Games in Concert – Today in the Netherlands

On the thread @ OCR, Smoke writes:

At 8:15 PM CET(2:15 PM EST) today there’s a
video game music concert taking place in Utrecht, in The Netherlands.
The entire concert can be listened to for free online through this
stream:

http://www.3fm.nl/page/3fm_smallliveplayer/breedband


It’s the first game concert in The Netherlands ever as far as I know, and there’s quite a few popular tracks being played.

Here’s the full tracklist:

* Legend of Zelda

* Super Mario Bros.

* Halo

* Metal Gear Solid 2

* Final Fantasy 7

* Battlefield 2

* World of Warcraft

* Kingdom Hearts

* Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion

* Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – by Floor Jansen

* Killzone

* Metroid Prime

* Fable

* Shenmue

* Monkey Island 3

* God of War

* James Bond: From Russia With Love

* Civilization 4

* Medal of Honor: European Assault

* Gun

* Fifa 07 – with The Sheer

For those that are able to read Dutch, here’s a link to the site:

www.gamesinconcert.nl

Ronin Collective returns! Huge New Release!

Taken from the front page:

“Ronin Collective is back! With a new website,
a new compilation and new resident artists! Check it out!

“After more than 2 years of inactivity,
Ronin Collective is back, and we wanted to do a special release for our
return. Gama, a 24 track, 2hour compilation featuring Ronin members, guests
and friends perfectly defining the eclecticism behind the Ronin style. You’ll
find everything ronin has been and more; returning members deliver yet again
with a periphery of tones and styles from Blisaed’s guitar-hop, to Wiseman’s
folk-psychadelia, to Benefit of the Boomerang’s flaming jungle and V0idnull’s
goa epic. Also, two new official members to Ronin: recent guest-releaser
Fah offers two incredible tracks, a 12 minute acid track and a gorgeous
cinematic forray into analog ambient as outro to our comp, and Troupe, with
a delicate indie-tronic track. Last, we also have a few great guests on
the compil, including Nagz with his enchanting demo-breaks, Le Monsieur
Baguette’s naive melodies and glitchy love, Kevin Chow’s orchestral masterpiece,
Beatslaughter’s two contributions to the world of breakbeat and everything
in between. Ranging from ambient, to hip-hop, through idm and to harsh noise,
this compilation is a manifesto to our ideologies of creativity and individuality.”


Here is a direct link to the release’s page. Very nice!

How Copyright Works

Atmoic Dog posted a bit of interesting information on the OCReMix forums on how copyrights work:

“I
get a lot of people asking me about this, and I happened across this
today. It’s a really good, fairly simple to understand, law-for-laymen
understanding of copyrights
.”

Part 1, History and General Terminology

Part 2, Fair Use (including copying music/dvd’s and sampling/transforming existing works)

Part 3, Infringement of Copyrights

Part 4, Legal Protections and Litigation

Good info for any of you curious artists (and/or pirates). I’ll be
happy to try and elaborate on anything you guys have questions on.

Software Equivalents List Update (19NOV2006)

For those who’re interested, I recently updated the software equivalents list on my homepage. I added a handful of new emulations, alternatives and changed some additional info.

You can find that list from a direct link on my studio page. I also recommend you to keep an eye on my blog, as I’ll soon release some very interesting news and material there.

RPGamer announces ‘Anthem of the Unsung’ contest

In this week’s RPGamer.com Sound Test update, Matthew Foster
(Redbeastmage) announced the launch of ‘Anthem of the Unsung’, the
site’s first music related competition in a year. Contestants are
expected to create remixes of lesser known character themes in order to
compete for a first place prize of an RPG soundtrack worth $40.
In his own words, here’s the basic scope on what is expected of the source material choice for this competition.

‘For a common example, doing say, Terra’s theme from Final Fantasy VI
would recieve a 0 for the contest, as she is argueably the main
character of the game. However, doing a piece that is based on Gogo’s
theme, from the same game, would be more fitting. Keep in mind, that
the character on whom the music is based doesn’t need to be a hero or
playable character. Villians, NPCs, even multiple related characters
are fair game. Basically anyone with a musical theme attached to them
will work out.’

The deadline for submissions is December 14th at 11:59PM PST, with
the results to be announced on Christmas Eve. For the contest rules and
judging criteria, click here.

OverCoat and mDuo13 Start ”Nekomimi Music” Blog

Copied from mDuo’s first post:

“Welcome to our new blog, Nekomimi Music. For those of you who haven’t heard our mumblings and ramblings in the past few weeks, you’re probably wondering what this site is about. Well, it’s time to end the questions and the vagueness and explain what this is and why it exists.
“Why do we exist?

“Well, I can’t tell you the answers to any questions of
existentialism and unversal truth, but I can tell you why this blog
exists. We care about anime music – and anime remixes. And since
certain other websites do not update as regularly as we’d like, we
thought we could do better, and while we’re at it, we could talk about
things that aren’t related to some of those other websites – we can
review the latest OSTs, show off chiptunes of anime songs as well as
professional rearrangements, post remixes of all sorts (including the
kind that doesn’t have a capitalized M) and whatever else we feel like
adding. In short, this site is meant to be a one-stop visit for anime
music news.

“Why do you keep saying ‘we’?

“Simple. There are three of us: me (mDuo13), soc (OverCoat), and red
(Redcavalier). We were basically the last active members of Anime
Remix, so we decided that we may as well stick together when we made a
new site.

“What kind of weirdo name is ‘Nekomimi Music’?

“It actually kind of a reference to the quirky opening theme from an obscure anime, but it’s also a fun theme: “nekomimi” means cat ears, so we can use the cat-ear motif to mark our stuff. I mean, who doesn’t like cat ears on anything and everything?

“So if this is an anime music site, where’s the anime music?

“To be honest, we don’t want to give it all away at once, so you’ll
have to keep checking back to get more and more of it. But we can start
you off with a little something you may have heard before: the Anime Chipdisk volume 1.
This is a little project by OverCoat, Tenemis, Coda, and Noboyuki to
take a bunch of your favorite anime themes and re-create them in
space-efficient Impulse Tracker chiptune format! The end result is
pretty close to what it would sound like if you were watching anime on
your Amiga or your NES! We hope you enjoy them!

“That’s all for now, folks!

“And that concludes the Nekomimi Music Manifesto. Wow, I’m getting
sick of typing those M’s. Anyway, be sure to check back, because we’re
going to be posting lots more within the next few weeks, including
plenty of songs, some of which
you’ll have never heard before!

“In other news, it’s my birthday! I’m 20 now. It’s kind of
depressing to realize I’m already this old and yet I’ve accomplished so
little with my life. Hopefully that won’t be true for long!”

Mitsuda and others interviewed for VGM Concert

Eminence Online, hosts of a soon-to-occur video game music concert in Australia, sat down with Yasunori Mitsuda and fellow musicians and staff at his Procyon Studio to discuss how they came to play and other subjects in VGM. Mitsuda revealed a couple tidbits about the Chrono Cross arrange. The entire thing is here.

Software Instrument Group Buys – real bargains for everyone

For those who rather read ThaSauce than scooping around on music pages (like I do), there’re some deals going on at the moment that you shouldn’t miss – and you should hurry up.
For example, there’s the DiscoDSP Discovery
Group Buy. You get the chance for a up to 60% discount (39,60USD plus
VAT instead of 99USD) for this VSTi, which is also a Nord Lead II
emulation. But hurry up! As soon as 60 people are signed up, the Group
Buy will be closed, and 40 people already signed up.

Also for a real bargain, take a look at the Wusik’s Wusikstation 3
Group Buy. It’s running till the end of the year (December 31st), but
instead of paying 89,95USD for a 2GB sampleset VSTi with tons of
modulation possibilities, you only pay 49,95 if 100 people sign up. The
Group Buy won’t be closed but keep on till 200 people sign up. You will
already get access to the VSTi as soon as 100 people signed up but keep
on recommending it to others, cause the more sign up, the more you have
the chance to get additional samples and a 6 month subscription of the
Wusik Magazine for free.

I recommend to check out both Group Buys and the Wusik page itself, cause they have way more stuff to offer for their customers.

RIP Zophar’s Domain (1996-2006)

As of today, November 9, 2006, Zophar’s Domain is no longer. The site was shut down some time this morning, which is interestingly enough their 10 year anniversary (Zophar’s Domain was founded on November 9, 1996). The forums will remain up for at least the time being, but beyond that not much is known. No official reason has been given as of yet, but some staff has pointed out a lack of activity on the site in the past two years. In the meantime, Zircon and myself are working on setting up some mirrors for Zophar’s game music archive.

Rest in peace, Zophar’s Domain. You will be missed.