Kanthos

That, or you can use the MIDI Out from the Pro or ES to connect to a MIDI In on a synthesizer. I haven't played the 88 Pro, but I have an Axiom 61, which is another semi-weighted M-Audio model, and probably has similar action to the ES. I grew up as a classical pianist, and after years of lessons and playing, I'm pretty happy with the semi-weighted models with respect to piano playing; for things like a Hammond Organ or Rhodes, it's great (not that I have much to compare to, having only had the chance to play a real organ and rhodes a few times each). You do have to adjust your touch a lot to play semi-weighted when you're used to hammer-action, and if you don't really have a touch since you're a beginner, playing on semi-weighted will likely teach you the wrong thing. I'd recommend a good hammer-action keyboard if you want to learn piano, with the caveat that it's probably better in the long run to spend less and get a cheaper one if it means you can get started playing significantly sooner (half a year or more) because you have the money for a cheaper one now. The longer you wait on something, the less likely you are to start it, or if you do, the less time you have to get good at it until life takes over and you find yourself running out of free time.

I have a few possible ideas, but I'll need to sit down and play to nail any of them down. I'm too distracted with work today to figure something out in my head. As a side note, for anyone wanting a really good instrumental jazz Christmas album (with one vocal track), check out Peace Round by the Yellowjackets. A few of the songs are less accessible to non-jazz listeners, but the group as a whole tends to play jazz with a funk groove that's still really musically advanced but listenable by non-musicians.

zyko, I'm in total agreement. I think I'm sceptical of the idea of a deathbed conversion for the same kind of reason too: while as a Christian, I believe that only God can judge the heart, it strikes me that at least some people might make a confession of faith that they don't really mean, simply because it either makes their surviving family happy or because they figure "what the heck, if I'm going to die, I might as well." Not that I believe living a good life on Earth is a ticket to heaven from a Christian perspective, but if you make a confession of faith simply to avoid a chance of an unpleasant afterlife and you don't care about how you live *now*, does your faith, whatever religion it may be, actually mean anything? As for the movie, I know a lot of it is outcry for the sake of outcry. I know parents of my Christian friends back when I was in high school who paid little attention to the video games, music, and other cultural influences their kids were exposed to, but would definitely have spoken up about a movie like this. It's lazy/sensationalist parenting. I favour trusting my kids over sheltering them (although I do plan to be well aware of the kinds of music, games, friends, and so on that they listen to/play/have). Maybe they'll make some bad choices, but honestly, who doesn't anyway? All you can do is lay the groundwork because the more you try to push your own agenda on them when they're not receptive to it, the more you'll push them away or cause them to become more interested in whatever it is you're telling them not to do. Also, Christians suck at picking battles. As a whole, we'll get into ridiculous, unproductive debates over whether things like homosexuality should be accepted by the church and/or the government, while we generally turn a blind eye towards the major disfunctions in the aspects of love we preach as being acceptable from our viewpoint. When the divorce rate among Christians is hardly better than the divorce rate among non-Christians, when we have teen pregnancies and affairs, especially in people who *aren't* the rebel types, when there's so much going wrong within the church, it seems hypocritical to start pointing out the faults of others.

I'm not very experienced on a guitar, but from the little I know, it'd be easier to fingerpick than use a pick. I know that if I have individual fingers already hovering over individual strings, I can hit those strings in sequence faster than I can move my fingers from one to the next.

As someone who's nearly in the right stage of life to raise kids, I've given a lot of thought to this kind of thing. I'd only be really concerned about letting young children (those who can't really think for themselves yet about faith issues and who can't always distinguish reality from belief from fiction) see a movie like this. I can't put an exact age on this, as it depends heavily on maturity, but I certainly wouldn't prevent my 12-year-old children from seeing something like this. There is some merit, I believe, in playing the "children card", just not to the extreme that a lot of people are taking it. Then again, my opinion differs from nearly every Christian parent I've met. You've either got the parents who think that as long as they drag their kids to church, they don't have to even consider other issues, or the parents who try as hard as they can to shield their kids from everything "worldly", the extreme case being the people who believe that explicitly non-religious governments should govern their nations based on the Christian moral code. These are the types of parents who, if asked what their worst fear would be, would likely respond "That my children would die and not go to heaven". Ignoring their myopic view of Christianity being focused on heaven (i.e. that all that really matters is ultimate salvation, and that life on earth has no significance), the problem is that those types of people forget that Christianity is a choice. Perhaps they think that if they constantly surround their kids with Christian influences, they'll have an easier time making the choice, or that their kids won't ever make a conscious choice; they'll just "grow up Christian". (Incidentally, I think both views completely cheapen the act of becoming a Christian). My view instead is that I want my kids to become Christians, but most importantly, I want to teach them to *think for themselves*. I don't want to create mindless clones (i.e. Rod and Todd Flanders), and I'll be happy and support them in their life choices, even if rejecting Christianity is one of them, as long as they've made an informed decision, one that's well thought out. Of course, I fully expect a lot of Christians to see differently on this. Then again, the Christian community generally abandons logic in place of faith, while I'd far rather have faith for the things logic can't deal with.

I just came across this project now. I can't promise anything, but I should be able to pull something off before Christmas. Whatever I do will be something jazzy or bluesy, probably featuring Rhodes or B3. Let me give it some more thought and I'll edit my post with what carol I'd be interested in doing.

Garritan Jazz and Big Band

The cat analogy was hyperbole That said, I could hardly stand to listen to any of the official demos on the site because of the poor-sounding saxes. Low budget libraries don't necessarily mean low quality. Perhaps it's something about the timbre of a sax that sets it apart, but a library like EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Silver still has an overall level of realism that's much higher than JABB. While I haven't played with the library enough to really get into its strengths in detail, I wouldn't say it's a *bad* purchase if you know what you want it for and know what it can and can't do. If you plan to write mainly for brass and either not have too much saxes (particularly exposed sections or solos), then it could work pretty well on a low budget.

True, although there's a difference between using marketing power to try and sell crap and using marketing power to increase the sales of something that is obviously not perfect but isn't completely horrible either. It takes both good marketing and a good quality product to really be successful in today's market.

I don't know about other libraries, but Garritan JABB is horrible. Their brass is pretty good, and rhythm section is great, but their sax instruments are painful to listen to. I downloaded this to try it out and see if it was worth paying money for, and deleted it within an hour. I haven't listened to samples from the other libraries mentioned here, but Garritan isn't worth any amount of money. If you just want trumpets and trombones, you can do much better, there are tons of places to get good rhythm section instruments from, and the saxes sound worse than the sound a cat makes when kicked, run through a wah pedal, phaser, and heavy distortion.

FL Studio has tutorial videos available for download on the official site. Might be only for registered users though; I can't remember.

Skrypnk, shame on you! Sytrus requires paying extra money, at least if you want to save. One of the other synths would have been a better recommendation. EDIT: Have you looked at the stickied threads in the remixing forum? There are a few places on the site that give fairly in-depth guides to remixing, both in general and in terms of meeting the site guidelines, and also threads that cover other topics (zircon's production tutorials, remixing on a $0 budget, what gear to buy, etc.)

It's fairly common for a lot of more modern jazz bands (from the fusion era onwards) to have one person on a drum kit and several other percussionists. Some examples are the Pat Metheny Group and Weather Report.

Ditto to zircon and DarkCecil. I'd like to add that if you're trying to sequence drums in a style that uses a lot of fills, like rock or jazz, you're probably best off to sequence a straight part first, and add fills afterwards. If you're really not inspired, you can possibly use instrumental fills over very basic drum fills (the standard bar of 8th notes on the snare comes to mind) to distract from the fact that your drum part is weaker than your instrumentals. A drummer's primary role in a band is to provide rhythm (it's the bass player, really, who should be keeping time), and I'd far rather play with a drummer who can only do basic fills, if any, but is solid at what they can do than play with someone who tries to do too much and fails.

Louis was playing dixieland jazz in 1919, if not earlier. Unlike musicians in many other genres, most jazz musicians who achieved fame did so across multiple decades. Louis died in the 70's, and played pretty much continually from 1919 until his death. The first recorded jazz was in 1917 (Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band), which, I believe, predates the earliest Blues recordings by 5 years. Both genres have origins in the 1800's, and while it's probably fair to say that blues is older (although no one really knows the true origin of the blues; jazz is much more clear on that count), it's still fair and accurate to say they grew up together, although blues may have been jazz's older sibling. I mean, unless you're listening strictly to the early blues recordings from the early 1920's (in which case I'd suggest you listen to blues as it's evolved over the years, not just the early recorded roots), then you have to admit that both genres were growing up for the entire 1900's and are still evolving (although jazz is generally more popular and innovative than blues nowadays). The roots of jazz were initially in African music, classical music (chamber music in particular) and ragtime, melded together in New Orleans. Blues was an influence on later genres of jazz, but not, as far as I know, on dixie. As for the Neskevartetten track, I suspect that your issue isn't as much that the song isn't "bluesy" but that it doesn't fit *your* conception of blues. Genres are a grey area, and while I don't think the song can be categorized into either jazz or blues, it's more blues than jazz, hence it being labelled as a blues tune. Maybe it technically is a "blues-jazz fusion" (confusing enough since fusion is its own genre already), but labelling songs with all the genres they might be a part of gets to be tedious really quickly.

From a compositional perspective, it's done in the form of a 12-bar blues. Also, given that jazz and blues kind of grew up together, share common roots, and have influenced each other, it's not that surprising that there's a jazz-oriented blues mix. From the little I know about blues, I can see why you wouldn't like the track, but to say that it isn't bluesy is wrong.

Sounds great. Where's it being used in the mod (general setting and so on, as I don't know the plot of the mod)? Hopefully not tavern music; the only usage of any kind of Irish-like folk music I can think of in a game that isn't used in a tavern is the Termina theme in Chrono Cross. The accordion sounds very slightly piercing in the high end; changing the EQ a bit would probably help that. Besides that, I'd love to hear some Irish whistle if you have more room to expand the track, and if you're able to write something that stands as a song, as opposed to a looped track that's intended to be short, doing a chorus and maybe a bridge that's in a different key (up or down a 4th or 5th probably work well for the genre) would suit the song. Overall, really good though. I've listened to it a few times because I enjoyed it, not just to review it, which is more than I can say for most WIPs.

I partially agree with you. I could do a rap over some video game music and I wouldn't expect to get that passed because it wouldn't have enough interpretation, unless the underlying track had enough interpretation on its own. I think, though, that it's fair to say that while vocals shouldn't be the only interpretative contribution to a mix, they also shouldn't be discounted. I don't think that lyrics are completely independent of the music they're written for (unless, of course, the lyrics were originally from some other source; people enjoyed the text of Carmina Burana long before Orff), but they're clearly not as integral to the music as the melodies (vocal or instrumental) and harmonies. If that wasn't the case, jazz would've had a lot more trouble as a genre, as much of the music that's considered to be a jazz standard has lyrics which are used at most as a stylistic guide for the instrumental performer in instrumental jazz ensembles. An even better example is a 12-bar blues pattern. Sure, there are some minor variations, but they're standard enough. I don't see anything wrong with a 2-5-1 pattern in a jazz remix, because no competent jazz musician would build a remix using solely that pattern. I think we're talking about the line between using and overusing a stylistic idiom. Saying that 2-5-1, when properly used, constitutes a "preset" is on the same level as saying that classical pieces (and those from genres derived in any way from classical, which basically includes everything) shouldn't use any standard cadences, as those are too much of a "preset". I think the issue is with overuse, not use. Any thoughts about doing a more jazz-oriented remix? I was really hoping to hear more of your interpretation of the J-E-N-O-V-A theme that got included in your VotL remix, or something else in a similar style.

You've been posting a lot of general how-to threads that I've noticed. I suggest you take a look at this, as it links to various threads and resources that should answer your questions. Since I'm not sure that your specific question is answered, I'll answer it. I'll start with another question: does your MIDI keyboard have the capability to produce audio sound or just MIDI data? If you're not sure and can't figure it out from the manual, see if the keyboard has built-in speakers or a 1/4" or 1/8" output jack. If you have speakers and you're not getting any sound, make sure the volume control is turned up high enough on your keyboard. If it is, the keyboard is likely defective. If you don't have speakers but do have a 1/4" or 1/8" output jack, you can listen to the audio using headphones (there are dirt-cheap 1/8" female to 1/4" male adaptors that will let you plug your 1/8" headphones into the adaptor and the 1/4" output from the adaptor into the female port on your keyboard). Alternately, you can get a proper keyboard amp (which should have 1/4" input) and a 1/4" patch cord to connect your keyboard to an amp. If your keyboard doesn't have any kind of audio output whatsoever, then it's a MIDI Controller: a type of MIDI keyboard that only produces MIDI data and must be used to control some other source. You have a couple options here as well. You could go get a keyboard or synthesizer with audio output that takes MIDI input and connect the MIDI out from your controller to the MIDI in on your other keyboard or synth. When you play, the MIDI data from your controller (MIDI events such as "Note on" and "Note off") will be sent to the other keyboard or synth which will produce the sound. The other option is to get software for your computer that produces sound based on MIDI data and hook your keyboard up to your computer, either through a MIDI port on your soundcard or through a USB port, if your keyboard supports that. The idea is the same as controller to keyboard: you're sending MIDI data to software that interprets it and produces audio. This can either be a standalone VSTi such as Kontakt (a sampler that contains a huge sample library covering a ton of instruments) or a DAW (Cubase, Sonar, FL Studio, Logic, Reason, etc.) that is running some type of audio plugin. Without knowing what you hope to accomplish musically and what your current setup is, no one here can really suggest anything different or tell you how much the gear and/or software would cost.

I doubt it would be accepted, since you'd have to do an awful lot of personal interpretation in order to meet site standards given that you'd be using someone else's lyrics overtop of video game music. Basically, the music would have to be so innovative and original, while paying due homage to the source tune(s) that it would make the judge's panel ignore the fact that you're using someone else's lyrics (thanks for the reminder why I stopped listening to most mainstream Christian music years ago). Basically, I don't think that could be done while meeting all the submission criteria.

Glad to help. So was it just removing all your plugins? Was there any one that was bad in particular, or did you just wipe them all and not bother trying to figure out which one(s) were bad? I take it your quote in your signature is from Shivering Isles? I have Oblivion but haven't made it there yet; I really should.

Depends how you use it. I know zircon owns it, and I do as well. I use it solely for effects. I'm not sure how you would use it as a VSTi if you're not using the tape deck capabilities to play back an audio file with effects.

I'd also think that adding original lyrics does a lot for interpretation, provided the song is not a MIDI rip of the original. I don't recall the submission standards saying that remixes must only have melodic or rhythmic interpretation. Perhaps this is something that might need to be clarified more though?

A VSTi is an instrument. It can be used to generate sound, given MIDI input. A VST can either mean a plugin that doesn't produce sound from MIDI input (i.e. an effect, like a delay or reverb plugin), or any plugin (instrument or effect) that is written as a VST (as opposed to other similar formats). Most people generally refer to either type as a VST, and the context is usually obvious (it's easy to tell a reverb plugin from a sampled symphonic orchestra).

Assuming the problem is with the visualizer plugin, there should be a way to disable that from outside of iTunes. I'd know where to look in Windows (both in the registry, and there's also a folder under Documents and Settings\My Username where iTunes reads plugin information from), but I've never used a Mac. However, there's some discussion on the issue here. Regardless, it sounds like a plugin problem, so removing all custom plugins you may have installed should help.