Kanthos

There were a lot of good suggestions in this thread for epic movie soundtracks; what about movies that really aren't the summer blockbuster action-adventure type? I'm thinking chick flicks, kid's movies, pretty much anything else with an instrumental soundtrack. Preferably fairly recent stuff; it's hard to find older soundtracks on the iTunes store unless they're extremely popular.

Resurrecting an old thread here, but I see no point starting a new one. Any recommendations for epic movie soundtracks that blend orchestral and synth? I'm not looking for something like Chariots of Fire where the entire soundtrack (or at least, what I remember of it) is synth-driven pop music, but something more like Inception or The A-Team where the synth is more ambient and abstract, or even something that's predominantly synth textures. Ideas?

Physical is nice once in a while if there's some extra in the CD or if it's a band you see live (either to buy the CD at the show or to bring one and get it autographed). Normally though, I'm all about digital; I can buy more with the same money and depending on the distributor, the artist probably gets more of a cut, so what's not to like?

Not sure why Andy didn't plug this himself, but read his tutorial on How to distribute and sell a CD on his website too

Hmm, I don't want to be tied to Cubase since most of the time, I'm at work or in transit listening to music. Not that I'm going to play my own clips over and over, but it's nice to be able to play them in the background while doing other work and let my subconscious get to work on it. And I guess there's no good way around having a 20-minute-long MIDI track; I'm either stuck splitting it up at the end or making sure I'm recording separate MIDI events when I switch ideas as I play. Maybe an alternative is to export both the MIDI and audio for each clip (the MIDI so I can have a generic "Recording" project with a few VSTs set up; I'd want the MIDI exported so that I could easily bring it into a new project) and tag the audio. I already use a comma-separated tag system in the comments field of all my music so I can group things into smart playlists easily; it wouldn't be hard to do something similar with the audio clips.

On Zircon's website, he's got a blog post talking about getting rid of writer's block. One thing he suggests is always having record mode enabled when you're playing an instrument in a writing session. I like the idea, and raised a followup question in a comment to the blog post, but didn't get a response (I know, Andy's a busy guy). So, I'll post it here. Thoughts, anyone? A question about the Always In Record idea: how do you keep all the MIDI files organized, and how do you get them all easily exported from your DAW? I’d expect that if I played my keyboard for 20 minutes, I’d have a 20-minute-long MIDI track that I’d have to manually split up, export, categorize/organize into folders, etc. That’s worth the effort, but do you have any tips to make it a less cumbersome process?

Just wanted to leave a review about Meteo Xavier. I just sold my copy of Zebra to him with payment via PayPal and everything was great. I had no problems talking to him, we were both clear on what the terms were, and it went really smoothly. I'd sell to him again and recommend him as a buyer or seller. Also, Brad, please remove Zebra under For Sale: :::computer/music electronic stuff::: Zebra 2: $125 [kanthos] (2/11)

My friend code is 2578-3107-8918. None of the launch titles grabbed me (I tried Street Fighter but found the controls pretty awkward: the circle-pad wasn't working for me and doing those kinds of moves on the d-pad hurt my thumb after a while), so I may not actually be online for a while, but there it is anyway.

And we didn't end up going. He didn't sleep well Friday night, and didn't sleep much on Saturday, so bringing him would've been a bad idea. However, here's the monkey sleeper (only, no DK tie). Also, a moogle costume would be amazing! Maybe for Halloween.

If we had a coloured ball cap, I'd either go with the Diddy Kong outfit or put a blanket on him like a cape, put an M or L on the hat, and call him Baby Mario or Baby Luigi (of course he'd have to be wearing a bit more than just a diaper; it is Canada after all). What I think I might actually go with, is he's got a sleeper with monkeys on it and a monkey hat (the main part of the hat is a face, with monkey ears sticking out). I'll make him a tie out of red construction paper and he can be Donkey Kong.

So, I'm thinking of going to the midnight launch at the EB Games store where I pre-ordered the 3DS, mostly for the novelty of taking my son to it just for fun. Then, I was thinking it'd be fun to put him in some kind of video-game-related costume. I don't want to put too much effort into it or spend anything on it. He'll be in his carseat anyway, so it can't be all that complicated. I'm thinking something like a red t-shirt or onesie and red baseball cap, put a yellow star on the shirt and call him Diddy Kong, something of that nature. Too bad we don't have any red clothes that are anywhere near his size. Any ideas?

And also, it's quite easy to trade in your old system to get the new one. Sure, it costs more overall to buy two systems, even with a trade-in discount, but if the improvements down the road are worth it, you get the best of both worlds: playing the system since launch and getting the new version.

Anyone following EastWest on Twitter or Facebook probably saw that over the last week, they had a deal of the day each day, a discounted version of their products. They just sent out a newsletter and though they're not advertising it anywhere else, they're offering all of the deals for the next two days. Symphonic Choirs: US $198 / EU €139 (60% off) Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Complete Plus: US $398 / EU €279 (60% off) Symphonic Orchestra Gold: US $198 / EU €139 (60% off) Goliath: US $198 / EU €139 (60% off) Silk: US $198 / EU €139 (60% off)

Bit of an old thread to revive here, but I found this interview with Jimmy and the rest of the Mass Effect 2 team on the Spectrasonics website.

Sounding great and having 'that tube amp sound' aren't the same thing. The guitarist in the band I play with, who's been playing electric guitar for probably 30 years, uses the Line6 Pod X3 Live (usually with a keyboard amp or monitor) now because it's relatively small, easy to program, and easily portable, but he's done his fair share of gigs with various pedals and tube amps, and there's a certain warmth and tone that he gets out of the tube amp that he doesn't get out of his current setup. Basically, the better and more experienced you are, the more you'll be able to tell the subtle differences between various pieces of gear and whether it's worth the tradeoff.

There's no way to get more than 16 channels out of your keyboard, so don't bother thinking about that route. Firstly, find out if your DAW has a freeze function. It's not the same as bouncing to audio since you can unfreeze whenever you like and it'll be simpler (usually just hitting the Freeze/Unfreeze button rather than recording the incoming audio as a track and disabling the MIDI yourself). You aren't editing the MIDI on so many tracks at once that freezing wouldn't work, are you? If you are, you probably want to rethink your workflow, at least as far as how your digital piano fits into it. You could try using one or more virtual instruments to approximate the sounds from your keyboard but allow for easier editing. Of course, if your computer can't handle doing that or you have no VSTs anything like the sounds on your keyboard and can't afford any, this route won't work, and you're back to bouncing or freezing. But basically, those are the only alternatives you have: use other sound sources or use bouncing/freezing so that recording audio at different times lets you record more than 16 tracks from your keyboard.

You do realize that Steam doesn't just download game content to your hard drive and then run the product's installer? For items released on multiple CDs or DVDs, that would get particularly hard. I'm sure they have their own way of doing things, especially since the content doesn't install to the same folder that it would if you buy the standalone version. Doing this with plugins wouldn't be any harder. For plugins that are simply a DLL file, it would be trivial to put that in the right folder. PC games are hardly all the same either when it comes to installers. As for the original idea, I can't see it being really successful for the following reasons. 1) Copy protection schemes can be very different with plugins than with video games, especially plugins that require iLok or eLicenser hardware or call home to authorize with various proprietary services (eg. using the Native Instruments Service Center to authorize the product and tie it to your NI account). 2) Downloading plugins with sample libraries (eg. the ones that take all the time to reinstall) would be a pain and would take forever (not to mention bandwidth caps): would you rather download the ~50GB EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold or install it from the CDs? 3) The people with the big budgets to spend on sample libraries and plugins also often have multiple computers, none of which ever go online. Supporting some kind of "Download everything on one computer and package things to be distributed to other computers across your network" would be even harder. 4) Many plugins are distributed online only or primarily online. Going through a service similar to Steam would introduce a middleman that wouldn't otherwise be there, so the developers would get less per sale.

zircon, neblix, not sure how often you guys check the Stuff For Sale thread but I've got Sylenth1 and Zebra 2 listed there. My own personal wish list: LA Scoring Strings (even just the light version) Project SAM Symphonic Brass EWQL RA and Silk Something with the power of the just-announced Korg Kronos keyboard but with an interface similar to the Nord Stage (eg. hardware knobs to get a basic effects routing done for your bread-and-butter piano, organ, and electric piano sounds; something where you can show up to rehearsal without even knowing the songs and quickly throw presets together).

Happy birthday to you both!

You must post a better-quality version of your submission somewhere. Also, just saw McCanada. Nice

I've got a bunch of plugins for sale. Ask if you've got questions. I'm willing to negotiate on prices, within reason, or give you a deal if you want more than one. KORG Legacy Collection, Digital Edition (M1, WaveStation, and MDE-X plugins): $75 Sylenth1: $125, which includes a €30 (about $40 US) license transfer fee that I'll cover Native Instruments Pro-53: $100 Zebra 2: $125 Sonic Projects OP-X Pro: $75 TruePianos: $100 Applied Acoustics' Ultra Analog VA-1: $100 Applied Acoustics' Lounge Lizard: $100 For Brad: Please remove, from For Sale, :::nintendo ds::: Animal Crossing: Wild World, cartridge only. $10 + shipping [kanthos] (12/10) Please remove everything I have under For Sale, :::computer/music electronic stuff::: and add the following three items Brainspawn Forte + EHco host: $75 OBO [kanthos] (2/11) SONAR X1 Producer Edition: $400 OBO [kanthos] (2/11) Various synth plugins: Priced individually or $500 OBO for them all [kanthos] (2/11)

Air guitar?

Another vote for FF IX here. I've played through all of them up to X, and VI and IX are my favourites in the series. You could always pick up VI for the GBA and play it on your DS too, and IX is available for $10 in the PlayStation Store for your PSP. You can get through FF IX in its entirety without any real grinding (if you go for the Excalibur II sword, which you get by nearly finishing the game in only 12 hours, the game even *encourages* you not to grind; you'll never make it otherwise), the soundtrack is great, the story's pretty good, and most of your party members have well-developed backstories. It's also a return to the completely-medieval setting that Final Fantasy games didn't really have since FF III (starting with IV, they added progressively more steampunk elements), which really appealed to me.

@the OP: The only way you'd even want to consider this, in my opinion, is if both your virtual instruments and your audio tracks and audio effects use up most/all of your processor and RAM. For example, if you're writing orchestral music on only one computer and are doing a lot with the mixing, your sample sets might be too big or use too much CPU to really load any effects, so you might export the individual audio tracks into a mixing template, and at that point, doing the mixing in another program wouldn't be that bad. But if you don't need to do that, it's probably simplest to keep everything in one project and in one DAW.

Never head of Frost* before, but that song is amazing. Good recommendation