Kanthos

Honestly, it comes down to preference and price for the most part. Each is better than the others in some way, so your best bet is to try them all and figure out what you like best. If you have any more specific questions (stuff like "Which DAW is the best for doing X"), some of us here can probably help with that.

Hard knee or soft knee?

Two things typically make up blues music: the 12-bar blues chord progression and the style and theme. It's probably safe to say Neskvartetten is much more of a jazz band than a blues band, but many jazz artists play songs in a 12-bar blues pattern, and in the jazz world, use of the term blues generally means just using the 12-bar pattern.

I'm interested. I'll need to find MIDIs or something of the Phantasy Star IV soundtrack so I get a sense of it, since I've never played the game.

No problem, Pixie. I confused myself too. Seems to be a regular occurrence for me

Due to "technical difficulties" * the full story of my entry didn't get listed. Adding Zelda to Footloose was exactly as I described it when I called in. However, there's more to the Mario thing than just switching the music. It was my idea, but if you listen to the two clips, the bass player and drummer were obviously in on it as well. I also cleared it with the actor playing Ren, the lead character, and with Sean, the conductor and my co-musical director. During the original clip, Ren slides on his knees to the front of the stage during bars 7 and 8 (when the piano is playing chords each eighth note; it's the loud section in the first audio clip). He's back on his feet and singing on bar 9 (on my audio clips, the electric piano sound is playing the vocal line). What we did instead was to have Ren do a shorter slide and start a couple bars early. Then, when we played the two bars from Mario, he actually jumped up and punched a brick, so he actually *acted* like Mario in addition to the music being from Mario. * Technical difficulties, in this case, means the following. I don't listen to podcasts over the weekend, so I didn't hear the VDGJ episode promoting the contest until two days before the first deadline. I didn't have time to put the audio together, so I submitted a description of what I'd done via e-mail. When the deadline was extended by a week and I resubmitted, I tried to call in my entry. I got cut off, so I e-mailed the MP3s to Zircon and Pixietricks. They played the partial audio clip and the MP3s instead of reading the e-mail (would've been nice, I sound AWFUL on the phone) and playing the MP3s, so the best part of the story got cut off. Oh well.

I wonder if Google would figure it out if you wrote a clicking-bot. Something that scanned the page every 5 minutes, found the links in the ad section, and went to them. Just think! VGDJ could be rich! Or I could get arrested or something. But seriously, I don't mind clicking to support my favourite podcast.

It seems like they don't have a lot of links to choose from. I've hit refresh around 50 times and only seen 4 different external links. I clicked on all of them.

Kontakt has it in for me. What I want to do is to have four separate channels, each with one instrument, and have Kontakt or Kompakt (Kontakt in this case, I'm doing a jazz mix) use the input MIDI data and send to four separate output channels. To do this, I have one channel using Kontakt as the generator and the other three using MIDI Out. All the MIDI Outs are set to send on MIDI port 1 to the channels 2, 3, and 4, with the Kontakt channel being channel 1. Kontakt has MIDI port 1 selected as its input port and has my four instruments set up to get MIDI data on the appropriate channel. Kontakt only has three built-in outputs: two stereo outputs, st. 1 and st. 2, and a surround output. Since I can't use the group thing that you mentioned, like I can in Kompakt, I made two more output channels, named them st. 3 and st. 4, and set them up to output to channels 5/6 and 7/8 respectively. So far, so good. What I'd expect to happen here is that mixer channel 1 will get the piano, channel 2 will get the bass, channel 3 will get trumpet, and channel 4 will get drums, everything will be playing the correct part, and won't be playing more than one part. What's happening instead is that the trumpet is getting mixer inserts 3 and 4, and the drums are getting 5 and 6. It's not a fault of the trumpet instrument or the way it's set up; if I disable the piano and send the trumpet output in Kontakt on st. 1, it only uses one insert on the mixer (and it doesn't overlap with other mixer tracks either; I checked for that). One way around this would be to have two copies of Kontakt, one for trumpet and piano and one for bass and drums, so that I can use st. 1 and st. 2 in each, but that seems like a silly wokraround when I'm probably doing something else wrong. I looked throught the FL Studio Bible and Kontakt 2 manual and couldn't find anything to indicate that what I'm doing is wrong or that I've missed something. Any help would be appreciated.

Kontakt has it in for me. What I want to do is to have four separate channels, each with one instrument, and have Kontakt or Kompakt (Kontakt in this case, I'm doing a jazz mix) use the input MIDI data and send to four separate output channels. To do this, I have one channel using Kontakt as the generator and the other three using MIDI Out. All the MIDI Outs are set to send on MIDI port 1 to the channels 2, 3, and 4, with the Kontakt channel being channel 1. Kontakt has MIDI port 1 selected as its input port and has my four instruments set up to get MIDI data on the appropriate channel. Kontakt only has three built-in outputs: two stereo outputs, st. 1 and st. 2, and a surround output. Since I can't use the group thing that you mentioned, like I can in Kompakt, I made two more output channels, named them st. 3 and st. 4, and set them up to output to channels 5/6 and 7/8 respectively. So far, so good. What I'd expect to happen here is that mixer channel 1 will get the piano, channel 2 will get the bass, channel 3 will get trumpet, and channel 4 will get drums, everything will be playing the correct part, and won't be playing more than one part. What's happening instead is that the trumpet is getting mixer inserts 3 and 4, and the drums are getting 5 and 6. It's not a fault of the trumpet instrument or the way it's set up; if I disable the piano and send the trumpet output in Kontakt on st. 1, it only uses one insert on the mixer (and it doesn't overlap with other mixer tracks either; I checked for that). One way around this would be to have two copies of Kontakt, one for trumpet and piano and one for bass and drums, so that I can use st. 1 and st. 2 in each, but that seems like a silly wokraround when I'm probably doing something else wrong. I looked throught the FL Studio Bible and Kontakt 2 manual and couldn't find anything to indicate that what I'm doing is wrong or that I've missed something. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks once again. You in particular have helped me and so many others a lot. I should send you a cookie or something. From Subway. Along with a bottle of water, none of this cheap "tap" stuff.

Bump.

Bump. To add to this, is there any way of somehow routing different MIDI channels from a VSTi into multiple mixer tracks that *can* be used with mix effects? Seems to me that doing so would be common and would be a fairly important feature.

Awesome, LAOS. Now if you actually put that up in the store, that would be even better

Kevin did in fact create sheet music. Get it at his site, http://www.kevinlaumusic.com/. I don't know if Kevin will ever read this himself, but if you do, great work. You won't remember me, but I met you at a wedding shower in Pickering for Liz and Mark. I'm checking out more of your stuff on your site. Haven't had time to hear much yet (Liz only pointed your site out to me this evening), but I especially like the version of Eternal Harvest. Yes, I know it's a remake, but well done just the same.

Get better, Zircon! Does this mean that we can resubmit? I e-mailed in something today that I would've much rather done over the phone so I could include an audio clip, but didn't have time to pull it off, and I'd like to be able to do it properly if possible.

I second the two hard drive idea. First off, it's useful because if you ever have to reformat and reinstall everything, you don't have to back up your data first, since it's on a different drive. That saved me so much time the last time I reformatted. Secondly, you might get better performance with a second hard drive for data, especially if you're running low on memory. Windows uses some hard drive space as temporary memory. If you have that space on your program drive and have your samples on your data drive, you'll get better performance than if you have both on the same drive.

Dual monitors is great for more than just remixing. No, it's definitely not necessary, but as a programmer as well as a (hopeful) remixer, it's something I wouldn't do without. Being able to have my programming environment in one window and the software I'm working on running in the other is a huge timesaver. That's all you'll get out of remixing on multiple monitors though. It's a timesaver, just like how you're usually better off using a keyboard instead of mouse to enter notes on the piano roll if you can play piano. You can do without it, and if you're not convinced and have a list of other gear you want, you probably want to get that first.

I don't know Phantasy Star at all, but Chrono Cross would definitely work well. However, I'm assuming that by motifs, you mean something more along the lines of Wagnerian motifs where there are a set of themes representing various characters and, in some cases, events or objects as well. That might be difficult for Chrono Cross: the score doesn't have much in the way of motifs, unless you count music written for one specific zone as a motif (for example, the Earth Dragon Isle music). The few common themes that do exist are mainly either taken from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack or are still limited in scope and not really tied to any character, event, or object (for example, Arni Village in both worlds share a theme; in Another world, it's a slower, more mellow version than in Home World). So, you might be hard pressed to use motifs in this sense of the word without doing some major reinterpretation. I'm all for good reinterpretation, but you might have a hard time convincing someone like me who knows the soundtrack and game really well that some arbitrarily chosen theme is, say, Serge's theme. I've played enough to have strong associations between tracks in the soundtrack and the event or location in which they are played. This isn't to say that using motifs in this sense will be impossible, but only that it'll have to be done with some caution. I love the idea of having a live orchestra record it too, and if it works, I'm all for it. The only challenges are the rights to distribute it freely (i.e. will the orchestra mind that their playing is freely downloadable?), the cost of the orchestra (unless your connections allow you to get it for free) and making sure the remixes are actually orchestra-friendly. Many of us could make a good-sounding orchestral-style remix; to actually arrange that for a standard orchestra is a whole other challenge that I bet most remixers on the site have no experience with at all. For that matter, there's enough people who admit that they're good at remixing but can't necessarily read or write music. Again, this isn't a challenge that can't be surmounted, but is something to think about. All that out of the way, I'm a new remixer and certainly can't start anything right away (I'm finishing my master's thesis at the moment) but would definitely like to be involved in the project, especially if it's Chrono Cross.

But Zircon is just a big teddy bear. He wouldn't *ever* punch you in the face. Ever! DrumUltimA is mean though! Just kidding!

rofl jill hit the nail right on the head I fail at humour, obviously. *goes in a corner and bashes his head against the wall repeatedly*

Hey Drum, no offense but getting someone with a bit of an asian accent to pronounce Saskatchewan didn't help things much. Maybe it was just the audio quality or something, but it sounded to me like she did it wrong too. Here's a (pseudo)phonetic guide with each syllable on each line. The emphasis is on the second syllable. Sask (pretty much only one way to do this) atch (like catch) eh (not pronounced eh like the typical Canadian stereotype, "What's up, eh?", but more like meh without the m. If anyone can describe this better phonetically, please do) wan (like Obi-wan kenobi) Good luck next meetup report

Ah. I was doing that in some places with EWQL, typically when I was using more than one effect for the same instrument. For straight orchestral stuff, that's a great idea, especially since EWQL has reverb and so on built in, but I'm not sure how well it'd work in FL Studio for other things. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, the only way to send different tracks from Kompakt to different tracks in FL Studio is to set all but one FL Studio track as MIDI Out, which means you can't use effects on it. The other drawback is that it still isn't going to save you memory for the samples in any way, only for the player. Oh well, I guess there's no magic solution that makes this all easy short of spending a lot more on more hardware. Zircon, that's a really good idea. Yes, I probably could've figured it out myself eventually, but I obviously didn't, so thanks! Right now, I have a fully complete mix in my head; I just need to find time to get it down. It's a jazz version of Endless Battlefields from Final Fantasy Adventure, mainly in 3/4 but with a fast 4/4 section and a more progressive jazz break. Other than exact notes for the solo, I have the whole thing worked out. Someone want to take over my programming job so I can actually do the remix?

Not serious enough to spend the extra money on a second machine, especially if I'm not willing to upgrade EWQL SO Silver to platinum, which I'm not. What do you mean by taking advantage of internal midi routing? My (possibly incorrect) understanding of the term is that it means sending midi data internally through software instead of over a hardware connection. Please correct me if I'm wrong and expand on what you mean by that. Thanks for the tip on Cadence Strings, Zircon. I'll take a look at that. I guess I approached the project with the idea that if I've spent the money for a good piece of software, I should use it as much as possible to justify the expense, which is true to a point, but the music has to come first. Now all I need is time to actually get into this regularly. Stupid thesis.

If anyone is interested, I heard about this in an e-mail from EWQL. I guess I somehow got subscribed on their list when I registered EWQL SO Silver. Anyway, they periodically do group buys where if the number of worldwide purchases of a product within a certain time period exceeds certain levels, the price is dropped. Until September 30th, Symphonic Choirs is at the lowest price on the group buy, only $398 US. Read the details here. I don't even think you can get it at academic pricing for that amount. I realize that not that many of you use choral samples, and probably even fewer care about buying the software, but for any of you who do, now's your chance.