Meteo Xavier

Hey now, SD3 is almost finished though!

Just wanting to ask because I'm sure I'm not the only one curious about this - for these commissioned arrangement projects by game companies, how does it get decided who gets invited to contribute to them? I never see any open auditions for projects like these, so do you have to be an Ocremixer of a certain clout to get invited, or how does that work? That tone probably comes off more negative than I mean for it too, but I've been wondering it for some time and thought this was as good a time to ask as any.

They have VST sales on Steam?

I addressed this earlier. I actually heard this last night. This track was pretty cool and a good direction I wanted to pursue. Then the rest of the album... This is a bit closer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEhG40Lco00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgZA6onmV7Q&list=PL8D4857FB3AE7D51B I fuckin' love this album and the artistic, compositional aim is what I'm after, not recreating the sound themselves. Every song on here cannot be confused for another and it never really gets so complex that it feels like he's just jacking off his music chops. If I could do something like this replacing the need for live guitars and vocals with modern synths, ambient flourishes and frenetic electro-world percussion beats and grooves, I'd be sittin' pretty.

...umm, at the risk of sounding like a douchebag, I think it's self-explanatory. I don't have limits as to what constitutes a quality composition and arrangement. I can be as complex or simple in parts as I want and use of any sound or instrument is ok so long as it gels well with everything else. The qualifier isn't on how complex it is, but if I can just give it an overall high quality and balance. This is what Genesis and it's alumni, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett et all brought to the prog table and it worked for them (I take after Steve Hackett's compositional focus most strongly), and I used to figure it worked ok with them until I tried to market ESPERS.

Where I get my reference there is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Rock. "[Progressive Rock] does not refer to a single style but to an approach that combines elements of diverse styles. Jerry Ewing, editor of Prog Magazine, explains that "Prog is not just a sound, it's a mindset,"[10] and Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci points out that it is defined by its very lack of stylistic boundaries." So that's where I get my confusion. To me, there is a world of difference between music without limits and focusing on complexity as a qualifier.

So basically 2, maybe 3, votes for focusing on complexity then, if I'm gathering responses correctly.

Well, that's my question. Is Prog about music without limits, or is it about achieving complexity? That's what I want to know before I dive in there, but in my research so far, the philosophy seems to rub against the actual practice (hence the topic title).

If it still takes an ungodly long time to compose, I don't really see the difference. I've figured out ways to fake complexity, but even that can get difficult to do in a DAW and I'm pretty tired of putting extraneous energy into it where it won't pay off later.

Well my question was does it have to be so dependent upon the complexity? I wanted to simplify it down to something more generally enjoyable. I listened to Karn Evil 9 last night and thought "**sus, do I really have to do something like this? Is this something people listen to more than once a year?"

The kind of music I REALLY want to do and market will sound like a mixture of the following: So with lots of Omnisphere type synths, world music influences, epic melody structures, orchestral, etc. And I wanted to focus on environment, melody, energy and thick soundscapes, not showing off how complex and insane I can make an arrangement.

In the many concepts and directions I'm trying to juggle for future projects, one is the possibility that a couple of labels I have some connection to might refocus into Progressive music. Initially I think this would be awesome because then I could stretch out and expand my compositions. Problem is, even though Prog music is supposed to be, in philosophy, a rejection of limits in a composition, the actual prog product as applied to the niche tends to heavily favor artists and projects that sound like ELP or Dream Theater. The irony of trying to call yourself a "progressive" artist is to sound like you came straight out of 1971 England, or else you're not prog. I don't have guitars and I have no interest in doing 30 minute compositions of 15 different time signatures, 120 drum fills and seeing how much I can WANK out on a Hammond organ. The prog music everyone drifts to is all about the wankery, it's not about how interesting, creative, or melodic you can make a composition. And here's where everyone says, "so just make the music you love", well, yeah, that could work if I didn't care about how little attention my music got, but I do. I didn't spend all this time and money learning to how to do this just so I could say I do music, I did it so people could actually listen to it. My first attempt at philosophical prog "Espers" got an extremely cold reception from journalists BECAUSE I had no limits on style or composition, they wouldn't even take it because "eh, it's too ambient to be new age", "it's too new age to be ambient", "I... guess it's kinda prog, but this isn't really prog at all". The business reality is I have to create a product targeted audiences actually want, not just to appease myself, but the label heads releasing it. So I figured here was as good a place to ask as any other since all my prog leaning mostly focuses on Genesis, its offshoots, and Motoi Sakuraba. Do you think I can really do compositions without stylistic limits and market it to prog channels, or do I have to do prog music like everyone else does before it even has a chance of getting any attention to it?

Some good news showed up in my Gmail regarding the project today, but it might be premature to tell you what it is. Need to wait a few days apparently, but YES!

^ Hmm... I've never heard it explained quite like that before. It intrigues me. Might you go into more detail?

Edit: Heard back from Rozovian. I'm going to be checking in on our last outliers for the project. That means you Pete and Jaka. And Rozovian too. Any other business going on we need to know about? EDIT: Or, better yet, does any one have any additional contacts in their network of places we can contact for PR and more support? We have a bunch of places already, but you can never have enough! Let's not wait to hype this baby up, let's get some groundwork started there too.

This is typically where I would ask you to marry me, but I don't think my wife would approve. Or maybe she would. I don't know. I don't want to know. Good comment is what I'm getting at. Let's pretend I didn't say anything at all. No Meteo, don't press that Submit Reply button. No, don't! Don't! Don't! ... YOU FOOL!!!!!!!!

At the risk of being a Little Miss Snarky, I think I speak for the whole internet when I say this thread has nowhere to go but up. Having said that, I'll give you a like.

You didn't mention your preferences until just now. Before, you were talking about it like it was going to be a problem for everyone.

That didn't stop people from buying and lugging tablets everywhere for themselves and their kids.

I've noticed my account profile on here has some issues in it. Alright then, I'll hit you up there.

No problem. PM me your email address and I will also give you something that will be helpful in getting album sales here.

I tried contacting you privately, Luiza. Were you able to get my message? Sorry to be off topic, I don't really know how else to contact you.

That's actually a pretty good question. I don't think I have a style, and I don't mean that in a pretentious "well I don't really think about genre, I do it all" way, I mean I often struggle so much just to get my tracks to work that I've never actually found a groove with how I do things, instead resorting to hillbillying elements together to call it a song.