Rip) - Course Intro

Kaleb--I unfortunately deleted them just before seeing your post.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Dhsu

You should have been here for my Umihara Kawase nom...maybe then it would've actually placed. ;_;

Regardless, definitely check out the SNES soundtrack. Plenty of cutesiness to go around.

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm listening to it now, it's totally great.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Uh... Wow. Okay. I didn't see that coming. Maybe I need a break from SotW, I seem to be out of touch completely.

Congratulations to CHz, I guess.

Originally Posted by Dhsu

The iXion track contains a musical cue that holds a certain sentimental value for some members of the video game arrangement community. Whether this influenced CHz or Liontamer's votes or not, we may never know...

Really? I didn't know that... I guess I've been out of the loop for too long. Of course, I'm a bit anti-OCRemix, so maybe it's an OCRemix thing, in which case it would make sense that I'd never heard of this.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Liontamer

Why would you specifically be "anti"-OC ReMix? Did we kick your mother?

Nah, it's nothing personal really. I just don't like the website and what it stands for. You guys run it in a way that goes against what I think is important and valuable in music and its appreciation.

Anyway, I finally got it... Haha, kinda sad that I would miss those, considering. I guess the track was so jarring to me I didn't actually hear anything. I'm deeply ashamed.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Liontamer

Do you feel the same way about arrange albums where the arrangement is vastly different from the original track, or it OCR more offensive to you because they're different from the original tracks and not authorized by the copyright holders to be that different?

No no, I actually love the remix scene, and I do respect OCR for what it has done to keep it alive (I mean, there's an extended period when you guys were the only people running a remix site at all, and it was a great resource). One of my favorite things about fanmixing is that you can get remixes that the original composers would've never thought of. Despite being a composer, I feel that composers have pushed the bolt out way too far when it comes to copyright. If you think about it, all this unbelievable creativity and drive to compose comes from a basic copyright infringement. That's why I feel copyright is far too restrictive, a lot of people who started out fanmixing are now professional composers, and that includes myself.

Some fanmixers (like virt, for example) do this thing where they take an old track and "restore" it to what they feel the composer had originally intended, but that's not really my thing. My favorite remix style is when it's a real "rearrangement", where you can hear the original and think "hey, that's really clever, and it actually works".

... I think I slid a bit off topic. Yay rambling?

But yeah like Dhsu said, my main problem is the pre-evaluation system, and the vibe of the reviews of the songs that do make it. To me it seems like everyone should be able to create music for others to hear, and following that, reviews should be honest, even brutally so. I do understand the reasoning behind the setup, and that one would feel the need to block the crappiest entries, but I can't help but feeling that this is not the right way to run a music site. I guess it is something personal, after all.

Anyway, I kinda exaggerated the whole "anti-OCR" thing I guess. I don't hate OCR in the sense that I wish it was gone or even that the site should change. It's a milestone in the structure of vgmixing that I respect for what they've achieved, but includes some policies that I don't particularly agree with. And since there is an alternative (well, sometimes there is anyway), I don't mind that djpretzel runs his site the way he wants, that's absolutely his right. Plus, some of my favorite VG arrangers post their stuff on OCR.

Quote:

We should do a topic about that.

Maybe we should!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?