Kanthos

Modal music is often somewhat hard to distinguish from music in a different key. For example, comparing A dorian to G ionian, the notes are the same, so the only way you can tell whether you're in A dorian or not (keep in mind that nearly all western music is built around ionian or aeolian modes; other modes are fairly rare) is that A dorian will center around A (A will be a prominent note, phrases will end on A and possibly start there, a large number of A's will have to be used, etc.) while G ionian will center around G. The need to emphasize the root note is much higher if you're not in ionian or aeolian modes, as those two modes are the most common.

You're missing the } before the else, right after the else, and right before the cout line. If statements use the following construct: if (condition) { dosomestuff } else if (other condition) { do some other stuff } else { do something different }

That's the exact kind of response I was hoping for. I'll probably start just with the book; as I'm also trying to learn composition, sequencing, and remixing at the moment with the spare time I have, throwing on vocal lessons will be a bit much, plus my wife and I are putting all our money into saving for a house so we can stop paying rent. Hopefully, we'll move this year, and once we're settled in our new town (just outside the large city where we rent an apartment for now), I'll look for a vocal teacher.

Still playing through Final Fantasy V at the moment. I like the translation better than the original Final Fantasy VI translation. There's one character (I won't name him to avoid spoilers) who is a turtle and has the following two classic lines: "I didn't spend the last 700 years sitting around eating pizza" and (mocking Bartz for being a dumbass): "You need to go get the twelve legendary weapons. They are weapons. They are legendary. There are even twelve of them!" And from a kid in Tule (adapted a bit, since I can't remember the exact words): "I'm training to be a bard. Want to hear my song? Some years ago in the canal to the east, A great big ol' monster was having a feast. He ate many people (fifty-three at least), Then some heros came and defeated the beast. My grandfather wishes he had never told me that story..."

Some versions of C++ have a pow(x, y) function that calculates x^y. If you're using the loop approach, make sure that you'll never have a power less than 1, decimal powers, or anything else like that.

I have a few questions relating to singing. I'm not a bad singer; I have a reasonable range, can sing pretty clearly, can hold my own part whether or not I'm singing it with someone, and can generally sing in tune, unless I'm pushing the limits of my range. However, my voice is boring and not very powerful. I generally sing along with my iPod as I'm walking (I live in a quiet neighbourhood so I don't get overheard, so no one thinks I'm some kind of freak), plus I sing at church. I can sing, for example, Charlie Brown's part in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown; I've got the range for it. Problem is, I'd need a good microphone so people could hear me, and even then, no one would want to listen. What kinds of tips do you guys have, particularly the vocalists, to becoming a better singer? Where do I look for that kind of stuff, short of getting private lessons (which I don't have the time or money for at the moment?) I sort of know what it means to belt something out, but how do you actually do it? What's the difference, in terms of technique, between a head voice and chest voice? I think that a chest voice is more powerful but can't go as high as a head voice, and obviously one voice comes or seems to come from your head and one from your chest. How do you actually do the two, and how do you know which one you're using? When, rangewise, is it generally a good idea to switch over from one to the other? Lastly, a question about writing for singers. Obviously, writing sheet music for a singer is easy if you just stick to lyrics and notes. What if you use other effects and wordless vocals and aahs and that kind of thing? Do composers typically write that out explicitly or have some other notation or just trust the singer to add it in? Are particular effects (belting, for example) generally specified explicitly or assumed by the performer given the nature of a section of a piece?

The link isn't working for me.

Have you changed any hardware? Did you update the drivers on things like your video and sound cards? That's the only reason I can think of at the moment.

Why are you posting here this close to the big day? Go rehearse! =D Seriously, my sleep patern has been really messed up and I've been having wierd dreams almost every night. In one, I was at a Pat Metheny Group concert and the pianist got sick partway through, so I sat in (as if I'd ever in my life be good enough to even think about playing with one of the best modern jazz groups). Pat started hitting on me after the concert. It was freaky. My wife looked at me funny when I told her about the dream.

I had a dream last night that I was at the recital, except that pixietricks started singing more jazz and funk tunes. At first, I was playing drums for the recital, but then Zircon showed up and since he was the better drummer, I moved to a B3 organ. I think I'm going crazy; I've had too many wierd dreams this week.

Sounds like it might work. I'll give it a try tonight. Thanks!

I'm trying a demo of Jamstix, which is a combination drum sequencer and drum part generator. It outputs MIDI data or audio data, and you can use it to drive other drum kits if you want. What I'm trying to do is have it make a drum track, possibily allowing for some edits within Jamstix, and then output the MIDI data to FL Studio, where I'd record the incoming MIDI into a new pattern. I could then do further editing or could save some RAM by unloading Jamstix if I wanted to send the MIDI data to a differen drum module, instead of having Jamstix route the data to another drum module. Can FL Stuido record MIDI data from a VST? If so, how would I do that, and what makes it different from recording from a non-VST source like my MIDI controller?

As I said earlier in the thread, the script is definitely changed, but they didn't get rid of all the comical lines from Woolsley's translation, and they didn't change the mannerisms of the characters from what I've seen. I doubt they'd completely rehash what was a pretty good translation, given that so many fans of the SNES translation really liked it.

I get 5 on mine and find it to be entirely playable. I'm using a 4-year old 2.4 GHz machine, but my soundcard is an M-Audio MobilePre USB. I find that it's not just the latency of the card that makes a difference, but the plugins do too, and sometimes randomly. Last night, I was trying out TruePianos and Rayzoon Jamstix at the same time, and TruePianos was unplayable with Jamstix running, even though my CPU load was about 25% and I had a lot of free memory. I tried again this morning, after rebooting, and they played great together. Latency due to plugins has always been kind of hit and miss on my machine. Another possibility is to do all your recording with soundfonts or something that doesn't use up much memory or CPU, and then convert to better samples when you're editing and mixing, because having 21ms of playback latency won't matter then.

Nice! Good luck on midterms

I tried it out last night. Apparantly on my keyboard, the polarity is reversed if you hold the pedal down while you turn on the keyboard. Polarity being reversed acted as expected: notes sounded until I pressed the pedal down. I tried a bit of recording last night, and the problem was gone. I'm not sure whether it was a concious or subconcious difference in my pedal technique, a difference in my configuration, or a difference/bug fix in FL 7, but I'm happy either way. Thanks for the help!

I tend to play my DS on the subway while listening to music on my iPod, so I have the sound off. Yes, the sound is worse, but most of the other stuff is fine. I haven't seen any lag yet, and while the translation is noticeably different, there are a number of lines that have been left the same, or are very similar, such as Kefka's "AHEM. There's SAND on my boots". From the little I've seen so far, they haven't done much, if anything, that changes the personalities of any of the characters, especially Kefka.

Sixto, Zircon's saying that your track is the worst in the project

"Edgar, you pinhead! Why do you have to live in the middle of nowhere?" FF VI definitely had the most memorable quotes of any FF game. Here's a few others. "Look at me! I'm a receptionist!" "You sound like chapters from a self-help book" "I'm a general, not some opera floozy" "Yeouch! Seafood soup!"

Yahoo doesn't like remote linking. Click the link and when you get that page, just refresh and it works. I don't recognize the song.

I'll take a look for that before I do anything else, but I'm not sure it's the cause of the problem. I've played on a keyboard before where I knew there was a polarity problem (in Footloose, we had a Roland and a Korg keyboard with two Yahama pedals, and the guy from the music store who rented them to us told us that we'd likely have to open one pedal and switch polarity to get proper results on the Korg, which we did), and it doesn't seem like the same thing. If the polarity of the pedal is opposite to that of the keyboard, I'd expect that when the pedal is up and I play a note, the note will be held, and pushing the pedal down would stop the note from playing, and that's not happening. As far as I can tell, it plays normally and just messes up the MIDI Offs. I'll try polarity first though; there's probably something on the keyboard that flips polarity.

I never got a soundtrack CD when I played Anthology a few years ago. Yes, you get cutscenes, but I'd say it's not worth it for the longer load times. You can probably download the cutscenes somewhere too.

Being a somewhat competent pianist, I prefer to play my MIDI data into FL Studio as opposed to create it by clicking. My setup is a M-Audio Axiom 61 MIDI controller keyboard with some generic footpedal I bought with the keyboard (one of the nicer pedals with the metal bar for your foot that looks like a piano pedal instead of one of the rectangular box pedals). When I record MIDI in FL Studio, almost all the MIDI data extends to where I cut off recording. By the end of a track, I'll likely have MIDI data for nearly every note. For example, the first chord I play doesn't register as a MIDI Off event, so the MIDI data looks like I held that chord through the entire pattern. Everything *sounds* fine, probably because FL Studio is picking up the velocity changes properly, but it makes recorded tracks essentially uneditable, and since I'm far from being a perfect pianist, putting tracks together is a major pain. I'm pretty sure that it's got something to do with the pedal, as I don't think this happens if I don't use the pedal for a track (I can't recall for sure though; I'll check at home tonight). Has anyone seen something like this before? Are there any settings, either for the keyboard or FL Studio, that I could change?

Love makes the feet move faster

Go here and download a free version of "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate". It's better if you're Canadian or know Canadian geography, since you'll get all the jokes, but it's a good pirate song nevertheless.