What’s good, NG?

I’m excited to share some good news with y’all.

Seph and I submitted “FFVII ~ Strife” to OverClocked ReMix back in June, right around the same time we uploaded it to the Audio Portal.

The judges were polarized on its fate for about six weeks when Emunator advocated for its strength of arrangement and genre-appropriate wall-of-sound segment at around 3:33.

As a result, it passed judgment — and today, it’s live on OC ReMix and on YouTube.

We’re ReMixers now, y’all!

~Paradiddles

It's been a long time, NG. Life's had some twists and turns, but now I'm back, rebranded, and ready to post some new stuff. If you want to hear some stuff Seph and I have been working on and you haven't scoped it yet, Seph uploaded our 2023 take on Clockstopper here.

It's good to be back.

ETA: After some thoughts about it, I decided to unpublish most of my pre-2012 uploads to the NGAP. The vast majority of those pieces unpublished were:

• Merely someone else's MIDI transcription gently massaged and then fed through Fruity Soundfont Player; and/or
• Poorly executed (bad mixing, unclear arrangement, etc)

To be clear, I don't think there's any shame in sharing your oldest, cringiest material. I just also believe that it's important to put your best foot forward -- and sometimes, that means cleaning up your space every now and then. :)

Hello one more time (hopefully) in 2011, NG! I've got one last update (or UPDOOT, if you prefer) about Project 26:

No more Final Fantasy pieces! I'm not doing a battle medley at the end after all -- I got stuck on the arrangement a third of the way into FFIII's and got exceedingly bored of it. But I found a better piece.

What is it? You'll just have to wait and find out, but if you're a fan of Andrew Hussie's MS Paint Adventures (namely Homestuck), you'll like the choice.

Expect Project 26 ~ 25 (Reaver §chism) on November 28th. Recorded, mixed, remixed, mastered. And expect Project 26 ~ 26 (i told you bro (working title)) on New Year's Eve at the latest. Recorded, mixed, remixed, mastered.

I want to thank all of you who have listened, voted and reviewed the pieces of this project. I wish those of you who took the time to review were a bit more constructive with your criticism (as always), but that you reviewed means a lot to me (and Choco) anyway.

~Joshy676

Hello, NG. This was a decision that, back in January, I was never going to consider. I truly didn't think there would be enough in the world to keep me from finishing 52 music projects in a year.

Well, I should have thought again. With school and work, not to mention all the other personal life adventures I've had this year, I don't think I'd be able to do more than thirty.

So, instead, I've cut the goal in half (to 26). With the way Choco and I have been working on pieces, that gives us just short of three months to work on three more pieces. Now it's just a matter of what the two before the finish will be. We've always had the final piece in mind -- a battle theme medley from Final Fantasy I-IX, using the themes which make use of Nobuo's favorite bass line (which, for those who don't know, is A-A-A-A-A-A-G-G).

We're excited to have a goal within reach, and we hope you guys are excited to hear more stuff from us. If we finish early, anything else I put up this year will not include the Project 26 moniker.

Thanks for listening,
~Joshy676

Hey, NG. you may have noticed that I miseed last week's Project 52 update. This week isn't looking good, either; I may or may not lose one of my fondest relatives, who is on life support at this time. Choco and I will catch up as best we can.

At this time, all we ask is that you be patient and send some positive energy over. It's gonna be tough on our end for a while.

~Joshy676

Hey again, NG. Project 52 entries 10 and 11 will be a bit delayed. This week's my Spring Break, and Chocosoda's out in San Diego with his girlfriend (and didn't bring his guitar, natch), so it's up to me to work on the arrangements. The quality won't be so great, since it's just me and my soundfonts, but we'll pull through it.

Happy FFVIII month, in any case. :)

~Joshy676

Hey again, NG. If you've been following my audio work, you know I'm working on a 52 (or so) mix project this year titled (duh) Project 52.

If you've been following closely, you also know I've missed a few updates -- it hasn't been, strictly speaking, a mix a week. It'll average out in the end, I expect, but it's been a bit shaky.

My excuse? Shit happens. I've got two different school and work schedules to work around (mine and Chocosoda's) and a few unexpected delays from outside stuff. Is this stuff halting the projects? Not at all. Slowing their releases down a bit? Sure.

In any case, due to popular demand, I'm uploading the boss theme from FFIX before moving onto FFVIII. Believe me, you'll enjoy 'em all.

Like "Return," "Battle II" from FFIX was done without input from Choco -- he was too busy this week, and I wanted the chance to break out a "band" arrangement again.

"Battle II" should be up in the next 12 hours or so. I'm mastering it as we speak.

~Joshy676

Hey, NG! I've been talking about it for two, perhaps three years, wrote-lost-rewrote-lost-rewrote-lost-r ewrote the tab, worked the pieces across three different music apps and spent the last two weeks making everything work, but it's finally a reality!

That's right: I'm talking about "S-E-P-H-I-R-O-T-H! Perfect: SE," my greatest "One-Winged Angel" arrangement yet. Recorded guitars, full instrumentation, better drum track, mixing and mastering, and better vocal tracking.

You can hear it here.

Thanks for listening,
~Joshy676

It's plainly obvious that I haven't submitted anything to the Audio Portal in a while. I'm sure a few of you are eagerly awaiting my next submission (or, more realistically, you're reading this from the 15 seconds it managed to be on the front page and haven't heard my work and/or don't give a rat's ass). A few of you might be thinking that I just stopped working.

I've been working on music, alright, but (like I used to do, back in 2005) I've been getting major arrangement ADOS. I've got so many half-finished mixes waiting to get polished that I don't know which one to work on first. Fortunately, my brother (now working under Chocosoda) needs work for his EM2 college class, so that means I get help for my problem in exchange for making my work a collaboration. Well, actually, my work has always been a collaboration with him, but now it's both official and necessary.

Anyway, here's my list of works coming down the pipe. Hopefully, they'll all be done by the end of the school year:

1. "S-E-P-H-I-R-O-T-H!: Perfect (S.E.)" -> Still writing the tab out.
2. "Super Mario RPG: Boss Rush" ROX -> Bass and drum tracks finished; guitars will be done on Monday and (hopefully) the mixing will be done by Wednesday
3. A Metal Gear Medley, tentatively titled "Young Snake" -> Finished writing the master tab. Now to tweak the tab, write the sheet music transcriptions for the brass and melodic percussion parts, and get everything recorded. (By the way, this medley includes selections from Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake,andMetal Gear Solid.)
4. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - "Reaver Schism" Mk.2 -> Rewriting the tab.
5. Final Fantasy VII - "Tools of the Ancients" Mk.2 -> Again, rewriting the tab.
6. "Comfortably Numb" cover -> Lost interest, then regained interest, then lost interest again. Might re-record it over the summer break.

I'm probably forgetting a few things I said I might do. I'll remember them when all this is done. You'll see.

~Joshy676

Hello NG!

So, in a frenzy to get my computer working again, my PC of the last near decade (AMD Athlon XP 1100+ 1GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160GB HDD, and nVidia GeForce FX5200) finally became an hero -- and not just the hard drive this time, either. So, while I find a new PC to hermit myself into (edit: found a new home in an IBM ThinkCentre - 3.0 GHz Pentium 4, same RAM, same HDD, and same graphics card), I've moved onto my band's G4 tower (AGP graphics, dual-core 867MHz, 2 GB RAM).

And because Pro Tools is giving me shit and FL Studio doesn't work on Mac, I'm moving over to Logic Pro. I know a bit about it (and I'm taking classes on it), so the transition should be smooth. Note that this doesn't hinder the next edition of S-E-P-H-I-R-O-T-H!, because it's still in the writing stage.

So, yeah. I'll be getting back to work on music stuff now. :P