Moseph

I don't know the details, since I've never registered anything. They have some FAQ/info sheets on the site that would be worth reading. Zircon or someone else who's established in the industry would have a better idea of the best thing to do than I would. (EDIT: Sniped; see above )

If you've created something, you already have a copyright on it regardless of whether you've registered it. Registering the copyright with the US government gives you some added legal protections that mostly relate to lawsuits and it makes your ownership of the copyright a matter of public record. You don't have to register before you publish, and you can still put a copyright notice on your work (e.g. ©2010 John Q. Public) without registering it. I think it's something like $35 per registration. I've never registered anything. The site for official info is http://www.copyright.gov/.

For anyone who's interested, the way I'm making the animations in Gimp is as follows: 1) Load image and scale it correctly (128x48 ). 2) Make sure Image > Mode is set to RGB. 3) Set foreground color to black and background color to pure red (use HTML notation: ff0000). Reverse the foreground and background if you want to invert the colors. 4) Select Colors > Map > Gradient Map, which turns everything red. (You could also use Colors > Colorize to accomplish this.) 5) Repeat the Gradient Map for all frames. 6) Select Image > Mode > Indexed. 7) Select "use custom palette" and click the palette button. 8 ) In the drop-down that appears, click "open the palette selection dialog" in the lower right. 9) In the window that appears, click "new palette." The palette editor opens. 10) Click "new color from foreground color." The color appears. 11) Right click the color, select "edit color," and make sure HTML notation is 000000. Hit okay. 12) Add another color, and set it to 880000. 13) Add a third color and set it to ff0000. 14) In the palette editor, click save. 15) Close the palette editor and drag your new palette from the palette window to the custom palette button in the Indexed Color Conversion window. 16) In the Indexed Color Conversion Window, set the dithering to whatever looks best (you'll have to try all of them). 17) Hit Convert. Boom. You have a three-color image that reflects the color intensity of the original image.

EDIT: EDIT 2: I want a sign

Says you. EDIT: Little Mac needs to be touched up by hand if you're actually going to use this. With these colors at this resolution he looks like ... something else ...

Swordfighting animation ripped from the original Prince of Persia.

Initially, I couldn't get it to make sound as a stand alone, either, even though the meters registered. I had to change the sound card setting from "E-MU 0404 | USB" to "ASIO E-MU 0404 | USB." So if you don't have it set to ASIO for standalone, try that,

Conventional wisdom is that, if possible, the operating system and the samples should reside on different drives so the computer won't have to balance accessing system files and streaming samples from the same drive. I believe the operating system's page file is the most likely to cause speed issues for sample-streaming, and you can change the location of that to whatever drive you want regardless of where the OS is installed, but you might want to do some reading on this and/or consult someone more knowledgeable than me before you commit to putting both Windows and the samples on the same drive. This may be a more important factor for speed (at least for sample library purposes) than solid-state versus disk is.

Thanks for the response. I've purchased the library (and StormDrum 2; woohoo!) and am looking forward to working with it. The wordbuilder looks like it closely resembles a multi-track DAW editing environment, so I have high hopes that my slice n' splice experience working with audio will transfer. I don't know how the Kontakt library is set up, but the Play version has legato/portamento toggles that (judging from videos) seem to do a decent job with single-syllable melismas, which was one of the areas that had concerned me. I have a couple weeks before school starts up again, so I should have some time to really dig into the library before life distracts me.

The library files are in parts 2 and 3 of the download. There are installers in parts 2 and 3 that you have to run after you run the installer in part 1.

I disagree here. I think the the piano sits nicely in the orchestra currently, and it's a good dynamic contrast with what came before it; I don't think it needs to be any louder. I think the timpani solo at 0:58 might benefit from being doubled in another voice. Cellos playing eighth notes, maybe; something to help define the pitch more clearly. This is getting really nitpicky, but the brass solo at 1:06 sounds a bit mechanical to me, mostly because there's no dynamic contrast in the line. Automating volume changes to create appropriate swelling and tapering on the sustained notes would fix it.

I have an (88-key hammer action) Casio CDP-100 that I'm happy with. Retail is about $350 without a stand. I got mine used for $250 off of craigslist. The internal speakers are pretty bad, but the piano sound itself is decent. The polyphony is low, which means that notes will start disappearing if you sustain a whole lot of them. Not a really big deal, but it can be annoying. I like the action a lot -- even more than much more expensive Yamahas that I've used. You definitely want something with 88 keys and hammer action if you can find it. I'm not sure if you can get both of those on anything besides the CDP-100 for under $500.

Finale and Sibelius talk a good game about their sample capabilities, but their realizations will never sound as good as a competently-programmed DAW realization. Finale and Sibelius are targeting the person who doesn't have the time/knowledge to do things in a DAW, and unfortunately, they (or Finale, at least) have focused on sample libraries far too much in their recent release cycles. I find Finale MIDIs to provide a good starting point for DAW realizations, but the MIDIs definitely aren't usable without a lot of tweaking. I generally prefer to do this tweaking than to play/draw things in from scratch.

No, there's pretty much no way to isolate a single instrument unless you happen to have a version of the track that's exactly the same except that it doesn't contain the element that you want to extract (in which case you phase-invert one of the tracks and play both tracks together, which leaves only the element that's different). There's a karaoke trick to remove everything that's panned to the center, which usually includes most of the lead vocals, but the resulting audio is usually pretty iffy. If you want to play with this, separate the left and right channels of the track, pan them both to the center, phase-invert one of them, and play them together.

I'm thinking about buying EWQL Symphonic Choirs, but I'm put off by the non-legato feel that a lot of the demos have (especially the "official" ones -- http://www.soundsonline.com/product.php?productid=EW-182). It frequently sounds like a succession of individual syllables with no phrasing and no connection between notes. I'm thinking that careful layering, detuning, and note overlap might be able to fix these problems, but obviously I've never used the library so I don't know how versatile it is. Tweek and dannthr: your examples sound better than EWQL's; can you guys comment on the strengths and limitations of the library? Is it possible to get a convincing a capella performance or do you have to hide things under an orchestra? EDIT: After watching some tutorials on YouTube, I'm pretty well convinced that most people just aren't using the library very well. On a lot of occasions, the people doing the tutorials (even Nick Phoenix, who built the library) make reeeeaaaally bad editing decisions. Like they don't know how a choir ought to sound. And maybe they don't, which would naturally cause problems. It also seems like they're setting up for live performance, which might explain the lack of phrasing that is so common in Symphonic Choir pieces. If you don't pay attention to continuity between notes (i.e. carefully edit note lengths and overlaps in the sequencer in addition to all the word builder editing they show) the phrasing will be crap. Looks like I'll probably be buying the library, although I'd still like to hear other people's impressions of it.

You can do a lot of that kind of tweaking by automating MIDI CCs and effects in a sequencer or by loading the samples into something like Kontakt. Inferior samples can be made to sound really good with enough work, but it's a real pain. I expect the issue is that most of the people who are willing and knowledgeable enough to put that kind of effort into it are also willing to shell out the money for a pro library that will give better results with less effort. There are also certain things (sul ponticello, harmonics, mutes, round-robin samples, etc.) that you just cannot do unless you have the samples, and basic/free libraries don't have them. Just for kicks, here's a very incomplete rendering of a Beethoven symphony (just the high strings, the horns, and the timpani of the opening) that I did with the Reason Orkester soundbank before I got VSL. Never finished it because it was a pain to program, although it would probably have been easier if I'd thought my patch setup through a little better before I started. And it doesn't sound as good as VSL despite the time it took.

Do I really need another orchestra library? the answer of course is yes

VBR (variable bit-rate) is an option you can set in the MP3 encoder, and it's fine for OCRemix submissions. It just means that the encoder will change the bit-rate over the course of the file so the sections in the music where you wouldn't be able to distinguish a lower bit-rate will be encoded with a lower bit-rate to save space.

Has anyone seen Keeper of Time? Because this movie sort of reminds me of it.

I pretty much agree with RD, but want to add that I thought it was way overscored, which reduced the overall effectiveness of the music. The music was going almost continuously, even in expositional dialog sequences where music really doesn't belong. It felt like they just sat down and scored the entire thing straight through without making any cuing decisions. I am extremely impressed, though, that a fan project would have an original underscore of this scope. Lesser projects tend just to rip music from somewhere else and slap it in without much thought, which usually ruins things.

Change it up. If it's an audio clip, slice it up and shuffle the pieces around. Maybe put an effect on it. Layer another loop on top of it. Etc.

Shot in the dark here, since I'm not familiar with LMMS. Do you maybe need to set the outputs on the tracks that aren't producing sound? Usually in a DAW individual tracks will send their audio to a master fader which will send the combined audio to the speakers. If the tracks aren't set to go to the master, you won't hear them.

Just listen to any song and pretend it was done in Reaper. DAWs don't really sound different, unless you count differences in bundled VSTs. Also, don't choose your software based on what "professionals" use unless you plan on touting your familiarity with specific software as a resume bulletpoint.

These programs all basically do the same thing. The reason to choose one over another is because the interface works for you. Some have demo versions or trial licenses (FL Studio, Sonar, Reaper, and Live come to mind). Download some demos, spend some time with each program, compare them to your experiences with Cubase, and use the one you like the most. If you want compatibility with school stuff, though, Cubase is probably the best bet. Be sure to check academic pricing before you buy anything.

You can download a trial version of it from the Nomad Factory site (which I intend to do but haven't done yet because I've been busy). EDIT: Sound on Sound review of it. I'm thinking this probably wouldn't be great for orchestra stuff.