Moseph

I second the 0404. I haven't used it for anything really heavy-duty, but I haven't had any problems with it. EDIT: Make sure your computer supports USB 2.0 before getting a USB interface, and make sure the interface is also USB 2.0 (which the 0404 is).

I'm not sure if it's the same thing you're describing or not, but I sometimes feel like the midrange frequencies of things I'm listening to are, for lack of a better description, too close to me in relation to the other frequencies. It happens even on professionally produced music, and it's caused by the headphones I'm using -- they're kind of cheapo. What kind of listening setup do you have? I've never seen any actual evidence that mixing at above 44.1 khz improves anything. Everything I've heard about it has been anecdotal. Personally, I don't see any reason to do it unless you plan on making a version of the music with a higher sampling rate in the future.

The Cool Edit Pro guy? I was speaking specifically of music -- CDs, cassettes, etc. There are plenty of pieces of software with TOS statements that forbid license transfers.

If the person who originally bought and paid for the music sells it to someone else (or otherwise legitimately gives his license away) he no longer has access to it and no longer has any right to it. It's like selling a physical object second-hand. It doesn't necessarily benefit the artist any more than a used car sale benefits Honda, but it doesn't hurt the artist like piracy does.

Graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music degree. Also, this morning I came up with a music analysis idea that involves averaging the location of pitches in a piece of music ... possible thesis material?

You right, it's not entirely the pirates' fault. That fact's recognized in my own buying trends, actually -- when I have the option, I buy the stuff without over-the-top copy-protection specifically so I can support those who don't use it (I use SONAR instead of Cubase mainly for this reason). But still, I think I'm justified in being annoyed with pirates for participating in the copy-protection cycle. And also helping to drive up the cost of the software that I buy.

http://handbrake.fr/ Don't think it can go around copy protection, but if you made the DVD originally, that shouldn't matter.

Aaaaand who do we have to thank for annoying, cumbersome copy-protection schemes which make it inconvenient for legitimate users to install software? Pirates! Thank you, pirates.

"It's just pointless delays, like a hallway full of balloons." I found this statement quite funny, largely owing to the disgusted way he says "balloons."

Yay for recordings! It's been about three years now, and I still can't bring myself to listen to the recording of my own junior recital.

So ... does playing someone else's guitar solo over and over again, plus associating it with physical movements (even if those movements are in fact arbitrary) have any effect on soloing ability in real life? Does the close attention you pay to the solo give you ideas for your own actual improvisations? I ask, because I think there's more to the Guitar Hero/musicianship connection than merely rhythm and dexterity. I think associating music with physical gesture of any kind may improve one's ability to listen closely to music, even when the person has not been specifically trained as a musician. The benefit, in other words, is less about improving any real skill on a particular instrument and more about connecting music listening to something physical. Is there any sort of study out on the effects of physical movement with regard to musical memory? It seems like the kind of thing someone might research, but I'm not aware of any papers written on the matter.

Ctrl + click on the link and choose "Save Link As... " At least I assume that's how it ought to work, since I'm not actually sitting in front of a Mac right now.

Behold, the metasaxophone.

I want to hear a sprechstimme version of this song. And I've got a Jill of the Jungle track. I used to play that game way back before I had a soundcard, so the music is new to me. Lock me.

I've never heard of a La-Mulana arrangement album, but I think I know where the idea came from. The game has two music modes -- a synth mode and what is essentially a MIDI mode (the manual says this mode is intended to be used with a Roland SC-88). The devs' soundtrack release is a really nice-sounding recording of what is probably the SC-88 in action. Sounds much better than the synth stuff (or the MIDI mode without an SC-88 ).

At one point, the developers apparently had an mp3 soundtrack for download from their site, but then they changed the site around and the soundtrack is no longer there. There are places online that mirror that soundtrack. If the general consensus is that linking to one of these wouldn't violate the boards' TOS, I can provide a link.

Stable and clear is what you ought to be shooting for when you EQ. If it already sounds pretty much like that initially, you may simply be overdoing it with the EQ and/or trying to use EQ to get a sound that would be better achieved through other techniques. When you EQ tracks, the idea is to reduce the unimportant/unpleasant frequencies in a given track so they won't interfere when those frequencies are needed by a different track. If you're EQ'ing the entire mix (i.e. the master channel), you just want to make subtle changes to balance out frequencies that might be a bit too loud or too soft. What kind of instruments does this mix use? If you tell us that, I or someone else might be able to make some specific suggestions about how they can generally be EQ'd. Also, do you have access to any sort of file hosting? It would be even better to actually be able hear the mix you're working on.

Haha! I wish I had a render farm! I have to just let my PC run overnight when I animate. Pretty cool stuff. I've done some fooling around with the physics and soft-body engines in Blender, but I've never put together a substantial animation with them.

Probably what's going on is that the book is counting intervals in two different ways: 1) Intervals can be counted by the number of semitones (half-steps) in them, which is a convenient way to think of them while playing a guitar, because each additional fret raises the pitch by one semitone. 2) More commonly, intervals are counted by naming them (e.g. major second), because how an interval is named gives some information about how it's being used in the music. The way semitones relate to interval names is this: 0 semitones (i.e. the same note) -- unison 1 semitone -- minor second 2 semitones -- major second 3 semitones -- minor third 4 semitones -- major third 5 semitones -- fourth 6 semitones -- augmented fourth or diminished fifth 7 semitones -- fifth 8 semitones -- minor sixth 9 semitones -- major sixth 10 semitones -- minor seventh 11 semitones -- major seventh 12 semitones -- octave

There's no such interval as a first. Are you possibly confusing it with a minor second?

A couple tricks, if you want to call them that, are in use here which I think are what allow him to compose so fast: --- He loops a lot of material. This cuts down drastically on the amount of music that needs to be written. A lot of his musical variation comes from automating parameters on the synths rather than composing new material. --- There tend to be fairly few instrumental layers, which also cuts down on the work needed. --- He's using only synths -- he doesn't have to struggle to record something just right, or figure out how to make the best use of mediocre samples, or figure out how the heck to write for a French horn. --- I assume that he views his music making as basically a fun hobby rather than anything really serious, and I would expect that this would make him less hung up on the labor-intensive OMG DOES THIS SOUND ABSOLUTELY PERFECT? aspect and more inclined to just make stuff and show it to others without worrying so much about it.

That's funny enough to sig. Which I just did.

Seriously, how stupid is this guy, anyway? The original of that Pokemon pic was the first hit in a Google search for "lucario mew tan." This isn't the eighteenth century; this is the freakin' internet -- if you found it online and stole it, someone else can (often very easily) find it online and call you out.

Stolen from this talented individual. I love how he chopped off the copyright info on the bottom of the original and added his own.

BuzzStrings has a slow attack, meaning it takes a while for the sound to reach its full volume. To fix this, there's a knob on the NN-XT labeled "Attack." Turn that to the left, which reduces the attack time, and this should fix the crescendo problem. One thing you could try for getting a soft sound in addition to reverb is an equalizer. If you reduce some of the higher frequencies, there will be less of an edge to the sound. If you're not sure how to use a equalizer to do this -- add a PEQ-2 after your NN-XT and turn the frequency knob all the way up, the Q knob all the way down, and the gain knob all the way down.