Vaylos

Quick bump here: I've completely reworked the WIP texture wise to aim for a more cohesive sound. I also adjusted levels and effects to add structure and try to aim for a more organic/moving flow to everything. Hopefully this is much improved over the last version. I'll post the link at the top a well. http://www.thesixtyone.com/JBot/album/manage/#/JBot/song/Crystalized+Zebetite+%28remix+of+Brinstar+Red+Soil+Swampy+Area%29/62613/

Yeah I think I see where you're coming from now. And I'm familiar with both of those two tracks, particularly Moon Rhapsody. They're in my playlist...somewhere hehe. But yeah I understand what you mean about having some more ebb and flow, and making the whole thing more organic. I've got some ideas brewing already, and I'll work at changing up some of the textures and make the whole thing more fluid and less stale. I also know a couple spots where I think a keychange would work well. It will take some time to make the changes (I'm not exactly a prolific musician by any means) So yeah, I'll get at reworking it a bit once I find some time between job hunting splurges. -J

Yep, I have a feeling some of that may be how t61 handles the file uploads. I've had some others in the past which after upload ended up being a bit...erm...less than stellar in the dynamics department. I'll take a look at it though, I have a feeling I may need to back off on the limiter a tad. The mix is a bit spaced out, but I was aiming for a somewhat large spacious feel, what with the area reminding me of large mine shafts. I'll play around with it a bit when I find time though, and see if I can tweak a few things. I had a feeling the violin would get shot down though, I'll have to do some experimenting with leads I guess. I'm not sure if I can make the background pads anymore dynamic. As for the plucked sound, that's actually part of the synth, it just has a bit of an attack if you staccatto the note, so it sounds like a pluck. I can see about smoothing it out a bit though so it doesn't sound arbitrary. But yeah, I'll see what I can do. The original file that was uploaded was at least 160kbps if not 192. That I can guarantee. I think just the way t61 handles mp3s is kinda like the radio station and the way some of them like to compress a track that's already had the life squashed out of it. But like I said, I'll look into it. Thanks for the crits. -J

Reworked Remix here: http://www.thesixtyone.com/JBot/album/manage/#/JBot/song/Crystalized+Zebetite+%28remix+of+Brinstar+Red+Soil+Swampy+Area%29/62613/ ------------------------------------------------------------- Hi all, it's been a long time since I've attempted a remix. Anyway, I was trying to get some ideas for an original project down, but it ended up turning into a remix for the Red Soil Swampy Area from Super Metroid. It's pretty much "complete" but I wanted to get some ideas before trying to submit it. You can find it here: http://www.thesixtyone.com/jbot/#/JBot/songs/new/?goto_song_id=47495&full_refresh Just hit the play button in the upper left corner. There's an alternate version where I did not include a bassline that seems to stand on its own merit somehow. I was thinking of submitting one of them, but then saw yet another remix of the same track not too long ago, so I thought I'd wait a bit. I do take some liberties with the source material, but I don't think I deviate too far out. Let me know whatcha think! -J-Bot

I'd have to say my monitors are my most important piece of equipment. It's a joy to actually be able to hear what I'm doing right, and wrong when I work on things, and my production abilities have steadily improved over the last year or so. On the inspirational side of things... hmm. Oatmeal VST. I love that randomize button, and closely behind it another freebie from KVR, The Element of Surprise. Which...is kinda like oatmeal, but it's only a single button randomizer for the stuff under the hood. Can't really tweak anything, but still good for messing around. My EMU Xboard61 for my controller. I really do like the key action on this guy, and it's compact enough to fit on my desk.

I'm partial to the Tannoy Reveal 6's myself. Er, the passives that is.. Think I got em for $370 off of e-bay (I think musicians friend had em for $450 at the time) They seem to work pretty well for me. Just realize that it's a good idea to actually go and listen to different sets of monitors if you're able, since everybody's ears are different, and you're the one who will be doing the monitoring. Here's some brands I tend to hear good things about: KRK Rokit series Tannoy Reveal series Event (the 20/20 are supposed to be similar to my tannoys and about the same price) Yorkville (a.k.a. "Yorkies") Think the YSP-1 were pretty popular for awhile, don't know if they still are or not. Read tons of reviews, get opinions, ask people who've used the equipment, and try to find a place that sells monitors to do some A/B comparisons. I literally researched for months before making my decision, given what my budget was. Good Luck!

It's acoustic as in...er....not classical hehe Which I understand carries over to electrical. It's your typical steel-string guitar with the narrower neck. I ordered the Ibanez V50 package off zzounds through the OCR link. I know it's on the dirt cheap side of things, but it sounds good to my ears, and the action isn't super-harsh or anything. It is not a classical guitar (broader neck/smaller body/nylon strings) so I'm not trying to learn classical technique. I'm not finger-picking anything here hehe. I might try learning classical technique later on once I get used to fretting though. My g/f has a classical guitar, but she doesn't really play anymore.

Okay okay okay, no fighting in my thread. Don't make me grab the hose >_< I'm going to have to agree with Suz though. Chord structures, knowing how to build them, and switch between them would be a necessity in learning music, whether learning guitar, or piano, or violin, or any instrument capable of producing them. Learning the scales and moving between strings and fret positions I would have to say is equally important especially when it comes to melodies, as I would assume that would be necessary for playing leads, and doing melodic improvisation on guitar and other instruments. I would also wager, that learning to move between chords as well as learning scales, and getting faster at BOTH would be a good idea. Mike, no offense, I think I see what you're trying to say, however, the way you said it just didn't sound right. I agree that learning scales and building speed on them sounds like a good way to get better at working with the leads and melodies, but seeing as I'll be laying down a -chord- progression, and then improvising a melody over the top (if/when I get good enough to actually record myself) I'd have to say BOTH are important for me to have a good hold on. Especially since chords kinda lay down the key/mode of the track, and I tend to use a lot of modality in my work. I'd also like to say, that I generally work in a variety of musical genres, not as much in popular, but I've been planning on branching out a bit, seeing as how some of my music is starting to sound. (that, and Jamstix2 is just plain fun to play with )

I kinda had a feeling that you'd say that hehe. Well, it's good to get an opinion on the site i've been using at least. Step 1: Learning scales and chords Step 2: Building muscles and callouses Step 3: .... Step 4: Profit! I guess I should have phrased my original question this way: " Been using the guitar lessons on about.com http://guitar.about.com/library/blguitarlessonarchive.htm Is this a pretty decent site, or are there better free lessons out there?" Well, the lessons seem pretty straightforward to me at least. I may need to do some work on my left hand pinky though...playing piano seems to have given me some tension in that finger...reaching down to that 4th fret is still awkward for me. (not NEARLY as bad as my right hand though lol) But, all in good time, Thanks!

Hi all. I've kinda been wanting to learn guitar for awhile now. Finally saved up enough to go out and get one. Thing is, I'm broke again, so it's going to be awhile before I can afford a tutor. Now, I remembered in a past thread, think it was last year sometime, someone posted a link to a website with some pretty good lessons for someone just picking up guitar, but I haven't been able to locate it really. (been using the one on about.com for now) Anyone remember which site it was?

I'm using Tannoy Reveal R6's (the passives) for monitoring. I really need to get some decent headphones for double checking though. Ah well, maybe when I have money again...someday. edit: the amp I'm using with the speakers is an ART-SLA1.

Edit: for content and spelling: I'm still very much an amateur, but I'm making progress I think. Current setup: Instruments: Bach-Strad Bb Trumpet (haven't played in awhile) Eb and Bb Bamboo Flutes (still learning to play) -Hardware Tannoy Reveal6 Passive connected to an ART SLA-1 for monitoring. EMU Xboard 61 for midi control and recording. Some nameless dynamic mic. Pretty sturdy though. Sounds better than the SBlive mic that came with the card -Software FL Studio 6 for most of my work. Rosegarden4 for music scoring Audacity in the rare instance I need to record something. -VSTi Oatmeal and Crystal, freebies found on KVR, capable of many different sounds. Kinda my bread and butter for my electronica-type music. Jamstix V1.81 Demo (because I can't afford a real drummer right now, and I suck at writing percussion, a weakness I need to remedy) DSK Brass: not -too- bad sounding to me. I might take a look at their other stuff as well. Proteus X: came with the Xboard. Full version, not the lite version. The strings sections are handy for layering, and fleshing things out. Other various things found on KVR. -VST Effects Primarily Kjaerhus's Classic series. MDA effects from time to time. kinda gives a different color or flavor. BlueCat audio released some freebies not long ago. FreqAnalyst is useful. -SF2 Mostly solo instruments I've painstakingly hunted down through the garbage piles of SF2midi.com Squidfont A nice sounding guitar font Suzumebachi posted up on the samples thread. some sounds from other fonts like Fluid or SGM on occasion.

Nice! Thanks for the link. Will give it a watch asap. edit: Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. Endless possibilities there. Must go explore some ideas now.

I've searched around, and haven't come across this thought or problem (or maybe I just failed to word it correctly) I'm not sure if FL Studio is "smart" enough to pick this up, but is it possible to control two seperate channels from one keyboard? Now when I say control, I don't mean volume/pan/other parameters, I -think- what I mean is splitting the keyboard so left hand/bass range plays one VST or channel, and the right hand/treble range plays a different VST or channel. If that fails, is FL Studio smart enough for me to hook up a 2nd midi controller and use one keyboard for one channel, and the other for a different channel for playing/recording? Er, assuming I had enough midi ports. I know the way FL Studio tends to work is that you highlight a channel, and that's the one the controller points at for playing/recording and whatnot, but I'm not sure how to make a second controller recognize a different channel, or if it's even possible within the scope of the program.

Well, I didn't have anything better at the time heh. I used a sharpie to dim the LED light recently though, so I took the sock off. MUCH easier on the eyes

Just a modest setup so far. All I have is a webcam pic which is a little hard to see, so I added some labels. Nothing real fancy yet. I havent gotten into recording yet, so everything stays computer-side. It's gotten a bit messier in here the last few weeks though heh. Edit: Oh, and this is why there's a sock hung over the amp. -Vaylos

I suppose it's a good thing I don't use a 64bit processor then eh? Hehe. I'm still running an Athlon Duron Applebred 1.8Ghz. So I'm in the 32bit world still, with no plans to upgrade anytime soon. Unless I somehow come into some good money. Only money i'll be spending soon, is on an Echo Gina3G for my birthday ^^ And possibly a RAM upgrade if I have enough left over. 512MB just isn't cutting it anymore -sigh-

Well, I don't mind Rosegarden so much, but I'm pretty much using it strictly for notation/midi. Kinda reminds me a lot of the old Cakewalk Homestudio 9. I'm liking the notation/scoring interface a lot better than when I was using Finale. I'm porting the midi over to XP and working in FL Studio, though. Haven't tried Ardour yet, since I'm nowhere near ready to start doing audio recording yet. Sweep looks interesting though. Wired is another up and coming program that looks like it might be a step in the right direction. Looks like it sports some kinda browser at least. But I do agree, the interfaces are a little klunky.

First off, yeah he was kidding. He's not a linux elitist or anything. He also uses XP in his office alongside linux. I'm not trying to turn this into a linux vs. XP thread, so please refrain from flames. Update: Still waiting on my friend to respond with that spare HDD. So, I got impatient and dug out my old 10GB (making sure it was still functional) and installed Ubuntu 7.04 on it. No problems so far, sound works fine, video card works fine, and I have to say Rosegarden4 is a joy to work with as far as writing notation goes. It's nice to have a decent notation/scoring program, and not have to worry about spending $300+. (was using Finale Notepad before or the simple note editor in cakewalk homestudio) My only current issue (and it's more of a preference than an issue), is that I'm -still- using the old SB Live Plat 5.1 (I will have an echo gina3g by end of summer without fail. Hurray for extra pay!) In XP, I use the KX Audio drivers, which swap front/rear channels by default. Creative cards are known to use I2S on the rear channel, and AC97 for the front channel. I don't know if that changed with the audigy or not. Anyways, I'm still figuring out how to do the front/rear channel swap under Ubuntu and ALSA >_< (mebbe I should take a look at Jack) I think i'm going to stick with Ubuntu. I like the interface, and it's working well for me. I don't mind diving into the terminal on the odd occasion. I can save the midi files from rosegarden to my USB drive, and port them over to XP for more detailed work in FL Studio, which was my original intent. Anyways, I don't want any flamewars started on my account, and XP vs. linux is a hot topic to say the least. So, if this thread needs locking later, feel free!

EDIT: Just read your post OC. I was writing this before I read yours hehe. I'm pretty much strictly looking at rosegarden for its notation editor, but I'd like to take a look at the other programs as well. Call it curiosity. Edit2: I just found this link: http://www.ubustu.com/globe/2007/04/17/ubuntu-studio-release-date-update/ So now i'm very heavily leaning towards Ubuntu, if not just about decided on it. Forgive me if the following is a little jumbled, I really am trying to be as clear in my text as possible. Well, to be honest, from what I've seen and read about it, Rosegarden has a really nicely featured music notation editor. And it's open source. Granted, FL-Studio is my main sequencer, but there isn't any score editor. I do have an old version of Finale Notepad Plus, but it is severely limited, and has limited staves. I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for a decent scoring/notation program like finale or sibelius or etc. since i'm not getting paid for any of my music, or anything. I mostly write just for myself, or occasionally do things for friends if they ask. I also have cakewalk homestudio 9, and yeah, it's very easy to use, but the music scoring is even more limited than notepad in some ways. I realize linux's multimedia side of things is still up and coming, but, I guess I can see the potential in it. Rosegarden, Muse, and Ardour all look like very good programs and i've always wanted to give them a try. I plan on keeping XP around, and put linux on a seperate HDD. Why keep XP? Well, to be honest, I'm pretty much a gamer on my other side, and will definitely not be using linux for games. Why linux? well, I covered that in the first two paragraphs above I think. For the record, I don't exactly relish the thought of building linux up and compiling everything from scratch. I am not a coder or an OS-lover by any means. I did grow up with DOS, so i'm not entirely command-line shy. (I also play on MUDs) and I did take a course in computer micro-architecture, so, I almost know enough to be A+ certified, just never spent the money to take the test. However, I don't think i'm ready for something on the scope of Gentoo, despite the control. I mean, I don't mind getting my hands a little dirty, and with linux I realize you kinda have to, but I'm hoping to get things set up so I can get to the production side of things relatively quickly. I guess I could just try out different flavors until I find something that meshes well with me, but I'd like to find out what flavors work well with audio, and I guess multimedia in general, before I do that. Here's my system specs if this helps Mobo: Chaintech 7NJL4 Processor: AMD Duron Applebred 1.8Ghz OC'd to 1.95Ghz 512MB DDR RAM 40GB HDD generic NEC CDR/W (7700A I think?) old LG DVD drive (no burner) SB Live! Platinum 5.1 ATI All-in-wonder 9600 Midi-controller is an Xboard-61 nothing fancy, and at some point I will be upgrading the sound card to an echo gina3g. probably towards end of summer, or possibly next month for my b-day if I can save up enough by then. I'm planning on getting a new 40GB HDD and setting linux up on that hard drive, and keeping XP on the old hard drive.

Okay, I'm planning on taking a bit of a plunge here, after constant cajoling from our IT Admin. Comments like "You know, you're just too smart to be using XP" come to mind. Anydangway, I plan on using Rosegarden extensively, but I may play around with other audio apps as well. So, my question is this: What would be a good Linux "flavor" for audio/midi/etc. work? The two I'm looking at right now are SUSE 10.2, and Ubuntu 7.04 "fiesty" I'm leaning more towards Ubuntu because they seem to be releasing a distro called UbuntuStudio that will be geared towards multimedia editing/creation. I just wanted to gather up some opinions before I took the "plunge" Thanks!

Actually I found a fairly usable harp SF2 on SF2Midi.com if that's what your looking for. I think it's listed as ZSF String Harp about 12MB, and I think the poster went by the name Zandro. Not sure if it's good enough for whatcha need, but I like the sound of it.

Actually, relatively recently, Jonathan Smith opened a music studio here in good old G'ville FL. I think he moved here from D.C. http://www.usaudio.com/ Frankly I don't know much about the guy, but apparently he won an Emmy. So I guess that counts for something eh? hehe. Towards the bottom of the page, he offers a music production "course" He charges a flat rate of $1,500 but I don't know if that's for the whole course or not. Just some food for thought.

You could try learning Solfeggietto, C.P.E. Bach, You might also take a look at a Debussy piece: Gradus Ad Parnassum, from Children's Corner. It's a little longer and harder than Solfeggietto, but not much. -cough- I still need to learn it myself heh. Link to debussy piece: http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=1742 it's a pdf file.

I picked up a small Bb Bamboo flute at a medieval faire about a year and a half ago hehe. I've gotten better at it, at least enough to play 2 octaves. (don't think it's really capable of a third octave) Anyhoo, I found this guide helpful, just in the way certain analogies are presented. http://www.romyb.com/introduction.html It's a different playing style compared to classical flute I think, but some of the ideas might still hold. I didn't have to worry about building my lips, or blowing from the diaphragm, since I play trumpet and i'm used to having large air flow. Trying to fit it into a small stream was definitely tricky for me heh. It's definitely not an easy thing to learn IMO. There was another site that had pictures of good and bad flute embrechures (spelling) for classical flutes, but it escapes me at the moment.