Kanthos

I recommend people read this: it goes into detail on some questions that wren't answered in the film (director's cut, maybe?) but are in the official novelization. She wouldn't have been the first person to escape a trash compactor. Gwendolyn Christie's confirmed to be in VIII too, so who knows? She could of course be a different character. It's assumed they did recover Kylo's body. It seems REALLY out of place for him to be a badass-in-training, have him kill Han Solo, and then die as the planet blows up; nothing would waste Han's death more. Re 3): According to this, which sources the novelization, there was a beacon on the Falcon that turned on with the ship, though it was still coincidence/the force ("In my experience, there's no such thing as luck") that brought Han and Chewie to the right location. Re 5): I think the first link I posted mentions it, but there's a theory that Rey's force awakening wasn't an awakening from nothing, but rather, she'd been training as a small child at Luke's Jedi academy, and somehow, she got rescued and had her mind wiped by the force to protect her. That frames VII as her awakening to things she already knew (and possibly developing in some of them, what with her being older than when she was trained and all). If she was Luke's child, which I think she is, this seems especially likely. Also, that puts her vision upon touching Anakin's lightsabre into more context: she wasn't seeing things, at least some of them, through the force; some if it could've been remembering. Her getting left on Jakku, obviously, but Luke sending R2-D2 off and a view of what was presumed to be the Jedi temple, and the Knights of Ren, those could've all been things she'd already seen.

I agree with Flexstyle on this; while there may be a bit of colouring from the house system, where the person is in the room, etc, I think it's mostly the phone. I've seen these guys 4 times live, in three different venues, I own every one of their recordings, and I've heard a number of other bootlegs. Compare the first video to , the "studio" one (they record their albums for a live audience in studio-quality settings, so it captures the energy of a live show but doesn't sound as bad as a typical live show). I left my amp at my band's drummer's house last week (we rehearse there), so I can't hear the sound in open air, but I'm pretty happy with where I ended up on it tonight. Not what I hear on the youtube video, but it sounds like I won't get there without distortion anyway. So, thanks guys!

There's no tricks on a standard subtractive synth to get that kind of buzz? I might be adding a distortion of some sort to my pedalboard, but that wouldn't be for a while so I can't depend on that now. Not the end of the world anyway, since I'm just setting up a bank of lead sounds on my Moog right now to use where appropriate, as opposed to trying to dial in the perfect sound for a specific song, but still, the mic colours the sound that much? (If so, then I guess I'm probably closer to the sound as programmed, and also not as inept as I thought!)

There's no studio recording. One of the things Snarky Puppy does is randomly quote some other song. In this case, "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" by Parliament, and then they transition into one of their own songs partway through the video. They tend to change up the gear they have to use often (based on what they can get in a particular city and what they bring with them), so there's no guarantee that anything will sound exactly the same from show to show.

I spent over two hours last night trying to copy (the synth playing melody right at the start of the video) and I couldn't get close enough to be happy with it. I have a Moog Sub 37 and Cory Henry's playing a Moog Little Phatty, so they're not identical, but pretty close, and the Sub 37 can do everything the Phatty can do plus a lot more. My attempts were less "buzzy" than the recording. I was using a saw wave, and sometimes turning on oscillator 2 with either a second saw slightly detuned or a saw/square mix, and playing around with the resonance, filter envelope, and filter key tracking, but everything I came up with was either a bit too dull (if there was less resonance), or the resonance made it just a bit too "squelchy". I played around with the filter slope too, but just remembered now that the Little Phatty only has a 24 dB filter. I'm still fairly new to synth programming; I know the theory of what all the controls do, but putting them together to get the sounds I want is still a challenge. Any idea what else I might try, or if I was likely on the right track and just didn't dial in the right combination of filter cutoff/resonance/envelope/env amount/oscillator type?

I don't know; while people here have different skill levels, there are enough people with adequate skill to call out anything unreasonable. All you really need to learn from other people is knowledgeable people who will take the time to help you learn.

Yeah, C isn't a good language to use for file-system scripting. I'd usually recommend Unix shell scripts for that (if you're on a Linux or Mac system), or even Windows batch files if what you're doing is too complicated. Python or other similar languages are fine too as long as you're not trying to run a lot of command-line-level commands that Python doesn't have alternatives for. If all you're doing is moving files around, then sure, use Python; if you're trying to do the equivalent of a series of Unix commands, just use the Unix commands! I was more trying to point out that the fact that C code must be compiled isn't really relevant to its suitability for a particular task. Unless the delivery mechanism is overly complex or there's some other important complicating factor (for example, running an interpreter or virtual machine on an embedded system may be too inefficient, because embedded systems often have very limited RAM and processing capabilities, etc.), then whether a program is compiled or interpreted or compiled to bytecode and run in a VM is usually not a relevant factor in whether to use that language or not. Relevance is extremely subjective, though. Sure, no one would write a program to feed a guess into the computer and have the computer guess that number. (I've seen similar examples where the computer has a random number and the human has to guess it, and the computer says 'higher' or 'lower' until you get it right; that at least is believable). But the problem with teaching programming is that virtually nothing you would ever write in, say, an introductory programming course is going to be in any useful in the real world to a wide variety of people. How many people need to find a tempo in phase with anything? Teaching programming is all about finding examples for people to learn the concepts so that when they come up against real-world things they want to automate, they understand how to do it. The only way you'd have a really relevant learn-to-program course is if it was targeted at a specific audience (e.g. "Learn to program C++ and eventually write your own VSTs") or if the whole course is building up a large project *and* the learner is smart enough to adapt the concepts as they learn them. For example, I've seen a book that has you build up a database-driven website as you learn to code; a smart person could take that and build up their own database-driven website without making the exact website that the book tells you to do. I'm still not sure how that would get you around the basics of learning loops or functions or other elementary topics, though; I'd imagine it'd be hard, even in that context, to say, "Here's a loop we're writing that's going to be important in the big picture of the project but is also able to stand alone and not rely on things that you don't yet understand".

Some really bad advice in this thread, guys. C is a horrible first language in modern times. There are many, MANY, reasons that I won't get into unless someone really cares (Metal Man, the reasons will doubtless confuse you, so if Timaeus and I do have that debate, feel free to skip over it). Back in the early 80's or so, there wasn't the variety of choices in languages that we have now, so C would've been one of the reasonable choices. We've advanced a lot since then, though, so there's no reason to start with a language that doesn't have garbage collection, that exposes pointers, that doesn't have a native string type, etc) Saying, "but Python uses tabs to enforce structure" is the kind of complaint that is usually heard either from someone who doesn't know how to code well or from someone who is so stuck in the "but it should always be done this way" mentality that they're obstinately resistant to change. If someone is so unorganized that they can't handle the structure of a programming language, whether it's enforced by whitespace or specified with braces, they will have immense difficulty programming period and probably want to do something else. Yes, Python *does* enforce structure through whitespace. This isn't a bad thing, and as someone who's been coding since 1993 (versions of Basic that pre-date Windows, even, let alone VB), coding in C since somewhere around 1995/1996, has two computer science degrees, and my day job is writing a COBOL compiler in C++, I wholly endorse Python as a language and, if it were possible, would be more than happy never to use C++ again. I've done a few smaller projects in Python too, so I'm not just speculating here. Python is easier to learn and it's easier to develop code that "just works" in Python than in C++. Plus, some whitespace errors are things that the Python interpreter will flag as syntax errors, and using whitespace for structure has the benefit of making all Python code equally easy to read on any machine. Here's an example. You know how in many games, there's a crafting component? An Iron Sword is made from 3 Iron Bars, and an Iron Bar is made from three Iron Ores, and you gather Iron Ores by mining? Well, I wrote a general-purpose tool in C a few years ago that would take a list of items and recipes and tell you what you needed to gather to craft them, without having to do the math yourself. It would read in a file of all the items in the game (so I could, for example, see immediately where in the game I'd go to mine Iron Ores), and another file with all the recipes, and by "checking off" stuff in the master file (using (x) beside an item, instead of ( ), so the file *looks* like a checklist), I could limit which items I wanted to get information for. So, if I said I wanted to craft an Iron Sword, it would tell me to gather 9 Iron Ores, and use them to craft 3 Iron Bars, and use the bars to craft one Iron Sword. I'm playing Final Fantasy XIV now, which has an official website from Square Enix that has all the game's crafting recipes on the website itself. I wrote a Python script to pull the entire crafting database from the website and format it into files usable by my C tool. This was only the second piece of Python code I'd written, and it took less time to write than the C code and had fewer bugs, despite the fact that the Python code had to parse the same files as the C code did AND parse three different formats of webpages (FF XIV has 8 crafting professions and groups recipes by every 5 levels of skill in the profession, so Level 1-Level 5 Carpentry, so for each profession, I had to get the URLs for each level, then for each level I had to load that page to get the list of recipes, and then parse the page for each recipe to get the items used to make it). C is powerful and has its place, but it is not easy. If a tool is the right one for the job, compiling isn't a big deal. Every language has some quirks and some types of overhead. Compiling isn't a big deal, especially for smaller projects. In a decent IDE, compiling and running a program is a single keystroke anyway, so it's no worse than running your scripted program in an interpreter. That's a horrible reason not to use while loops. In ANY loop, you need to know what your exit conditions are. For loops make it a bit more obvious (you're generally adding one to a number and stopping at a known limit), but the first thing to do when writing any loop is figure out how and when the loop will exit. Timaeus' example isn't really irrelevant, at least not any more so than any other toy program to teach something about programming. It doesn't matter if the code is relevant or useful or not; what matters is how you use it. Neblix's example is easier to understand, though, and is better-written code. Metal Man, the one thing in which Neblix and Timaeus are both right is that your code isn't very good. You're a beginner, so that's expected, and you know that you won't learn without trying, but I *do* agree with the recommendations that you find an "intro to programming" course online; there'll be all kinds of stuff you can do for free. I do strongly recommend you do it in Python though.

I've never had a proper Radias, but I used to own a Korg M3 workstation which had an expansion card containing the Radias (without the effects and such, since it just used the M3's effects engine). Both the Radias and Blofeld are good choices, and I'm sure you'll have fun with whatever you end up with!

I just picked up a Waldorf Blofeld two days ago. It's just the module, but I've already got a Korg Kronos and Moog Sub 37, so I didn't need another keyboard. In my case, I play live, and while the Kronos does a great job of polyphonic synth sounds and my Moog will always be my first choice for leads, I wanted something that's a bit easier to program than the Kronos and that also gives me the flexibility of playing a part on the Kronos and bringing in another sound with ease. I play a lot of modern jazz, so I want, for example, to be playing a Rhodes on my Kronos and to add a pad or synth brass or stabs or whatever without being forced to build a bunch of combinations, as that makes switching a lot harder. Let's say I have 8 synth sounds I'm likely to call up on occasion. Well, do I make 8 combis (Korg's term for patches with multiple sounds, potentially on multiple MIDI channels) for playing those 8 sounds with a Rhodes, another 8 for playing those sounds with a piano, another 8 with a wurlitzer, another 8 with a clavinet? And what about playing all those sounds with a B3, where I use many different B3 patches due to the different drawbar settings, chorus/vibrato settings, percussion settings, etc? So, that's why I went looking for another synth. I'd ask yourself the following questions to help narrow it down. 1) What is your budget? 2) Do you need a keyboard? How many keys do you need on it? 3) What kinds of sounds are you going for? Do you need something with decent polyphony? How many effects do you need? 4) How easy do you want it to be to program? Do you want one knob per function? Are you ok with a few knobs? 5) Do you actually need a hardware synth? VSTs will be cheaper than the equivalent hardware, and are typically more powerful. You can do something like buy Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a MIDI controller for roughly the cost of a decent synth module or keyboard. 6) What VSTs and other gear do you already have? Whatever you get should be unique, not just duplicate what you can already do, unless you have some other motivation for doing so (e.g. a synth that can replace your laptop for live performance) 7) Are there any other special considerations? I tried a few other synths before settling on the Blofeld. I rejected a Virus Snow because it was too hard to program; it had too much menu diving and not even four knobs, so you couldn't do things like set your ADSR envelope from knobs all at once. I tried a MiniNova but it felt cheap (though the keybed was the best mini-size keyboard I've played); there were some issues with some of the knobs not registering all the way from 0 to 127. It has a lot of menu diving too, though you can get away from a bit of that with the knobs, which you can use to select sets of four parameters. The thing I didn't like is that, other than two sets of 4 assignable combinations for the knobs, the choices of what was on the knobs was fixed, and wasn't always sensible (e.g. not being able to control the whole envelope). The Blofeld is better in this regard because not only are the combinations more sensible but you can push a button to move between them (rather than move a switch to just the right spot) and the parameters controllable through this parameter matrix aren't usually in the menu. So, for example, you'll choose the Filter Envelope and edit the ADSR parameters through the knobs and only a few other parameters on the menu. And, pressing the Filter Envelope button jumps you to the right spot in the menu. The Novation UltraNova is similar in this regard, though it has 8 knobs instead of four and basically mirrors the menu structure. I'd guess it's roughly on par as the Blofeld in terms of ease of programming it; probably a bit more complicated for the most common parameters (as they wouldn't always be the first four knobs), but easier to get to less-common parameters (I think there were no more than two pages of 16 parameters per section, except perhaps for the modulation routings, which are going to have a lot of menu diving on any synth unless there's only a small number of routings in total. Anyway, for me, my budget was under $1,000. I didn't need a lot of effects (I have a few effects pedals as part of my rig already), but I did need something with decent polyphony (otherwise I'd just use the Moog). I wanted something as small as possible to keep the overall size of my keyboard rig down, and I obviously needed hardware because I play live. The sound is also really important too, but to my ears, I didn't find any of the synths in this price range to be really superior. The Blofeld offers some features that the MiniNova and UltraNova don't, while the Novation synths have more effects. The Virus line is probably the best in terms of range of sounds and features, but as I said, I didn't like the way you program the Snow (which is admittedly not that bad; it just didn't feel that easy to me, and since I'm only really learning synth programming, I want something that does as good a job possible as supporting the way I want to work with a synth), and the larger Virus synths, which do have (mostly) one knob per function, are more expensive and larger. One negative thing I'll point out about the Blofleld is that a lot of the factory patches are pretty quiet. You can adjust the volumes easily enough, so that's a minor annoyance, but it's worth mentioning at least. Ultimately, you need to use your ears and go out and try a few different synths and see what works best for you. I'm happy with the Blofeld, but you may find something else just really works for you. I would recommend that if at all possible, you don't go for whatever's cheapest; if there's something a bit outside your price range, and saving up for it is feasible, I'd suggest you do that rather than settle on something that you won't enjoy as much. If you're fairly close, that is, and you have the potential to save up in a reasonable time. Waiting a few months to get the synth you want is preferable, I think, to getting a synth now that you won't be happy with. On the other hand, if your first-choice synth is something like a Virus TI 2 Keyboard which runs for over $3,000 new, and you're not going to have that kind of money for a couple years, that's the time to settle. Good luck! Hmm, I reread your post and noticed you were saying 'learn to play with both hands'. That narrows your options considerably. I'd steer you away from anything with less than 49 keys in that case (so no UltraNova). I find 37 keys on my Moog to be a bit small sometimes; my ideal would be a 61-key synth and my weighted 73-key Kronos (I find I don't need a full 88 for anything but the odd classical piece I still play, and even then, most of the classical music I play doesn't need a full piano's worth of keys). Anyway, you're not going to be able to develop any serious two-hand playing techniques on a 37-key keyboard. If you're playing in C (37-key keyboards are almost always C to C), you can do one-octave chords in your left hand, not going higher than a C, and have only two octaves left for melodic parts or chords or anything. That's just not enough. If your biggest concern is having something to learn to play on, I'd strongly recommend a 61-key MIDI controller, because I can't think of any decent 61-key keyboards in your price range. The Blofeld keyboard version, at 49 keys, is a bit of a compromise.

Hi guys, I've got nothing to do with Korg (besides using one or two pieces of Korg gear). I just saw this job posting on twitter and I bet there are a number of people here who might do a great job of it. The position is for sales and product evangelism for Korg USA, and for someone who might not want to go the route of being a game composer but who still loves remixing and other aspects of music and technology, it might be a really good fit. Check it out if you're interested.

I'm not a mod, but I'm a big jazz fan, and I'll vouch for his harmonies and timing. This is very much within the vein of solo jazz piano. It's a bit more free-form than most of the music on OCR, but it's not meant to keep to a steady beat. The harmonies are fantastic and none of them sounded out of place to me; I heard shades of Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans in there. I'm not an expert on the quality of the piano sound, but compositionally and performance-wise, I think this is great.

Theatrhythm is a rhythm game, but the newer Theatrhythm (Curtain Call) is really really good, if you like a rhythm game with RPG elements. The Dragon Quest version looks very similar.

The remake has just as much mapmaking. It's not that bad, though, plus if you like, people have uploaded all the maps so you could draw them on and then go. I think it's a neat touch, though; it makes the game be more than just another easy JRPG.

The remake is very much like the original if you're not playing in Story Mode. If you are, your party is fixed (both gender, appearance, class, and name), and compared to the original, you visit some places a bit out of sequence - with the monsters toned down for appropriate levels, of course - or they added a new zone for the story; I haven't finished yet, so I'm not sure which. Basically, it's the same game, just improved for the 3DS. I'd reconsider Link Between Worlds if I were you; it felt very much like Link To The Past to me and not at all like the Legend of Zelda, which is also my favourite game in the series. If you're even a modest a fan of Harvest Moon games, I highly recommend the Rune Factory series. I have 3 and 4 and have finished the first two previously. It's a great blend of dungeon crawling, crafting, and farming, and you don't need to spend long chunks of time in a row doing any one thing. The first one was somewhat broken in that you could only complete 4 dungeons until the start of Winter - one dungeon was only accessible when a lake froze over - yet you'd be done the previous dungeons *well* before then, but it was still a good game, and the series has improved as it's gone on. (I still believe that in the first game, provided you manipulate the weather by saving before you go to bed and reloading on a rainy or stormy day where you either can't drop off or pick up a tool to be upgraded, or can't go out at all, it's possible to earn enough gold and collect enough wood before the end of Spring 20 to start your house upgrade, making it complete on Summer 1, which means you can have bought all the additional furnishings for your house by the end of Summer. I got really close once; I'll have to try this again sometime).

Bass line too much? For my tastes, it's one of the highlights in the song. I love this arrangement!

Yeah, this is just mostly me being picky as a huge lover of the B3 (despite never having played the actual organ; I really need to change that). A keyboard with a proper organ emulation and drawbars is a big part of my live sound. Either way, this is a great concept, and especially with the bass solo taking it out of the realm of a straight melodic cover in a different time signature, I think it has a good chance of being accepted here once it's finished, if you choose to submit.

Much nicer drawbar setting! A couple other fine points about the organ: one is that the organ playing the melody can be a bit more full, or at least boosted in volume a bit. The other is that you don't have to be afraid of the fast rotor setting. For example, in the section at 1:32, you could go to the fast setting halfway through, leave it, and sustain the final chord for longer, using the swell pedal to take down the volume and let the chord die out a bit. The best B3 players in this kind of style are always switching rotor speeds (and even drawbar positions!) on a regular basis; a bit more variety will make the part more lifelike. Love the bass solo!

I love the concept; I have a few suggestions to take it even farther. 1) A more varied bass line would be good, especially under the melody, which is fairly sustained. 2) More dynamic variation would help; the piece sits at pretty much the same level. Even the piano comping is at a fairly even level. 3) I'd look for a different organ preset (or, if you're using a plugin or keyboard that has a proper B3 simulation, change your drawbar settings). Your patch exposes one of the high overtones and sustains it, especially near the start, and I'm finding it fairly piercing. If I had to guess, it sounds like the drawbars are at 008000008 initially. That's a great setting for some funky comping where you're playing percussively and fast, but for the long sustained parts in the melody, it just feels like too much, especially when the melody is played fairly high.

My thought is to leave it, given that V6.0 is in the works. It's an annoyance, but easy enough to work around once you experience it.

I've noticed the same thing for months. I use Chrome on Windows 7 and I keep the browser up to date, so I'm always using the latest version as soon as I can update it. Right now, it's 39.0.2171.99

Free masterclass from Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke available here. I watched it last night. They didn't answer many questions, but what's not to love about hearing Chick and Stanley play together, especially tunes from the Return To Forever and Light As A Feather albums, with Stanley on acoustic bass?

You could try and find someone here who might want to buy the iLok account and SoundsOnline account from you, and mail the physical iLok key and DVDs. I did that a couple years ago.