Meteo Xavier

I could tell the difference on a few occasions, but I understand its very early too. I need a good guitar plugin more than I need good drums or a sitar, so I'm definitely going to be watching for news and developments on it. Is it another Kontakt plugin or will it be a stand-alone VST?

I'm going to concur with this. A couple years ago we ran my cheap little Roland EM-25 through my brother's guitar pedal/FX switch and amp setup and you about couldn't tell the difference. Even on a piano setting, I was cutting mad Mega Man X leads, and on the Saw Wave - whoa... The drawback is the lack of a real guitar feel, as stated before. It lacks the expression of a lead guitar simply because its not a lead guitar. I'm in the school of thought where you're just not going to get the real thing without the real thing. Its just nature in play. Still, you can get cheat and, like everyone's saying, you can at least fake it well enough so that people aren't turning your material off because its too fake. As long as you're music's awesome and rockin', no one's going to care if your guitar is real or not. Additionally, you should check out the Mega Man X soundtracks (X1-X3), X-Men Mutant Apocalypse and, to a lesser extent, the Spiderman and X-Men (SNES) soundtracks for some good examples of how a fake guitar synth can at least be awesome enough to pull music together well. You can find those on www.zophar.net in the Music/SPC section - they provide SPC players too. Does that help at all?

Don't forget that sometimes a good album will, over time, turn into a great album. Soundtracks too. For a long time, I couldn't stand the Valkyrie Profile OST, but the minute I was using it as a reference to learn how to construct music, I couldn't imagine living without it. Earthbound is probably another example. I imagine a lot of people didn't take to its challenging, wild song constructions at first either, but its definitely something that grows on you and now its as classic as classic gets. The reverse can also be true. An album or a soundtrack that is immediately absorbed can, over time, degrade down to good or worse. Its just taste and taste can change over time.

I quit trying to think of music as good or bad, I just seperate it into what works for me and what doesn't work. Music is art and it inspires different things out of different people. Some of my favorite stuff comes from people society largely hates. Basically, as long as its melody, harmony and rhythm and sounds cleanly produced and recorded, it's good music (potentially). All it needs from there is to find the right audience to appreciate it.

They might be choral phrases that appear in a certain, popular, professional library.

People have been using this "music theory" long before FL. Music theory can be pretty daunting at first, but take small steps towards it and it starts to unravel and make sense over time. Look up something like "music theory for beginners" or "music arranging for beginners". You'd be amazed how little they condescend and how much they can offer. I look through them every once in a while and usually find something basic I missed.

I kinda thought it was something else for a minute, but yeah, someone's got some awesome sound manipulation skills. Man, I can't imagine myself taking all those vocal samples and turning/tuning them into melodies. Cool man, thanks for sharing.

This is a good place to ask - this is a question that's been on my mind lately. What exactly is the problem with sounds being recognizable? It bothers me to no end on the rare occasions I hear a sound that is something I have, but I have to wonder why. Just because I have that same sound, it makes my music somehow cheap and completely ineffective? What sort of logic is that? Sample packs and libraries are mass marketed anyway, and if presets were sucky and lazy and cheap music crutches in the first place, why would award-winning (as advertised anyway) sound designers and companies put them in there? I mean, good lord, I've recognized stuff I have that even my heroes, Uematsu, Motoi Sakuraba, and Peter Gabriel all used and I know they use the same recognizable sounds over sometimes - what exactly then is the problem?

Are you going to record and then post some videos on it?

Ok, I've tried not to ask three times now, but I just can't help it. Did you actually sell your kidney or what is the story behind this development?

What kind of sample library are you looking to do?

Hard work includes lectures. If you're not willing to learn that way, may I suggest grabbing like 400 MIDIs and studying them for hours on end for like a year or two? Actually, the real path to learning how to do music is all of it. Learning, assistance, lectures, studying music thats been done, hard work, time and devotion. Like anything in life worth doing, its daunting at first and a road paved with inevitable failure time and time again, but those who stick with it and learn from their mistakes go the spoils. Anyway, one of the things that's helped me a lot is the MIDI route in FL. I still rely on that technique today. You get to see the notes in the piano roll and cut channels down to bass only, drums only, etc. etc. and you get to see how they play off each other and build the track. vgmusic.com is the place for MIDIs.

Mustin's AWESOME. Do that.

What is your budget? I've been recommended Komplete 6 a number of times and that seems like a great deal - $559 for Kontakt 4, Absynth 5, NI Battery, FM something, Reaktor, Guitar Rig and something else... Anyway, that would be a really great start down the FL road. If you're just starting out and you do want to go down the FL road, I could recommend KOMPAKT if you can find it. I've used that for a couple years to decent results. I think I paid $150 for that and I find it works great for starting out. Or, if you'd like, I could send you a bunch of decent soundfonts to just kinda get started. I don't really know anything about Reason. Does that help at all?

Yeah, I'd just hate to put us both through the hassle of doing it only to find out the plug isn't right and causes your TV to smoke up. I almost blew up my Atari Jaguar doing that once. I'd rather not risk that for both our sakes.

Nope, I don't have any of those. I thought maybe a wall-wart or something would work. Sorry.

I might, I have a bunch of those lying around everywhere. I'll have a look sometime. Can you send me sort of a picture of what you need?

I wasn't aware there was a problem to be had until now. I was not trying to be an ass, I just offering what I considered, based on my own experiences trying to collaborate over Ocremix, to be some decent suggestions. I'm sorry if it looked that way. I'd like to drop this issue now as it has no more public relevance, please.

That's fine, I was just wondering why.

What the fuck ever, Jimmy. Well, like I say, you can just talk to someone to get a frame of reference. A phone call or an email won't be a problem. And, again, I'm not trying to steer you away from the plethora of talented people here, I'm just saying it might be a good idea to start with talking to a local person for a frame of reference first. My own experiences with collaborating MIDI-MP3 over the internet have been kinda mixed. There's certainly nothing wrong with just composing instead of needing to do both. I compose much better than I produce. I don't know how much success you're going to find with finding someone who just produces diamonds with little effort. As is all things in life, music takes real work. What you put in is what you get out. Anyway, if you were to take someone's word here, you should probably go with Big Giant Circles. He's a professional and his experience definitely trumps mine.

Well since we're asking, what is this new argumentative thing you're doing? I particularly don't understand it now since I did nothing to defeat the notion of hiring someone here. All I said was "go TALK to one" not "go HIRE one." Some of this logic is based on my own experiences trying to collaborate with people here and talking to people I know IRL who work in the same field. Frankly, I feel like I get more done with a person IRL than on the internet, thus my SUGGESTION. It was a SUGGESTION and nothing more. I'm not going to go any further on that because I'm particularly not interested in arguing with you any further, on this topic or any other. If you have an issue with me or what I post, please contact me privately in a decent manner and I'll resolve those issues. I don't appreciate being called out multiple times in public by someone I generally don't expect it from in a short period of time. I'm dropping it from here. I suggest you do it too. EDIT: Ok, it seems I just used a vague term, which I can understand now where this is coming from. I'll make the changes now. ********************************************************************** Ok, let's try maybe something more helpful. What do you use to write your MIDIs, James?

Since we're asking, how come I never get to see "Welcome, meteo xavier., private messages:" on the home page, even after the redesign? I just wondered if there was a reason behind it.

Well certainly there's no shortage of people here who like to put their skills to $$$, but depending on the actual songs themselves and how much leeway you're willing to offer (not to mention $$$) could really depend on it. Where do you live? Usually every fairly big city has at least one go-to producer of some kind who does that kind of thing or could refer you to someone who does. I live in a tourist town and while we're only really known musically for Dolly Parton, there is hardly a shortage of vantage points in that regard - you just gotta know where to look. I'd say hit up a producer (EDIT: Contact one and start talking to him or her before you look toward hiring) in the nearest big city and see where to go from there.

I got mine rather quickly and it works pretty well (even though 13 channels seems to take up a lot of RAM for a synthesizer module and virtually no CPU. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?) I just want to know what that AAS file from the receipt page is supposed to be.