Harmony

Interestingly enough, I showed the onion report to two people at school today that I have a friendly ongoing Mac-vs-PC thing with, and they both thought it was real So Riggs you're not alone. In defense of everyone who thought that was real, if you're not familiar with the onion (my two friends weren't) then the MacBook Wheel report is one of the more difficult jokes to catch imo. The reporters don't curse or make incredibly wrong or ridiculous claims, and if you don't read the ticker at the bottom, everything sounds like it could be legit. But that's a problem! Even people who own and support Apple actually believe that the company would try to sell them an obviously impractical piece of hardware in the name of innovation. And successful or not, that's how you know that the company is too focused on design/innovation, as has been said.

Maybe this is more of a personal thing, but I actually find it invaluable, since you can usually map the aftertouch to something else other than mod, like filter cutoff, pitch, or lfo frequency. You can even get a little more creative with it and link it to a level on an FX send and get a really cool dynamic distortion or reverb thing going. In general, it opens up some amazing possibilities for expression with a keyboard that are otherwise just not possible. Yeah you might not use it as often as the pitch bend, for example, but in the $1000 price range, it would be something that I'd have to have.

100% NT1-A, except that the 2 guitars are recorded with both the NT1-A and direct out.

That news report is from the Onion They put in so much time, effort, and money to mock stuff. I <3 those guys.

LOL. the Onion strikes again

atm, whatever they're doing, they should just keep doing that. Innovation is what keeps them competitive, and without that cool factor they'd lose a huge part of their fanbase.

I don't know what companies don't make that standard. On my SoundBlaster Live that functionality was there and it was incredibly useful. To get it done now I have to physically connect my output to my input. Sorry I can't help any more than that.

I've played with two vocal mics in that price range, the Rode NT1-A which I have, and the Studio Projects C1. Both of those are condenser mics which require phantom power, so make sure your setup has that capability. The NT1-A is really fun to play with and the self noise is ridiculously low, especially above about 1kHz. With my setup I measured about -60dB of self-noise at 10kHz, whereas my Shure SM58 got about -40dB. 20dB better than the Shure! The only issue I've had with it as a vocal mic is that I think it's a little too bright. I always have to roll off the highs otherwise the vocals, even low male ones, are too harsh. With female vocals, it's almost a must. Otherwise, this is the best choice, IMO. The C1 was a friend's and I didn't get to play with it for long, but it was pretty good for guitar/vocals. I thought it was more mid-heavy than the NT1, which made the C1 sound kinda cheap. But, with the right EQ, that could be overcome as well. On my acoustic guitar it sounded great, since I guess it was accentuating the guitar's mid-heavy frequency range. Biggest plus over the NT1 are the pad switch and the low roll off switch. Both might be helpful for vocals, but as long as you're not using it as a drum mic, for example, where you're afraid of exceeding the max SPL, those features aren't that important.

I don't disagree. I just see that as a step two. Most of the complaints that I've heard over my years in this community have revolved around not being able to get a mix accepted in the first place. Once you're able to do that consistently, the next step imo is practicing making the people love it as much as you do

I've been watching a lot of the Computer Music Producer Master Classes lately (at work, don't tell my boss), and while some of them are kind of wonky, they're all still pretty interesting and you can always learn something by watching others work.This one from Mistabishi is one of my favourites. He goes into detail about creating and shaping his DnB drums, especially the snare. It's amazing to see how much work these guys put into what most people would assume is just a simple sample. It's a 4 part video so get some popcorn and enjoy. (A bulk of the snare stuff is on part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD_yquqj3Qg Brookes Brothers is another good one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU6k2gePXVc

No. "Good" is obviously subjective, but what makes "an" OCR is clearly spelled out in the site info. ANY music from ANY genre that promotes the appreciation, preservation, and interpretation of video game music. The audience is irrelevant. You don't need to appeal to casual listeners, or connoisseurs, or musicians, or judges, or rockers, or Larry, or your grandma. The only caveat is that the music should demonstrate attention to sound quality. OCR doesn't want a cellphone recording of you playing a Mega Man theme on your Squire over a Casio drum loop for 4 mins -- even if "you" happen to be Yngwie.

I hate this fear of "mainstream" music that people have. It's like musical homophobia to me. Listening to the radio and taking inspiration from Timbaland will not corrupt your music. Like Yoozer said, what's wrong with slick production value? What's wrong with music that millions of people enjoy? Why do people find it necessary to shun music after it is published (watch out zircon, get any more famous and you'll be ostracized)? Some music is made for and enjoyed by casual listeners. I can bob my head to it without thinking. I can dance to it without worrying about tempo and time sig changes. By the end of the first time I've heard the song, I already know the hook because it's just that dammed catchy. Other music is made for and enjoyed by musical connoisseurs, for lack of a better term. People who enjoy music for the sake of music, and like to hear intricacies, and creative melodies, and couldn't care less whether or not it's danceable, or appropriate for karaoke night. OCRs fall in BOTH categories, and if anyone is worried about whether or not they should sound more or less "mainstream" to get a song accepted on OCR, they've taken one step away from actually getting accepted. What's with the drama? Take the original melody, re-arrange it, and add some personal flare. Once you have the experience and technical ability to do this proficiently, it is as easy as apple pie to get onto this site with anything from a hip-hop bounce fest to a minimalist jazz masterpiece.

Well, since I don't have any of the other stuff in Komplete 6, I'll take this opportunity to talk about Kontakt 4. Hey, maybe they'll release some new free Absynth 5 presets in a Kore Compilation Pack and I'll talk about them then Kontakt 4 has moved into the top 5 on my 'need to buy now' list for a number of reasons, and most of those reasons revolve around the new sample library. The choirs sound really useful for someone like me who doesn't own any stand alone choir samples. I'm also looking forward to the VSL solo strings and organ, although I wasn't too impressed with the strings demo song. Hopefully I'll put them to better use. I don't kompletely understand what's going on with the new sound morphing stuff, but it potentially looks pretty cool. I'd love to have a piano that smoothly transitions to the new mellotron for parts of the song. I didn't have a problem with the old library, but moving to a more Kore-like library will make finding sounds MUCH easier. I was at a friends house the other day who also has Kontakt 3 and we discovered that we have two kompletely different methods of finding our sounds in the library. That shouldn't happen if a program gives users a solid library system to begin with (not just a fancy file browser).

Sweet! Congrats you two

If you like throwing parties, that sounds like a reasonable plan to me. I had to not invite some friends just because I didn't want to have TOO many people show up. That sucked, but a second party would have fixed that. It's gonna be more expensive on your part though

Why don't they just give people the ability to open up the mouse to clean it like just about every other peripheral in the world . I'd have a bigger problem with not having that type of freedom with my hardware than any ergonomic issues.

haha, I'll try.

In general, no he's not an a-typical nerd...but he's a pretty awesome musician so hopefully that buys him some cred with the OCR crowd

I'm going to a drum circle tomorrow and I'm totally gonna play "Happy Birthday" on my djembe for you!

I ain't comming if I can't jam. And don't worry about the neighbors GT, we'll invite them over...I'll bring egg shakers for them to play with.

Oohh, I don't want to miss this again If I come can I bring my brother?

Yeah, I didn't know you were expected to bring gifts to a housewarming party either until very recently. Apparently in the adult world, every time someone gets something new, they expect their friends to give them even more new stuff to go along with it; new houses, new spouses, new babies, ...

maybe this is a naive question, but why not just go with a PC mouse that you like? I guess the keyboard is a little trickier, but that could be replaced too. Is there some functionality you'd miss out on?

Suggestion: I Just had my housewarming a week ago and it really helped to have people bring food instead of gifts. I was much happier not having to worry so much about feeding everyone than I would have been getting cheap gifts (or none at all) from my broke friends.

My preference would be to have it Sat evening so we could drive down Sat morning, stay over Sat night and go back Sun morning. And I would prefer Oct too.