Moseph

It sounds to me like white noise with a high pass filter on it or some kind of electronic cymbal hit. EDIT: Sniped!

Can you post an example?

My parents gave it to me. By which I mean, I use my real name as an artist and my forum name as an internet person.

You just need to download the 64-bit version of PLAY, assuming you're using the PLAY edition of the library. Also if you're using PLAY, they just updated Choirs so that the wordbuilder is part of PLAY and not a separate program -- this probably means that FL users no longer need a workaround.

http://www.audiogang.org/ I don't think there's an OCR thread that deals with guilds and professional organizations, although you could start one.

I don't know the piece specifically, but it sounds like a Chopin waltz to me.

Try transposing some stuff up an octave. The mix itself doesn't sound bad to me, but a lot of your instruments are really in the same midrange areas of the frequency spectrum. The bass synth is kind of blah -- it lacks punch and tends to get lost among the other instruments, especially after 1:22. I think you should maybe replace it with something that has a less complex waveform and/or sounds more like a bass guitar.

Yes, can you rephrase the question? I don't understand what you're asking.

It's about 67 or 68 bpm. There are a lot of triplets and such that make the tempo less than obvious, but listen to the two sustained notes at the start -- you can hear a slight pulse in the sound, and that's the tempo the whole thing follows. Each of these two starting notes lasts four beats, if that's any help in hearing it.

For whether solo or ensemble patches are more realistic for building chords, the answer is that in a real orchestra, there are a fixed number of instruments (say, four horns) and anything that causes more than that number of instruments to sound at the same time is "unrealistic." If we assume, for example, that there are four horns in our orchestra, and if the horn ensemble patch is four horns playing the same note, then building a four note chord with the horn ensemble patch means that there are actually sixteen total horns sounding at the same time. This is not to say that you can't do this, or that it even necessarily sounds undesirable. It's usually extremely difficult to discern exactly how many instruments are playing in a ensemble patch, so you really have quite a bit of leeway in how you voice chords with them. Generally, if you want a really thick sound, the ensemble patch will give you that, although excessive layering may end up sounding over-saturated. Usually I don't play more than two notes simultaneously with a given ensemble patch; your mileage may vary. Another way to look at it is just to assume that there are a whole lot of horns (or whatever) in the particular orchestra you're using.

Yes, as far as I'm aware. Also, just since I feel obligated to mention this any time people express interest in EWQL Choirs, the wordbuilder is very difficult to use well. You've been warned.

Spinal Tap: Trollin' before the trolls were born.

Oh, okay, the Terratec is a legit audio interface, so that's probably not the problem. Have you been able to record without clipping at an extremely low gain, or does it clip no matter how much you turn the inputs down? If you can get a clean recording at a very low volume, you might be able to use compression/limiting to make the recording usable, although you might then have trouble with line noise. Barring that, though, miking an amp would probably be the best way to make it sound good, short of being able to put a compressor pedal or something in the signal chain before it gets to the soundcard (although I can't really say anything for sure since I haven't messed around with your setup myself). One other shot in the dark question: have you tried lowering the pickup on the bass so that it's farther away from the strings?

The distortion problem might be related to the quality of the soundcard. Is this one of those integrated cards with an 1/8" input jack? If you're going to mic a bass amp, one thing that you should keep in mind is that to get a good sounding tone, you may have to record a pretty loud signal. I've heard of people having okay results by draping a blanket over the amp and mic to cut reflections, but I haven't tried it myself. You could also patch directly from the amp to the soundcard, but if the soundcard is causing your recording problems, you may still encounter them. Does the Alesis Miclink accept 1/4" input or just XLR? If there's a 1/4" input you could run direct from the amp's output jack into that.

Just a thought on Steinberg Virtual Guitarist -- have you tried installing with UAC turned off? I've encountered some pre- Windows 7 programs that won't install properly on Windows 7 unless you do that.

An i5 with 4 gigs is probably sufficient unless you're doing really large scale orchestra mockups. Maybe bump it to 8 gigs if you're still concerned about the specs.

Wait, so you're going to mix in 5.1 but you don't have a 5.1 setup?

I have no idea whether you should switch. Are you dissatisfied with specific aspects of Live that you hope Pro Tools handles better?

Yeah, the reason you can't find the type of information you're looking for on the hypo (plagal) modes is that they're not relevant to modern composition. Plainchant in modern notation looks extremely mundane. This, for example, is the Dies Irae melody, which would probably be classified as Hypodorian because the melodic range extends below the final (which is D). Since there's no reason I can think of that this particular range issue would be of any concern to you, the distinction between Dorian and Hypodorian really shouldn't matter from a compositional standpoint. Probably also worth pointing out, if it isn't already obvious, that the term mode meant some different things back then that aren't implied by the way the term is used today. If you're looking to emulate the sound of chant, it'll be easiest to use the white-key Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes. The actual modal theory that plainchant uses is fairly complicated and probably isn't worth getting into unless you're doing academic analysis of chant or are just really interested in the music. For compositional purposes, you'll be better off listening to chant and imitating what you hear, or just taking melodies directly from existing chants.

The classification of music as being in one of those modes is based more on finals, reciting tones, and combinations of species of fourths and fifths than scale patterns per se. For the most part, those modes are going to look like white note scales similar to the non-hypo versions but starting a fourth lower -- the "tonic" degree or final is not the lowest note, though. Wikipedia has entries for them. Out of curiosity, why are you interested in them? EDIT: This may be more clear: the classification of, say, Dorian vs. Hypodorian is basically an issue of melodic range, not scale construction. You really don't need to know anything at all about the distinction unless you're studying plainchant.

Not an album per se, but Live-A-Live was used for a round in the People's ReMix Competition a few years ago, which resulted in four mixes from the game. They can be found here: http://doulifee.com/prc/PrcSong/prc.php?prcid=74 Better than nothing.

I'd rather not be connected to the highway.

Speaking of which, how do I specify where I want my warp set? Do I just have to run into you or Gman in-game to point out the spot specifically, or is somewhere up by my castle (the big bridge-looking thing NNW of spawn) specific enough?