Kanthos

World 1 is the only one that is true classic Arkanoid. Get on to some of the other worlds and you'll see what I mean about the game completely reinventing the genre

Anyone tried out Nervous Brickdown yet? It's a Breakout clone and then some. I've had it since it released here and haven't finished it yet (some of the bosses are quite hard; yes, there are *bosses* in a Breakout clone), but it's a good combination of hard and fun with a really good vibe to it. The new ways they've come up with to make a "bounce the ball into blocks and don't let it get past your paddle" style game innovative are fantastic, like drawing your own paddle and using it to clear ink off a piece of paper, or having to switch the colour of your paddle to match the colour of the ball.

Started on FL Studio, switched to Cubase because it had a more developed recording process and a tempo track (more convenient to have tempo changes in one easy-to-access place) that allowed for time signature changes.

Not sure what the problem is, but in the worst case, you could export a version without percussion and export a percussion-only version by muting/soloing tracks, and then combine them.

To add to what dannthr said, just jumping in and trying to analyze the parts of a song isn't that difficult here. For one, it's a standard short rock song, not a 68-minute jazz epic or symphony Don't worry about particular language (I imagine you're familiar with the terms verse and chorus; you might not know what a bridge is), but try and figure out, overall, what's happening in the song. Once you can do that, once you know the direction your song is going to take, then you can figure out what to emphasize. In rock, for example, something you'll hear fairly often is that the verses are quieter than the chorus, and this is usually done by having less "busy" parts for all instruments (i.e. playing less notes), and by using a lighter touch for the notes that are played, such as using a hi-hat rock beat on the drums. Drum fills in such a verse might be shorter and use more cymbals, especially if the drummer has splash or small-radius crash cymbals. In the chorus, the drummer might switch to the ride or might play the hi-hat with the cymbals open instead of closed, giving a louder sound, and might have bigger fills oriented more around the snare and toms than during the verse. The other parts might be playing more. One thing you generally want to avoid is switching styles at odd places. The average listener should be able to figure out the parts of your song based on the instruments alone; if you do something like switch from hi-hat to ride partway through a verse, that just sounds bad.

I like the version of To Zanarkand, except that it's really lacking in bass once the strings come in. This is obviously because you're playing the piano one-handed; I'd love to hear a version of the strings recorded on top of a two-handed piano version.

According to Jack Thompson, at least one school shooter (can't remember which incident; maybe the one in Montreal last fall?) has trained on Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Clearly it will turn us all into killers and should not be played.

Awesome idea! I remember that cartoon and it was great. Hope the game lives up to or surpasses the original.

When will people learn basic reading comprehension? 1) The project is not released yet. 2) The project is not complete yet. 3) A release date has not yet been announced. 4) The release date will be announced during OCRemix's panel at Otakon. 5) I don't remember when the panel is, but Otakon runs from July 20th to 22nd. 6) The project will not be released during Otakon. 7) The panel is not announcing that the project is complete or released already. The panel is only announcing when the project will be released.

Don't ever lose sight of musicality when you're remixing. It doesn't matter if you've got amazing technical skills as a producer and you do the best job possible mastering. If your music doesn't go anywhere, if it doesn't show off your musicality, it won't likely be accepted. I suggest thinking like you're in a studio. Pay some attention to effects, eq, and so on early on (particularly with balancing the various instruments in your piece); the kind of stuff you'll likely do naturally. But don't worry as much about getting an instrument to sound "just right" from a production perspective; get the right notes down, played with the right phrasings and articulations. Then do the production work.

Edirol is a brand name. They're a child company of Roland and make things like audio interfaces (I've got one of theirs) and low-quality monitors. LagunaCloud is probably talking about a particular synthesizer, perhaps this one.

Isn't that what I said 4 posts ago?

Um, the page looks the same to me (File hosting and FTP access for musicians. Contact admin@soundtempest.net for more info.) Did everything work out? Are you sure someone else actually bought it, as opposed to your domain host replacing it with the spam-looking page since they were no longer obligated to point to your web host?

I just discovered this today. Civilization for the DS!

Ok, I'm impressed. You went from borderline troll to someone positively expressing some different opinions with that last post. Sorry for making my post harsher than it had to be.

I can't follow any kind of chord progression or time signature in this, and while I'm all for complex changes and rhythms, it doesn't have the "You won't understand how I wrote this, but you can still grasp it as a listener" vibe to it. Writing aside, you'll benefit a lot from better-quality samples, especially the sax, and better processing on the drums, which sound tinny and light, not crisp. The ride, for example, sounds like I'd imagine a cymbal half as thick and a little smaller than a real ride would sound.

Any reason why you need four TRS inputs instead of two? You're going to be using them all at the same time? You can probably get a really good audio interface for less money if you're willing to get one with two inputs. I have the Edirol UA-25 and it's been great.

If you're starting off, don't bother making soundfonts. There are enough decent free ones (check the free samples thread for links) that you don't want to spend a huge amount of time making your own. Besides, why make soundfonts if you have a mic, when you can just play the parts directly instead of recording to soundfont, sequencing, and then having to make sure you get articulations and velocities right? The only really good reason to make any kind of sample library is because there are a set of related sounds you want that you can't find anywhere.

There's no way you'll be able to do much with only $500. At very least, you'll want a decent sound card, a DAW (FL Studio, Reason, Live, etc.) and a pair of studio headphones, and then you'd use a soundfont player to use some free orchestral soundfonts, which will be somewhat limited unless you're *extremely* good (i.e. paying a few hundred for orchestral samples will make a big difference in sound quality unless you're absolutely amazing at arranging for orchestra and have great production techniques). That's also assuming you have the time, knowledge, and skills to sequence an orchestra by hand. I'd recommend a MIDI keyboard besides that, especially if you would rather play your notes into the computer as opposed to clicking. There are threads in the remixing forum that talk about each of these pieces of equipment; check them out to get a better idea of what you should be looking at getting.

If sequenced music lacks human qualities, that's because the arrangers suck. There is nothing inherent about sequencing that *forces* music to be made in a more mechanical way. Besides, some people like me who have musical ideas that they can't translate to sound using an instrument alone (I have tendonitis and was forced to really reduce the amount of time I spent playing the piano, so my playing skills now are not what they used to be, nor will I ever hit that level again); should those good musical ideas be lost because of some idealistic, pretentious crap? Also remember that a lot of people use things like MIDI keyboards to play their parts in, only resorting to sequencing tools like a piano roll when editing is needed. And before you say that editing is just trickery used by sequencers, you're ignorant if you don't realize the amount of editing that happens on nearly every album released in every genre, including classical and jazz. Either way, I'll be damned if some pretentious loser comes along and says that because I don't have the skills to make top-quality recordings live and don't have a band to play with or a drum kit or piano in my apartment to record on, that I'm not making real music because I use a MIDI keyboard and a bit of editing to get good results. Music isn't notes on a page, data on a computer, audio waves, tone colors, and anything else that someone like you would typically associate with music. Music is a language of self-expression that transcends and encompasses all of these. Maybe someday you'll realize that. So tell me, what do you do? You play a handful of acoustic instruments and jam in a garage with your brothers. Have you accomplished anything creative? Do you fairly regularly create music that makes people with more musicality (note: this doesn't just include technical skill or even experience as a player) be impressed, not because of your tone quality or things like that, but because of what you've done? Have you taken any genre and pushed its limits? Have you re-imagined any music in such a way that would get the original composer, should he happen to hear your music, take notice? Have you tried coming up with a new sound that no one else has done before? If not, then why are you insulting those here who have? Every new genre of music has had its critics. There will always be some narrow-minded buffoons who will hear something going in a direction they didn't imagine and try to discredit it, because they have mechanical skills and maybe even some semblance of musicality, but they do not have creative ideas. Right now, you are one of the ignorant.

And for the love of God, use caps and take the extra second to type for instead of 4.

Before you go reinstalling stuff, load one of the Sytrus presets. Are they all broken too? Can you adjust one of the same knobs that didn't work earlier when you've got a preset loaded? I'd suspect that you don't quite understand the workings of the synth or have forgotten to do something somewhere, and that's why the knobs seem to not be working.

You can change the serial number of the machine used for Windows. If you know the serial number you installed with the last time, you could just get a Windows install CD (as opposed to a recovery CD) and you'll get prompted for the serial number during installation.

Also, what style(s) do you want to mix? Do you play any instruments? Do you want to record any instruments? Do you have any other gear already? How good is your computer? No one can help you without knowing your goals in a fair amount of detail. Certainly, we can recommend cheap software/hardware in every category we can think of, but that's a waste of time if most of that won't help you.

I've tried and own FL Studio 7 and Cubase 4, and have tried demos of Sonar, Reason, and Live (although those were well over a year ago and I don't remember much about either of them, only that I found FL Studio best at the time). Cubase is by far the better choice, for me. FL Studio's piano roll is definitely better, but I prefer to input using a MIDI keyboard or via live recording, so that's not as important for me. Cubase's big win, for me, is the tempo track and the fact that you can change time signatures as often as you want. The recording tools seem more natural in Cubase, and the fact that the interface is oriented around seeing the parts for the entire song as opposed to working with shorter patterns and combining them to form a song is a plus too; I like having everything in one window instead of having to deal with the Song window in FL Studio. EDIT: I also find Cubase to perform better. The time spent to open a track is shorter than FL Studio for songs with roughly equivalent length and the same set of instruments. This is probably because Steinberg defined the VST standard and understand how to incorporate it into their DAWs better than anyone else. Either way, the loading is noticeably faster in Cubase on my machine.