dannthr

Urse's website could be easier to use, but you do have to go looking for stuff to find things. We use Zebra 2 at Pinnacle College as one of the primary devices for teaching students about subtractive synthesis in Sound Design.

Nice, It's a powerful sound design tool. Here's the manual, by the way: http://www.u-he.com/downloads/Zebra/Zebra2_User_Guide.zip

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25850 Here's the thread where he posted his reel and the constructive criticism following.

Well, first of all, let me tell you, I was a huge douche bag back then. And I was a bit of a jerk even here. Film composers aren't about a sound--there isn't music that is inheriently filmic in style because EVERYTHING can be put in film--if you're interested in exploring that path, then you should start where the film composer starts. Scoring to a visual. Grab a trailer, a cut of a film you like, maybe a cut of a film you've never seen before, and set it to your music. Drop every other sound away and figure out how your music can serve the narrative. Get in with indie film directors, there are more than you can count. Score to a visual--serve the picture.

If you're curious, here's a demo reel from a Film and TV composer: http://vimeo.com/41147077 Having a visual component shows us how Ned's music serves the filmic moment--a definitive demonstration of what he will bring to the picture and how he weighs in as a candidate among all the other demos we might be looking at today.

Your first cue is too long and too wandering to play as long as it did, if I were someone with a ton of tracks I had to listen to I would not have made it through the first cue. There is some HORRIFYING compression on your tracks, clipping/distortion--it's really, really awful--it has a really add threshold with a soft knee that just makes dynamics on the edge waver awkwardly. All of your tracks with any dynamic range seem to suffer from this compression issue. Nothing looks better than actually writing to a visual. A film composer doesn't merely have to fit the style, there are a lot of timing and technical issues that need to be demonstrated that are not just about writing theme or motiv--you seem to have a style, but this reel is all over the place, too long, and just doesn't sell your work. You can't just throw everything together on a montage and expect it to all fall into place--there needs to be direction and contrast and thought put into the order. Most importantly, you need to grab my attention in the first 15 seconds. Also, I hate montage demo reels--maturity in composition is development, everything else is just magic tricks. Nonetheless, you do have to satisfy that demand to grab attention in the first 15 seconds. It's still going--sheesh--dude, you can't expect to bend someones ear for 19 minutes when you're lucky to get 15 seconds. If you insist on having a montage reel, make it less than 5 minutes, probably less than 3 minutes, and only put your best stuff on there. A demo reel isn't about your indulgence, it's about selling you at your best. There are some tracks here that just sound like noodling.

[source] => [microphone] => [cable] => [mic preamplifier] => [analog to digital converter] => [computer] Many audio interfaces (not all) have mic pres built in, but the quality depends a lot on the components used in the manufacturing process and ultimately, nothing quite competes with the sound of a really good mic pre. The SM58 is a dynamic mircophone, meaning it relies on sound pressure to power the transducer. Condenser microphones require phantom voltage to power them allowing them to be far more sensitive than a dynamic microphone resulting in greater captured detail. Ribbon microphones do not use phantom power and require a great deal of gain, more gain than most standard audio interfaces come equipped to offer. Due to their construction, they tend to capture sound more like the human ear does allowing them to pair well with a high detailed large diaphragm condenser. All micrphones have a different quality of sound and capture and all micrphones sound different paired with different microphone preamplifiers. One microphone won't be enough forever but the SM58 is great for stage work since it's not detailed enough to pick up stage noises/crowd noises. But if you've ever been to a concert, you'll note that most of the time, the quality is not as good as the studio version of the track--that's not all production polish, a lot has to do with recording in a controlled environment with high quality equipment.

I've heard that the AKG C3000b, which has been discontinued: http://www.akg.com/site/products/powerslave,id,220,pid,220,nodeid,2,_language,EN.html Is very similar to the AKG C214 capsule, if you can find it used, you might be able to get between $100-200 for it. Used gear is great as long as it was cared for and was used in a non-smoking studio.

Maybe a used Shure SM58 Buying a microphone is an investment. Here's an example: In 2000, I bought a small condenser microphone (AKG C1000s) for about $200. Price of an AKG C1000s 12 years later? $200. This stuff doesn't depreciate, it's an investment that will always retain its value. Don't be afraid to save up and spend some real money on a good microphone. For stage vocals, you might be able to find a Shure SM58 for around $50, but you don't have a lot to choose from at that price range. A vocal mic for studio recording, you'll want a large diaphragm condenser microphone... eventually.

Well, you need a wave editor like Soundforge or Wavelab. Or a daw with wave editing capabilities.

When I was your age, I did all this shi* by hand in a wave editor.

Excellent, an emo bitchfest thread. One of the things I remind my students often about composing music is this: Composing music or more specifically, mastering music composition is a life-long pursuit. Acknowledging that point of fact is really important in engaging the learning process and maintaining a positive and constructive outlook throughout the journey that is mastering music composition. What don't I like about making music? The impediments and obstacles I face in the music making process are usually related to what I feel are the limitations of my tools and the legwork required to wrestle with those tools to get the product I imagine. What do I think I am not very good at? My foils are related to discipline. I am not very good at maintaining focus and discipline in general, this is not unique to music making, but is a problem I have with every aspect of my life. (In order to remedy this, I need to balance discipline appropriately with a playful creative outlet, but it's not something that happens over night, it requires a lot of hard work.) Is there a specific step in the music making process I flat out hate? I really dislike instrument programming. It's like going to the dentist, it's good to go, you have to do it, but it's painful almost the entire way through. Boring, tedious, or frustrating? Along with instrument programming, I would have to say mixing. I'm never happy with my mixes. And if I ever find myself happy with my mixes, it never lasts. I would also like to add that I am constantly frustrated with what I feel is a lack of harmonic diversity in my music making. At some point mastering conventional harmony is boring and you feel the need to push outside of the box more and more. But music composition, as a life-long journey, does have its breakthroughs, it's moments of revelation. Much like Chess or Go, a beginning player wouldn't understand the movements of an advanced player, but then you have these breakthrough moments that free you from the box, but then you realize that you have to meet that breakthrough with an advancement in your skill because that box you broke through was providing structure. The most important and embarrassing music revelation I had was last year when I realized that key signatures were meaningless and I have been struggling to advance my skill level to meet that revelation. Sometimes it's quite frustrating. I'm also struggling with a completely satisfying control over orchestral timbre through orchestration and instrumentation. Something other people think I'm good at that I suck at? Music composition, orchestration, and production. Often times we look at someone on top of a hill, and see them as being at the summit, but from our angle, we can't see the mountain behind them--they can--in hiking we call this a false summit. There is still so much more to learn, so much more mountain to climb, and yeah, it can be exhausting, and it can be frustrating when you look over and someone younger than you is higher up that mountain, or someone who used to be behind you is ahead, but you gotta focus on your climbing at all times. There is no final summit, they are all false summits, it's the climbing that's the point of the journey.

What I'm gathering from your offer is that you're looking to utilize music created by someone else to enhance your routine with the promise that our music would be cooler because someone is dancing to it... is that correct? If you're suggesting that your dancing to our music would provide any benefit to us, then yeah, I think we would need evidence that your dance is that good--after all, you're issuing a request for a "collaboration" without providing us with any actual information about what you bring to the table outside of videos of OTHER people dancing (which is just silly). It's like a musician asking for a music backing track claiming that having a live musician on our track would be beneficial to us--which is potentially true, assuming the musician is worth their salt.

Hey, that's great that you're willing to pay. It's good to see a music request on this forum with some compensation to back it.

Side-chaining?

Excellent information here. Oscillator Unison will bring out the fundamental, detune will make it sound thick, but the original sound has to have a richness in timbre from its overtones.

Richness will come from strong harmonics. Variety will emerge from exploration.

Really strong leads often employ Unison and Detuning effects--doubling oscillators but with minute tuning variations to create a strong almost chorus like effect.

The choice to have A = 440hz is really just an arbitrary one and also one that is highly variable both by region and choice. (In fact even defining it by frequency like that is something from the last 100 years or so). If you're recording with an Eastern European orchestra, you will indicate to them how you want your tuning--or they will indicate to you what their tuning is and you will have to compensate on whatever accompanying tracks or synths you might be mixing with later on. The Western Scale as a relative relationship between pitches is not arbitrary, which frequency you start your pitch on IS arbitrary and not universal by a margin.

There are other scores I'd love to get my hands on: I'd love The Land Before Time by James Horner and Back to the Future by Alan Silvestri and just about anything new from Alexandre Desplat.

If there are people out there interested in self-study, I recommend the following books: Samuel Adler's The Study of Orchestration (Third Edition) This is an excellent book that exposes orchestration and choices made by the orchestrator in the modern day orchestra. It must be paired with the accompanying MultiMedia CD: Samuel Adler's The Study of Orchestration (6-disc Accompanying Multimedia Set) Together these two provide a powerful insight into every choice made from videos of performers performing individual articulations on their instruments, so you can observe performance and understand what articulations sound like, all the way to understanding how to voice a brass ensemble and how different voicings create different moods, etc, etc. It's packed full of content and a must have for anyone studying orchestration. I will also recommend: Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration It's a bit old, but a lot of what he discusses remains true to the orchestra today. Mostly, thouh, I like his charactarization of timbres and voicings and doublings in both the melody and harmony. A very useful reference--it would be nice to have some recordings of his examples, but they're not hard to find on Youtube (after all, the guy is a famous composer). And finally, I suggest checking out any of the John Williams Signature Scores Conductor Scores. These scores are the concert scores that John Williams himself has approved for when he does his own concert tours. I personally own the Star Wars Concert Suite, which is over 100 pages long and contains the Star Wars Main Theme, Princess Leia's Theme, Imperial March, Yoda's Theme, and the Throne Room Scene; I also have the score to Battle of the Heroes as well as the Concert Suite from The Cowboys. They contain the full orchestration by John Williams and his people and provide incredible insight into modern, cinematic orchestration choices--and it's easy to find a high-quality recording to compare it to. With John Williams as material, there are many exercises I can set for myself--anything from honing my production skills by attempting a reproduction of the music with my orchestra samples, to studying the score and creating a piano reduction to udnerstand what the final orchestration branched from originally. Of course, Williams isn't the only score around--I just like it because it's contemporary and the Signature Scores are as accurate as you can get. Similar studies can be highly useful with people like Maurice Ravel who could arguably be considered one of the best orchestrators who ever lived.

I actually have renewed appreciation for that soundtrack after watching this explanation. Hansy is a crafty guy:

I've attended several Berklee summer sessions, I've found them to be as valuable as you're willing to take from them. It's a solid school with great faculty from all walks of the various music industries and sub-industries. Berklee's strongest program, however, is Jazz, and you can pretty much count on any Berklee performance grad to be a GREAT session musician.

Congratulations on completing your first class. I love orchestration concepts and it's always admirable to see people seriously pursuing a greater understanding of those concepts--it truly is a life-long pursuit and I learn new things every day I engage study. I know one of the guys that teaches that course and it sounds like a solid program. Re: The Bullies Main Theme I like the colorful and idiomatic utilization of the various orchestral instruments and timbres, very nice. I liked that you didn't overuse an instrument group, we had constant shifts in timbre to keep things fresh. I'm not totally sold on the repeating cadenza-like figure mostly because I don't quite understand its purpose as part of the compositional narrative. I would also like you to take a production pass with this and really work on breathing a little more life into the instrumental performance. More expression, more varied articulation use, etc. I know those weren't part of the parameters of your course, but they're all important factors in getting work.

Agreed, vocal exercises should never feel painful or forced--nor singing. I knew a metal singer who thought he perfected overtone singing, or singing two notes at once, but he forced it too often and in a really unhealthy way--he damaged his chords, grew a polyp in his throat and ended up having to get throat surgery. Now, he doesn't sing anymore.