Meteo Xavier

What the hell is going on here

I sent an email along.

Wait, you can "Jr." female progeny now?

Damn right you're taking it back. Now let's focus back on this triple birthday party as its not to last much longer.

Srsly? How? Jennifer Tilly's 53 and still looks like she's 35.

Its like my daddy always said... Say it, don't spray it.

Today is a magical day as we celebrate the birth and continued rebirth of these three such persons. OCRE, of course, is Mr. IRC - by far and beyond the most popular denizen of #ocremix and a prime candidate for IRC mascot. Protodome is the man who taught the devil how to RAWK and Binweasel I knew nothing about outside of Penthouse Magazine So happy birthday to you, you Kings of Egypt, you slices of meringue pie, you public lambasters, you orthodontists of the Twin Cities, you Jennifer Tilly impregnators, you Pokemon resale values, you Jolly Green Dwarves, you Third Eye Blinds, you Afrocelt Sound Systems, you left handed pipe twisty... ... ...

That's called a corn field at night. Shnabubula's music is now Iowa?

Well first off, I got EWQLSO as part of the Composers collection and there was no manual to speak of (though it just now occurs to me it might be on the Soundsonline website, but that site has been kinda broken for a while). Second - composition is not the problem. My strength is the actual arrangement of notes and I can say what I want to say ok there. I didn't learn composition through any other method than just watching MIDI scores on Fl Studio's piano roll. I could SEE what needed to be where in the context I was going to work with them and my body responded excellently. I could play with it and learn from there. My fundamental was Motoi Sakuraba and Hiroki Kikuta. What I'm hoping to learn now is Production. Production is art too but there is still a science to it, I know there is. To learn it, I need to learn the general rules of thumb, the fundemental rules and processes. Once I get those down, I can start experimenting and learn further and just work with it until I have my own style down. From this book, I hope to learn a specific process in making my instruments come off more realistically in the context of the DAW medium and have that be my fundamental. After that, I plan to study orchestration through scores and additional learning like everyone else keeps telling me to do. Basically, I'm starting over. I have the tools, I have the money and I have something behind me to push forward. I just don't have the process.

I HAVE done that. I figured now it would just be easier to try the book I keep getting suggested offhand and see if I can find the pieces I'm missing in my design here, but even a question like "Has anyone read this book and used it?" turns into a discussion on how I'm doing the learning process wrong and I need to do all this other stuff I've already done and haven't found success in yet. So I don't know what to think. I'm not a natural musician, I can't just figure all this out from "using my ears" and "messing with knobs" like everyone keeps telling me to do, and no one short of the University of Tennessee teaches any of this stuff around here. Video tutorials seem to work ok, but they're so few and far between. So now I want to try a textbook that seems relevant and highly regarded and now that's not good enough. I feel like I'm going in circles and it doesn't make any sense to me. Not trying to lay down a sob story, but I don't know how to make my position and trying to just find out if anyone here has actually used the book any clearer.

So how or why does a book like Guide to MIDI Orchestration exist and get highly recommended in the first place if it's essentially useless when people should be studying straight orchestration techniques anyway? Thats what I'm not understanding.

Yeah, do let me know how that book works for you, Shrack. My development as a composer has been so random and picking up pieces here and there for the last 7 years that I don't even remember how I figured out what I know now. I can't continue this way and still expect to do competent work down the road. Now that I have some accolade and experience down, I need to focus it all on a proper way of doing things, that means starting back sort of at the beginning with a beginner-intermediate tool that I couldn't have gotten before - an expensive ass MIDI book. It may actually hold a lot of puzzle pieces I've been missing in my development in ways I can actually learn. Studying scores and the higher up orchestration like this comes later and I'll definitely look for that Sadler book (one that comes with a CD anyway), but this is where I need to start now. That's just how my body works. So don't think your suggestions have been in vain or anything. They are things I will do later, I can't start there now is all I'm saying. I need a new starting place.

This is true, but I think its mostly because the cost for development versus perceived lost markets scare off developers more than there actually being a small market for those games. I kinda think about that when I play Castlevania Adventure Rebirth. That game couldn't have cost way too much to develop and its fuckin' awesome as hell. I wish I could find how much that game sold.

Yeah but I still need to learn how to make my primary means of doing that, MIDI, the root priority, then go that direction. Thats what I'm missing right now.

Because its also the same reason people are denying themselves games they probably could be enjoying and then wonder why they can't find any games they like anymore. Same with movies and books too. Meta-discussion is fine as to understand why we enjoy it and why it works with some and not others, but now I feel it's gotten to the point where it's outright preventing a lot of gameplay. People blame these things on pretty much everything other than themselves. If they were willing to just drop some of it, they could find more games and movies and books they would enjoy.

Then that is not useful to me right now. A good portion of what I'm held back by is the technology itself, so I need to learn it either in the context I will be facilitating it in or at least something resembling it. That's why I'm so stubbornly fixated on the MIDI part of learning it and why studying orchestration and scores by themselves are not useful to me.

Because it's not 10-20 years ago? And hey, gamers, you want to know how the nostalgia factor works? You want to know why you today's games don't do it for you like back in the day? Because back in the day you used to actually just PLAY the damn game without the standards and bullshit you put on games today. When you were kids, there was a genuine openness in your approach when you picked out your games. Were you concerned about balance and game-breaking and translation and awesome story and company politics and graphic engines and all that shit when you were 9? No. It just looked cool and you thought "Oh, let's try this!" Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but you didn't know until you actually gave the game a fair fucking shot and put some effort into it. It's great you know WHY you liked games back in the day and can identify the elements that went into it, but now you're so drowned in that pseudo-knowledge that it inflates your standards until only one fucking game a year is worth considering. ("You" the editorial) Another factor that goes into this is you forget you're not children anymore. Everything was a lot more awesome when you're 7-13 because everything's largely still new. Now you've got 10-20 years of gaming under your belt and the only games that look even remotely interesting in the mainstream genres are ones that look like the ones you used to play when you were kids. Also, most of you have to live real lives now and go to work and have relationships and kids and diseases that will kill you in a few years. Did you think it was all going to same? If you see a little curtness in my post here, its because I'm amazed how few very intelligent grown adults seem to really get it here. The games, for the most part, are not the problem. Today's games are different but they're just as fun and awesome as they were back then, you just don't know how to approach them as awesomely as you used to back when you hit your peak in that hobby. I challenge you this: Go to rpgamer.com, look through the latest releases, (not REVIEWS, RELEASES), make up a list of titles for your system of choice, randomly pick 3-5 of them and just have yourself a weekend playing them without your bullshit standards. Set it up in a game room, get a pizza and a coke like you used to, and just have some damn fun. If you can genuinely do it without thinking about balance and history and all that, I guarantee you you'll have at least 20% more fun playing it than if you approached it like all your other games these days. Bottom Line: THE GAMES ARE NOT THE PROBLEM, JUST RELAX YOUR STANDARDS AND HAVE FUN. Golly, when did playing videogames get so serious?

Does it teach you how to compose it in a MIDI orchestration context like the other two do?

Well some of them were actually samples from Secret of Mana's soundfont set (particularly in Need Insurance), others are just similar sounding GM soundfonts. That's probably the best way to go for a retro sound without getting into the nitty-gritty of tracking and more complicated sample work.

Dan is a college professor in orchestration and working/accomplished composer and he's been mentoring me for a few years now - and his suggestion came with a book recommendation. Thats the difference there. I'd still be interested in what your book recommendations were. Thats what I'm looking for.

(What friends?) I was actually going to try to find to special order it from my city library as well. One of them has a program of some kind where they order books from other libraries and try that.

Hmm... definitely cheaper and looks more suited for beginners (which I still kinda am), but it seems like people are more willing to bitch about this one. Dammit, I don't want to buy two books...

I'm not being picky, I'm asking a question with a narrow focus and I get annoyed when people don't listen to that and offer suggestions to things I've already done and I know I don't need. I'm not currently interested in scores, I'm interested in this particular book. Now, if you want to recommend those other books, by all means go for it. That is relevant to what I'm asking. Not trying to be a dick here, but I don't know how much more clear I can make my intentions.

... While I didn't specifically mention scores in that, it's part of the same deal there. This isn't a topic on orchestration, this is a topic on this particular book. The question at hand is, "Have you read this particular book, and if so, would you recommend it?"

Can I fight you even if I agree with you?