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Nabeel Ansari

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Everything posted by Nabeel Ansari

  1. The headphones come with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so assuming your DDJ-ERGO has a 3.5mm port (or a 1/4 inch port if you have the converter from 3.5mm to 1/4in), then yes, you can use these headphones with your DDJ-ERGO, but it will be a wired connection, not wireless. You don't need the USB except when you have to charge it (like you charge a phone). It runs on a rechargeable battery that you charge via USB. In other words, buy the headphones, then buy this, and you're done.
  2. Score meaning the soundtrack. There's no manuscript; zircon produced this in FL.
  3. Listen to arrangements that other people have written and notice what sets their arrangement apart from the original. Try to think of big picture things. Right now, you lack the capacity to desire something specific as far as what you want to do, and the reason for that is because you haven't quite looked at all the things you can do. It's not enough to have the tools and understand the original tune, you need to be able to say "I want to make it jazzier" or "I want to make it more hard rock" or "I want to make it like a classical waltz" and then have the appropriate method of making that a reality. Focus on listening to other people's remixes and getting inspired by something. It can be something simple like "oh, I want to make this game song sound like that zircon remix!" You need to desire *something*, because right now you're unable to be self-sufficient in terms of creativity, since you're just starting out and have come to asking the question "how do I make this song unique or my own?". More mechanically speaking, ways to write unique arrangements are: -Reharmonizing (changing the chords of the melody) -Varying the rhythm of the melody -Extending or rewriting the melody -Transposing to different keys and modes -Adding intros, re-ordering sections, adding bridges, endings -Improvisational sections (solos) A large aspect of arranging is redefining the form. An original may have melody 1 play, then melody 2, then 1, then 2, etc. My arrangement could be an intro, then using melody 2 as a build-up to melody 1, then a solo, then melody 1 again, melody 2, then an ending. As you can see, the possibilities are too vast to summarize neatly.
  4. This is an introduction to Music Production concepts. http://downloads.izotope.com/guides/iZotope-Mixing-Guide-Principles-Tips-Techniques.pdf
  5. Disagree entirely. Death that isn't something you emotionally react to fails to do any of the set up you mentioned. It's just something that happens, and then the author fills in the gap manually by telling you how it affects everyone else. This is bad writing. I am aware something bad happened to Eren, and now he's got bloodlust for the Titans. Is he justified? I don't know, maybe. Do I feel sorry for him? No. But I SHOULD feel sorry for him. That was the point of making that death so dramatic, but it failed to put me on the edge of my seat, hoping that someone would save her. But no, I didn't feel any more bad when she died than I did for the nameless crowds of people getting killed. It is most certainly cheap. It doesn't drive home the point at all, because it lacks good conveyance of emotion. I guess you could argue for the relative insignificance of a person dying compared to any other person dying, but that just makes for a crappy story in general that isn't worth watching. Of course, no duh we're cosmically insignificant, why do I need an action anime to tell me that? Like I said, this show has amazing visuals and music but the depth just isn't there, at least not to the point of being worthy of its praise even if it's not a bad anime in the least. I'm not saying it's awful, I'm more focusing on evaluating if it's as good as everyone says (and so far, it's not). There are much better anime to gush and freak out about.
  6. I'm not enjoying Attack on Titan. It seems really exploitative of shock value and twists, but it doesn't really write the characters well enough to make me actually feel anything for them. I feel like it's trying to use death as a way to evoke emotion, but it seems childish and reckless in execution, so it's just like "oh, that person died with a lot of dramatic music and speedlines. Okay." when I didn't really get attached to or understand that character because they're really uninteresting (and have some pretty whack dialogue, seriously, this script is incredibly unnatural). It's okay to do this kind in mass destruction scenes where lots of unknowns die; it's not okay to do this when you're doing it to the protagonist's mom, which is supposed to set up the premise of the show (his hatred for Titans and journey to acquire strength to kill them). I don't empathize with him at all. Yeah, his mom was eaten, but that wasn't executed in a way where I felt really bad (because she had a few lines of generic dialogue), and I felt a disconnect from the protagonist when he went over the edge. I'm sure if they established the mother more, and gave me a emotional connection to her *before* killing her, it would have made her death more horrifying, and I would've followed the protagonist over the edge. Before ya'll call me a psychopath for not feeling bad about her dying, it's important to note that in fact it is the writer's job to create empathize-able characters, not the viewers. The fact is that we generally don't feel emotional about things that happen far away from us. Millions of people across the world being slaughtered? You say, "oh that's horrible." Your spouse died? You're crying on the floor. Attack on Titan had potential to be the latter, but it ended up being the former. You don't need to have a lot of death to be sad, in fact you can use just one death in your story and make it incredibly sad and depressing if you write the characters well enough. AoT seems like its author is really immature and values superficial tragedy more than deeper, emotional tragedy. Anyone like the characters and argue that they have more depth than I give credit? Interested to hear.
  7. Really? This particular song sounds like rock more than anything. I can see the vocal jazz in it, but it feels more like a specific element than the style of the whole song.
  8. Starting watching Hunter X Hunter. I love the character writing. That makes my Watching list: -Gundam Build Fighters Try -Gundam Reconguista in G -Gundam Wing -Hunter X Hunter
  9. Generally any good composer writes by intuition, yes. Also, not sure how that's a flipside, you and I both said not to plan the arrangement?
  10. "complex or simple?" You shouldn't plan out your arrangements unless you're experienced enough to have a confident command of things like musical movement and musical density. Just write what comes to you and get feedback. If it ends up being complex, cool. If it ends up being simple, also cool. Simpler music is easier to criticize and easier to fix, though.
  11. Ignore the sarcastic/rude posters. The music industry is in a really bad place these days. It's very difficult for someone such as yourself to just come in and try to make money off of music; it just doesn't work like that anymore in the age of piracy and .00001% royalty streaming. It's more practical to release your music for free or for pay-what-you-want (on like Bandcamp) and work on building a huge fanbase by getting passed on on popular websites and social networks by other people who have big followings, which is more important if you want to eventually make money on music (free music is easier to build a fanbase because there's no difficulty in people "trying out" your music). Other artists are turning to more interesting models like Patreon, where "patrons" can monthly donate a pledged amount to you in the return of "rewards", being access to your newest creative endeavors. It's like crowdfunding, but it's just donations for YOU, not for any specific project. One person I know is using it to fund her new creations, another is using it to actually pay for his living expenses. But again, you're only going to get success in any of these models with a bigger fanbase. If you don't have any fans, no one's going to donate to you or pay anything to you.
  12. Try authoritatively arguing against people on the forums more. This avatar exemplifies my incredible lack of patience, propensity for confrontation and general assertion of alleged superiority, so I believe I've earned it.
  13. All I can say about G-Reco is that it's weird. Really weird. But the animation is beautiful and it's got that sense of "what da fack?" amid its more serious themes. A lot of the character interactions feature a lot of incidental dialogue. For instance, a conversation will be interrupted by one of the characters complementing another on how good their coffee tastes before returning to the discussion, but unlike more serious anime where they pull it back into the conversation by some crazy metaphor subject transition, it's actually just a completely incidental unrelated piece of dialogue. It's almost hyper-realistic in that sense, and is more akin to what real-world conversations are actually like. It can actually get in the way sometimes, and is an interesting way of telling a story, as sometimes it actually makes the dialogue harder to understand (perhaps exemplifying some kind of real-world difficulty in conversation that we don't really think about in idealized script-writing).
  14. Does this burning fist of yours tell you to? Well, if you say so. Perhaps I was too taken aback by its Shonen nature to judge it accurately. I'd love to give it a shot, honestly, but I just can't stomach old animation, or old anything really. I'm kind of uninterested in saying anything more, so I'll simply apologize for calling it bad on inappropriate grounds and leave it at that. Maybe if they retold the story with modern production value, I'd try it out. I have several points for why I enjoyed Unicron, so I guess I'll try to cover it succinctly. I thought Banagher's story was pretty compelling as a standalone. I'm familiar with some of UC's history but obviously not to the extent of experiencing its characters like yourself. I understand that some "purists" (I don't think Gundam can have purists, it has too many different branches) find the Newtype business really yucky, but I think that you can "magic" effectively if it coincides with your show's thematic message. It set up a very important familiar conflict, dealing with war and peace and blah blah blah. I thought in particular, the idea of "possibility" and having the Gundam be a unicorn (something that "doesn't exist") was pretty clever and having finished it over a month ago I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that symbolism was meant for. I have a good idea, but haven't reached the point of certainty where I can really preach it. I thought the idea of "La+ box" and the "key to ending the war" resulted in a pretty clever resolution, one that brought to light the fact that nothing is ever really clear cut even if it masks itself as such. The key to ending the war being nothing but an ambiguously interpreted lost article of law really goes along with the show's central theme of "possibility". Yes, things are terrible, people are terrible and selfish, etc. "But even so!", there is this possibility, a glimmer of hope that we can turn this around, and that's all we need to keep fighting for what we think is right, shown by Banagher almost giving his life several times in the series over "possibilities". Life isn't about happy endings, it's about working towards them. But even in his heroics, Banagher is a believable person, and he sees the bad while he sees the good. He has his tears and his moments of giving up for a good while before he figures out what he's supposed to do, and I think that in general is a good thing going for a protagonist (informed optimism instead of blind optimism). For this specific reason, I draw a parallel between Banagher and Madoka. It's not the same situation, or same theme, but it's the same internal reaction, the same style of character development. Having only seen "modern Char" incarnations in the AU gundams, I didn't have too strong an opinion on Full Frontal's Char Aznable, nor do I fully claim to understand exactly what this character was in pure physical nature, but I did understand his significance and his viewpoint and he largely was an antagonist that the creator clearly respected enough to give believable motivations. His little time travel bit with Banagher raised my eyebrow a bit but the actual logistics aside, it served the more important purpose of bringing Banagher to understand the idea of cosmic insignificance, which basically was the strongest point of Char's perspective. To any normal person, I feel they would side with Char after being pummeled with an amount of despair. other characters: I thought Audrey/Mineva was kind of flat, but she showed some more color towards the end. I liked Riddhe's character development, where he fell prey to the despair of war and was placed in the dangerous position of power, but came through at the end. I liked Marida's character. She was always the enemy in a lot of fights, but she was never a bad person, it was just her circumstances that landed her on the "wrong side", at least in plot terms. Her "father" was also pretty good, not being some evil commander, but just a tired old man who's sick of war and wanting to see its quick end. Not outstanding or insightful characters on their own, but pretty good a sub characters. As far as the actual show, the animation was top notch (3D Gundams plz) and the music in particular was outstanding, being done by Sawano (AoT composer and future Xenoblade composer). The main theme in particular is incredibly well composed and orchestrated, along with the UX 0 and RX 0 themes. The fight scenes left a tiny bit to be desired, but their lack of pure dazzling action in my opinion was indicative of Banagher's hesitance and pure-hearted nature (as opposed to the fights in Gundam Build Fighters, which have amazing choreography by comparison, but it makes sense because they're playing a game). I mean, I guess I was a little too hard and definitive on something I haven't taken seriously enough to analyze, so you're right regardless.
  15. I feel I should clarify that I have seen a good portion of it. It's not as if I've never seen it before, as I seem to have implied. However, "quality content" doesn't require you to watch all 16-17 hours to get the good parts, so I disagree that I need to see the whole thing to decide if it's any good or not. If it's "quality content", it should be consistent, and from what I've seen of it, it's a pretty typical over the top corny shounen, like DBZ. As for the "purist" bit as you call it, I'm really not into these kinds of debates, but it's a known fact that G-Gundam broke Gundam convention. It set out specifically to do so, being the first alternate universe Gundam. It was intentionally designed trying to be different, and this is not an opinion, it's fact. Yes, obviously Sunrise made it. You can't deny literal facts. That doesn't mean you can't argue against the thematic consistency of a specific work in a franchise. Just because you try something different doesn't mean it's automatically good, and I'm aware you're not saying it's good, but I am saying it's not worth watching. It offers nothing insightful; it's just typical, enjoyable old action anime (yes, Domon's final attack quote is enjoyable to recite when you're a little kid, and I did do that). Perhaps my statement that is was "garbage" was irresponsible, I tend to use strongly worded statements. It's not "bad" in that it's dysfunctional and awful, it's "bad" to me in that it's not amazing. There are a lot of amazing animes out there, and spending 16-17 hours watching G Gundam is not in my interest if I want to cover it. I'm not saying every other Gundam was amazing by comparison; the complications don't make it automatically good, of course. I've seen some "eh" stuff and some "ugh" stuff (particularly in Wing). But to say G Gundam is the most amazing Gundam, I have incredibly strong disagreement with that but am unwilling to start that debate in this thread and I would like the thread to return to its normal course.
  16. Tiger & Bunny is next on the list.
  17. This is *not* what Gundam is. Gundam's strength is its exploration of very complicated political and social issues. The only reason G Gundam is "Gundam" is because it's in the name. Yes, that doesn't make it a bad show by itself necessarily, but it's pretty terrible for a Gundam show, much like many people consider Other M an awful Metroid game (while by itself it's not *that* bad a game, albeit it is nothing special). I have no intention of watching G Gundam specifically because it's over-the-top and lacks any sort of complex substance to it. I don't like shows just for entertainment factor unless it's super stellar aesthetic design, like Build Fighters, which is a 2013 show with pristine animation and music. Even then, the show carries bright themes and doesn't really pretend to be serious as far as geopolitical themes (there are no geopolitical themes); it is essentially a major league gaming story (until the end, when something catastrophic *actually* happens and it's not pretending, it actually is serious).
  18. I can't really take a show seriously if it thematically concludes a gigantic geopolitical disaster by having the protagonist tell someone he loves her. Conversely, other geopolitical disasters in other Gundam are accurately addressed as pretty terrible (wars, genocide, etc.), with ambiguous morality, and lack any sort of meaningful resolution. It can be seen as an ongoing commentary of our own cyclic mistakes as humanity, and I find that far more interesting a message than "boy tells girl he loves her, dark gundam gets blown away and they live happily ever after". How is that supposed to make me feel? What am I supposed to have learned from that? Tell people how I feel? I guess, but it seems like the premise of the show (ongoing tournament to take over the world) wasn't appropriately used to reach that conclusion. Never mind the fact that the political world was being run by a freaking tournament, which makes absolutely no sense in the first place.
  19. Burst through Gundam the past couple months. Finished: Gundam 00 Gundam Build Fighters Gundam Unicorn Gundam SEED Gundam SEED Destiny Special Edition (really bad movies, might watch the show) Watching: Gundam Build Fighters Try Gundam Reconguista in G Gundam Wing To-Watch: Turn A Gundam (not really looking forward to it, it's not my style, but I know it's good) I'm not looking to watch G Gundam or anything before Gundam Wing. I *might* watch X. Reasons being I have low tolerance for old animation quality (also G Gundam is garbage from everything I have seen and read about it). I'll also eventually watch any good movies/OVA's made after the year 2000. This is honestly like the best anime ever produced. Great plot, solid characters, great soundtrack, high budget animation, symbolic visual motifs, symbolic plot motifs, scary good rewatch value.
  20. Filters are also necessary not to mess up the microphone. Moisture from your mouth, if it gets on the condenser's plates, can be destructive to its performance.
  21. Well, not just wisdom and evolution, but this is actually the healthiest and most peaceful year in a very long time for the documented history of humanity.
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