Kanthos

I haven't used Finale since PrintMusic 2006, but I can say that you're not likely going to be able to get OCR-worthy music out of it, no matter how hard you try. The problems you face is one of control and realism. Control is an issue in the sense that the only way you can manipulate the human aspect of the music is through dynamics and other markings, and Finale will typically render those in a uniform way. Think about a crescendo, for example: are all crescendos from mp to f the same? Even just the ones that last the same length? What specifically does f mean, and can you quantify it, say to measure it in decibels? Not really, since dynamics are a range, and the intensity with which you play a f passage as a player is largely dependent on the nature of the music, where it lies in the piece, and so on. There are a lot of human aspects like this that you can't control in Finale since it's not set up that way. You also don't have control of things like EQ and mixing levels. Nearly all recorded music in all genres now, including classical, is produced in the studio (in the case of an orchestra, recorded in a concert hall and mixed down later is an option). The last I'd seen, Finale doesn't give you the fine-grained controls you need to really give that last bit of polish to the sound. Your best bet, if you want to use Finale compositions to produce remixes, is to export as MIDI and import into a proper DAW (Cubase, FL Studio, Sonar, Logic, GarageBand, Live, etc.) where you can manipulate the human aspects of the performance. Your arranging skills may be fantastic, but Finale isolates you from the level and type of production tools you need to satisfy the production requirements of the OCRemix standards.

No, just about having a more complete list.

Ok. I'm used to having a Ventrilo server to connect to for World of Warcraft, and I didn't even think about in-game voice chat.

How does that work in TF2? I imagine there's a bit more to it than just plugging in a headeset?

I'll have to get in on a game sometime soon. Haven't done much gaming at home in the last week; I've had a few other things on the go, and Easter won't help any. Maybe tonight or tomorrow though.

One suggestion I have, not so much with the new exposure of database but with people's profiles, is to add specific categories for a few types of keyboards. Right now, I have Rhodes listed under the catch-all "other" category, and seeing organ might make some people think that I could play and record a pipe organ (which I can't) instead of a B3 (which I can).

Or, at least, post a WIP; there are enough people who read the WIP forums who aren't judges but who often would share the judge's opinions on whether a mix is submission-ready. Of course, that draws the risk of having people applaud a non-OCR-worthy mix just because they like it, but it's a shorter process than submitting and waiting for a NO.

The crossroads are always under attack on my server, and I'm not even PvP. I've got a level 70 blood elf mage on Tanaris, in a casual guild. We've downed Gruul a couple times and have a large number of people who have cleared Kara, but we're not really a raiding guild. I still play pretty regularly; if nothing else, I at least log in every day to do my daily transmute and hopefully discover more alchemy recipes.

Best post in the thread right here. I'm in.

Um, isn't this a repeat of this thread, which you also started?

How about a musical where a number of young artists live together in poverty in a community in New York, where they deal with love, AIDS, and death as they look for acceptance? You could base the story off a classic opera and elude to one of it's most recognizable themes in your music. Or maybe write a musical based on a well-received book. I hear Gregory Mcguire has some good ones that might adapt well into a musical format. All joking and references to existing musicals aside, what exactly do you mean by write a musical? Write a script? Write song lyrics? Write the score? Some combination of those? I don't have any real ideas, only to point out that this is *a lot* of work. Especially if you want to be a composer and lyricist (it will help you out *a ton* to be both) who would work with someone else who would provide the script and story, it might be a better direction for you right now to take an existing story, find a few scenes in it that you feel are good candidates for songs, and write the songs to go with them rather than deal with the stress of trying to write a whole show from scratch. By all means write a show if that's what you really want to do, it *has* worked out for a beginner to do a successful show before (listen to the episodes in this podcast; it's an interview with Stephen Schwartz); even completing a non-successful show is a big feat too. Good luck, and hopefully someone else comes up with a serious suggestion. Honestly though, look at existing literature; even if you adapt something instead of using it as-is, you can get somewhere.

Many people across many industries love their job. Does that mean they should work for free? Should a teacher who's passionate about teaching students not get paid for what they do because it's something they love? You forget the difference between those who make music or write code as a hobby and those who do it as a full-time job, who *will not make money otherwise*. Then again, your posts read as if you're a pre-pubescent, spoiled, entitled white kid who's never had to work for anything in his life, so it's not surprising that you place no value on real work. Ok, so tell me again, using English please (instead of the grammatically deficient crap you usually post) why I should not make money for working as a software developer. Tell me why I should tell the bank to screw off about my mortgage, car insurance, food, and other essentials because I should be some kind of idealized person who works for free. There's no way I can or will do that. And if I want to charge something reasonable for software or make music I wrote as a hobbyist, independent of work, what's wrong with that? I paid good money that I worked for to acquire the set of development tools, computer hardware, and audio software that I have; it'd be nice to make a bit of my investment back. Guess what? The FL Studio team, Steinberg, Native Instruments, Garritan, all of those developers and sound engineers do that as their *job*, not as a hobby. So what if they happen to love what they do? If you're seriously suggesting that we all should find jobs that we like and should work for free, you have a lot to learn about basic economics and financial principles. And if you're so high and mighty, what have you produced and offered to the general public, free of charge, no strings attached? And, for that matter, is it actually worth releasing? If you want to release stuff for free, be my guest, but the fact that you come in here and openly condemn those of us who work in fields we enjoy says that you have a lot of balls and no brains.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday! May you go on to create more remixes like Wanderer on the Offensive!

Hopefully that solves it. I can imagine what it's like to be without a computer for all the things you need it for. Like Team Fortress 2

For a complete beginner, the tutorials will do a better job explaining it than any of us typing things here. No one really wants to invest the time to develop a complete tutorial when the videos already exist. Start with them and ask people here when you have something more specific than "what do I do?"

pixietricks announces new website forum! Stalkers emerge from the woodwork and hijinks ensue!

Sounds like the audition button will do what I want. I think my audio interface only supports one output, which is fine since I'd only be using one thing at a time, or if I was recording an instrument with effects to add to an existing mix, I'd want to hear the mix as well as the new instrument anyway. Thanks for the help!

I'm sure this is easy to do, I just couldn't figure out how to do it. I was playing bass last night and tried running the bass through my Edirol UA-25 audio interface and then into Cubase, with the intention that I could play on an audio track, have the audio track routed to Guitar Rig 3 for effects, and then have the output going either to the monitor/headphone output on the UA-25, to the UA-25's standard output, or (ideally) both. Obviously, Guitar Rig 3 is standalone, so I could just run it independently of Cubase if I'm playing live, but I'd want the setup the way I described it so that I can play with effects on (not that important for bass, but at some point I want to play around with wah saxophone, recording both the audio and MIDI data for the pedal) and hear what I play with the effects as I play it. What actually happened was that Cubase was able to record the bass part successfully if I armed the track for recording, and the peak meter on the audio track was recognizing the input audio signal if I wasn't recording, but I couldn't get any sound output as I played, although if I'd recorded the part, I could play it back. Anyone know how to do this? I imagine someone here has tried recording with effects? Or does everyone use physical effects boxes and just record the final signal, so hearing it monitored doesn't matter?

I never wear sweaters, but will play some jazz on the 20th in honour of the man whose show first introduced me to that genre of music.

There are doubtless people here who pirate, although no one admits it due to site policies and such. My personal view is that it takes a lot of work to develop quality software (I'm a programmer myself, so I'm not just speculating about nothing here), and it seems hypocritical to ask for money for my software but expect to get everything I want for free. Also, I believe the underlying problem is that as the use of computers has spread, people have begun to believe that having the software of their choice at the prices they want is a *right*, which it is not. If I expected to buy a Jaguar for the same price as a Honda Civic, no one would take me seriously, as the Jaguar is obviously better engineered and I have a clear choice to buy it or not. Why people view software differently is beyond me (the analogy here is between commercial and free software).

This you, Darkesword?

I don't think you understand how Subversion works then, because it does exactly what you just described. There would be minimal, if any, extra CPU cycles, especially if all you use is Tortoise SVN. SVN is a versioning system: you basically make a repository (a place to store data; the setup is really easy), add an empty project to the repository, and check the project out. You can then add files to the project and commit your changes to the repository. SVN is only active in the process when you actively invoke it; it's not something that'll sit and monitor all your changes. It works when you commit by comparing your working copy of the file to the latest version in the repository. So for your purposes, it'd be a bit of setup, and then you'd commit changes as frequently as you like. You wouldn't want to change the filenames each time you commit; instead, you can see the history for a single file and can revert to the committed version of your choice. You also can add a comment with your commit to describe the changes you've made, so something like "Added a bass solo" would make it easier for you to find the version you wanted than remembering that you added the solo in "CT Remix - Tyrano's Lair 03.cpr". Take it or leave it, but from using it both for personal use and in a team at work, I'd be very comfortable having Tortoise SVN as one of the only processes running alongside my DAW, both for stability and CPU cycles.

Good luck Brad! What are you going to be playing?

I've had Cubase crash and burn when loading old files, although it wasn't corruption. Cubase doesn't really like VSTs that load a lot of samples when they launch. I can save an instance of Kontakt in a project, for example, but if Kontakt tries to load instruments, Cubase dies. Took me a while and a couple lost projects to figure that out.