Sole Signal

I like the Red Coin/Blue Coin concept a lot. I was thinking Blue Cap/Red Cap too. I like "See You Next Time" though I think that's the ending quote from Mario Kart. M64 is "Thank you so much for playing my game!" I like Tyler's line of thinking too but now that I think about it, the Devastation alliteration might be overkill. It's a happy song.

Okay, I'm opening up to suggestions from the community for the naming of 3 of my project tracks. They are, with genres: 1. Hazy Maze Cave first mix - electro/techno 2. Hazy Maze Cave second mix - more organic, breakbeats, acoustic guitar and electric bass 3. Ending - sort of similar to my "Day's End" mix I would like the Hazy Maze titles to be tied with some sort of Dawn/Dusk, Before/After, or Part 1/Part 2 idea. I thought it'd be cool to continue my Devastation's Doorway...Devastation's Duel...etc idea into the Ending mix title somehow. Or I could just call it "This Cake is Not a Lie"

I took the survey. Very good questions, though I picked "Never" for a few because there wasn't a selection between "Never" and "a few times a week." I'm also not a fan of fb's recent marketing videos for Facebook Home, tailored for Generation me-first.

Thanks for posting, looks like some useful stuff there.

I'm almost done with the "other" track now. Hopefully done this week.

That's life in general, not specific only to musical careers. There's a reason that the breaks often seem to fall to those who work the hardest (assuming of course, also some sort of talent and ability). There's always going to be outliers either way--but that's no reason to get discouraged and not try. I'm nowhere near Tallarico or some of the other big players around here but I spent many years without landing anything substantial. Then I got and things took off from there. Similar to avaris, I use music as a healthy side income but I know it could be more if I worked all night after getting home from work. As it is, some of my "vacation days" from the office often turn out to be days to work on music, but I wouldn't have it any different. Have to keep a healthy balance though.

You may have to learn some things to save money initially: learn how to build your own website until you can afford to pay someone yourself, be creative with cheaper samples until you can upgrade, create a youtube channel and put together a quick video with mass appeal (easy, right?) to gain you some exposure, familiarize yourself with basic tax principles to take advantage of sole proprietership... Still, to echo what WillRock said, you can only prepare yourself so much. There comes a point when you just need to start stepping out and taking (calculated) risks. As long as it excites you to keep trying to figure out ways to keep progressing and you capitalize fully when an opportunity comes up, you'll be in good shape. You make your own luck.

One of my favorite games (and soundtracks) on the SNES...I'll take Koopa Castle (second time).

Scary moment of being unable to render 2010/2011 project files, but I found the finished renders. Sent.

Cool, admittedly my first thought of "cheapest carpet he could find" was "cheap" but that's great that it also looks nice. I don't mind spending a bit to make it work, but looks like there are some good less expensive options. Still looking around, thanks for the ideas!

Thanks for the idea, just found some more good advice about 2/3 down the page: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html Aesthetics aren't unimportant for me; I'd like it to look nice and professional. At this point I'm leaning toward creating the "dead" closet space and then also treating the room/studio space for other instruments. I also found cheaper foam here, but it doesn't look as nice: http://www.foambymail.com/acoustical-pyramid-foam.html

I'm looking to soundtreat a 3' x 6' x 8' closet for voiceover/vocal work, and operating under the assumption that a dead room is optimal unless you have above average room acoustics. Right now anything I record in there sounds like, well, it's recorded in a closet. 1. Should I treat every square foot of the closet space, or is that overkill? I'm looking at this foam here: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/auralex-studiofoam-designer-kit 2. My room acoustics are not good for recording, for example, acoustic guitar. In general, if your recording space is not great, is it better to record an acoustic guitar completely dry and then add artificial reverb and effects? The closet might be too small in which to play, but perhaps it could serve as the backdrop for the guitarist...? I don't have much experience recording vocals or instruments so I'd appreciate any thoughts on this. Picture One Picture Two

I've used EW PLAY Platinum/Choirs/Gypsy/Pianos/Goliath/MOR/Stormdrum 2 with an ilok for two years without any problems. They're tools in the toolbelt; you learn what samples shine and which you wouldn't expose in, say, a solo. Most are quite good, though. Ironically, it's my old EWQL silver Kompakt/Kontakt build that hasn't worked since my new PC--frustrating when trying to open old projects.

Hey man, good to see you around. Can't believe this is your first posted mix. Good stuff.

Nice, congrats. Take that, PMI.

Granted, I never exceeded the initial limit allowed, but it's just something to be aware of. Good luck!

I built and maintain a site for a colleague that uses Paypal extensively for all online sales. At the time, it was absolutely the best free option, and probably still is, since his transactions are mostly high dollar items. However, we're now looking at options for other carts, since it's very difficult (i.e. impossible with my coding knowledge) to calculate accurate shipping costs with complex combinations of items. In the eye of the consumer, there also might be some professionalism lost when the only option is to check out with Paypal default buttons "Add to Cart," "Buy Now," etc. If you get to the point where you'll want to worry about that, just wrap Paypal in some other cart system or custom buttons and you'll be fine. For you now, though, Paypal as the base for your online sales will be more than fine. I've used it for several years now. Right now my bandcamp points to Paypal, so I'm losing more in fees. Keeping it to Paypal only ensures more money for you. One thing I did do is open up a new bank account for my Paypal account, since my other bank had a cap on how many online transactions I could transfer in a month before I started also accruing bank fees. Hopefully that helps some.

Finished a remix of ska band Five Iron Frenzy's "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night," sort of similar to Pendulum's "In Silico" album: http://soundcloud.com/solesignal/dark-and-stormy-night-sole For fans of the (long dormant) band, they are currently the second highest funded music Kickstarter and now are recording a new album. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fiveironfrenzy/new-five-iron-frenzy-album

Only have played the first game, so I'm not familiar with the source, but this is great.

Thanks Snapple, shaggy, and Dan for the suggestions and advice. The Delta 1010lt looks best for my needs at this point. I want to go the PCI route with my setup. EDIT: Well, I found an older Beta Windows 7 driver for the 0404. I got it working...for now. This is probably the third time it just stopped working and each time I had to use a different method to fix it. Still will be keeping my eyes on that Delta 1010lt.

If I can ever figure out what is causing EWQL silver (old orchestral set) to not work on my new workstation, I'd be happy to re-render. Unfortunately, East West and NI split up years ago and no one at East West seems to know how to fix my Kompakt problem... Only other option is to plug my new samples in but that would change the sound of the mixes.

I hadn't considered a USB interface; do you notice a latency loss when going that route? Bonuses I suppose would be portability, but I was thinking more of an internal card... I used to have an old Audigy 2 USB setup for my laptop and it wasn't superb.

This is great, love the trombones at :17 and thereafter. Nice dynamics and restraint; would sound right at home in Kirkhope's Nuts and Bolts soundtrack. Sounds very good from here.

This contest's was one of the better systems I've seen for a fair and balanced vote, as long as the sample size was large enough. I've been in many contests where it's much more of a popularity vote. The community here is well versed and the anonymity helps a lot to eliminate favoritism. Bringing up "questionable voting" doesn't make much sense; if anything the lack of disparity solidified what I (and others) seem to have thought: a lot of solid tracks, but some still needing polish (certainly including mine). I had no idea whose tracks were whose and that was refreshing when placing my votes. Me too, I was a little surprised to see Throne Reborn score higher; I almost didn't submit it because I wasn't completely happy with it. I'll definitely be polishing both of them some more. XPRTNovice completely deserved the win IMO; did you play all those instruments?

Under $300 ideally, though anything around $150 would be nicer. If you can blow me away with reasons why to go higher than $300 I may consider it. CPU specs are high so that won't be a bottleneck.