ReMix: Final Fantasy VI 'The Sveldt'

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If you'd asked me five years ago whether I thought I'd still be doing ReMixes and running OCR half a decade later... actually, I might have said yes. From the very get-go, I thought it was a great way to practice arranging and mixing while at the same time paying homage to excellent and often overlooked melodies. Five years and over a thousand mixes later, I still think there's plenty of life left in the concept. I still think there's places ReMixes can take us where we haven't been yet, and I know for a fact that there's tons of great undiscovered country out there - plenty of games with amazing soundtracks that haven't yet been touched. I think the idea of ReMixing will continue to have life as long as there are people who love game music and who feel they can best express that love via interpretation. Imitation takes a back seat to interpretation as the highest form of flattery, in my book, and looking back over five years of interpretation and expression, I am simply amazed/envious/surprised/shocked/impressed at what people have come up with.

Which is not to say the road has been easy. Through five redesigns, dramarama site politics, forum migrations, the creation and evolution of the judges panel, and sixty-four ReMixes, I have been here. Sometimes not as much as I wished I could be, and at other times more than I wished to be, but for half a decade, since we moved out of the 90's and into 2000, OCR has been an integral part of my life. Out of necessity, I've chosen it over many other avenues. I've spent countless hours writing write-ups, posting mixes, talking with judges and moderators, working on the technical guts of the site, etc. All of which would truly suck if I didn't get such great help from everyone that's involved with this community that makes all of the above absolutely worth it. From the guys at ztnet who you may not know but who basically make OCR possible by providing and supporting the infrastructure for it and a huge percentage of the emulation community, to each and every last listener who's ever downloaded a single track, every last minute of effort and time that I've spent on OCR has been repaid tenfold by the community. So I can't complain, and hell yes, I'd do it all again... in a heartbeat. I'm lucky to have this site to run.

There's far too much to really cover in terms of a five-year retrospective; for one, we usually do a year-end wrap-up, and furthermore we don't have a huge flood of mixes prepared for the event, or anything too elaborate. Consider it fortuitous, then, that Eliot Van Buskirk from CNET/mp3.com happened to interview me a few days back, and just posted the interview on mp3.com. It's not specifically relevant to OCR's 5-year anniversary, but in a way it is: he asked some darn good questions, and I think (or at least hope) my answers sum up what we're about, and will expose the site and the concept of unofficial game arrangements to a whole new group of listeners. While game mixing gets a fair share of attention within the gaming world, whenever an entity that's geared towards music in general sits up and takes notice, I think that's an excellent sign that the idea can be appreciated by non-gamers as well. Big thanks to Eliot for posting the interview on the exact date of our five-year anniversary - hope you enjoy reading it.

And finally, the mix: I've always loved the Veldt theme, and I'm a child of the 80's. I threw out a WIP arrangement of this theme that I'd been working on for the last month a week ago, and decided to pay homage not only to Nobuo's great material, but also to a kickass decade. You'll hear musical nods to the likes of Trio's "Da Da Da", "Lily Was Here", "Carribean Queen", and "Sweet Dreams" if you listen closely. It's not a juggernaut of a track that tries to be everything to everyone, but is instead my electro-pop vision for the primary motif, taken and retooled into a backing pattern, with soprano sax, piano, and guitar soloes that work around the melodic structure. Heck, I can't let Rayza have all the kitsch, retro-80's fun, now, can I? At any rate, as always I hope you enjoy, and here's to another five years of games, music, and game music.

― djpretzel