dannthr

Joseph L Frog, when you say Warcraft related remixes, do you mean WC:O&H specifically or just any good 'ol Warcraft mix?

I dig this, man, what I think it suffers most from, however, is simply a lack of texture variety. There's a lot of space to develop your instrumentation, to move the melody around a bit, etc. I really like the backing sounds and the whole feel of the track, but your violin(s) really dominate the mix and I keep hoping for a more definite relief with some kind of instrumentation development or register development.

If you have health insurance, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a check-up with an otolaryngologist or an audiologist to check your hearing and get your ears cleaned. A good audiologist should be able to do a full audiogram to let you know the frequency health of your hearing range. May even change the way you mix. Most importantly, even though it seems like a passive exercise, listening to sound should be considered an exercise, and the health of your ears depends greatly on you managing how often and at what intensity you listen to sound. Hearing damage is no joke, and nothing to mess around with, you are not doomed to losing your hearing due to being a musician, you can be aware of your hearing environment and take precautions to protect your hearing for the long run. One time I was at a comedy show and the sound guy was retarded and had everything that was prerecorded at club levels, which was ridiculously loud, so I left the show, found a nearby drug store, and bought ear plugs to attenuate the sound. It sucked because some of the jokes I couldn't hear, but I would rather not enjoy a couple of bad jokes to save my hearing for later. My job depends on my ears working.

Noise with a 0ms attack and a <50ms decay, 0ms sustain/release. Add reverb to taste?

Yep, you installed half the library.

C Alto J? You should have the Alto MULTI loaded, it should load 6 utility patches that contain a complete mapping of the phonems. You should not be loading individual phonem patches.

Did you have the correct vocal range selected in Wordbuilder? (ie: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, Boy, Men, Women)

I realize there are a lot of hobbyists on this site, but I also know that many hobbyists are pretty bad ass. On one of the tracks for LucasArts, I used a friend who works as a programmer at Qualcom to do some guitar work for me. It was great being able to use him, even though LucasArts was ready to hire a guitarist for that part, I used my friend who was a superfan of Monkey Island. I can easily find talent around LA and have ready access to some very nice studios near downtown. Even still, I am primarily interested in working with people passionate about games and the games industry. Everyone here on this site is passionate both about games, music for games, but also passionate about the process for creating music itself. This means that many people here are capable of recording some vocals, guitars, saxamaphones, whatever, most people here buy the gear, use the gear, love to use the gear, even if they still do it as a hobby. Finally, I pay every single person I use. So, really, how can you go wrong? A chance to work on an actual game and get paid doing it? Doing something you already do? Do I have a project in mind right now? No. But I build my tracks around the resources I have available to me and expanding a rolodex of sexy OCR musicians means I will. That's a win/win...

The mud is from having too much stuff with too much verb across too many frequencies. Number one, gently place your instruments in an individual EQ spectrum (not harsh). Number two, apply EQ to your reverb signal separately. Some verb plugins allow you to shape the EQ response of the verb, if you have this option, again, focus the verb--that means cutting away a lot of the low-end. You just need to focus stuff.

Warfighter, the Track you're writing your choir notes on, in FLStudio, should be outputting to Maple MIDI Port 1 Channel 1. The input track for Wordbuilder should be MIDI Port 1 Channel 1. The output track for Wordbuilder should be MIDI Port 2 Channel 1. The input track for Symphonic Choirs should be MIDI Port 2 Channel 1.

Networking is vital. It's really important to form trusting relationships with the people who may hire you, but as a freelancer, you will find that networking will also assist you in getting work when you're not writing for games. For example, I will get hired to do arranging or production for other composers, and I will hire other composers as instrumentalists on my own work. Work is shared when your friends get work. It's also important to make friends with people just starting out. You may find yourself elevating WITH those people as you grow in the industry.

Brian, you have two possible issues on your hands. 1) You already know that your keyboard is a bit broken, if you're certain it receives bank change data on #32 and it is not properly receiving it, then there may be something wrong with your keyboard (more than it just not receiving data on MIDI ch 2). 2) Mute should work, if FL Studio does not mute all MIDI data in that track, then that is a failure of the FLStudio software archetecture--if that's the case, hack it however you have to for now, but keep your eye out for a new DAW. Finally, in regards to your questions about using separate MIDI tracks. You will want to initialize all your MIDI tracks at the beginning of the track with significant MIDI adjustments (vol, patch, etc, etc). MIDI is a stream of musical data and your keyboard does not "know" that you have changed to a new MIDI track. It will retain on each channel the last settings it was given.

There is nothing more important to the game industry than experience. The reason being that there is so much that happens during the game development process that almost completely unique to games. Let me ask you this: Aside from work itself, what differentiates you and someone working in games now? Is your music writing up to par? Is your music production up to par? Do you understand how games are made? Do you understand the role of music in a game? Do you understand how to implement music in a game? How quickly can you write and produce industry level quality music? Moreover, how many days in a row can you sustain the process of writing music full time? To an audio director, producer, or music supervisor, these questions are immediately answered with a work resume and if you don't have work experience, they are putting their neck on the line for you.

That is why professionals use templates.

Not at all, merely group your sessions properly. If FL Studio has folders, create a folder for each session. 16 Channels each session (or in Brian's case 15, as he can not access 2), then mute a whole folder, record an audio channel for each folder (at least). If FL Studio does not have folders, then group your tracks clearly. Whatever FLStudio has for you to organize, whether its color coding your tracks, or simply just ordering them logically. Organization is ALWAYS an important key element to any good session. I regularly deal with 50+ channel sessions, it's just par for the course.

When you use the wrong term, it can confuse people new to the operation of a DAW. Don't call it freezing. Freeze is a VST specific operation. There is no need to move the MIDI channel information to a nonMIDI track, all you have to do is MUTE the MIDI channel and it will no longer send MIDI data to the outboard keyboard. Don't give people ridiculous operational advice when they're just learning how to use these things, it confuses them for the long-term.

For Brian's information, "freezing" is not the simple operation for him, he's not using a VST. He would have to RECORD a performance, and then switch out the MIDI track used. He does not have to put his MIDI performance into some sample track--all he has to do is mute/unmute tracks individually. Let's read the OP first, then respond...

Two options: Split the project up, record separately and then combine them. - This means writing as if you had two keyboards, then load separate multis for each take. Feasibly, you could have as many tracks as you wanted this way. Use program changes. - You have to remember that in the OLD DAYS, we didn't have anything BUT hardware MIDI devices and we created program change data that is part of the MIDI standard protocol which allows a single MIDI channel to handle many instruments within a bank. Depending on how your banks are set-up, you can make a single MIDI track in your sequencer switch control over different channels OR you can make a single MIDI track in your sequencer switch patches within a selected bank. This can be an easy way to manage a large scale song assuming you don't have more than 16 channels playing at once. If your device is not reading channel 2, however, you may need to send it into a shop to get repaired--at least something to consider--my old JV1080 needs a new internal battery.

I occasionally hire musicians for quick, remote recording. I know there is a trove of excellent musicians here, one I can think of that I hired recently, and so I would love to have a rolodex of goto guys and gals I can depend on for both pro and indie products. So if you're a great musician or vocalist, send me (on or off list) the following: Name: Contact details: Instrument(s)/Vocal-Range|style: Near LA, Yes/No? Remote Capability, Yes/No? Rate-card, if you have one. Union, Yes/No? And a link to a demo if you've got one! I work on games (big and small) and other film and indie projects (including vanity projects) so don't be shy.

I hand cut my stutters in Sound Forge.

Every year audio achievements in the games industry is celebrated in an awards show produced by the Game Audio Network Guild. This year, the 9th Annual GANG Awards show will be March 3rd, 2011--Thursday evening at the Moscone Center (during the Game Developer's Conference). Moreover, several of your OCR Peeps have been nominated this year, so cross your fingers and root for an OCR win, eh? Team spirit and whatnot... BigGiantCircles has been nominated for Mass Effect 2 (Best Original Soundtrack Album release of 2011)! BustaTunez, Zircon, Some1namedJeff, and myself have been nominated for our work on Monkey Island 2: Special Edition (Best Hand-Held Audio)! Busta, the fair skinned lightning rod from Sweden worked his Indiana Jones HAT off to make the interactive music for MI2SE work miracles with todays technology, so give him some lovin', next time you see him, and wish us all luck at the Awards!

First: I would NEVER trust a DJ's ears. Those guys abuse the s(*& out of their ears--most DJ's I know, can only carry on a conversation with you if they're facing you and reading your lips at the same time. Second: I would NEVER trust a music professional who will experiment with roughs at a live show. Maybe that's just me.

If you want to chat, you can PM me your AIM or MSN address. I spent the last 6 months as a full-time contract/freelancer.

A freelancer needs to have a contract that makes room for other projects because contrary to what we would prefer, the composer is only needed for a short time unless he's going to be more involved in the design/implementation. A lot of newb projects don't really understand the development cycle and how and when each of the players get involved. You should be working on getting more work even while working on actual gigs. The hustle never stops, honest.

You've done WAY more work than you need to and at this point, I would highly suggest you consider your soundtrack work with this group a work of self-education. Only put more time and effort into this soundtrack if A) you just really love the project to death, or you realize that a fully realized and fleshed out version of this soundtrack will help you get (more) paid work in the future. Until then, continue to challenge yourself, improve yourself, and always learn, learn more.