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It's time to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the very popular "Metal Gear" franchise with a remix of a track from a criminally underrated entry in the series. Saxophone: @HankTheSpankTankJankerson Bass/Jazz Guitar: @Arvangath Rhodes/Piano/Harp: @Peíorele Guitar: @mattmatrice Programming: classic_gamer_76 Mixing/Mastering: @timaeus222 Artwork by Lia Perrone. Huge thanks to everyone involved -- as well as @The Nikanoru -- for making this happen. You guys are AWESOME!

I might be wrong, but this suggests me you're opening the standalone version of sforzando, which is not made for usage within the DAW. For Reaper or any DAW you need to put the .dll version (sforzando VST_x64.dll if 64bit, originated during the installation) in a folder dedicated to VST plugins, which your DAW can scan and get the software from. It's easy to feel sort of disoriented at the start, but it gets better soon. VSTs like sforzando get opened directly from the daw. Something like this video shows... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CByHPXk3Flw As far as formats, I have only been using .sfz files with sforzando, I honestly never used .sf2 Searching "sfz library" or "sfz instruments" on google should point to a lot of free stuff. And they don't necessarily have to be sfz libraries. they can be actual dedicated VSTs http://www.vst4free.com/index.php?m=VSTi

I've tried a fair few DAWs now and could lump them into three categories. There's Pro Tools, which i would consider the "Engineering DAW", as you can get deep into the nitty gritty but it tends to be far less intuitive and harder to get to grips with. I would never use it for being creative, personally. But if you plan on working in a studio then it's pretty much essental. At face value I'd probably lump Reaper in here too, though I have very little experience with it. Its super cheap though provided you're not releasing commercially. Then for lack of a better term i have the "Creative DAWs, which are Cubase, Logic and Studio One. These are the most well balanced of the three categories, with exceptional workflows and a good range of VST's to use. Of the bunch Logic is easily the best value as it's very cheap for the full version and has some incredible bundled content. But it's only available on Mac. I also know it can export midi to score sheets but I don't know if you can compose in notation. I'm a Studio One user. I find its workflow to be the least hindering to creativity and super smooth. I also use it alongside Notion, which is Presonus' own notation software and it integrates well and triggers your scores on playback with Studio One. I do find it incredibly clunky to use though. I used Cubase for a year at university and didn't find it as intuitive as the other two and it's also more pricey for reasons that must be unknown to me. Finally there's what i call the "Electronic DAWs", which are FL Studio and Ableton Live. I've never used Ableton so i can't comment much however i hear (as the name suggests) it's exceptional for live performance stuff if that's you're goal. FL Studio has a pattern workflow that is tailored more towards electronic music, but not limited to it. The workflow wasn't vibing with me and basic audio recording/editing felt super clunky and lackluster. I did use FL for about 3 years though because it's cheap and they have lifetime free updates so it's also amazing value. It's fun to look at too. It gets a bit of flak because it's seen by pro engineers as a bit of a toy, but I firmly disagree. Hopefully this narrows your search

Reaper is plain awesome. Robust and light software, highly customizable. The community/forum is vast and helpful. Many studios use it professionally and not just based on its affordability Its stock mixing-tool plugins are underrated mainly because of the bland looking GUI, they're far from perfect but they're actually more than fine as long as you know what you're doing... and that has been proven several times in various mixing contests. Its biggest downside at the moment is the lack of decent virtual instruments, which means you won't find good sounds in there to create music. You need to look for external VSTs, external sample libraries, sample players like Sforzando or actual samplers like the TX16Wx. Start with freeware, a lot of nice stuff. Eventually upgrade to paid plugins if you like them and want to take it to the next level. Other more expensive DAWs come with better sounds and plugins (and this is one of the reasons for the price gap), but at least as far as I am concerned, the best plugins and libraries come from 3rd parties anyway regardless of the DAW you use. So if you want to go with Reaper and you're a beginner I would highly advise to follow the official tutorials https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php Many people end up blaming the software because they don't get to know enough about it.

Really cool track! There's indeed a lot of mileage wrung out of the sources, and it goes by pretty fast, you just want to listen to it again. I absolutely love the fiddle, but there's cool trading licks between the sax as well, sweet usage of the skids sfx, cool Seeeegaaaa at the start.. what a great way to open up the album, and the track stand on its own as well!

Yeah I think that explaining WHY Drac is attacking Wallachia was quite important. The love of his life, likely the first woman in centuries who wasn't repulsed by him, was killed by an idiot who thought her to be a witch simply because she practiced science. This also explains Alucard's presence, and why he'd want to stop his father (I mean we already knew that basically but it's nice to include that in it). This season was more of a fleshing out of the backstory and, if game progression were to be applied here, following the first few blocks (even though Sypha and Alucard are on different blocks in CV3 but whatev). We still haven't seen Grant, after all.

Still got a couple days worth of work for it. Composed, just needs mixed. I'll see if I can get it Friday though.

I'm sorry, but these complaints are absurd. • There has to be a fleshing out of the story before he went to Dracula's Castle and the Church behaving like a gang and preventing the advancement of medicine and science by deeming it "witchcraft" is perfectly reasonable in 15th Century Europe — I mean it's not the like church ever did that back then, right? • The series doesn't end at episode 4. There is more to come. Lastly, I find the music perfectly fitting to the series when you actually watch it. The ambient, moody and pulsing soundtrack is a perfect fit. I've not seen anywhere in the series thus far and I've watched it twice through where nearly any of the music from the games would fit without making the scene terribly cheesy.

Time for a roundup! We passed our second-to-last deadline with great results, and as you may have seen in the opening post, we've seen a lot of updates, new WIPs and finished tracks! A quick overview: Tabby made great progress with the artwork, with a far advanced version of the front cover artwork that is nearing completion. \o/ New challengers! We've got a claim from Charles Ritz for "Did You See the Ocean" and a (temp) claim from @Rozovian for "In the Dead of Night". Initial WIPs from @Heavy Viper ("Spirit of the Night"), @Blake Inc. ("The Dark Star"), @Kylok ("Fear of the Heavens") and @Rozovian, and even though they are initial WIPs, some of them are actually pretty close to being finished already. Great stuff! Good progress was made by @Sagnewshreds ("Danger"), @Sbeast ("Prophecy"), @JonnyAtma ("Leave Time for Love"), @Jorito ("Fond Memories") and @PabloComa ("Calm Before the Storm"), they just need a bit more work to be finished. The tracks from @DS394 ("Steel and Snare"), @RebeccaETripp ("Still of the Night"), @Hylian Lemon ("A Curious Tale"), @Kylok ("A Wish") are (as good as) finished and they sound amazing. I bet you'll love them So all in all a LOT of great progress! Unfortunately not everybody was able to check in for this deadline, but most people were good in communicating about it, which is much appreciated. There is one more deadline left, and this is the big one, the really really really final deadline, followed by the release of the album. Final deadline is September 3rd, 2017. Even though we only have 1 more deadline left, we'd like to encourage you not to wait until the very last moment. If you have something ready sooner, and/or if you'd like to get some feedback on your work, please don't hesitate to share with us. We're here to help. And don't worry about forgetting the deadline, we will be in touch with you about it Best of luck with this final lap, go kick ass and give Secret of Mana the tribute it deserves!

I'm loving my new machine! I'm so behind that I'm playing Mass Effect 1 on it, but I've also been playing Rocket League and it's so, so pretty. Can't wait to start making this PC work for a living!

I'm a firm believer that most "mixing" happens in the arrangement/orchestration stage. Sometimes the best thing I can do for a song is delete a part that doesn't need to be there. It's so easy to get carried away with layering, with today's technology essentially eliminating almost all technical limitations of recording and composing. But just because you can easily stack a hundred tracks on top of each other, doesn't mean you should. Restraint is an art form; the notes you don't play are every bit as important, if not more so, than the notes you do play. More and more I'm learning that trying to fill every possible hole in the sonic spectrum just leads to mush, and ultimately, an endless "tail-chasing" cycle with EQ and compression and all that. The more empty space you have, the more powerful each note is within it. When you've got dozens of synth plugins, and two hard drives full of sample libraries, sometimes the greatest challenge is refraining from cramming all that awesome stuff into every song. Tasteful, well-recorded sounds, when mixed with other well-recorded sounds, should ideally not need any EQ at all. In theory, anyway. If you're trying to carve holes to fit more stuff in there, maybe you've got too much stuff in there already.