ella guro

Thanks Moseph, those are really good suggestions. I should take a Beatles song or something and then break it down and use a similar structure in a remix. I like the idea of just borrowing different existing ideas from different places and putting them into a different context. I agree, tsf, that too much choice can really hinder you. I am really trying to branch out of Reason, though, because it will be good in the long run for me to know how to use multiple programs.

I was all ready to give you some advice and then :36 came in and I was like "ok he definitely knows what he's doing" haha. This is good stuff. My only issue is the source is so short that a full blown arrangement of it might be stretching what you have really thin. I think you did as much as you could possibly do from it, though, and there is certainly stuff with as short source material on OCR right now. That's the only complaint I have, though. Awesome work!

So it's been years since I've worked much on any sort of remix, and I've done some but not a whole lot of music for the past few years. The last three months or so I've wanted really badly to start on something, but I feel like I have no direction. I just open up the program, stare at the window for a few minutes, mess around with a few sounds, and then exit without saving. Part of it may be that I'm switching from Reason to FL and I'm having real problems getting straight what sounds/effects to use. But even with that I still have the same problem when I go back to Reason. Part of it also may be that I work better with some limitations, when I don't have complete control over everything, because when I have access to so many different sounds/effects I'm not good at making a decision about what and what not to go with. And I'm really afraid if I do just pick some instruments/effects/ideas and go with it, the results will be less interesting than if I picked another one. Is this just lack of inspiration? Not knowing where to start? Something else? If anybody has any thoughts on how to deal with this, please share.

My college used to block IRC by default, but all you needed to do was email someone from the network to get yourself added to an unblock list. So you might want to try that. Before that I'd also try a bunch of different ports, not just 6667 and 6668 and see if you have any luck there.

BIG TIME PROPZ! especially for getting this done so early into the year.

I got a 404. try reuploading it

I have to echo what Nase said. If I'm not having fun making music, I can't do anything. Though an outside force motivating me to get something done (like a semi-flexible deadline or something) is almost always a positive thing for me. I don't know who this may or may not apply to...but I get easily flustered with music. The main reason is because I make "weird" music according to a lot of people, and I find it intensely frustrating that there always seems to be a contingent of people who aren't gonna like my music no matter what. It really bothers me. So I always get trapped in this mindset of "I'm gonna make some 'normal' music this time so people will respect me musically" or something like that. And that never works. What ends up happening is I start to make 'normal' music, and then I get into a mindset of "what would someone else do in this situation" and stop doing stuff that's interesting or fun to me because I'm making music to what I think other people will like. In that situation I either end up getting bored and giving up or turn things into a 'weirder' direction and then enjoy it a lot more. I think the bottom line is that ultimately you have to make music that you would like to listen to and have fun doing, and don't let your important creative decisions be defined by other people. Advice is good, of course, but you're the one in the end making all the decisions. That's something I don't think is said enough here at OCR.

Geez! First winning the poker tournament, now a free DSi! Mono is one lucky person...

HAHAHA yeah, I have thought about that.

Thanks! I'll check it out. Yeah, the first time I saw that I did that. I'm really glad I had that experience, because I don't think I'd like the movie nearly as much if not for that. It's definitely better for me to watch films alone, because if I watch it with someone else I get really worried about whether they'll like it or not and keep explaining obvious things to them. Any Tarkovsky films are worth subsequent viewings at least for the visuals. He's a director that might come off as overly obscure or pretentious and didactic at first, but the way he captures the world and nature especially is amazing and unlike any other director. I don't really know what constitutes obscure and doesn't, so I was just listing my favorites in general.

Congrats Jay and Stevo! I know you both were waiting very patiently to get posted. I'm gonna edit this post with some thoughts as soon as I let things sink in.

My brother loves that movie, but I've never seen it. The only Hal Hartley I've seen is The Book of Life, and that was because of PJ Harvey (I <3 her 800 times). I thought it was a good movie though - he has a really interesting style of very stiff acting and fourth-wall breaking but he's also extremely sincere at the same time, which I like a lot. I was a film major at school so I'm all over this movie recommendations stuff. I wish you guys were a little more specific with what type of movie you wanna see, but here are some of my favorites anyway with the directors noted (these aren't necessarily obscure, just some of my favorite movies): 1. Inland Empire (Lynch) 2. Mulholland Dr. (Lynch) 3. Mirror (Tarkovsky) 4. Stalker (Tarkovsky) 5. Cries and Whispers (Bergman) 6. Pierrot Le Fou (Godard) 7. Vivre Sa Vie (Godard) 8. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie (Bunuel) 9. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette) 10. Paris, Texas (Wenders) 11. Night of the Hunter (Laughton) 12. 8 1/2 (Fellini) 13. Nights of Cabiria (Fellini) 14. The Long Goodbye (Altman) 15. Videodrome (Cronenberg) 16. Blade Runner (Scott) 17. Network (Lumet) 18. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais) 19. Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson) 20. Brazil (Gilliam) 21. Faces (Cassavetes) 22. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky) 23. Persona (Bergman) 24. Wild Strawberries (Bergman) 25. The Third Man (Reed) 26. Aguirre, The Wrath of God (Herzog) 27. High and Low (Kurosawa)

sorry to hear that you're resigning, Fishy, but it sounds like you're doing it for the right reason. cheers to more music!

Finally got home from all the Mag stuff and the post-Mag stuff at Doug's apartment (including an EPIC DoD collaboration). Thanks to a ride from Ari, Katie, Justin and Ash (who will be continuing on the road for the next few days) and their heroic braving of shitty weather up here in Ohio I made it home. To everybody - I'm so glad I got to meet all of you guys! This is like my third post so I'll shut up now, but it has meant a so much to me as someone who just recently rejoined the community and as someone who is in such a rough transitional phase right now. I really thought there was no way I was gonna get to MAG, even when it became more probable that I could go. Like my voice sucked, and nearly every photo that got taken of me I hated, and I felt weird or awkward on occasion, and yet I still managed to have an epically fucking great time. A testament to the awesomeness of it all, I suppose. This is gonna be a long year But at least I feel more of a desire to get back into remixing.

thanks :) :)

here's some more highlights of magfest for me: - aforementioned hanging in DJP's room on NYE and talking about music was completely unexpected and awesome - that damn power glove I brought and wore part of the week got a whole lot of attention - hanging in the lobby after the fire alarm went off - playing Contra with Larry and both of us sucked horribly and were made fun of by passersby - Mono's brother Phil's repeated drunken retellings of running into matt pollard and them going out to try to find Ari (none of us except Phil ended up meeting matt though). - Ari kicking my ass completely in basically every game we played - The Metroid Metal concert was awesome, and one of the free cds that they threw into the crowd landed right at my feet and I picked it up - The renditions of different videogame songs that we played in Will (bustatunez)'s room, including a version of Dragon Song featuring Harmony, bustatunez, Taucer, DrumUltima, audio fidelity, AeroZ, and others. I banged annoyingly on the drums with them for some songs. - Katie (Mono)'s extreme drunkenness on the second night and high fiving of every person she walked by. - The OCR panel and the not-so-surprise shout out to Ari. I was also happy to see OCAD up there. - Meeting Mazedude. Both me and Ari were really happy about that. - The poker tournament of 40 people that Katie won (after taking away my huge chip lead!) and I got third in (after taking Ari's money). - The DoD listening party and SnappleMan's half creepy/half hilarious hitting on me. - The gigantic fucking pizzas that Doug (DrumUltima) ordered brought a huge party into our room on the last night, and even Mazedude and the OneUps (minus Mustin) showed up and chilled. - many others that I can't remember right now frownyfaces: - Sam (Shnabubula) was in the hospital so he couldn't come. I really really wanted to meet him in person finally. - I was bugged out by my voice and other personal awkwardness. - I'm sick now - There are a few people I would've liked to meet that I didn't get a chance to, but there's always next year. Thanks 10000000000000000 times to Ari (Prot), Katie (Mono), Justin (Neko), and Ash for convincing me to come to MAG and letting me stay in their room for free. You guys are saints! And thanks to everyone else in the world who I met! I already feel like doing a billion different remixes now and can't wait until next year! - Liz (aka ella_guru, formerly adhesive_boy)

I wuz there too, NekoButtFace! It was hilarious IMO, and I didn't expect anything else to happen given the situation. I had an amazingly surreal and fun time. I'll make a more detailed post later...I wish I had my voice and other awkwardness stuff worked out, but everyone seemed cool with it even if I wasn't happy with that part. It was a long shot for me to go at all, so I'm really glad I got the chance, let alone hanging with DJP/Larry/Ari/Neko/Katie/Ash and many others in the same room or chatting with Mazedude. Cheers, everybody!

awesome, way to go emunator, 42, OA and others! I'm kind of sad that I didn't try for 200, but 50 was fun.

I bought Braid today for 2.50 and just finished it. Probably the easiest 2.50 I've ever spent.

Ok, so, I definitely want to do this because it's a great idea, but the more I've thought about it...I'm not 100% sure where I'm gonna be next month and if I'm gonna have enough access to my computer to do this much mixing. It might not be fair for me to commit when I don't know for sure about this kind of stuff. So it might be better for me to speak up now and just drop out of this one in case something happens rather than have to drop out while the competition is going.

I definitely see what you're saying there, and I suppose I agree with the principle, but it's been my experience that high quality sound libraries require just as much effort to get to sound good as free stuff. It's generally a myth that high end orchestra stuff sounds "just like a real orchestra!" right out of the box without good writing and especially good tweaking/mixing/mastering/fx. Agreed 100%. I'm more responding to the "you HAVE to get this if you want a realistic sounding orchestra" stuff. To me, getting a realistic sounding orchestra is near impossible to do with whatever samples you have and not even what people are talking about most of the time they bring it up. The goal is to get something that sounds good, and sounds organic. Because unless what you've written is being played by humans, you're always creating the sort of idea or simulation of an orchestra anyway, not the real thing. So it's on you to provide all of the energy and inspiration and emotion to make things more feel more like they're supposed to feel. I like the idea of being limited by what you have, I think it helps you find ways to exploit those limitations creatively. Having access to a billion free soundfonts and vst's and fx already makes me nervous and overwhelmed, so I don't really feel like I have a need to purchase more stuff 'cause I want to feel like I'm using what I have. If I have crappy sounds it adds another layer to what I'm doing because I start to experiment to find ways to navigate around that (e.g. process it differently, do more work with tweaking, or just change the sound to something with a similar timbre). Which is certainly limiting, but limitations are what help me do stuff in the end. If I didn't have those limitations, the stuff that I'd make would probably be a whole lot less interesting and mean less to me. I think it depends on personal preference for what you go for, like what kind of music you want to make. Using free samples helps me a little bit creatively because it forces me to think of less conventional ways to do things so that's the reason I go for them, but that might change in the future. I mostly don't want to feel like people think having high quality samples is an excuse to not think about vital stuff like sound design. But that has to do with people's attitudes towards the samples, not the actual samples themselves. I agree completely with what analoq says about not letting the tools alone shape the art. Anyway, I'm still excited to download this stuff and I will be checking it out. And I don't want to derail the topic. But I think it is an interesting topic of discussion and it's worth talking about more in depth at some point.

Same here. I'm almost opposed on principle to expensive sample libraries, partially due to being a curmudgeon (because I feel like it encourages people to put less effort into the sound design of their mixes), partially because I'm poor, and partially just lack of RAM . But yeah, downloading! I could always use some nicer free sounds.

I don't really have anything to add that hasn't been said 100 times in this thread. This is wonderful.

I was gonna try for 200, but I sorta gave up after getting to 50. I still might try to get 100, but I think I'm better served (since there are already plenty of people doing this) by either commenting on the WIP forums or working on a mix. Still, it was fun to do the 50 so I'm glad this month was here to motivate me to do that. I will try to get to some more reviews soon.

I CHECKED IT OUT, thanks.