Kanthos

Well, if you can see that you can receive MIDI data somehow, and your audio works fine, then there's no point playing with B4-II (other than because B3 organs are cool). I have a vague idea of how to check the MIDI channel for each of your instruments, but can't describe it well without tripping over terms and probably confusing you. It's been almost 2 years since I touched FL Studio now, so hopefully someone who uses it regularly can help.

I think you guys are a bit off here. If I understand things correctly, the keyboard is connected to his X-Fi via MIDI, not connected to the computer via USB, so FL Studio wouldn't be able to detect it by name (although it should detect that MIDI data is being input). Been a while since I've used FL Studio, but the issue is possibly one with none of the instruments being set to receive MIDI data. @ the OP: Do you have any standalone synths? Or, for that matter, grab a demo of Native Instruments B4-II or something similar. Is that software recognizing MIDI input? Something like B4-II is doubly good since you can click on the keys on the virtual keyboard to get a sound, so if the issue is with your audio setup somehow and not with MIDI, you'll know.

Not sure about recognized or not, at least in an academic sense. It's not about learning to listen in the fundamental sense of having sound waves enter your ears; it's more about being able to appreciate a genre, composer, or artist despite not liking them in the past. I've often returned to bands I didn't like in the past to find that I appreciate them a few years later. Sometimes, at least for me, it's also been about understanding the music. I almost always appreciate a piece more if I can see themes introduced at the start of the piece and developed later. So if there is "learning" involved, it's maybe developing my musical memory enough to the point that after listening to a piece a few times, I can make those kinds of connections.

It may take time to appreciate video game music, but for very different reasons. Ignoring the more modern game scores that are very heavily classically-influenced (which fall under your point about listening to classical music), the main complaint is sound quality. Many video game tunes aren't any more complex than your average pop tune; the difference is it was often written for primitive audio hardware, not real instruments (or realistic samples), and that there are no vocals (which shouldn't, but does, scare some people off). Remixes on the other hand are a different story since most of the remixes here are in other established genres. Barring chiptunes, there's not a whole lot of OCR's catalog that doesn't fit in with something more mainstream.

Honestly, I wasn't that impressed with the Toronto show. There were big sound quality issues for the first half and I don't like Al Di Meola much. There's a review of the show on my blog (link in my sig) if you're interested.

Romantic Warrior is easily my favourite fusion album. When I saw Return to Forever in concert at the end of June, they played half the album, and those were the best tracks. I also love Joe Zawinul, both with Weather Report but even more with the Zawinul Syndicate. Taking the brief glimpses of world music from Weather Report's music and expanding on them in his work with the Syndicate produced what I think is his best music, as well as introducing players like Richard Bona to North American audiences. As a keyboard player, my two biggest musical role models are Jordan Rudess from Dream Theatre and Zawinul.

Happy birthday Jordan. You should celebrate with a new mix!

Fair enough; I've just seen people post a request for songs from game X in style Y and when no one pays attention to them, they try to start a project to get songs from game X in style Y. Of course *any* project benefits the community (as long as the music produced is at the quality level OCRemix expects, of course), but for some people, the benefit to them is quite obvious. If this is a project that's been suggested before, there's probably a good reason why it hasn't been done (probably too many people committed to other existing projects). Out of curiosity, what were you thinking of doing?

I don't believe project leaders strictly have to contribute tracks to the project, although many do. Your big problem is that no one knows who you are. You have a grand total of 6 posts, so unless you've been hanging around the IRC channel *a lot* and have become very close with a large number of remixers, no one is going to take you seriously. There's also a large number of ongoing projects right now led by people who are well-established in the OCRemix community, some of which need more remixers to step up. Anyone who wants to contribute is going to go that route before the hop on board an unknown project. Projects are supposed to benefit the community, not just be a way for an individual to get some tracks out of established remixers that are tailored to the individual's liking. Until you've been around long enough and contributed enough to prove otherwise (whether being heavily involved in the forums, by getting some of your own mixes posted, or helping out the site in other ways), no one's going to see your project proposal as anything else besides a "help me get what I want" effort, which isn't very conducive to getting mixers to help you out.

Happy birthday!

And one last post. I mentioned I was switching to a keyboard-based format. Well, for what I'm typically doing now, hauling around all this gear is a pain. I discovered the Nord line of keyboards and have ordered a Nord Stage. It has a dedicated organ module emulating the B3, Vox and Farfisa, a dedicated piano module (with samples of a few grands and uprights, rhodes, wurlitzer, and clavinet), a fairly simple synth module, some onboard effects, and the ability to use 2 synths, 2 keyboards, and 2 organ manuals at once. In most situations where I don't need synths or complex layering, this keyboard alone will be perfect, and I can always bring my laptop and some of the other gear (I've sold my Axiom and the PodXT since they won't be doing much for me in the new setup and I need the cash for the Nord Stage). So why use a conventional keyboard setup versus a laptop setup? Well, I think simplest is best, and if I can get nearly everything I want in one keyboard and add my laptop for more synth sounds or other VSTs on the few occasions when I need it, that makes sense to me. Plus, given that I don't have a really good setup in my house for having my laptop on a desk (I do have a studio, but it has no Internet access and my wife and I usually hang out in the family room anyway), having the knobs and dials for the synth, organ, piano and effects modules under my fingertips is a good thing compared to having my laptop in some awkward spot, so I'll be able to handle the sound design part of being a keyboard player much easier. A laptop setup (or adding a laptop to a keyboard-based setup) is the way to go when you have more sounds than you need and can't afford an expensive keyboard with large sample memory (like how Jordan Rudess of Dream Theatre will sample the sounds he wants from other keyboards and load them all onto a Korg Oasys on tour so he's only dragging around a few keyboards instead of 10+). Lots of artists do tour with laptops as part of their setup though, so it's not uncommon; you just have to take it into account. So...hopefully I've answered all your questions. If not or you want to discuss stuff, please PM me or preferably post again here so others can learn from the thread too. I also have a few posts on my blog (link is in my signature) where I go into more detail on my setup; feel free to check those out as well.

Double-posting to keep posts a manageable length. To answer some of your other questions, you'll probably need/want to get the following: 1) A better laptop (I'd go PC, not Mac) 2) A larger MIDI controller. 37 keys is not very much if you're a competent keyboard player. 3) Possibly a better audio interface if you're going to record more than guitar, but you probably won't need one. 4) Kore (although you can use your DAW; you'll just find Kore to be *much* easier). I'd get a PC-based laptop because you're already an FL Studio user and probably have a lot of other PC software you'd want to use. Although, if you're using the new laptop *only* for playing, then make sure all the VSTs you already have are available in Mac-compatible versions (anything by NI is by default), and you could go the Mac route. If you keep your computer well-configured and don't install any useless stuff on it, particularly processes that use CPU power and take it away from your music, you should be able to go either way. With a larger MIDI controller, you could use the TonePort KB37 as a second keyboard for playing lead lines or something similar. This would also mean you'd have to switch presets less often since you'd have access to two or more sounds at once instead of just one. My Axiom 61 retails for $320 or so; I managed to buy it new for $240 due to a pricing error in store when I bought it (they had priced it at the same price as the Axiom 49 which is identical but with less keys). You could also look on craigslist (free online classifieds) if you're in or near a reasonably large city. In Toronto when I just sold my Axiom, there were at least 3 other posts concerning Axioms in the last week. You can definitely get a good MIDI controller for under $500. Also, a number of people here recommend the Axiom, including djpretzel himself, so it's not just me The KB37 is fine as an audio interface for playing live; it's only worth looking at something else if you want to record. There are a few threads on OCRemix about that kind of thing, probably under the Remixing section of the forums, and I can only really recommend the one I have. The main thing Kore gets you is the ease of performance. With a DAW, you'll still have to load all the VSTs at once, but you won't have an easy way of muting some instruments and not others. This means that the only way to have more than two sounds loaded is to assign each to a different MIDI channel and switch the channel your keyboard(s) are sending on. Depending on the keyboard, this can be complicated and will certainly introduce a delay where you're not playing because you're pressing buttons on the keyboard. Pressing one is fine, pressing several is usually not in my experience.

Sorry for not replying sooner; I just saw your post today. I've been doing this for a year, so I have a pretty good setup worked out. Right now, I'm more of a classic keyboard player (B3 and other organs, rhodes, wurlitzer, and of course acoustic piano) than someone who uses a lot of keyboard synths, but it shouldn't be too different from what you want. I'm in the middle of changing my setup to include a good keyboard, but I'll talk about my previous setup and then why I switched. I play at church or on my own (no band yet), so I had two MIDI controllers: a M-Audio Axiom 61 and a M-Audio KeyStation 88es. Both are semi-weighted, because my background is playing classical and jazz piano and synth-action (next to no resistance on the keys when you press them down) just doesn't do it for me. I'd be fine with a small synth-action keyboard to play leads on, but semi-weighted is my preference. The only real difference between a "keyboard" and a MIDI controller keyboard (there are other kinds of MIDI controllers; I recently sold a footpedal, the Behringer FCB1010) is that a keyboard actually produces sound; virtually all modern keyboards also send and receive MIDI data, so I could use a controller with a keyboard and have the keyboard produce sound for both. I don't recommend using a DAW like FL Studio or Cubase, and *highly* recommend Kore. Kore has two big advantages over a DAW: it's standalone (so you don't load Kore into FL Studio when you're playing live; you just launch Kore, which saves you memory if you don't need the features of a DAW) and it's a VST Host, so you can launch Kore and load existing VSTs. While Kore certainly has additional benefits for someone who tweaks individual sounds a lot, I haven't really used it for that purpose yet. I use it mainly as a great way to organize a performance. What I do is make a new Kore performance with all the VSTs I'm going to use loaded. It takes a while to start up, but when it does, I can instantly switch between presets in the performance. I mute most of the instruments for each preset, which means that although they're loaded into memory, they don't require any CPU power, and for each preset, I only unmute the instruments I want to sound. Within a preset, the unmuted VSTs are listening for data on one of two MIDI channels, so I can change for each preset whether my top or bottom keyboard controls a given VST. Organizing a performance then is simply putting Kore presets in the right order and stepping through it. With each preset change, some instruments get muted and some get unmuted, and I'm ready to go. On stage, I do the change through the Kore Controller, so I have to press only one button on hardware that I always keep in a convenient position rather than have to go to my laptop and click and hope I don't click the wrong thing. Between songs, that's not as much of an issue, but it's *essential* if I want to change sounds for the bridge of a song or something. With regards to your questions about lag and about how to get sound out of your laptop and into the venue's system, I'd think that the TonePort KB37 or any other audio interface (a sound card for your computer that usually is external (for a laptop, it'll definitely be), with have line and/or mic inputs and usually line outputs) should solve that problem. You set Kore or FL Studio to use this as the sound card of choice instead of your laptop's onboard sound card. In addition to letting you connect to a DI box or something similar, this also lets you record instruments or vocals if you ever have an interest in doing so. A decent audio interface (mine is an Edirol UA-25; it has two guitar/mic combo inputs and a 1/4" stereo output pair) will also take care of your latency problem. There are several types of audio drivers, but for PC, ASIO is the best by far. I get about 44 milliseconds latency with my onboard card (and find somewhere between 10 and 15 ms to be the point where I notice the lag) but get only 4 ms latency from my UA-25, with other things properly configured. My setup on stage then looks something like this. I bring my laptop and have my audio interface connected via USB. If I'm using my own keyboards, they're both connected via USB; if I'm at church where I use theirs and mine, theirs is connected via MIDI through my audio interface. My laptop is running Kore as I described. I use a Line6 PodXT for effects (not necessary, but reduces the CPU load on my laptop), so within Kore, I use panning to affect the processing. Hard left is clean, hard right is fully processed, in the middle will send sound on both the left and right channels, etc. I have a 4-channel mixing amp, a Roland KC-150. I run the left output from my audio interface directly into the amp and the right channel into the PodXT, with the output of the PodXT going into the amp. This way, I hear the fully processed signal. Then, the line out from the amp goes into a DI box, which runs into the system.

Does anyone know if the bonus dungeon from the GBA version of FF IV is left in the game?

EDIT: Axiom's gone; someone grabbed it from my craigslist listing before it'd even been up for two hours.

ITT: kanthos is wrong. ANYWAY...Line6 has a good set of effects on the PodXT. I endorse this product and or event.

Oh, sorry for the wrong explanation then. Yes, effects are common on keyboards. It's rare, at least outside the straight-ahead jazz world, to hear an unprocessed Rhodes. Deep Purple got their organ sound by running the B3 through a Marshal stack with heavy distortion. Guitarists will probably get more mileage out of something like this, and it's not as common to see a keyboard setup with 8 or 10 effects all used at once, but this would be quite useful. The hardware is just an audio interface though, and isn't useful for anything when not plugged into a computer. And if I remember correctly, the software can be used both standalone and as a VST plugin, so if you already have an audio interface, you should be able to use the software without the hardware. I just meant that it wasn't a hardware-only solution like the PodXT.

Yes. Right now, the serial numbers are not registered to anyone and can be added to any NI account.

This thread *is* about the software counterpart. Any effects unit can be applied to any audio signal (assuming you have the right connections). You may not get a particularly useful result, but there's nothing stopping you from putting distortion on violin samples or a phaser on a piccolo. You can think of effects as a transformation: an audio signal comes in, something is done to it, and another audio signal is sent out. No reason why this can't really apply to things in general.

Ok; I marked it as claimed, so it's yours if you want it. EDIT: NI removed all the licenses they could for software I wanted to sell. I'd forgotten that a couple of these, unfortunately including Kontakt 2, were EDU versions which can't be sold. Bah, sorry to get your hopes up OA. Better to find out now rather than later, I guess.

OA, NI has confirmed that all their installer discs include both Mac and PC content, so you're set. Let me know if you're interested.

Just to clarify, you need a computer around to make use of this, so if you're expecting to walk off with a new piece of stage gear and have a desktop, this isn't the deal for you; buy a real PodXT instead. That said, I have a PodXT and love what it does. I use it for keyboard effects and I've just scratched the surface.

Bit late to the party there, BGC?

The printing on the CD implies that they're dual-install, but I didn't see any Mac-only files when I opened it in Windows (although this could be because I don't know how to see them). I'll ask NI to be certain.

The M-Audio KeyStation 61es is not synth action. It's semi-weighted, so there is some give to the keys. I have the KeyStation 88es (identical, just with more keys), and for a semi-weighted keyboard, I'm quite happy with it. If you're not a pianist, synth action is fine, since you'll probably want it for pads, organ, that kind of thing. If you're a pianist, you either want to get semi-weighted, which will be an adjustment to make (and harder if you're playing classical as opposed to jazz, IMO) or save for a good weighted keyboard. M-Audio's "hammer-action" ones, and probably any other weighted keyboard that costs under $1,000 isn't really worth the cost: either accept that you can't afford a good keyboard and go semi-weighted to save some money, or pay for something worth playing.