Kidd Cabbage

ePSXe is the shizznazzle. I use it for basically everything in the world.

4/4, 3/4, and 6/8. When used tastefully, compound meters are fine... but in mainstream music, they never are and they're a crutch the pretentious writers use to be different and 'creative.' Absolute fucking crutch for bad writers who can't make anything interesting without them (see half of Dream Theater's newer albums). If you read that, and thought "Yeah, that's true! But when I use it, I do it tastefully, so that's good," then you're wrong. I'm absolutely talking about you. [This is all coming from a Meshuggah fan. But I'm fairly certain they're aware that it's kind of gimmicky.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l1n69jTArI

This is George Bush's fault.

V I Bam. Theory.

Hahah, he's going to be buried in baby's My First Coffin.

Oh, hey, I got put in here. Thanks to you guys that wished me a good day.

The DAW don't matter none, just so long as it can run VSTi.

The problem with Forgotten Voices, though, is that the melodies are sampled, so you can't build your own with it.

Agreed. There is really no point to staying with XP anymore.

This song stinks like shit and its hair is all stringy, yo.

Nice. Everything is 50% off. If I didn't already have so much of this stuff, I would definitely get the composer's complete bundle for $750.

I'd like to point out that along with stringed instruments, the overtone series also applies to columns of air. So that makes up, well, every non-percussion instrument in the orchestra for starters. And your second paragraph contradicts itself. You say to use ethnic music, which doesn't rely on the overtone series, as an example of why the overtone series shouldn't be a good basis for harmony, but then proceed to say afterward that most ethnic music doesn't have any functional harmony! Yes, I know that more immersion leads to more acceptance, but consonance and dissonance are far more objective than most things in music, and how you use those have to do with your stylistics in music. Also, keep in mind that harmony was the original question - not what makes *any music* sound good or not. And unless what you say has anything pertaining to harmony (triangles and ethnic music without harmony), it's really irrelevant. If you want to bring up Just or Pythagorean intonation or something, fine, even if they're barely ever used. Even microtonal harmonies are based on the overtone series. It just so happens that our 12-tone equal-temperament system was derived to have as many functional notes as close to the harmonic partials in the overtone series as was reasonable.

I'm sure I'm just being argumentative here, but I think a better way to think of it is that the melody is in the chords. The melody and chords have symbiotic relationship. It's always thought of how the melody relates to the harmony, and if you change either one, the other changes as well. Or just don't think about either at all. I come up with either first in a more basic form, then go back and forth, changing things in both melody and harmony until I have something that I'm happy with. If a melody revolves around a fifth in the key, and you throw that in the bass, you'll get a different function than if you put the tonic of the key under the melody. Any number of harmonies can surround and embody the melodies, each changing how the melody feels.

A second-party developer is like Retro Studios is to Nintendo. Nintendo owns it, but it's not an in-house development company.

What, you think that I only think of the overtone series and fractions when I write? I thought you were serious when you said that you didn't understand why harmony worked, so I explained it - nothing more. Don't be an ass for me answering a question.

Hey guys. Movies cost a lot to make. But people sell them used and the makers don't make any money? The horror... ... Let's make people who buy used movies pay extra to see the ending.

Physics, mostly. Consonance is created by simple pitch ratios, and dissonance is more complicated pitch ratios. For instance, an octave's frequency is a 2:1 ratio. A perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio. These are very consonant intervals. All consonant progressions are very boring progressions, and all dissonance just sounds unpleasant. Functional harmony is a tension and release between dissonance and consonance. It's also the overtone series, which again, is physics. When you pluck a string, it doesn't just oscillate the whole length of the string. It also oscillates in partials along the length of the string, at increasingly smaller intervals and less volume (as shown here). This is the difference between a string sound and a sine wave. A sine wave has no partials, a string has a different timbre because the different volume levels of the different partials. When a string is cut in 1/3rds, you get a fifth. So if you pluck an open E string, you hear that fundmental pitch, and at less volume, its octave, and at less volume, its fifth. That means that the strongest note in an E string, aside from E, is B. For this reason, the fifth has a very strong relation to the fundamental - because you're already hearing such a strong B within that E string.

What's a music?

i am 12 and what is this

Eh, for music software, it's not that bad price-wise. And the fact that it has a full mixing suite (I'm not sure about its synths) adds sweetness to the deal.

Cubase is phenominal. Personally, I use Sonar because that's what I learned on, and I work much better and freer in the layout I'm used to, but Cubase is freaking great. It's very stable in comparison to other DAWs and compatible. You should PM SnappleMan about the built in plugins. In Reason, you can't actually record or process audio files without another addon, Record. I use Reason as a ReWire sometimes for its synths, but even then, I find myself using Komplete far more often. I also don't know much about Cubase's built in synths. But yeah, Cubase is definitely a high standard - I'd even say it's as standard as ProTools, and definitely as powerful.

Very against it. Harmony is about 1/3rd of music to me, and if you don't actually write it, you're leaving 1/3rd of your music generic and up to machines to write. Not to mention, different chords have different sounds and they suit different things. For instance, you might think that C-5 root motion sounds folky and you would know how to use them, then. If you know how chromatic mediants sound, you'll know if you want that effect. Not to mention these progression generators leave no room for modulation.

He means 'monitor' as in 'studio monitor.'

I'll have to look into this...