DZComposer

The worst thing you can do is tell yourself "I don't know how." Just dive in. Music isn't about knowledge, it's about expressing your ideas. You will know when you hit the play button if what you hear sounds good to you. If it doesn't, change it. I couldn't name even a quarter of the chord structures and melodic patterns that end up in my orchestrations. It doesn't stop me. I use my ears. A good ear will do more for you as a composer/songwriter than a theory book. The only thing you really need to know to use most sequencers, music wise, is how tempo and division of beat work. By that I mean what a quarter beat, 8th beat, etc. is. As a drummer, you should already know this. Piano rolls are nice in that you do not need to know how to read music. Granted you won't sound professional overnight, but with practice you will surely improve. As said before, WIP forum is a great place to seek assistance on a piece you are working on.

What's your budget? If you are going to mainly use this is a piano, you may want to get a digital piano with MIDI out. Anyways, using MIDI cables requires a soundcard with MIDI input. Most soundcards, even ones that do have MIDI in, do not have standard MIDI ports and require an adapter to allow you to plug the MIDI dvice into the joystick port on the soundcard. Some of soundcards actually have standard MIDI connections. These are usually soundcards designed for music production, though I have seen them on some "general purpose" sound cards. USB doesn't require the connections, but it still requires a MIDI device.

I assume you're talking about the new Kontakt Player based on the Kontakt 2 engine? The Kontakt 2 Player can not load soundfonts. It can only load libraries written specifically for it and installed into it (It can't even open non-KP2 Kontakt instruments). You need the full version of Kotnakt 2 to do that. You should be eligible for upgrade pricing should you choose to upgrade.

I'm still working on my TP Brass Ensemble. School has slowed me down, though. I'm not quite ready to post a WIP yet. For a little while a couple of years ago, I had started a series of brass ensembles with horribly cheesy titles called Lylat Brass. Admittedly, some of them weren't very good and my samples at the time didn't do the ones that were good any justice. The situation has changed now. I want to start the project again. This one, Twilylat Brasscess (The chessy title tradition will continue O_O), is the first piece from Lylat Brass 2.0.

I also happen to be working on a TP piece. Mine is a brass quintet consisting of 2 trumpets, one horn, one trombone, and one tuba. I have plans for these pieces: Title Screen Ordon Ranch Leaving Ordon Hyrule Field Midna's Theme Zelda's Theme Castle Town Spirit Theme at least one boss Perhaps a couple of the howl stone songs Maybe others. This list is just tentative. This piece may end up being too long for OCR, though. One of the features of this will be the trombone simulating wolf howls at certain places.

The Corneria BGM in SF64 was a 6/4 orchestral march. The remix you speak of I believe is the one from the OST (which has been out of print for more than 10 years). It was the first track.

Is there an OST out for this game? Will there be? The score moved me, I would love to have it...

I kind of like this, but there are too much drums, especially the cymbals (hi-hat?).

Reading about orchestration is one thing, but it doesn't mean as much if you don't listen to orchestral music also. In fact, it probably helps more than the book. A lot of people think Orchestral music is boring. Anyone who says that hasn't really listened to it. You'll be amazed by the complexity of some of it, and a lot of it goes beyond the 4 part (or less) instrumentation that is so prevalent in today's modern music, which itself is a hard part to master. In fact the complexity is my current orchestration weakness. If you can, get study scores (If you can read music, they won't help if you can't) to the stuff you are listening too. As far as stereo fields are concerned, for the most part orchestras set up in a semicircle with treble instruments audience left (stage right) and bass instruments audience right. Pan from audience perspective. There are a few exceptions, generally the horns are in the back center, and the trumpets stage left with the trombones and tuba. I'll hotlink this image from the Rochester Philharmonic: Of course it's not required to set up like that. Different conductors like different setups. A good way to get a feel for how it should sound is to go to a few orchestra concerts. Some orchestras even offer discount tickets for people under 30 if you fit that age range. I'm not saying you have to devote months and spend thousands on orchestral an CD collection. But, buy a few CDs and listen to it. Really listen to it, don't just put it on while you're surfing the internet. Go to a couple of orchestra concerts. That's nice because there is nothing to distract you from the music. I'm not saying you have to listen to the deeply sophistcate stuff like Bach and Mozart. Some of the more modern stuff, like Shostakovich's 5th symphony, not only offers full orchestration, but it is more entertaining to modern listeners.

I was having some clipping issues during the ending, so I had to adjust the gain a bit. I haven't run this piece through a compressor. Speaking of compressors, does anyone know of a good tutorial on how to use them? Every time I run a piece through a compressor it screws up the balance.

Interestingly, those snare rolls are sampled rolls (they recorded someone doing a snare roll). I'm too lazy to program my own. Though I never noticed the machine gun effect. Maybe it's because the roll is behind the chord and you only hear certain hits that simulate the MGFX. I using the EWQLSO Gold Pro XP set with some of the percussion coming from Virtual Drumline 2.

It has an ending now! I'd say it is about 89% finished. I still need to clean it up a little bit and add some phrase shaping. It needs some EQ love too. http://www.corneriasound.com/betamusic/gclrsam003.mp3 I need to get a subwoofer for my studio monitors. These things are coming out with a little too much bass.... Changes: Adjusted the breath emulation intervals on the solos. Added a couple of parts in a couple of places. An ending. Replaced Xylophone with Marimba at 3:10 Changed samples near the end to match the musical style.

Hmm... That thread didn't show in my search... Thanks. That's Page 17 (it's not the last anymore) for others who are wondering. I didn't know that ANY modern forum software still used threaded stuff like that. You can always count on legacy features to hold back modern ones....

To me, the advantage of a quick reply feature on a forum is that I do no have to click a link to type a reply to a thread. The quick reply box here, though, requires that I click a reply link before I can type in the box. If you need to click a link to activate it, it nullifies any reason to have it (SMF and UBB have spoiled me). Now, either I'm blind and dumb (likely), or it isn't there, but I've scanned through the User CP and found no way to change this behavior. Has anyone else been able to? I'm sorry if I brought this up an additional time, I did a quick search, but nothing thorough.

Pasodoble is a lively style of Spanish classical music. It is most commonly known as "bullfight music" as it was commonly played at bullfights. This request is a challenge! Taking a 20 sec. bolero and writing it as a true pasodoble is not a simple feat, since boleros are in slow 3 and pasodobles are in fast 2!

I think that sound is actually produced by the violin. I can hear a "woodiness" in it. I have a crappy violin myself, and I don't really know how to play it, but when I bow a note in that range it has a similar "scraping" sound as the one in these samples behind the note. It was probably left in there for realism, though I am not sure if that sound could be heard by the audience. I don't recall hearing it at any of the concerts I've attended. But then, I've always been near the back of the balcony. I don't hear those knocks in the slow sordino. I am using the pro XP version, are you?

I recently got EWQLSO gold pro XP, and this is the first real thing I have done with it. I'd say it is about 89% finished. I still need to clean it up a little bit and add some phrase shaping. It needs some EQ love too. http://www.corneriasound.com/betamusic/gclrsam003.mp3 I need to get a subwoofer for my studio monitors. These things are coming out with a little too much bass.... Changes: Adjusted the breath emulation intervals on the solos. Added a couple of parts in a couple of places. An ending. Replaced Xylophone with Marimba at 3:10 Changed samples near the end to match the musical style. What do you guys think?

If you want the SAM Brass, you better already have a sampler. No players included. If you want marching sounds, wait. Within a month or so Garritan is coming out with a Marching Band library. I have yet to see another library that works well for that, so it may be worth waiting for. It will include a sample player.

The Arwing sounds in the SNES game were embedded into the music. If you have an SPC player than can mute channels, mute all but 8 and record it. The one from SF64 is not embedded in the music, and none of the N64 sound rippers work on the game so I can't help there.

What is your price range? If you're willing to pay, go above Sound Font and get an entry-level sample library. One of the better low-cost sample sets is the Garritan Personal Orchestra * http://www.garritan.com ). $200 US Garritan also has an upcoming general MIDI set for $150. EastWest has the silver editition of their orchestra ( http://www.soundsonline.com ) $195 Expanded editition (Pro XP) currenty on sale at $295. List is over $500. Both include a sample player and have a pretty decent sound. GPO, I think, is better value as it comes with an 8-instance host that allows you to use 64 instruments, unlike EWQLSO for which you need a 3rd part host if you wish to use more than one instance (8 instruments). I own GPO and have used it as my main library until I got EWQLSO Gold Pro XP ($900). I have been satisfied with it. GPO's drawbacks are that it uses a nonstandard method for dynamics control and that there are not section samples. You have to build sections with individual instruments (uses more RAM). It is advisable to have an ASIO capable soundcard and at least a gig of RAM for these libraries. There are others out there, such as the Advanced Orchestra (though that is a litle more expensive and IMO lesser quality). That's on sounds online as well. For the mid-range, there is EWQLSO Gold (Sounds online), Miroslav, VSL Opus, and others. These will cost you between $500-$1000 and may or may not have players. I know that EWLSO Gold and Miroslav do.

This is one of the symptoms of a bad driver. The most recent one installed was the CD/DVD Drive emulation driver that is Deamon Tools. Uninstall (from safe mode) that adware-laden piece of crap (WhenU = adware) and your problems should be fixed. Spybot blocked it for a good reason. Unless you want popups.... Always be suspicious of free (as in beer) software. Minefield for adware and spyware.

ROTFLMAO All I can say is that you win big with this one!

Just a question for further clarification, as it would have an impact on a future [personal] project idea I have, what if a medley crosses between different series's? For example, a medley of final boss themes from several Nintendo franchises, such as Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, etc. (not my plan, but hey it would be awesome, yes?)?

Last time I ordered something from there, an identical looking disc to that one was in the shipping box. Perhaps I shouldn't have just set it aside.... I've since lost it, but I just ordered EWQLSO Gold pro XP yesterday and from the looks of it, they're gonna send me another one. All the more reason to be excited when that package arrives (though, admittedly, more so for Gold Pro XP. I just hope my HDD can handle it. 36 gigs )!

Just my luck that two months after I purchase Cubase SL 3, Steinberg rolls out Cubase 4. Does anyone here use Cubase 4? Is it worth the upgrade? Since they changed the naming scheme, how does Cubase Studio 4 compare with SL 3? Would I need to buy a new dongle (I hear they're going to stop including them with the products, which is retarded.) or would the one that came with SL 3 work?