The Vagrance

heh, I've been told that many times before... SIGGED and edited D: yeah, I'm not one for swearing... It doesn't count if its C&P shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit

Right by Elvis apparently

Personally, every game I love has to have "Damn that was badass" moments. Like in Halo 2 (damn near everything in it), or Madden (whenever you level someone or intercept or something), or Gran Turismo 4(Cutting off the other driver just before the finish), or in Final Fantasy XII (Despite not pressing anything watching my characters terrorize the enemies gives me a great feeling of accomplishment, and don't get me started on those quickening combos), or in Okami (That wheel thing is sweet), or even the simple things like in Oddworld: Stranger, whenever he goes into a full sprint and the controls allow you to cut corners and everything else. Things like that keep me coming back to a game, for that short, simple adrenaline rush.

What I do for writing lyrics is to just write down what first comes to mind, the take out, add, etc. as needed. Of course, there is no magic way to write lyrics, but try not to travel the beaten path in both presentation AND actual words. There are probably a million and a half songs about heartbreak but a lot of them are unique in presentation alone which makes each song beautiful in its own right. As for cheesiness, the best way I can describe cheesiness is attempting to be deep while using extremely simple terms, in sad songs it usually simplistic questioning ("Why must I cry?"). Of course, as Leah said earlier, what one person may see as cheesy others will see as happy, sad, etc.. Another thing about cheesiness in lyrics is a lot of lyrics will seem incredibly cheesy when on paper, but when presented they can contain intense power. A lot of rap music does this, turning seemingly average lyrics into powerful statements, its all in the presentation. The best example of this I can think of is during one of the VH1 Hip-Hop honors they honored the Beastie Boys, and instead of the Beastie's performing one of their own songs they had 3 other rappers do it (Diddy, Q-Tip, and Fabolous IIRC), and it was terrible, then right after them came on the real Beastie Boys and they absolutely killed it all because of attitude. This applies to all types of music too. Have you ever read aloud one of your favorite songs' lyrics? It can sound terrible but when its performed it sounds great. Well, I think I've beaten this horse to death so I wouldn't worry about it. I don't think lyrics have to rhyme, even extending to rap music. Rhyming shows some skill with wordplay but its not necessary. Rhyming makes things more accessible and predictable as one can begin guessing how the next set of words will go along knowing it rhymes with the previous word you ended with but once again, its not necessary. Overall, just don't worry too much about what everyone else expects out of your lyrics, try not to force it, and just let it flow. Writing in any shape or form gives people the ability to express themselves to the fullest and if you put effort into it you'll find your audience. Everyone here will be open and supportive so don't be too afraid to post anything, besides, we're all faceless people on this forum so no need to take anything too personally. Woah, don't be afraid to incorporate your native language into your songwriting either, its a unique tool that not people have to ability to do. Anyway, good luck with your lyric-writing.

I feel that teaching interpretation just defeats the purpose of it all. Production *MIGHT* be nice, especially if you get into the more creative side of it that is rarely traveled (creative EQ'ing, creative compressing/sidechaining, just basically thinking outside the box with everything). Matter of fact, doing a full-fledged think towards the mastering side (EQing, compressing a bit more, limiting, exciting, making individual sounds big) would be helpful to a lot of people for giving tracks that extra "oomph" that it may be lacking. Arranging would be an interesting tutorial but arrangements can be picked up fairly easily from just listening to the styles they want to do and incorporating their own style into it.

I request a flash animation with all of the bosses chasing each other around to the Benny Hill theme, stat!

XD Just checking in, reminding everybody I'm not dead, just on one helluva dry streak. Foxhull, I do have some ideas for the Awakening Remix (I DID have them down but FLStudio decided to be a bitch and crash) and I'm currently bouncing around ideas for Steel Giant (Rap remix anybody? Maybe trance, but more likely rap). As for INvasion, thats on the back-burner as I'm still on the fence about it, the problem I have with that track is that there's so damn much to it (it crashes my Sonar every time) which means I'll probably need to reconstruct it from the ground up even if I were to keep the arrangement, and I figure it might be better off to restart, but iono, I've changed my mind so many times on that project. Also, I've been working on Absynth and z3ta+ patches for quite a while along with a Reaktor instrument so expect those soon.

I'll be able to produce for people after I get done with Crescendo to Chaos and/or Humans and Gears

Pretty wicked splicing and it has an awesome quirkyness to it but I'm having a hard time digging it too much. Its a nice little diddy but I can't see it as anything past that. However, the engineering of the track is still pretty awesome, everything fits together and those drums are both hilariously compressed yet heavy. In short, nice work, not a serious full song but hot damn its some wicked sampling with some creative engineering to it.

I love it as an intro, although there may be a bit too much in there for an intro, either way the pad is beautiful, keep it up.

I got a microphone today so with a little bit of creative micing and layering I could get a good, real drum track down!

1. Any sequencer can do that. 2. Any sequencer can do that. 3. Reason drops out here, although I think FL can do it 4. Now FL and Reason are out, best bets are Sonar, Cubase, Logic, etc. There are work-arounds for each of them to be able to do all of them in Reason and FL and such but full-fledged DAWs such as Sonar, Cubase, Logic, and even Ableton Live are your best bets. I reccomend you try them all out (well, I don't think Cubase has a demo) before you buy.

h4y guyz wats up?

I use Sonar and I love it, especially 6.o, but I decided not to reccomend it because it has a huge learning curve, while FLStudio and Reason ease people in much better.However, if you think you're up for the challenge, anything you want to do and Sonar can probably do it, it supports most plug-in formats (including DXi and VST), has some quality synths built in (PSYN II is pretty nice but the Pentagon I is very sweet, but more expensive synths like the Korg Legacy Edition or Absynth or z3ta+ or something are better), and has some amazing plug-ins and effects, like V-Vocal (think autotune only better, everything from pitch-correction, to time stretching, to vibrato adjustment, and the ability to creae tons of neat effects. Go to to see what I mean), Perfect Space (great reverb plug-in made by Voxengo who is a quality effects company), and the VC-64 (Vintage compresser and EQ with tons of extra options, its very high quality and is made by kjaerhus, another great company). Point is, get Cakewalk and you'll be thrown straight into an ocean, however master it and you'll be able to do almost anything you want to.

Yeah, still try 'em out, I just hven't heard the most outstanding things about them.

What I mean is, you should be fine in FLStudio with a Keystation, but whenever I try assigning knobs and stuff with my Oxygen49 in Reason or Sonar it won't work, and only the keys work. Also, with a smaller keyboard, you can go through all the octaves, I can't think of a MIDI controller that doesn't have an octave up/down button on it, that way you can gety all of the octaves, just not necesarrily all at once.

I wouldn't be so sure about getting any kind of Keystation as I've heard pretty bad things about them (once again, what you pay for is what you get). Unless you're a hardcore piano player and you NEED all 88 keys, I reccomend getting an Novation (which, by the way, has MUCH better MIDI mapping support than the Keystation/Oxygen series), Korg, or M-Audio Axiom MIDI controller instead.

http://www.myspace.com/thevagrancemusic For those of you that notice things, yeah I did change myspaces, the Doomsday name seems a bit too...generic. Not saying The Vagrance isn't but I like it better, but I'll prolly keep the Doomsday name for VG Remixes and any rap tracks I do. Anyways, 2 new tracks (although I posted 1 of them earlier) and an instrumental just waiting for me to get a mic for.

An example would be to tie a knob to the filter cutoff of your VSTi, that way whenever you turn the knob the cutoff goes along with it, so instead of turning on-screen knobs you're turning real knobs. It helps a little for the creative process if you're a hands-on kinda person. Its also a great deal of hel pif you're doing a live show or something.

I mean just play with them and see which one feels better, there will be no actual sound difference between them whatsoever, but se ehow they feel, how sturdy they are, etc.. The reason that one is so cheap is because all it has are keys, whereas most others (like mine) have controllable knobs and sliders to what you can control things in your sequencer with.

Any soundcard that needs a diagram like this thing below to show how awesome it is is most definitely crappy or has its marketing team on IV shrooms. Besides, it shows CD and MP3 audio - guess people don't play MIDIs anymore or equate their presence on a Geocities webpage with "crap" anyway, so they don't care for the sound . But seriously - no, I don't see any SoundCanvas thingies getting built in there. No benefits for existing users and it adds to the price without having any advantages. You're right in thinking that, but! 88-key controllers usually have piano-style keys - e.g solid ones, with weight, and sometimes something called "hammer action", and sometimes something called "graded hammer action". The weight means you'll need more strength to put the key down to the bottom (this differs per model). The hammer action means that when you do this, it "feels" more like playing a real piano because the hammer on a grand or upright gives a slight kickback to the key - when it hits the string. "Graded" means that higher keys are lighter and lower keys are heavier. All depends on the budget you're willing to spend on a controller, and if you personally even like the action on a piano. Some are heavy, some are light-weight; all a matter of preference. Velocity sensitivity is almost universal in keyboards, except maybe those with the mini-keys. When you press down the key it sends a MIDI NoteOn signal. When you release the key it sends a MIDI NoteOff signal. The "bar" you see in the piano roll is the time between those two signals. That's also why you sometimes see a PANIC button; if the NoteOff is never sent the synth just keeps playing, and PANIC forces a NoteOff to everything. Just make sure your first mix is not an mp3 of a recorded MIDI file with just a reverb effect thrown over it. Other than that, have a ball . Eh, that's just advertising. Every company does stupid shit like that. Give an X-fi a try, though, and you'll see. I'm not tech savvy enough to throw numbers and specs at you, but it's one of the top choices of gaming nerds and audiophiles (think www.overclock.net and forums like those), so I don't think that many people could be wrong. How does this MIDI controller look? http://www.audiomidi.com/Keystation-88es-P5790.aspx Overclock =/= audiophiles. True audiophiles are geezers probably as old as your father (I know my father's one, he worked in studio's since his college days, and he's over 50 now). I'm more than willing to bet this "X-fi" shit is just a little bit of creative EQing, which truth be told should NEVER be used by a producer. As far as MIDI controllers go, just go to a guitar center or Sam Ash or whatever music store you have near you, and try them all out. Its advisable to not look at price when shopping for audio gear becaus ein most cases you will get what you pay for. I've played with that particular MIDI controller and it seemed fine (I have a very similar one, the Oxygen 49, its basically the same but it has 49 keys and sliders and knobs for me to mess with) but I advise you try it out for yourself.

The X-board is about as cheap as you're gonna get, and I've heard some BAD things about it. Save up and get something nicer.

I want to also reserve a spot for this as well whenever it starts.

Thanks for correcting me, although I doubt he'd know the difference.

The difference between MIDI's and mp3's has NOTHING to do with actual sound quality. A MIDI is the foundation, MIDI files only have a set amount of samples (I think its 127) that are universal to everything that can do MIDI. The difference is, you can take little MIDI notes, and instead of it playing the low quality MIDI samples, it'll play whatever noise/sound your soft synth/sampler is supposed to put out. Mp3 files have to do with .wav file compression.