Meteo Xavier

Justin, if you were a religious icon of some kind, I would totally convert for you. You're one of the wisest things on two legs currently.

Inspired by the Cinesamples LITE thread. While I do have some tutorials and the mighty MIDI ORCHESTRATION textbook, I find one thing I'd like to try to get to help me really learn how to use EWQL effectively is to look for any templates or MIDI mockups others have made with EWQLSO and put them up online. Like what this guy did with Stormdrum. http://www.piotrmusial.com/sd2/ No, I'm not looking to steal any of it, I just want to learn more with sight and example inside the actual tools I'll be using instead of trying to figure it out through text and sound like everyone else tells me to do. I was just wondering if such a thing was available. I downloaded the guy's expansion above and it's really helping me out as far as learning stormdrum.

Why do you have such a big screen for a small room if you only watch TV at a small portion of the morning?

I'm not sure how you keep a child under 2 from watching a digital screen these days short of keeping them locked up in a cave or something. Sounds rather excessive as an alternative for common sense and moderation. I myself was hoping to get my future progeny's first 18-24 months hooked to long playlists of nature documentaries and COSMO as a way to keep them occupied throughout the days. I don't think the screen itself has anything to do with it, I think it matters what they're watching. My idea here was to start them with this and give them an appreciation of nature, a starting point for a fascination of science, a lot of wonderful images to expand their minds with, and just keep them occupied while I work or clean around them. Obviously that ain't a magic answer for anything, but in this digital age, it's a lot smarter than other parenting ideas in that realm of theory.

I'm not exactly jumping at the gate to buy Grosso at all, I just thought it would have its advantages for how time it takes to make the same orchestral/trailer music everyone makes and wants in the first place. I just can't stand the pretentious elitism among this stuff these days. "You're not a real artist if you use loops and phrases!" "EWQLSO sucks because it's old and uses a dongle!" "PLAY sucks because PLAY sucks!" etc. It didn't stop other professionals from being able to use PLAY to make excellent sounding music years ago, and instead I'm encouraged to dump it and buy new, overpriced Cinesamples stuff because its Kontakt, because it's new, and because it's somehow 100x better recorded and scripted and on and on. I really don't know how much more you can improve the experience and flexibility for other composers to sound exactly like Hans Zimmer at this point (or the point it was 4 years ago) other than to purchase something like this that actually has all the action cue/trailer compositional stuff already made out-of-the-box. So much attitude and "serious business" from people who have yet to do anything significant with it. Drives me nuts.

I thought I'd made my position on pretentious crapola like that clear by now. Why should I care about how something is made as long as I'm legal and ok to use it? Even professionals with major artistic credibility use loops and other legal things they themselves did not generate. Yuki Kaijiura, Yasunori Mitsuda, Motoi Sakuraba and more use them regularly. If I wanted to care about using premade loops and phrases as not being "real", I'd also have to question using samples instead of hiring a real orchestra in the first place. Then I'd have to worry about if it's really MY musical voice if I don't play the instruments myself. Compared to how orchestra composers today steal from each other all the time anyway, I must ask why I should spend $400 on a "lite" library from Cinesamples when I could get something that actually makes the job easier instead. (Yes, that was a stretch, but I wanted to tie that back into the thesis point of the topic somehow).

The more I think about it, the more I really could use a phrasing program that does all that orchestral shit for me. That stuff's a huge pain in the ass, and all that shit sounds the same and is what everyone wants anyway...

Ohhhhhh... I didn't see that. Now that's a post that would've been worthy of snide. *legitimately dumb* Oddly enough, it took me quite a while to figure out NI Action Strings was like that too and not a string sampling thing. I must have some sort of specified difficulty in that region I should work on. Do it, Andy. We know you want to. >

Another year, another Christmas remix album, another post from me saying I'd like to try it but not sure if I'll be able to. All the same, not having it need to be OCR-standards quality does take some pressure off to perform, so I hope to do something this year finally.

Did you see Sonokinetic's newest one? http://www.sonokinetic.net/products/classical/grosso/ I liked the way this one sounded. I don't really need another huge, hollywood-sounding orchestral thing, but some good stuff in here that tempts me all the same. Website also features work by Reuben Cornell who I've worked with a couple times - that dude kicks all kinds of ass and his demos on here are no exception.

The yearning for EWQLSO on Kontakt is starting to reach the level of people yearning for another season of Firefly. :S And like Firefly, it's time to move on and accept the present. EWQL with PLAY and the iLok REALLY isn't that bad. I'm the most problem-prone person active on Ocremix and I still have had more good come from modern EWQL than problems. I get more convinced it's just something "serious" computer musicians say so that everyone else knows they're "serious" computer musicians. Like how kids today use slang to sound cool. (Edit: To be fair, I don't have a huge crazy-ass setup for doing music, I just have this one computer and sometimes a USB thing, but still I would've expected to see more of the things people bitch about on it by now, and if EWQL really was that terrible now, why do other professionals still buy it and use it in their work? Doesn't add up.) It's also time to accept that you're not going to get a high quality full orchestra set these days without putting down some benjamins. If you're that serious about doing orchestral music, than save your money up like a man, purchase it, and claim it on your taxes. Or wait until Christmas when they have huge discounts on it. DaCapo had a really nice Christmas discount last year that I almost bought.

I think a quick clarification for admittedly vague semantics would've been a lot better than a big fuckin' picture that overflows with snide sentiment.

Wow, it's actually going to be $400.00 at it's base, and then $200.00 with a 50% student discount. Damn. :S Edit: Clarification.

Wow. Where do I even begin here? Let's just start randomly. 1. Not all games and companies are required or can even have huge budgets for audio anyway. Not all games are AAA Titanfalls and, as much as composers like to bill how important music is to the game, it's really one of the least important aspects in the fundamental construction of the game. This is demonstrated by the MUTE button of a TV remote control. If you turn the graphics or TV off, can you play the game? If you turn off certain layers of the programming code, can you play the game? If you turn off or unplug the controller, can you play the game? If you turn the music down or off, can you play the game? That one, yes, as many gamers do at one point or another, it's just the experience of playing it that diminishes. Music is most definitely important to a game for many reasons, but from the perspective of the people building it, it's essentially garnish. You can't blame companies for favoring programmers and artists. You have artists and musicians but no programmers, you have no game (you have an album). You have programmers and musicians but no artists, you have no game (or something like Zork). You have programmers and artists? You have a game, it just needs some royalty-free tracks or something. 2. The whole problem with musicians getting what could be generally considered to be "fair" rates for music is that it's basically trying to put an objective value to highly, highly subjective work. In fact, this simple infrastructure is why the gap of success from artists is so widely varied throughout history anyway. Art falls in an odd place as far as being essential for humanity to live. Without art, you're not really living, but you're not exactly dying without it either. An example is: I'm in the market for a trailer song and I have one guy who wants $4,000 for it because he uses a live orchestra and one guy who wants $800 for it because he uses EWQL I listen to both, and they both sound like what I'm looking for and I'm not enough of an orchestral obsessive to really REALLY hear the difference, which one do I go with? Do I take the smart option and go with the guy who has the talent to make it sound real enough to me, or do I take the expensive option to help out an industry I'm not part of in the first place? I'm pretty sure neither has intentionally paid a much, much higher price to make sure the industry I work in is healthy... 3. On that point, a lot of this kind of talk goes into how much musicians SHOULD get paid because musicians should get to put the value they want on their work, but it never goes into what justifies a musician to charge professional rates in the first place. What actually qualifies someone to be a professional musician in the first place? Are they required to be licensed by the state like many other professional freelance fields? Are they required to have 2 years orchestration residency, 2 years apprenticeship in electronica, 1 year experience performing live? Are they required to have the full range of professional grade music hardware and software? Is it illegal to do music without Omnisphere? Nope. If you wanted to, you could just quit your job, spend all day doodling around Fruityloops, charge a high price and that's all you'd have to do to call yourself a professional. What you're telling me is that I should charge the same amount of money that Virt charges for music, even though I'm not even 1/10th as accomplished or versatile as Virt is, and there is absolutely nothing requiring me to be as good as Virt is to justify that price. Wouldn't that seem like a problem in the infrastructure there? 4. And on THAT point, the music industry is already fucked up beyond all recognition right now, how could it get hurt any further? Music as an industry has NEVER been good. I don't think there's been one time in history where there has been a huge demand for musicians and not enough supply. Maybe the 60s, I'm not sure. It is a job that can safely be assumed will never get any easier as the ability to make it gets better introduced to the general public at large. More artists means more competition, and there's only so much $$$ to go around for that. 5. Oh, and btw, a little known thing many composers, even ones that talk about "undercharging killing the industry", engage in is... well, undercharging. Anyone with even a lick of sense knows how hard it is to make money in this industry, and it therefore follows that "well, even a reduction rate is still better than nothing." In my wheelings and dealings, I've nearly hired two quite famous VGM composers (I won't name names out of courtesy) to work with on previous things, and both offered, straight out, to work with major reductions to their rates. Hell, I've even been given reduction rates for VST sample sets! From successful companies! Working within a budget hurts the industry? Give me a break. Let's examine a hypothetical scenario. FurryFreedom: Hi, is this Neblix? Neblix: Yes FurryFreedom: hey man, I'm a big fan of yours from ocremix. I have an indie game coming up and I need about an hour of music. Would you be too busy these days to hire? Neblix: Nope, I'm available! Neblix: I charge $800/minute. That includes mixing and mastering, and is royalty free. At 60 minutes, that comes out to about $48,000. FurryFreedom: Oh... I only have $20,000 I can spend on a soundtrack. Neblix: Ok, well, $800/minute is a firm price. If I reduce it from there, the industry will collapse ass over elbow. $20,000 will get you 25 minutes of music though. FurryFreedom: Umm... no, I kinda need a full hour of it. FurryFreedom: Thanks anyway, I'll keep looking. Are ya seriously telling me you wouldn't take $20,000 over NOTHING? Just to help an industry that's already in a slow terminal slide that this one sacrifice could not have possibly saved? Sorry man but... no, just no. Undercharging doesn't kill an industry. If it did, nothing you'd ever go to a store for would EVER HAVE SALES. I suppose I could've just saved myself a lot of writing by just writing that one paragraph, but, eh, there it is.

Errr... ok, I misread you, but much of what I said still stands and I'm leaving it there for it to apply to anyone else thinking in that range.

Well, before you start getting $ signs in your eyes like a lot of young (and old) new composers do when asking this question, consider this: 1. Are you really worth $500 a minute? Take away any pride or ego you have and try to decide if you are really worth that. 2. If you were wanting music and the young guy you hired presented to you the track you are capable of doing, would you pay $1,500 for it? Would you pay slightly more than the price of some used cars for it? 3. Are you willing to make a never-ending series of changes to it to satisfy your client? Are you willing to work all those hours and still be unlikely to satisfy them enough to get your money? 4. What are your credentials for charging a premium price on it? What have you done to prove you're worth it? Really not trying to be cynical here this time, this is what you and every professional has to ask themselves to truly justify the price. Just because game composers and other freelancers nowadays are pushing more and more to get paid higher prices for their art does not mean everyone who does music is worth $500 a minute. Just because you charge that does not mean the market will bear it. For $500 a minute, I could get someone who's worked and proven themselves in the field for over 30 years to give me something awesome. I can ask someone I've not only heard of but been a big fan of for years. I won't name names but I could even get someone who worked at Squaresoft and has been remixed many times over on this website for that price. And anyone who can afford to buy custom music at $500 a minute knows this too. Can you compete with that? Again, not trying to be cynical this time, just trying to be real. There's more to getting rich doing music than charging high prices. * * Edit: I guess that doesn't really answer your question directly. I think you should not charge a safe/flat rate until you've really proven yourself to be worth what you want to charge. If I were you, I'd take just about any half-decent offer for $ you can get, because you'll get more secured jobs that way and you'll get more clout to tout about. And don't come back to me and say, "But I can't afford an apartment on $35 a song." Then do what smart artists do and keep your day job. The real irony of success in the music business today is that not making a career out of music is probably the best guaranteed way to be successful at music you can get now. Don't turn music into your job unless you're really making enough money per year to substitute a job's salary.

^ This guy. Right here.

If foregoing breast milk is a trend here, it's not a wide-spread one. I've never heard of any trend like that here. Breastfeeding is such a big deal right now that anyone who casts any shade on it whatsoever is crucified in the same fire as the KKK and mafia. (Full disclosure: I totally support breastfeeding and have no idea why anyone would cast shade on it at all in the first place, but it's a surprisingly FIERCE social issue.)

Walk it off. Strong women don't complain about the weather. >:S

Get some mustard, there's gonna be a HOT DOG tonight!

Most of my music starts with some sort of hook or experiment and then going on into whatever it becomes. Quite frankly, when I really think about it, I have no idea HOW I compose music, it's just, after 10 years, I just DO somehow. Not trying to sound overly awesome, but it's become so instinctional that I seriously have trouble just even trying to figure out how I do what I do in a theoretical sense. I have, however, experimented with building tracks one instrument at a time. In that I'll write the drum track with fills and rhythm changes first, then write the bass to accompany it, then chords and riffs and then the melody to provide the basic structure. I've had surprisingly good results doing it this way and it really allows me to break out of a lot of my typical conventions, but I still don't do things that way very often as it's just not as fun or doesn't always have that THING to it.