Nabeel Ansari

Making new sample libraries at ISW, been playing Dark Souls and FF14, looking forward to most PS4 titles from E3 and also Dark Souls III, haven't discovered much, never really very excited about OCR stuff. xP

The N64 controller was simultaneously the best and worst controller design in the history of video gaming.

Those should teach you the basics, but you need to go way beyond for it to start actually helping you. This is a great book: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Practice-Volume-Audio/dp/0077254953 It's the second volume in a series, where the first one is basics. This one talks about actual compositional tools like voice-leading and counterpoint, and it explains more complex music in terms of key changes and borrowed chords. It'll also show you how to write hymns, which while sounds pretty lame, is actually an extremely educational skill to master. Additionally, you can acquire a jazz theory book: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440336899&sr=1-1&keywords=jazz+theory&pebp=1440336901213&perid=1GNYDP0WVRK6K3J9BPZG That one's really good, I used it in my MUSC 380 - Jazz Theory class a year ago. It talks about improv methodology as well as advanced harmonic concepts. Since you seem like an electronic dude, you'll get more usable tricks (in terms of harmony stuff) from this book. There's lots of chord progression examples in the book; you should transcribe them in a DAW and see how they sound as arps or in synth pads. It'll give you some nice creative boost.

Making your own sound is okay, but a good sound is never going to fix your writing. Music is about ideas. Writing music is about presenting those ideas, developing them, showing them in new lights, and referencing them (among other things I'm forgetting). The most standard musical "main idea" is called the melody. The melody has something to say in the music, and it's closely related to chords. The chords define how the melody functions (its core essence) and the melody itself is the representation (or if you'd like, the execution) of that core essence. I notice a lot of people kinda just lean on one of them sometimes, especially people getting their chops from OCR. They write the melody, then kinda just add chords that sound like they fit underneath, or, they have some chord progression and then just slap in some notes in a lead synth to make their melody. This doesn't ever really work because it doesn't really wield an understanding of why chords and melodies are so closely related. A melody has a start and an end. Depending on how out your style is, your melody may or may not resolve. It may move across different tonalities or it could just be something really simple and catchy. Sometimes, melodies are very transparent and non-catchy (and that's fine, and if anyone tells you otherwise you smack them upside the head) when the musical presentation is supposed to be about color (harmony/texture) and not statement (main idea presentation). Sometimes you don't have melodies at all, instead your music is about presenting and manipulating color. Even though melodies are hard to write, color music (most popular in the impressionist era) is actually harder to write, since it's kind of abstract. In electronic music, it's a little easier, since you're forgiven for lots of repetition (which you can use to build up your tracks more linearly instead of moving around organically). You should listen to music, especially symphonies. The old guys were masters of using music as a means of communicating ideas. They had their melodies (themes/motifs), then gave them to different instruments, changed their keys, swapped major/minor, chopped them up, etc. All of these things are valid ways of manipulating and presenting ideas. When you're writing music, you have to have "something". There has to be something where you say "I want this to be developed". It can be a cool synth arp, or a wacky chord sample, or it can be a full melody. You have to build your track around presenting whatever that is. You need to foreshadow it, lead into it, show it, then hide it, lead out of it, bring it back in a different way (or the same way). Don't do all that stuff in that order all the time, the point is there's all these things you can do with one idea, so the more you do, the longer your piece/track gets and the more dynamic it is. Then start piecing together ideas and having overarching progressions. is a perfect example, since this band does this thing a lot where they build a track out of 3 or 4 main ideas. At 1:36, the entire direction (rhythmically and harmonically) of the track shifts someplace else. The mood and part-writing style changes considerably. It's a "new idea", it's "we're done with that, here's something new". Again, they do this at 2:15, and I would argue the second idea foreshadows the third one with the way its harmony works. That's up for debate, but the point is the song moves to different places. That's progression! In each of the three sections, they do a lot with their main ideas (having melodies, b-section melodies, changing texture, changing chords), but the sections also flow together as one big unit. This is just a snippet of advice. Learning how to write takes lots of practice, study, and mentors. I can't fix you in a forum post, but I can help change your mindset a little. My recommendation is learning more music theory. You need to get past chords and rhythms, that stuff is where people usually stop and it's not really what music theory is about at all, and thus it pollutes the general populace understanding about music theory and people think it's too basic or rigid to have anything general to say about music.

SPOILERS AHEAD It's really not that vague, you just might not be used to involved story telling. The best critically acclaimed films are all about paying attention to small details. The power of your narrative coming from the meticulous construction is the finest example of story telling, whereas storytelling with people talking and having dialogue and then other people telling the main characters what they should do next is incredibly boring and often results in some pretty 1 dimensional themes about saving the world or the power of love/friendship or whatever. Dark Souls's narrative is good for two big reasons, to me, which are the themes presented and the way in which they are presented. All of the elements are clear to convey the narrative, it's just not handed to you on a silver platter like Final Fantasy. You're an Undead, going Hollow, and you have to kill things to get souls to retain your humanity. All the enemies you fight are people like you who failed in their journey. Bosses like Ornstein and Smough were once alive, like you before, and became hollow after a long time in their journey; because of the power they achieved before going hollow, they were enabled to begin terrorizing the Undead, sort of as bullies. Imagine you becoming powerful and then failing; it's implied in the narrative universe that from then on, you would become a boss that fights other Undead who are one the same pilgrimage. Your job is to ring the bells, after you're directed both by cutscene and by the Crestfallen Knight to do so. Kingseeker Frampt tells you to seek Anor Londo, to acquire the Lordvessel in order to begin your path to link the fire. Linking the fire is what must be done to preserve the world and not have it fall apart. You fight the end bosses (seath, Bed of Chaos, nito, who were spoken of in the opening cutscene, and the Four Kings). These were people who in some way or another, caused chaos related to the First Flame. You beat them, you get to fight Gwyn, the past soul who linked the fire and locked himself away in eternal solitude. Now here's the "meaning" of Dark Souls. Dark Souls is about the empty and pointless nature of your existence. Your entire life (or undeath, rather), is a big directive to "advance". You're fighting through all this shit without really clearly understanding why. Meaning is assigned to nothing except for boss fights, the only moments of clarity in the game (and appropriately, the only moments that have actual music). That's the point. Dark Souls is supposed to feel empty and direction-less because it is empty and directionless. But why? Because linking the fire doesn't accomplish anything from a utilitarian standpoint. You're only delaying the inevitable, and causing suffering to the other hollows and undead. There's a reason the NPC's like the Crestfallen Knight tell you not to bother. Nothing you do matters in this game, because once you link the fire, you are just another Lord Gwyn, and another undead will come to fight you as the final boss of their journey and take your place. It's a cycle. You, as a player, have the agency to recognize this and decide to not play into the cycle. You can become a Dark Lord by leaving the room after fighting Gwyn. You killed the soul keeping the fire alive, and now you let it go out, thus you're saying "I understand this is what's going on, but fuck that". Looking at the game as a simple progression to linking the fire is the superficial "heroic" interpretation of the game. Something needs my help, I fight bosses, and then do my heroic deed. When in actuality, Dark Souls leverages things like player despair (through respawning at faraway bonfires), emptiness (the lack of music, which becomes the lack of narrative meaning in the specific things and places you take part in throughout the game), ambiguous morality and selfishness (killing NPC's to get their shit, killing NPC's who you know are bad people, etc.) and self awareness (realizing linking the fire is pointless, thus giving you the choice not to do it) to convey the opposite. Dark Souls is a massive power fantasy (don't even get me started on how well this game does at making you feel powerful) that results in the ultimate crumbling of your ego. You beat Ornstein and Smough, you smash the Bed of Chaos, you become god-like enough to take on 7 capra demons at once, and where does it get you? Being just as useless and unable to help the world as Lord Gwyn, and every other Undead who's doing the same shit you are to reach the same destiny. Dark Souls is a high quality game story specifically because it doesn't tell you the narrative through dialog and cutscenes (though it tells enough from the opening scene and Kingseeker Frampt's dialogue that people less inclined to delve deeper still understand what's going on), it tells you the story through the gameplay mechanics and through consequences of the actions you take in the game. It's a high place on the storytelling ladder, and there's rarely been a game that leverages a story through video games that well. When all's said and done, Dark Souls is actually a really deep exploration in the concept of life after death, and the question of if immortality really worth it. It explores it through the game mechanics, through the other NPC's storylines, what you understand about the boss lore, and then the ending. And unlike more standard/primitve game stories , it doesn't have an ending with a cutscene that answers the question like ""yes the world is worth saving!" It lets you, the player, decide what to get out of the story. You can't really complain that the story wasn't being conveyed to you, because you, the player, ARE the main character of the story, and the story is about how you proceed through the game, what it does to your attitude, and how you interpret the ending. Your playing of the game is the manifestation of the story. And that's why it's good, because Dark Souls uses that as a way to convey meaning and depth, rather than it just being some stupid metaphysical observation without substance. There's more to it than just that, that's the broad overview. There's all the deeper meanings behind NG+, and the online mechanics as well. To me, that's a perfect example of what a game story should be. Told through player agency, mechanics, and consequences, something other mediums don't have. And I'm not talking about consequences like "other characters won't show up later in the game if you dont make them happy OH NO", I'm talking about consequences like "if I shoot Gwynevere because I know she's an illusion from Dark Sun Gwyndolin, Anor Londo is permanently cast into twilight, the sun disappears, and the entire area becomes dark and dead, the Firekeeper turns against me, rendering the bonfire permanently unkindled and severely affecting my gameplay expereince in Anor Londo for the rest of the game, and it's irreversible".

The Bloodborne was brought up by Bleck with a valid concern that DS3 potentially could have its game design influenced (in some ways polluted) by Bloodborne followed by people expounding on general comparisons between Dark Souls series mechanics and Bloodborne's. In anticipation for a next series entry, it's a completely relevant discussion to have.

It's janky. I think we had to fiddle around really hard to get ours to work.

A Smash flood One remix from each Smash game And then for the fifth one, post my Melee remix

I'd say it's always more valuable to complete the game and potentially miss out a little bit of its highest difficulty than to simply get stuck and give up. Getting stuck and giving up is a waste of money and it doesn't complete the conveyance of the narrative (which is what makes Dark Souls good in the first place).

Everything OC ReMix does is through Fair Use (except for commercial stuff, and not sure about SF2T HDR). There is no such thing as "no gray area". A company who wants to legally attack you for using an OC ReMix (whose source is owned by them) can always do so if they wanted to, and there isn't any law or black and white legislation that says you can use *their IP* on *your project*.

Summoning another player makes fights trivially easy. I summoned someone else for Ornstein and Smough and the fight was over in a mere couple minutes.

I'd attribute that to FL's inconsistency; it does some pretty weird shit sometimes. One time, rendering with wrapped remainder gave me an entire export of silence.

No, it *is* an arrangement problem. Arrangement is about voicing and harmonic direction. Looping isn't a thing that can be flawed or have problems because it's just a concept, it's the fact that the composition is irresponsible that's causing the harmony clash in the first place. You can test this by copying the first part of your track and pasting it after the "end". If it clashes, it's got nothing to do with "looping", it's your writing (/production if it's resonant frequencies or poorly tuned hits). Whether you use a DAW's "loop feature" or do a manual loop, the harmonic clash will still exist. You wouldn't slap two sections of a song together without a meaningful transition or making sure they flow into each other, and checking the end of your track into the beginning is no different when it comes to looping. All seamless looping does is sum the tail signal with the beginning of the track, which is no different than starting the beginning of the track right when the loop point is passed. If it clashes, it clashes. It's not anyone's fault but the composer. To offer some advice, resolving a chord progression with the loop point is the standard usage in the VGM world. Every old famous game melody ever loops well because it's either staying on the same chord before and after the loop (usually the tonic), or going from V or v before the loop to the tonic after the loop. This is one of the ways of how you write a musical loop that isn't just "repeat the stuff that happened before" but rather "the stuff is continuing". Finally, FL Studio's engine is poorly done, and oftentimes settings like "Wrap Remainder" simply malfunction. It's an FL-specific problem because its developer base isn't organized or efficient. If you have problems that don't seem like they make sense, chances are FL is just messing up and you should try a re-render (or doing a manual loop in another DAW or editor).

I mean the thing about looping is that you're making the next part of the song the beginning of the song, so it would seem paramount that you need to write it as if the beginning of your song could go after the end of your song (or that the end of your song leads into the beginning of your song). Replace all instances of "song" with "loop region" in that explanation if you're only doing a seamless loop of part of the track.

I can see that in that respect, yes, I hope Dark Souls III is better than Bloodborne. More accurately though, I'd say I hope Dark Souls III preserves the unique Dark Souls methodology and doesn't just become Bloodborne II.

It's pretty high.

I hope it's at least as good as Bloodborne first

I'm not sure if this is sarcasm so I'll leave it at that Well, the challenge to fun ratio doesn't suck (it's one of the best challenging games precisely because it doesn't suck), it's just too high stakes for some people, and that's... fine. There's no such thing as a game everyone likes.

I feel like anyone who expects epic music from Dark Souls completely misses the point of the game. I'd prefer it to remain silent, like usual, with the exception of important areas and boss fights. The opening screen music for DS2 and the theme for Majula were both wonderful, given how passive they were.

I liked the accessibility of DS2, I saw it as an improvement over DS1. I generally roll my eyes at hardcore culture, and when people think that something being hard to latch onto or just really hard is somehow a strength of said thing (probably an empowerment attitude from justifying their interests). This isn't directed at you, Moseph, but rather I do encounter many people on forums who treat the game design flaws as things you're supposed to get used to, or as they say "get good". That being said, the fast-travel concern I think is valid. In DS1, the multiple areas were masterfully connected, and it was really apparent on my second playthrough. Being able to bypass Blight Town through the Valley of Drakes was a real treat. I was able to ring the two bells within an hour of each other. In general, the entire game world FEELS like one big area, and it's even better when you discover a new area, have the text pop up that says the name, and it turns out to be somewhere you've already been. In DS2, everything just sort of branches out in separate directions, without much coherency between them. Every level in DS2 is its own isolated rabbit hole, and to get back to the hub? Warp to Majula. Very different from DS1, and I personally prefer DS1's handling of navigation better (lots of manual shortcut rewards).

"Now, is this song an example musical genius, with unique and awesome chord shapes/modes/scales OR is it an unlistenable incoherent and nonsensical mess that has no musical merit? Or is it a bit of both? " Posing your question like this seemed to imply that this kind of stuff is new/avant garde; so I felt compelled to answer that it isn't. It's just further down the virtuoso rabbit hole than what most people listen to. I personally don't really care for it, no, it sounds more like noodlery/wankery than coherent musical thought.

Yeah, the hitboxes in Dark Souls have never been great. But each installment (and Bloodborne) has seen sleeker, more streamlined combat than the previous. Let's hope they ironed everything out in DS3, or at least ironed out more than the predecessors. The combat was never enough to deter me, and I was always more interested in the RPG elements and the lore than combat.

I don't see a thread about this anywhere, but yeah. I just beat Dark Souls 2 recently, and I'm very excited for the 3rd installment. While I wait, I'm gonna go back and restart DS1 and give it a proper run (only got to Anor Londo last time).

Yeah, I'm not sure what you're going on about, Will; this is relatively expected in terms of jazz fusion. There's a lot more "out" stuff than this.

I wish I could prepare you for the massive sadness that is incoming to you. In a couple weeks you'll see what I'm talking about. xP