bustatunez

Hmm, well I'm late to the party and don't know why this is an argument. People do both - even in the threads you linked, you'll see various opinions, plus several of the posters acknowledged it has more to do with the libraries themselves. I personally use separate arts for the reasons above and also, more importantly, for the sound - it's rare that I'll find one exact art that does exactly what I want it to 100% of the time, but when combining them together, you can get much closer. Having the freedom to do that and tweak at will has been crucial for me in gigs like CoD where the mockup needed to be as realistic as possible - not to mention the additional headache stemming would bring if your keyswitch patches aren't organized in the same way as you'll be stemming. Lastly, even beyond layering, like you mentioned it's much easier to do mix tweaks and other often-essential customizations on an art-by-art basis, which can be a pain when you have everything in just one patch. That said some people do prefer keyswitches, hence why many libraries provide both these days - a grand KSW patch and then all the individual elements. Plus like I mentioned earlier, most folks (myself included) use a combination of both, based on the libraries themselves. It's just a matter of preference and doesn't really correlate with experience/notoriety - you might as well ask, "What is the best DAW?" (the answer is reaper tho) Ooooh, do you have organ-style pedals you're using for keyswitches? That sounds pretty friggen awesome!

To the OP, Der_Winter: https://neobustatunez.livejournal.com/2990.html <-- If you're using Kontakt, this is how I get away with using samples from 2004, some even from the 90s. It's all about programming in dynamic expression, and using certain 3rd party scripts. Warning that the post is 11 years old and so my UI will look a bit different from modern versions of Kontakt. https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4qn3hjaqhv1rxo/GDC16_AAA_Virtual_Orchestration_on_an_Indie_Budget.pptx?dl=0 (audio examples here) <-- My GDC talk on more broad concepts of how I sequence, use reverb, live overdubs, and so on. Lots of tips and tricks and such for each section of the orchestra. FYI, normally this talk can be found in video format at the GDC Vault ( https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023727/AAA-Virtual-Orchestration-on-an ) but it's not loading today for some reason. To AngelCityOutlaw: For some reason Pryzm tells me to tell you that I use articulation patches and almost never use keyswitching except for choir syllables (Oceania) and 1/2 vs. wholestep trills (Hollywood Strings). Keyswitching makes it harder to tell what's going on at any given point, tougher to edit individual articulations, and it can make stemming a pain in the ass if you haven't specifically set up separate tracks for shorts vs. longs beforehand. It also makes it obnoxiously difficult to orchestrate for a live recording, especially if you're working with external orchestrators. One tip that might help though - whenever I record tutti horn melodies (EastWest H.Brass), I always arm three tracks at once: Legato, Marcato, and Staccato. I play everything in realtime on keyboard, then do some manual timing correction on all three at once. Then as a final step, I'll mute the notes I don't need from each of the three. So for example, obviously for actual staccatos I'll only need the Stacc patch, for quick motion maybe I'll have Stacc+Legato, for bold notes with oompf I might keep the Legato and the Marcato, and so on. (You can see more of my brass sequencing technique in the GDC talk) Cheers, - Will

Sup folks! I'll be joining Cris Velasco, Tom Salta, Kris Maddigan and Darren Korb on a panel at PAX East this Saturday. I've never been to a PAX East before but apparently there's a MAG-style jamspace there too, I might hop in with Drumultima if he can stand my crappy flute playing more than once per year Anyone else attending PAX East this year?

Sup folks! I'm happy to announce that I'll be doing an r/games AMA Thursday, March 9th, at 3pm EST / 12pm PST. I'll be with the co-creators of my current indie project, Anew: The Distant Light, which is also on the last days of its Kickstarter campaign. I'm super excited about this title as it's one of my most unique and personal scores yet, with elements of 20th century art music (John Adams, Bartok, Debussy, Takemitsu) as well as much quieter and more emotional cues. Hope you can make it!

Topless juggling with objects that are currently on fire or GTFO. ...Actually, the objects should start not-on-fire, then BECOME on-fire as the juggling progresses!!! Begin with a well-timed fire-arrow shot straight up and go from there. (also, awesome - best of luck! :-))

Sup everyone! Super happy to announce that my Kickstarter-doublefunded anime soundtrack album, "Beyond Libra", has been released AND we're having a listening party tonight!! For those unfamiliar, this was an album of original music I wrote over the last 8 years, with lots of stylistic references to composers such as Yoko Kanno, Jo Hisaishi, and Yasunori Mitsuda. I collaborated with several OCR artists on this one, including Jeff Ball, DrumUltima, Jillian "Pixietricks" Aversa, Sixto, Finbeard, Harmony, Audiofidelity, XPRTNovice, Shrack, Snappleman, and Jose the Bronx Rican. We also had three different live choirs (The Philadelphia Boys Choir, The Yale Slavic Chorus, and a Nigerian vocal ensemble) and live orchestra, along with artwork by Keiiii and Star Wars artist Stephen Chang, so it was a gargantuan production across three continents. Kickstarter backers who opted for the digital release should have already received their copy via an emailed bandcamp code; Physical copies will be mailed off later today and tomorrow. The album is available at https://rogetmusic.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-libra for the full release with all our gorgeous disc art, and it'll be available on iTunes, Spotify, and several others soon as well. Listening party will be on Wednesday, March 9th (ie. today) at 10pm EST (7pm PST), courtesy of 8bitX: www.twitch.tv/8bitx Scott Porter (SeattleOvercoat) will host the show, and I'll answer questions and give behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the album's production. Sorry for the short notice, but I hope you guys can make it!

Sup guys! Just wanted to give y'all an update - We're now 5 days away from the end of the Kickstarter campaign, and we've raised over $2,600 for this project!! The extra money will go to a mixing/mastering engineer, as well as some live instrumental overdubs to increase the quality of the release. Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who's backed our project, and I appreciate all the shares/likes/retweets as well!

Kickstarter is LIVE!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rogetmusic/beyond-libra-an-anime-inspired-soundtrack Thanks so much to all the folks who have contributed so far!

Yep! It's a mix of the opening titles theme, but with vocals muted (so that my blablablah is audible ). Thanks a bunch!!

Hey guys! I posted about this aaaaages ago, but now finally my anime-inspired soundtrack album is almost ready for release! Influenced by composers like Yoko Kanno, Joe Hisaishi, and Yasunori Mitsuda, the 44-minute album features live orchestra, three live choirs (including a Nigerian vocal ensemble and a Slavic women's chorus), vocal performances by Jillian Aversa (Pixietricks), Raj Ramayya (from Cowboy Bebop and Wolf's Rain), Brandon Bush (Harmony) and others, and instrumental performances by Sixto, Drumultima, JeffBall, AeroZ, Audiofidelity, Chuck Simpson (Finbeard), and many more! EDIT: Our kickstarter is now live!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rogetmusic/beyond-libra-an-anime-inspired-soundtrack

Hey guys!! Sorry I completely forgot to post this here, but today at 3pm PST (6pm EST, midnight Scandinavia) I'm hosting a livestream where I'll show how I do orchestral music production. I'll use my Tomb Raider score to show my sample libraries, project layout, reverb, mixing in live instruments, and final mastering. http://www.twitch.tv/bustatunez Seeya there!

Thanks Armadon! So all of the tracks in the OST are up now, but Crystal is also starting to post some of the bonus remixes! The first has been posted, AeroZ's live loop-cello remix of Isis' Lament: https://soundcloud.com/crystaldynamics/35-bonus-track-isis-lament-sebastian-freij-remix?in=crystaldynamics/sets/lctoo Crystal hasn't posted it just yet, but you can watch live video of AeroZ's performance here as well: http://youtu.be/o1WFf1O7cMg (please don't share outside of OCR just yet...!)

Yaya! That was one of Pauli's tracks (my asst. composer), he did a great job with that one, "Desert Rains" and the Apep boss fight

Tracks 17-24 are up! https://soundcloud.com/crystaldynamics/sets/lctoo I think this chunk of the soundtrack has pieces that show my influences more clearly than anywhere else in the score: "Shrine of Osiris" uses very Lord of the Rings orchestration, "Riddles of the Ancient" has a very clear Indiana Jones flavor in the harmony and textures, "The Putrid Depths" is very Chrono Trigger in its use of jazz upright bass mixed with orchestra and high mallet ostinatos, and "Sobek, He Who Eats..." is about as Vagrant Story as it gets Hope you enjoy!

Next 8 tracks are up!! Check out tracks 9-16 https://soundcloud.com/crystaldynamics/sets/lctoo In particular I'd like to call out track 13 "Under the Desert Sun" as one of my favorites to work on. I had Kristin Naigus (http://field-of-reeds.net/) perform duduk and English horn solos at the beginning, she did an incredible job bringing such a lyrical tone to the melody. Honestly I think one of the best experiences I had on this score was learning to write appropriately for the English horn, it's a wonderful instrument that's often underused when compared to its higher pitched sibling, the oboe. Later in this track you can also hear AeroZ play Lara's Theme beautifully on solo cello - I remarked on one of the interviews I did that at this point it's almost easier to count the soundtracks where I haven't worked with AeroZ, I think you'll see why

Hey guys! I just wanted to share my soundtrack to Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, latest game in the isometric top-down Tomb Raider spinoff franchise. Crystal Dynamics is releasing the score on Soundcloud for free: https://soundcloud.com/crystaldynamics/sets/lctoo What's super cool about it is that I got to work with a bunch of OCR folks as both solo instrumentalists and official remixers - practically every performer on the album is an OCR remixer, MAGfest attendee, or an avid gamer in addition to being a professional musician. More on this later, but for now I hope you enjoy Kristin Naigus (of Project Destati fame), DrumUltima, Shrack, and AeroZ's performances on these first few tracks!

(Thanks Katie!! ) Also, I'd like to announce that Spacestation Evolution: ReTuned is now on the newly-launched Overclocked Records label! http://overclockedrecords.com/release/spacestation-evolution-retuned/

Aghh yes I know, I meant to do some accordion stuff ages, there's one sultry jazz track in particular that I really wanna record... but lately it's been crazy hard to find spare time between my game gigs and working on sample libraries. (In other words, blame zircon )

(extremely delayed response - sorry!!) I use Alicia's Keys for piano stuff: jazz, folk, and even orchestral. It has a ton of character and doesn't have that "perfectly sampled" feel that the bigger libraries have, but instead it just sounds emotional and dynamic on its own. Plus it's super cheap too, like $90 - and it comes with newer versions of Komplete I believe.

Hey guys! I just wanted to announce my latest soundtrack album, “Spacestation Evolution: ReTuned!”. (album art by Monobrow! ) Spacestation Evolution was my very first game soundtrack, written back in 1999 for a game with both RPG and Gradius-style shooter elements. So the soundtrack had pretty diverse influences – Virtua Fighter, Megaman, and Gradius for the shooter gameplay, and classic Final Fantasy / Chrono Trigger sounds for the RPG elements – yet sounds very distinctly “Playstation 1” overall. ReTuned! contains both the original score (presented as-is and rendered using my custom-built DLS sample set from 1999), along with 14mins of live-recorded remixes of the synth-rock shooter music, performed by yours truly. The album is available for pay-what-you-want on Loudr: http://www.loudr.fm/release/spacestation-evolution-retuned/5y75m And as a special bonus, tomorrow night I’ll be appearing on Arecibo Radio to talk about the album and play some tracks! Check out the event on Facebook for details: https://www.facebook.com/events/411075522356652/ Friday, Dec. 27th 5pm PST (8pm EST) www.areciboradio.com I had an incredible time revisiting this 13-year-old soundtrack, and so I hope you enjoy both the classic music and my new remixes!

Whoa nice! I don't think I'd heard this remix before Audiofidelity, it's pretty sick!! Really nice wind writing. I have another video up now - "Dijurido" from Cowboy Bebop, on solo piano: Next I wanna try recording my accordion... more on this later

Thanks a bunch guys!! I've got another favorite from Cowboy Bebop on deck, for piano solo. After that, I *may* bust out the accordion... D:

Hey guys! Now that my time at Lucasarts is over, I have a bit more time to focus on anime music, my other musical passion. I'll have a big announcement in the coming months, but leading into that, I'll be releasing videos of myself performing covers of my favorite anime tunes on various instruments. I have two vids up now, with more to come soon: Share/Like/Subscribe if you like what you hear! Thanks!!

Just a quick bump now that I've announced the internship in the OCR Panel at MAG. Again this is a pretty amazing opportunity for artists, programmers and (potentially) sound designers, so apply ASAP! Deadline is February 15th.

Hey guys quick heads up - Lucasfilm is now accepting applications for next summer's Jedi Academy internship program! Open for *current* undergrad and graduate-level students only (no recent grads, sorry!) - http://jobs.lucasfilm.com/internships.html Basically they have paid internships in every field, from game-related stuff (art, engineering, design, possibly audio) to business/finance positions as well. From what I've seen it's a wonderful program, our interns on the Lucasarts side all seem to have had amazing hands-on experiences in their different fields, and it's a great way to break into a very competitive industry. Last year we ended up hiring every one of our interns fulltime on my game team, and our audio intern ended up with a sweet gig over at Skywalker Sound. I feel like our internships are especially hands-on without any pointless grunt work because we're usually so understaffed anyway that there's always something important to do I'm actually not sure if we'll have an audio internship this year but it's definitely worth creating a profile and submitting your CV if you meet the scholastic requirements. It's very competitive (last year we had about 300 applicants for audio alone) but definitely worth your time.