TheHands
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Posts posted by TheHands
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I no longer have time for any consoles, the DS has helped keep me in the gaming world. Granted, the only games I ever seem to want to play aren't ones that just came out (Metroid Prime Hunters, Tetris DS, Brain Age, and Civilization Revolution [the exception]), but it's nice to be able to play on the way to work and class again.
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Answers to Questions:
1. I do know about OCR's resources and guidelines, but I'm a firm believer that all tricks to making and editing music are subjective, and interchangeable with many others of it's kind, the same way that you can get identical effects from many tools in Photoshop if you use them correctly. As such, I'd rather experiment and see what emerges, rather than duplicate what's in guides, faq's, and other things, even if they do work for many other people.
2. I appreciate all feedback, really, but I know my weakest point is production. I'm confident in my arrangements, and on rare occasions I feel as though I've arranged a certain section of a piece better than the original, when put in context. Mixing on the other hand is something I've never done before I started posting here, and I'm still terrible with it. Encouragement and general opinions are nice, but criticism and suggestions are what counts, ultimately.
3. The games, specific original pieces, and genres actually inspire me to respond more frequently than anything else. I was taught classical guitar, which bled into metal, punk, and most other rock variants, based on whatever I listen to normally. This makes it easier for me to give feedback on said genres, as opposed to house, trance, or anything else I'd hear at a club. I can't critique something I couldn't picture myself wanting to play.
4. An option would be to set up a rotation of WIPs, like a fresh one each hour that needs to be responded to, linked to a main page where it'll be noticed. This might make it easier for people to see what needs to get looked at, as opposed to what everyone's looking at but is acutally pretty well off on it's own.
That's my piece.
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Piano could use much more contrast. EQ, multitrack compressor, something to raise the highs and lows of it, give more definition to it. Piano writing is a little on the mechanical side of things, it should be more expressive.
The guitar sounds like it's got a flanger or something on it before its distortion stage. It also sounds very fake. You can use that in some genres, but not really in this. Go for a sound with less wannabe guitar and more rude synth, or figure out some way to inject tons of life into your guitar writing and effects.
Drums+piano... weak. Having a bass there with them might improve it. Drums aren't nearly powerful enough for the style I hear you trying to go for. They work in the calm sections, but not at all in the more intense ones.
Overall, there's a lack of reverb and you don't seem to have worked that much on sound quality either.
Source is there, and despite the similar progression, I think it's interpretive enough. The quality, however, isn't on OCR's level yet. The arrangement isn't bad (tho some transitions are), but you need to work on the sound quality, production, mixing. More finesse, better production, and it'd be so much better.
I'd prefer not to go the way of synth, honestly. I still need to figure out the small things, like vibrato and the way a note naturally dissipates when it's strummed.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=755983&songID=6907911
That's the updated version so far.
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Now who'll play Bobobo-Bobo-Bo-Bo as filler and keep me amused at random?!
First Foster's, now Toonami.
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I'm still new to FL, but I've been arranging for a while with programs that were more limited in what they could do with the sounds and production. This is the first song I've written in the past month or so, and I'm generally happy with it. It's a cute little metal song that came into being by accident when I was playing my acoustic with a capo.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=755983&songID=6902795
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I tried that before. I got zero votes.
If you do something just because you want votes, then you might as well give out hookers and blow. Write because you want to, not because you want to win. If it happens it happens. If you don't, you don't. Otherwise you probably won't actually be happy with what you've got, even if it wins you awards.
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This here be my submission, arr.
Persistence of MemoryAlbert yawned with fatigue as he slowly walked up his front walkway. His thinning gray hair, which was parted to the left for as long as he could remember, fell into his bespectacled eyes. He wrinkled his nose (a match for his wrinkled face), but decided not to bother fixing it. His old Victorian house was as much a part of his life as his wristwatch, which told him the time, date, and when to take his medicine (sometimes the time in Prague too if he wasn’t careful).
He rattled a single key in his hand, struggling to remember why it wasn’t the one that opened his front door. Once he realized he’d changed the locks a few years back, and the brand did in fact match the key’s inscription, he slowly unlocked it. He couldn’t help but wonder what Agnes had for dinner for him, he wanted meatloaf. He hadn’t had meatloaf in months. He didn’t care that it got burnt on the outside, or that she changed the recipe every time she made it. He loved the crispy bits, and knew that every time she made it he’d have mashed potatoes and gravy on the side that he’d make into a volcano. Then he’d get to play Pompeii and destroy everything on his plate. Agnes’d look on with a sigh, but keep loving him anyway. He softly prayed to himself for meatloaf tonight.
Come to think of it, he didn’t remember having a mahogany wood door either. Maybe he’d traded keys with Jim Finley by accident at the office? That would explain it, maybe. He could just ask him for a ride back to his place, if it wasn’t too much of an intrusion. After all, they’d only worked together for the last twenty years. It’s not like he was a complete stranger. He clenched his teeth in anticipation of the questions. “Hey Al, what’re you doing here? Won’t Aggie worry? Want something to drink?” He gently pushed the door open.
“SURPRISE!” screamed fifty people he didn’t know.
He jumped in fright, but couldn’t help but notice that the Finley’s had the exact same model recliner he’d had for ages. Three people in their mid twenties rushed to him to give him a group hug, two men and one woman.
“Happy Birthday, Granddad,” chirped the small woman with a grin the size of a softball.
“Aggie, what’re you talking about?” he asked.
“No silly, it’s me, Julia,” she said, her grin turning sad. “My father is your son, Stowe.”
“It’s alright Aggie, we’ll talk about this later. Who’re all these people?”
The black haired man to the left took Albert’s hand softly.
“Granddad, it’s us. We’re all here for you,” said the man.
“So I see. Have we met?”
“I’m Justin, Julia’s brother,” he said.
“I don’t have a brother in law named Justin, and that’s Aggie. I don’t take kindly to liars, even in Jim Finley’s house. What’s all this about?”
“It’s about your birthday, we’re your family and friends. This is a surprise party, a party that caught you by surprise,” spoke the other man.
“Don’t be rude, dumb ass,” Justin spat at the voice’s owner.
“Birthday?” Albert questioned.
“Look at your watch Granddad, today is your 80th birthday!” Julia exclaimed, her grin returning.
Albert glanced at his watch, expecting to call their bluff, but saw that it was in fact April 19th, the very date that he was born on. Maybe its batteries were starting to go? He didn’t remember it being so late in the year, Christmas had just happened. It couldn’t be much later than early February.
“You sure?”
“Yep. An atomic clock said so this morning,” said the voice.
“Ben, stop being such a jerk,” Julia scolded him.
Confused and frustrated, Albert sat in the rather fashionable recliner to try to think. He couldn’t help but notice the groove in the cushion was just like his, only a little deeper. Agnes sat across from him on the edge of a couch.
“Granddad, you threw this party. You sent invitations to everyone here months ago, and told us not to tell you,” said Julia.
“Why would I do something like that?”
She sighed.
“About a year ago, your doctor told you that you had Alzheimer’s, one of the most rapidly spreading cases he’d ever seen. He said you had a little more than a year before you completely lost it. Then you got really depressed, and started making fun of it, until you decided to throw yourself a surprise party.”
Albert couldn’t digest the first part of what she’d said just yet, though the later was undeniably the sort of thing he’d do. Confused, he slowly smiled.
“I thought it was funny too, but I didn’t think you’d actually do it. Then you started sending out invitations, and gave me plans for how you wanted everything set up. You even told me to make sure I’d have meatloaf, potatoes, and gravy like Mom used to make. I’m really proud of how you planned it out,” she finished with a sad smile.
He mulled the words over in his head silently.
“Well, you don’t seem like a liar to me, and that does sound an awful lot like me. Should I just float around and introduce myself to everyone then?” he asked.
Albert took her nod to mean that whether or not it was true, he should at least pretend. He wandered to the closest person he could find that he didn’t know besides this new Agnes, and found a former coworker from the office, apparently he had a friend named Donnatello that worked three cubicles over from him. He giggled at this, and vowed not to forget Donnie. After deciding it was sort of fun, he continued this way. After about fifteen new faces, he encountered a woman named Lydia who apparently wanted to pursue him after the breast cancer finally caught up to Agnes, but decided not to. He did not enjoy the rest of the party.
When he woke up the next morning, he found leftover meatloaf, some cake, and a small stack of novelty items that he’d never seen before lying on his kitchen table, with a leather-bound journal on the top of it. He didn’t remember anything.
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When you constrain your brain in different ways, it produces material you wouldn't expect it to, and sometimes is amazing because of it. Try writing a nonfiction piece about yourself in the third person without using pronouns for example, it's one of the most annoying but surreal exercises you can have to force yourself into new places creatively.
Speaking of which, my submission is coming in the next 12 hours.
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This made my week. Thank you so much.
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I decided to try a more harsh take on the Zanarkand theme from FFX. I'm still relatively new to electronic music, more so to arranging other people's work, so all feedback would be appreciated.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=755983&songID=6895698
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I'm interested in this project, but I honestly don't have the mixing ability for it yet. If nothing else, I want to see how it turns out, and I'd promote the crap out of it.
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Sexy. I'll consider this, and see what I can come up with.
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...unless you're referring the literal minimum of a entry, which is kind of an odd thing to ask.
Actually, I was referring to the minimum. Flash Fiction is a very specified genre, where the author tries to fully convey a story in less than a thousand words, usually somewhere in the ballpark of 750. It's actually pretty big in the slam scene, and usually more challenging to write because of the limits you set for yourself. Most of the time people throw in adjectives that don't add anything to a story, which makes it drag on and usually hurts the composition. Flash Fiction is much more specified, and fun.
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Awesome. Didn't notice the second half of that.
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How short can it be? I'm more of a flash-fiction person.
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It might just be that I'm still new to mixing and competitions here, but does it have to be a game arrangement for this competition, or is it an original composition? It wasn't said in the thread yet.
Either way, I'll try to give it a shot.
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As a writer, I can honestly tell you that you know more about each of your characters than you usually do about yourself. Even the most minor details can come into play, let alone a back story. While some characters in the spin-offs were obviously made for those expansions only (think of the ones without any depth, and the ones with a story so thin that it's probably got plot holes built into it), the vast majority of the characters in FFVII were written with back stories almost as expansive and dynamic as the game.
No spin offs are ever planned, for anything. You need to test it first to make sure it can hold its own before trying to milk it for more. If you plan it ahead of time (especially almost ten years ahead of time, from when production on each game was), then it's a sign of overconfidence, stupidity, or poor planning. None of these things applied to Square at the time when it came out, even if Final Fantasy was already a reasonably successful series. However, that doesn't mean that they can't happen easily if you want them to.
I didn't bother to read anything beyond the Tolkien comment, so if I'm repeating someone, then I apologize.
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Ditto to all of the above, especially the Daft influence.
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I want to hear the drummer go ape-shit. This is begging for more difficult drums than just a hat-kick-snare combo. Since it's metal, why not double bass? Tom rolls? Somethin'.
I like the guitar tone a lot so far, and I agree that it's begging for a solo after it breaks down.
This doesn't vary enough from the original melody and song structure right now to stand alone, for the time being it's just a heavy cover of a great song.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this though. Most WIPs don't make me care about the song, this one got feedback. That's gotta be a good sign.
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What I'd say is to write music for yourself first, then try reworking other people's works. It's hard to reimagine someone else's work if you're not sure what your own should sound like, or if you don't know the interface you're using very well.
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Doesn't seem very professional to use remixes from other video games in a game you plan to sell, unless it's a parody and you'd have the permissions of all parties (including the original writers, remixers, and parent companies for each game franchise). Ditto to the original score from remixers.
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*BUMP*
First rough poster.
If you have stills available, I'll make you a better poster.
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I wouldn't say Pong is the epitome of anything. Culturally moving, yes. Minimalistic and beautiful in design for its simplicity, yes... but I think that's where I'd draw the line, personally.
Also, as I need to leave for work, I've gone one small response to I-N-J-I-N:
Come to NYC, look at some of the art galleries here. You'll find some as bizarre as your "smashing pancakes with a boot" reference. I saw an entire gallery of a photographer's work, dedicated to logging the lives of the crack heads, hookers, homosexuals, gangs, and punk rockers of the East Village fifteen years ago. While from a photographic aspect, the images were lively, had the "auto-newsworthy" status, and in some cases colorful, they were most of the time far more bizarre and terrible than anything I'd ever seen.
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Video games are still games first and foremost in most cases. A graphical interface does not make Solitaire on my PC any more of an art peice than Solitaire played with real cards. Which equates a comparison to other sports, and racing games. Then war games.
As I said, calling one thing art or not means nothing if you have a loose definition of art. If you're trying to equate the best artistic video game to the best artistic books/movie/etc,, you're obviously going to be trying to find the best from each medium. Thats why the debate seems 'snobbish/classy'. You argue with the best evidence first in a debate. No one is going to say video games are art and bring Pong as their first example. That is why the debate seems to hinge on certain titles and criteria. We've all got our ideas on what constitutes art.
But as pointed out, yes, we do need to be cautious between trying to narrow it down to classy/snobbish ideals or merely expand it accept every title as art.
Art and its quality should be defined by its individual purpose and method to achieve its own aim. The game should have a purpose or message (no it doesn't have to be a spiritually deep message, or anything super-important!) and it has to convey that. I'm sure this stands for all other art forms. And yes, sometimes a great message purposefully delivered in what appears to be a bad way may actually be the most effective venue.
Well, let's look at the most basic forms for each genre then. Something as simple as comparing Dick & Jane books to Pong. Neither are art, though both are clumped into the same family as things that can be and/or are considered art. There's art in both, on the most basic level, but overall they aren't. Or a seven year old's portrait of their family, consisting of stick figures with a triangle to show Mommy's dress and another stick figure in the corner to show Daddy's mistress. It isn't actually art, the child's only actually recorded their family in graphic form, the same way someone could list all the members of the family and what they look like once they know how to write.
You're right that in most cases they are still games, but why can't games be art? Not all games (that's like saying all books, photographs, paintings, and songs are art, while Dan Brown, family photos, building projections, and Brittany Spears are definite examples otherwise). I'm not saying that all games are art, most are strictly entertainment. But there are some that seem to have branched out beyond it, rather than staying that way, and it isn't always intentional.
The Mona Lisa, for example, is just a portrait of someone Da Vinci wanted to paint. Most medieval art is religious in nature because that's who bankrolled them, rather than what they wanted to make. Again, Normal Rockwell. Rianna's video for that umbrella song. Sometimes attempts at entertainment turn out to be amazing works of art.
The definition of art is something that can be disputed forever, as it means something different to everyone. However, my handy copy of the Oxford Pocket American Dictionary of Current English has this to say:
By all definitions given except for numbers 5 and 6, video games and/or the playing of them fall under the category of "art." However, if you want to make the definition more loose by saying that it needs to say something, then we can debate this some more. Besides that, this isn't the be-all end-all argument, it's just voicing of opinions. I'm just curious now as to why it has to say something.art / aart / n
1. a human creative skill or its application.
b work exhibiting this
2. a the various branches of creative activity, eg, painting, music, writing, considered collectively.
b any one of these branches
3. creative activity, esp. painting and drawing, resulting in visual representation
4. human skill or workmanship as opposed to the work of nature.
5. a skill, aptitude, or knack.
6. those branches of learning (esp. languages, literature, and history) associated with creative skill as opposed to scientific, technical, or vocational skills.
Toonami is dead
in General Discussion
Posted
Not a matter of flaming, or it being mature. It sounds like you were just more into action and anime than American comedy cartoons. Fosters, Ed Edd and Eddy, and Courage the Cowardly Dog are all amazing, and have a lot in them that kids don't pick up on. I miss Courage, so much.
It's not just anime for you, but specifically the anime where there's a lot of poorly drawn action sequences and extended dramatic macho crap (not that it's bad, it's just what you seem to like).
I'd be happy if they went back to the old cartoons from back in the day, things like Dexter's Lab and I Am Weasel.