Meteo Xavier

I've had it up to here with free stuff, I want professional stuff I have to pay for. And when I say here, you need to imagine a 6'1 Jesus figure holding his hand up to his uvula to get the full effect of what I'm saying.

Back in August I bought, for $50, a beat up Yamaha CP70 and amplifier, and me and my dad are looking to try and fix them up to sell (I want to get some professional VSTs with the profits) and I'm looking for good resources or ideas for fixing and polishing up this baby as best I can so's I can sell it for as much as I can. Any ideas, resources? I can't be specific with the actual problems at this point, save some damage in the plastic cabinet above the keys where the YAMAHA label is.

Awesome advice, brother. Very, very good!

If I build, will you come? Yeah, good point. Audience interaction is key. I'd rather see a small artist who interacts with the crowd than a big one who stands still in one place fifty feet away from the audience. That's just me though. I love standing front row. I could tell them I'm a registered sex offender, but I think that would clash with the music I'm playing. I'd rather start by playing music in the background.

Yeah, one of my biggest problems is that I can't very well hear how I play in the context of whether or not it sounds good. I mean I can physically hear it, but I can't recognize very well if I'm not playing it smoothly or correctly.

Nah, don't worry about. *bang* To answer some other questions, I'm just looking for tips, knowledge and ideas to just perform a decent set so I don't play clunky piano or let one voice overtake another leading voice so on and so forth. What to practice so I get the songs done correctly, what to know about performing for others so I don't fuck it up (Yeah, confidence, except I don't have much of that). Obviously I'm looking to start quite small - just what to do so my songs come off sounding good to the public.

For other people. Publicly. I've going to give my ridiculous excuse for a composing/remixing hobby/habit a break and focus more on actually performing for a bit. I play a modest piano and I'd like to learn to sing with it. I have lessons in place, I just want some tips and information on what it means to perform for others and perform well - like books or websites or even if you have some. Thanks again, ladies and gentlemen.

Wazzat?

God bless you people. You have very helpful to this frustrated quasi-musician.

I'm listening to sound samples of Kompakt on zzsounds.com and you have pleased me with recommending this product. I'll have to sell the Chroma Polaris to fund this. Are the presets going to sound this good, or will I have to screw around with the knobs and such for a while before I get something that sounds as good as these samples? I have the sound modeling skills of a loose strand of DNA. http://www.zzounds.com/item--NINKOMPAKT And thank you again if I didn't say it already. Edit: Wait, is this a VST? Will this work for Fruit Loops you think?

Do you use any of those for your mixes?

I have had enough with soundfonts and I want real instrumentation in my computer work. SampleTank is what I'd like to go with, but its frustratingly expensive and its too much for my computer to handle. I have looked at PlugsoundPro ($299) and it looks decent, but I haven't heard anything about it (I've only discovered it 5 minutes ago) Any recommendations or ideas? Thanks again.

I read somewhere on here recently that soundfonts require effects to make them sound good and more believable. What are some suggestions, recommendations, ideas for this?

I have a mixer I'm sure, my dads a sound guy at Dollywood, he has all kinds of sound equipment lying round the house. Do you know where its been explained before? Was it on this topic somewhere?

I don't have....well I don't use an external mixer. How do I record waveforms in FL? And Low Latency? Start speaking ENGRISH man!

Ok, so I am about to purchase both a KORG WAVESTATION SR and ROLAND JV-880 synth modules and I quite like the sounds I am getting from them. Is there anyway I can hook them up to Fruity Loops through MIDI like soundfonts (in that I can use several instruments from the module at a time, it seems to me that I would only be able to use the instrument that was currently selected) or somehow get them onto my computer? I don't know much about this kind of work, but I would really like to get them working on my piano roll, I really like the instruments on it. Thanks!

Oh yeah, and I need a decent reverse cymbal sound, something makes a swelling crish sound so I can go into different song parts.

OK, I needs some help. I thought I could do well with good, free soundfonts, but now I am at the point where I need professional grade instruments to play on Fruity Loops 4. Does not have to be the greatest, most finely tuned virtual instruments in the world (not the $900 orchestral bundle with 6,000 samples with minor sonic differences etc.) but something where I can get a large quantity of pianos, guitars, organs, synths, strings, pads, effects, drums etc. that are a good cut above the soundfont range of quality for around $150 or so. Any ideas....? Thanks.

Hardcore. Thats all I have to say for you Ifirit, Hardcore. I think I'm going to stick around this a bit, I'm quickly becoming a Silent Hill addict myself.

Speaking of psychological abuse and such, does anyone know where I can find good information, articles, examples, etc of psychological abuse? Or for that matter, abuse towards mental patients? Reason I ask is because a friend and I are working on a story of our own that deals with the subject at hand, its about a mental patient who wakes up in the hospital one day to discover that the hospital is completely devoid of anyone but himself, but the hospital itself shows very few signs of any kind of conflict, the power still works, water and food are available, but the hospital is completely locked up, so he has no real means of escaping. At the same time, as he sits around in the hospital trying to investigate the matter and find a way out, his perception of reality keeps changing, and so there are a lot of scene transitions somewhat like those found in this game. And the whole point of this story is to really exploit the psychological damage he sustains from brain damage and an abusive hospital in a realistic manner. I want to be careful with it so I don't just slap some "psychological thriller" together that everyone else seems to be doing nowadays. I want it to be good, but I have little knowledge and experience in the matter (which is surprising to most people, I should say). So any help or direction or interest would greatly help me out. Thanks.

The only thing I couldn't figure out about the Silent Hill games (note: I've only played 3 and 4) is how the monsters fit into the story of the game. In RE, the monsters were the whole threat, they were the conflict in the story. In Silent Hill, (IMO) they just seem to be thrown in there to slow the character down, they don't seem to fit in the storyline at all. Am I just missing something?

I need to find some better quality soundfonts. Ones with more memory in them to help them sound better. Most of my tracks come off as bastard children of the Final Fantasy VI/VII OSTs.

Whats the address for Plugsound?

Hello again, I've been requested to do an industrial/hard rock song (without vocals), and I need some decent guitar soundfonts (distortion, overdriven, any decent ones that can work with Fruity Loops) and basically some ideas and suggestions on HOW to construct an industrial/hard rock song. I got a good start going (with an Industrial drum set and a Distortion guitar from the Setzer SPC bundle, both from Darkesword's website), but I don't know much about how to get that industrial sound, Chord progression ideas would be helpful too. Thanks plenty.

Thank you once again, Mr. Zircon