Argle

As I get older I mainly want to play a game, enjoy it, and move on. I don't do much replaying anymore. I've never liked fighting games so I can't speak to the desire to get really good at them, but doing endless item runs in a game like Diablo 2 no longer appeals to me.

You may like the default look of Reaper, you may not. But either way there's no reason you have to keep the default theme. Let's see what other themes are available. Eh. The v3 one's ok but the other two are pretty awful. Fortunately though that's the tip of the iceberg. Enter the Reaper stash. No pot, just loads of user generated content including themes. I've been using RADO VOX for a couple years, so let's try that one. Download the zip and unpack it. Locate the theme file and place it here. Restart Reaper and let's check it out. Almost looks like a different DAW. And that's only one theme, there are hundreds of them in the stash. You can begin your search here. Outside the stash is the monstrous Imperial theme. Have fun!

Capitalizing a few letters doesn't change the nature of anything.

I'm going to go with OverClocked ReMix.

you lucky bugger, getting a birthday mix post.

New in v4.5 is a large overhaul of MIDI, most notably you can now view and edit multiple MIDI items at once. Disclaimer up front, I am not an expert in these new changes, so I'll give you the basics, but there is tons more nuance in the various ways of handling multiple MIDI items. First things first, if you open up the MIDI editor you can use the track list on the right to navigate all MIDI items in your project. They are arranged per-track, and if you click on the diamond icon on the left of a track entry, it will expand to show all the items on that track. So, there are some icons we must become familiar with. First is the eye icon, which unsurprisingly controls visibility. An item that is visible is not necessarily editable. You may want certain items displayed as a reference, but have no intention of working on them. You want those items simply visible. Next is the lock icon, which controls editability. Notice that an editable item has solid notes, while an item that is only visible has faint transparent notes. Obviously an item that is made editable will also be made visible. Last is the arrow icon, which sets the active track. While you can have multiple tracks editable, you can only draw new notes on the active track, and only one track can be active at a time. An item that is made active will also be made editable and visible, obviously. So that's the basics of dealing with the track list. If you wish you can select multiple items in the arrange window and double-click on them. The item that you click on becomes the active item, while the other items are visible. Then if you click on any of the selected items you can change the active item. Note that if you click on an item not in this group, the entire group will disappear from the MIDI editor. Lastly, if you open a single item and then ctrl-click on additional items in the arrange window, they will be added to the editor as visible items. So there's a crash course on multi-MIDI editing. There are a lot more options that you can do with it, so explore. I didn't go into the media item lane, which is a different way to select the items you want to view. For more in-depth info check out the manual.

So in case you don't know, the way you loop a section of project in Reaper is to first make sure looping is enabled. Then you draw a time selection around the area you want to loop, and voila. You can do the reverse as well, skip a time selection. To accomplish this press Alt-spacebar to play the project rather than spacebar. A use for this is if you wanted to record while skipping a certain section.

I would consider entering, but I literally don't know a single Disney game soundtrack.

Some things you can do - boost the highs. - choose a different sample. - play with the ASDR, make it less sustained. - apply effects - have 2 or more different hat patterns going at the same time. - take a random drum loop and highpass it until you just have the top end. Instant cool hi hat pattern. What you call cheating is nothing of the sort.

Screw them. Screw them all. We're too good for them anyway.

Well I did something to my shoulder. I've been noticing it when I push my car door open. Like, wow, am I getting weak cuz it's a bit hard to push the door open? Nope, just pain. Yesterday was pretty bad. Pain when I raise arm out to shoulder level height. Not sure if it's rotator cuff something or other. Before I freak out and go to the doc I'm going to discontinue the exercises that hurt in their range of motion, particularly pullups. That's my best guess as to the cause, since I just started doing weighted and explosive pullups. Let's see if it'll get better if I'm careful in my range of motion.

I think it sounds decent, would not sound out of place at all in a video game. For guitars you could probably get better results from Shreddage, which is the bees knees for chugging rhythm work because it was recorded direct. The drums do seem kind of wide panned. Not sure how much control MOR gives you over that.

djp hasn't even started his track yet. Or so the wall of color says.

The thing about being a soundtrack composer in this day and age is, how many indie composers actually do that as their sole source of income? Show me one and I'll show you a rare animal. Take someone like Zircon. He doesn't just do soundtracks, he has a soundware company, releases albums, does license/production music, teaches (I think), and probably a lot of other endeavors. He has diversified. Trying to become the next Nobuo is a fool's errand IMO. Either prepare to do a lot of different jobs like Zircon, or just be content with having a fun hobby.

I have looked around my area for places that would make good parkour spots, I literally can't find any. There just isn't much to climb or jump over. It's like I live in a parkour dead zone. Just as well, I suppose, I'd feel very self conscious trying to learn that stuff in a public area.

A cool plugin for the MIDI user is ReaControlMIDI. Let's open it up. At the top you can do bank and program changes. Admittedly I have no experience with this, so check it out if it interests you. Further down you can transpose notes. That could be useful to play in one key but have the results in another key. Further down still is the Control Change, which I think is the coolest part. Because you can't automate modwheel, pitch bend, and other CCs by default in Reaper this is a workaround to do it. My favorite use for this is to use automate big pitch bend swoops that would be hard or impossible (for me) to record with the pitch bend wheel. Other obvious uses are mod wheel, volume, and expression. An alternative to drawing in the CC lanes in the Midi Editor, or performing the modulation on your controller. Down at the bottom is the ability to send sysex data. Again, a really power user thing that I have no experience with. Remember that in the fx chain, ReaControlMIDI has to go before the virtual instrument that you want to affect, compared to normal audio fx that come after the instrument.

The elementary school playground by my house is actually, like, an awesome park for exercising. It's got different heights of pullup bars, parallel bars, monkey bars, all the fun stuff. Not all playgrounds have those things. The real kicker is that almost no one ever uses it.

I started when I was 21. Which felt old at the time, but feels like a young punk age to me now. Rather than worry about age, don't get too attached to the whole professional music thing. The world is saturated with skilled musicians that no jobs exist for. Enjoy making music for yourself, and your personal improvement.

The stereoEnhancer plugin has two width controls and a crossover. What's the use of it? To make the low end of a sound mono while keeping the mids and highs stereo. It's useful to tame the low end of drumkits and wide synth basses.

Once you give it a try you'll wonder how you ever got by without it.

When you say my vote is worth 3 points, 3 points for who? The first place? What do +2 and +1 refer to? I find this more confusing than the olde method.

If you've ever looked at all the JS plugins in Reaper, there are like 100+ of them. Are any of them good? Problem is, many of the interfaces are so bland, and there's pretty much zero documentation about them, who even knows? Over the last two years I've stumbled across some really cool ones, so I'm going to list some of them in the forthcoming posts. First plugin is time_adjustment. What's special about this? It does negative delay. What the heck do you need a negative delay for? Simple. If you've ever been faced with a patch with a slow attack you know how it makes the timing of your whole song loose. This is especially an issue with orchestral works - strings, brass, and woodwinds all suffer from it, in relation to percussion instruments. So whaddya do? You could 1) Ignore it and have mushy timing. 2) Decrease the attack time of the patch, but that usually ends up sounding fake. And even the fastest marcato strings sound delayed compared to a percussive sound. 3) Manually move the part off the grid so the timing is tight. This works, but it's annoying to compose off the grid. OR You can put time_adjustment on the output channel of the sounds and set a negative delay. -25ms to -50ms is the typical range needed. Problem solved! You have the benefit of composing on the grid while having all your instruments timing tight, but in a natural way instead of setting an unnaturally choppy attack. After all real musicians don't wait till the beat happens to react, they anticipate the timing. If you have an orchestral template go through all the output channels and apply time_adjustment in the right amounts, and you'll be very happy how much tighter your orchestra sounds. It's great for pads as well, as an alternative to setting the attack very fast. It works for almost any non-percussive sound, really. Just solo the sound with the metronome on, and if it's coming in late apply time_adjustment.

Alias is a show about a spy!

After doing some weighted pullups last nite my bodyweight pullups seemed to go higher. I want to get really explosive and strong at them.