Meteo Xavier

It's done! It's actually fucking done! Usa turned in a final .WAV today and no more changes are needed on it - meaning the project is now 100% complete in terms of tracks! We still need to get our shit together for everything else, and now I can start building an additional PR plan (which I will still bother some for help with, whether you like it or not, ) but the main point of the project is finally over! I'm actually so excited I want to post this on the main Community page. Do you think they would let me? I want to start building some buzz and hype for it. :D

I'm surprised IK Multimedia has its own OCR member account to post when someone like me mentions it! That was quite a surprise (though not a bad one).

Yeah, but I never make snap decisions for sound gear more than $20. I would've liked to hear more choir/vocal stuff in the demos. It's apparently also going to add all of SampleTank 2 in it, which sounds a bit weird to me as ROMplers tend to be designed for consistency, but I've never had a full version of ST2, so I won't know until I get a chance to really try it.

I didn't actually expect to see it in my lifetime, but it's finally coming out soon. http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletank3/ You have to really dig into the page to hear the audio demos, but they're there and most of them are a considerable improvement over SampleTank 2. Won't please VST elitists by any stretch of the imagination, but for a dedicated ROMpler, I really like what I'm hearing. $300 though... $200 would've near guaranteed a purchase from me.

I most definitely owe the community something tangible and helpful for allowing me to proceed in my artistic endeavors on here despite my never-ending parade of cynical, baffling nonsense. I'll see what I can do.

Make sure you have a $2,000 gig lined up before you run out to buy $2,000 worth of fun new technology. It's cool, but it's not $2,000 for home and fun cool.

A joke but... five jobs will come back to bite in the ass, I guarantee it. That will wear any man down in no time. I have begun my pre-workout workout routine. It includes jogging/elliptical, 40 weighted jumping jacks, 20 chair dips, 50 crunches, 20-40 bicycle crunches, 20 lunges, 40 dead lifts of 30lbs as I do not own heavier weights, 50 fake jump rope jumps and 20-40 sissy pushups to build me back up to doing the real ones - 3 times a week. It has been difficult as I had unanticipated near-crippling knee pain after my very first one, and I have yet to see my energy really recover for it, but I am making some progress, and I am getting used to the taste of my protein supplement shake.

They never are, because that's the job everyone wants, so that's the job everyone gets lazy and cheap to get jobs for. The supply exceeds the demand 25-fold, and I've learned in my unfortunate experienced and observation, musicians really aren't generally that good when it comes to business and networking smarts. They really just think making a free post on that stuff will drive jobs in. I've seen so many "XFIRSTNAMEX XLASTNAMEX: Music For All Your Media" threads, I could puke. The real luck is waiting for someone new to start something up, not have a composer yet, and post on it. You beat everyone to punch, and cut as many throats as you can until you seal the deal. This may just sound like cynical, burnt out, bitter bullshit, but even if you believe me, the learning curve for how real that is is steep.

Usa's still busy, but he contacted me yesterday having made some progress on it. Yes, I know I've been saying "ALMOST!" for 5 pages now, but keep the faith and patience, brothers.

There are worse things to spend a pittance like that on, and if it's (apparently) good enough for Yuzo Koshiro, it's likely good enough for you.

Welcome to Meteo Xavier, home of a shit ton of experience in the "real world".

If you gave me $100,000 and all the time I needed to hire actual instrumentalists to perform things for a soundtrack, I still wouldn't bother because it's a waste of time and money when I could create the same thing sonically using VSTs and loops. The time and energy that goes into production should go to the quality of the compositions and mixing, not trying to wait on a lot of frankly unnecessary human components to just show up and get ready. What does it add? Does Average Joe Gamer suddenly drastically improve his opinion of the game by the fact that they used a real harp performer? No. The whole point of making this stuff electronic in the first place was to cut out all the middle men that used to be required to create music. One thing I kinda expected to be touched on in favor of the anti-loop movement is the argument that using loops and VSTs now makes it so session musicians have hard times getting work. I remember that used to be a thing I kept seeing years ago when I just started out trying to learn how to compose. They used to call it "cheaping" the industry and "cheating" too. How many centuries must go on before musicians learn that trying to do music for a living is really fucking TOUGH? It was tough when the VST technology was new, it was tough when everyone bought a $25,000 synthesizer and tried to cash in on the 80s synthpop craze, it was tough in the 50s and 60s when record companies screwed you out of your royalties left and right, it was tough when Washington crossed the Delaware, it was tough when Arthur plucked the sword from the stone, it was tough when Emperor Gaius was assassinated by the Roman Senate and Praetorian Guard and it's never going to change. The current state as it is today is just as bonkers, and when I'm competing with 13 million indie composers and amateur chiptune dance artists, who all want to be paid $300 a minute officially but will secretly undercut everyone else as long as it gets them the job, just to secure a gig I might lose any minute because the guy I'm working for seems to think my job is to magically bring the songs he hears in his head to life by psychic proxy of communication and will fire me for anything, on a deadline I can barely make because I chose to have a full time job so that the unbelievably fickle business of doing music will not ultimately decide if I eat or starve, I just don't have time to care if I'm using presets and loops over anything else. The stigma of using loops does not counterbalance the efficiency and benefits they provide when using them. I can say without fear of hyperbole or editorializing that this kind, and every other kind, of music elitism should be considered the same thing as Neo White Supremacy. It is pointless and evil.

There was a dude from ThaSauce IRC who told me straight I should be hanged for using synth presets instead of making my own. If I could remember his name I would damn well shame him here.

The stigma of the commercial loops baffles me. It's like people on here go, "I want to be a composer just like that guy! I need to get all the tools and stuff he/they use!" Then they find out a loop from a readily available loop package shows up in one of their soundtracks and they're like "wow, that's really disillusioning..."

I tried helping here but I couldn't find anything either. Your best option, I think, is creating a support ticket with them. Yes, their customer service sucks, but they were able to help me out twice, so it's not impossible. Sorry, that's the best I could offer you at the moment.

I always enjoy it when lesser-known artists get bigger breaks like these. Much respect and congratulations.

Why not just combine this soundtrack with that one or wait to announce them both at the same time if they're that close to each other? In some of my observances and experiences, releases tend to inspire more excitement and feedback with bigger packages of less frequency, then smaller releases with more quantity. The latter, I've read at least, sometimes inspires burn-out to listeners. The above paragraph probably comes off arrogant or negative, but I mean it to be positive constructive feedback.

What's the other soundtrack?

I think you could get away with 30 minutes each and have a single album-sized, fairly decent library to choose from. Do you have a private email address or a link to something with more information on the project online? I'm interested, like I say, but I feel weird trying to compete for it in a public format like this here thread. I'd prefer talking in private if it was available.

I did have to correct myself for thinking it was a game, not a guide, but I am still interested why you need that much music for it. I'm not intending to be or come off critical, I'm just wildly curious.

I'm interested, but... 4 hours of music? There many AAA blockbuster games currently that do not use that much music. May just be a typo, but why do you need that much music? I also hope you would understand that that's a really tall order for a project with limited budget. Additionally, do you have an email address or website linked to this?

Usa will have the track to me at the later part of this week. Good anyway since I was sick all weekend anyway. Good news on that, Mak. Thanks much. When this finishes up, I'm going to request some time to build up a proper plan for exposure and PR from the bigwigs. My plan to ask for contributions for others pittered out (which is fair), but I've got some alternatives and other help for that as well. Has a crawl to the finish line ever been so protracted in all of history? Maybe not, but we'll get there, trust me.

I NEVER wanted to learn how to SFX, but now I've tried it, I can see why people have told me it's kind of addicting. It was thoroughly satisfying to know I came up with a coin-like sound in just a couple minutes. Still, I'd have to really, really work at that shit before I got anywhere in skill to charge money for, and I still have much I must learn about composing first before all that.

It was "TOASTY!" that got me.

Go to your toilet, take a shit, and when you have finished, get back here and click this link: Do not watch with a full bowel.