Caster13

I want a PS3 so I can play Valkyria Chronicles. But I'm poor. And, I suppose, if I had a decent large screen TV that has 1080 output, I'd appreciate the Blu-Ray playability as well.

Since you're taking a look at Zack and Wiki and Okami, I don't have to mention those. I definitely want to repeat No More Heroes though!

The world outside Canada just got a little scarier for me... This is a mistake so inane but you people are talking about having to go through court to settle fix it? I sure hope you get this solved and straightened out without any trouble at all or my faith in humanity is going to die a little. Couldn't you just point to some records as to what you were supposed to be there for? Like an appointment book or something?

Honestly, this sounds more interesting...!

I just downloaded and installed Finale Notepad 2008 without spending a dime.

Gah! All this time I've been using a mix of Finale Reader and MuseScore! How long has Finale Notepad 2008 been available for free for?

Mass Effect plays quite a bit like a shooter but it's certainly not the best thing about the game. If you liked Bioware's previous RPGs, you'll like Mass Effect. I'm playing through The Last Remnant myself. It's... decent. I've read a lot of reviews because I was really interested in the game and many of them say a lot of bad things about the game. There are certainly problems with the game, but if you're the kind of guy who really likes epic RPGs, then you'll likely be able to look past these problems. Honestly, I think the worst problem with The Last Remnant is its stuttering framerate during combat, but that's something I can personally overlook. Also: how old is the current unit he's planning on selling to you and has there been any problems with it? But, so far, I'd agree with Joe_cam's estimate of $400. Extra controllers and headsets are rather expensive in my case. Oh! What about a wireless Internet adapter?

I'd be more concerned about the child inheriting so much musical talent that the world will explode when s/he plays its first note. Congrats you two!

Got another one. The idea for this story comes from a mix of and the free running in Mirror's Edge (how's that for futuristic and dystopic?). It turned out being longer than I thought it would be so I decided to exclude more detailed description of rooftop running so the Mirror's Edge influence probably isn't noticeable.Anyway:

I've been focusing on writing quite a bit lately and this sounds like a blast. Would you prefer sticking to the futuristic/dystopic feel or does it matter if it branches out?

Sheet music for video games is fairly easy to find. For example, a quick search turned up: Ichigo's and SODA.

The Dummies book are surprisingly helpful!

I got some help on the Reaper forums. Apparently there was something in the actual MIDI file that set the defaults and I could delete them within the MIDI editor's event list.

I'm a very new user to Reaper and music in general but I've ran into a strange problem. I have this MIDI file (created in MuseScore, some of you will likely recognize this as Moonsong from Cave story and thus it's obviously not an original work of mine, I'm just fiddling with it to get a feel of working with digital music). I import it into Reaper and it's split up into two separate tracks (according to treble clef and bass clef). I set a sound font plugin (either sfz or FONT!sf2)in my fx chain but no matter what sound font file I use, every time I press the play button, the sound font on the treble clef midi track resets back to the first sound font. For example: Let's say I select squidfont_orchestral.sf2. The first individual sound font is "0: Vins I Legato" (violins). If I set the individual sound font to "1: Vins I Detache" than press the play button, the sound font changes back to "0: Vins I Legato". This happens in either sfz or FONT!sf2, no matter what individual sound font I choose. Anybody have any ideas how to solve this problem?

Taping the neck was one of the first things the Dummies book suggested for beginners. I've got some tape down to help with my fingering but, for the most part, I sort of wing flats and sharps when I see them on sheet music. I figure I'll work on the basics before trying to memorize even more finger positions. I mix up playing while sitting and standing and I don't seem to have any issues with either one. When sitting I have my music stand held up really high, just a little bit higher than my horizontal line of sight so that I don't slouch. I also use a rather comfortable chair with a solid back that helps me sit straight. Sixty... five...? Was it just worth that much or did you actually pay sixty five hundred for it? Also, what's it worth now? =P

After following all of your advice (stretching to warm up my muscles, following the proper holds) I was able to play for much longer time. I was even able to play/follow along for the nearly the whole melody of Moonsong--except for the parts with consecutive eighth notes in a row, still gotta learn to get my fingers to move that quickly.

Hrm. Somehow, I'm not surprised. I've heard that he's been going a little somewhat senile lately. Like naming a pedophilic character in his book after critics who gave him previous bad reviews.

I didn't pick up a shoulder rest at first but I got one soon after and found that it's a big help. I practiced for about two hours today and focused on keeping my left hand in a proper hold and found out that my shoulder muscles are especially strained when I "arm steer" towards the right and finger the G and D strings. A few stretching exercises focusing on that helped to ease the strain quite a bit. Any advice on my home recording questions?

Thanks for all the tips and advice so far. I think the pain I feel is just muscle fatigue as they quickly subside once I give them a stretch after playing. I'll definitely keep a note of whether or not any of the pain subcedes with more practice. A few days after I picked up the violin, the idea of getting myself a small digital keyboard popped into my mind so I'm going to keep an eye out for those.

A week and a half ago I decided that I needed a new hobby so I picked up Violin for Dummies. A few days after that, I rented a violin from my nearest specialty music store ($16 per month including insurance? Who knew it'd be so cheap?). I'm having a total blast, playing/practicing anywhere from thirty minutes to four hours a day unless I've had a ridiculously long day at work. I'm currently at a point where I'm able to learn and play twenty-thirty second long melodies (mostly from Cave Story since I found a nice collection of sheet music) or so in about a half an hour to an hour's time worth of consistent playing. Seeing as to how I'm pretty much learning it all on my own however, I have come up with a few questions that I could use some help with from some more seasoned and experienced players (who I'm hoping are around here somewhere). First of all. Is it supposed to hurt so much and/or will the pain eventually go away with practice? My right hand cramps when holding the bow after a while; my left shoulder tires out; along with my left wrist. When I try to hold both bow and violin according to the pictures I've seen in the Dummies book and in other places around the web (e.g. a straight wrist-forearm so that the violin doesn't rest on the wrist, curved thumb holding the bow, etc) they hurt even more intensely and quickly. Am I just going to have to tough it out and let my pathetically weak limbs get used to the pain? Maybe I should pick up some weights to do curls with when I've got free time? I find that I my left shoulder and wrist barely cramp as much when I let the neck of the violin rest in the palm and wrist of my left hand but would getting used to this kind of "incorrect" positioning be a problem later on in the future? My biggest challenge right now is learning and getting the hang of understanding/reading music. That is, associating the musical notation to the actual sounds to the finger positions. Any hints or advice on how I can speed up the learning process? And finally, can anybody recommend cheap but decent music recording hardware and software? I'd like to keep a record of my progress and post them to my LJ to share with my friends. At this point, I'm not exactly trying to record anything that'd be worthy of submitting to OCR, so would $10 microphones like these be good enough? And what free recording/editing software would go well with it? What about free music notation software? Most of the sheet musics I've found tend to be for other instruments other than the violin so are there any free programs that'll let me write and print out sheet music?

Preview sounds awesome. Will you be selling physical CDs? For how much?

Funny thing too was that the blood and gore was added into the north american NTSC version.

Totally awesome.

I remember reading somewhere that sometimes what games he's reviewed are picked by the editors at The Escapist.

I think they cut down on the save points and shortcuts because they've apparently included a checkpoint save system where you restart before or after certain big events, e.g. boss fights, if you die.