Omni-Psyence

Check it out people! -link deleted- Sorry if the mix sounds a bit off, I moved into a new apartment and I'm getting acquainted with my new listening space.

Just finished this up. An eclectic mix of sounds, hard to generalize. http://soundcloud.com/omni-psyence/silver-lining Thank you for listening!

I tried to recommend this too...

Well, the principles found in this book are the same as you'll find in any class or study material on orchestration, I'm sorry if I assumed you weren't going to be so picky. There are other books which I have read that were helpful, though.

Yeah, establishing your key or mode will be very crucial. That's done usually by recognizing the tonic, root note, or whatever you want to call it. More often than not this is the note that your phrases will resolve to, and is usually used most often.

I record pretty much everything I do with my MIDI keyboard controller. It's been working for me excellently thus far. I really want to get a Maschine, though!

I have not read this book in particular, but I would suggest working through some pre-existing scores piece by piece until you have a practical, working knowledge of how those scores are built. Orchestration is such an incredibly rich topic to be contained in a single tome. As far as the MIDI part is concerned, I'll mimic what Kanthos is saying. If you want more "realism" then you need to nail the timbre and articulations. Also, everything won't just be playing a simple sustain patch the whole way through. It's pretty crucial to learn how every single instrument in the orchestra is played by itself and with others, both from its own family and not. A simple but efficient rule of thumb to go by is the more instruments you use, their parts should be less disparate from one another. Too much contrasting timbres and notes will create a huge mush. The way those pros can use an entire orchestra with ease is because they know how to balance these delicate forces.

I think I'd remix any game whatsoever, as long as it has some cool tunes. Can't see it being any other way!

Try some thrash metal from the 80's like Dark Angel, Overkill or Kreator.

Very nice man. Heroes 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. Lots of nostalgia going on here, and your version is *PERFECT*! Hats off to ya

Hey, check out my demo reels here: http://omnipsyence.com/ I have an Electronica you can listen to, let me know what you think.

Thank you very much for your kind words, I am really pleased how this track turned out. Right from the start I wanted to do something that would be very emotional and swinging from highs to lows. I submitted this to the site as well, hopefully it gets added!

I did a remix of Stage 3 a few years ago. I'll try another stab at it as this is one of my favorite games of all time!

This track was created for the Metroid 25th Anniversary tribute album "Harmony of a Hunter" organized by Shinesparkers.net It's titled "Metroid Legacy" Please let me know what you think!

The ones he posted are not illegal, Andy Sneap compiled most of those himself IIRC (and released them for free through his forum on UltimateMetal). I have these same exact IR's myself, but I use them less and less.

You assume wrong, I've read your entire post. To me, it seems as if you are looking for at least an "easier" way out (ie, to learn convincing, heartfelt orchestration -- and yes, not just with traditional orchestral instruments) than what is currently available. If I misunderstood, I'm sorry. Everything I posted applies for any kind of musical instrument you can imagine. The concepts are not limited to one or two things. If you gave some serious study a chance and put in the work to create deliberate compositions which will expand your skills, you can only walk away with improvement.

The most important factor in my own artistic growth has simply been a combination of critical thinking about music each and every time I listen to anything. When you hear a musical phrase develop, piece it together by its own basic elementary parts and realize how each sound and change will contribute to the whole at any given moment. You can really aid this process by learning principles of orchestration. For symphonic instruments, this amounts to studying each and every instrument in the orchestral section and knowing exactly what they can do on their own as well as with each other. If you write a handful of solo pieces for every orchestral instrument, you will come away with a much better understanding of how and when to articulate your phrases. After that you should try to learn how to carry melody within the families, ie, strings, brass, woodwings, percussion. Same for establishing harmony. Sorry to say there's no easy way out, you do need to study and practice the techniques on your own. I recommend Peter Alexander's Professional Orchestration series for some reading material.

Cool, I just sent you an email!

Excellent choice of topic. MMX4 is my favorite!

Updated my link with a new file! Check it out.

Thanks for listening people. I'll try to have this complete within the next few days. Many more to come, any requests?

That is really lame, actually. Let me try to fix them ASAP! There, try now. Thanks for alerting me.

Remaking this classic Chrono Trigger piece. First link is original version, second is mine!! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24242231/Corridors%20of%20Time%20WIP.mp3 All I got here is about 50 seconds of material, and this is around 80% fully arranged. The piece will be expanded more and the original tune will shine through in many ways thanks for checkin it out

That's actually pretty awesome, never heard of that game before. I was thinking of doing a bi-weekly "remix request" thing to knock out some of these anticipated tracks that no one ever touches. Nice track!

Thank you for the positive response folks, it's been a blast making the episode. I was thinking about releasing the soundtrack but I'm not sure it would be terribly interesting, since each scene is so short. One idea I had was to create extended mixes of each track, but I need to start working on other things soon and I'm not sure if I'll have the time to do it quickly. If enough people want it I think I'd do it though! I'm eagerly anticipating working on season 2. I'll try my hand at writing this time, and I'll also be handling all audio mixing as well. Each episode is going to return to the 1:30-2:00 length shorts, but we'll also have a really epic season finale just like this one. Expect a lot more characters too!