Nabeel Ansari

Yeah, I think I first saw it around last year. I think it was a Knuckles reference,

http://kotaku.com/why-arbys-twitter-is-all-over-gaming-right-now-1790182762 According to this, since latter half of 2015.

I've spilled water on my keyboard multiple times and I eat messy food over it all the time. It's not so bad. :3

Arby's has been doing this for quite a long time.

Very nice! Though it would be better if it was longer and had a bigger story to tell.

Well, the good news is you already seem to have a pretty strong intuitive sense for how to balance your sounds (and also just how to write music that works). In that track you linked, only the saxophones really stick out to me as bad. That being said, you can't get free saxophones that sound better than that; it's just not gonna happen. Anything that would sound better would take a lot of work, and that's work that someone would sell it for to make money on.

It's more a matter of questioning why you say you "don't get" the complaint. Do you not understand the complaint, or do you simply not agree it's a common issue? Saying "I don't understand" can imply the issues are not important, or more extensively that it's other people's fault that the software had issues, or that the issues they have are not valid issues, etc. You can think it's good software, and recommend it, but still recognize that many people have had a lot of problems with it. It seemed you were implying that since the software worked for you, the fact that other people had issues is confounding and suspect; I wanted to point out I thought that was pretty illogical way to navigate the topic. As for the "now" situation, you were remarking on the complaints you'd seen for years, and the PLAY update was only recent, so I was responding to that specific observation (which has everything to do with old PLAY and nothing to do with the new one). To clarify, I don't mean a consensus that everyone thinks it's bad software, I mean a consensus insofar as everyone is aware that PLAY has pretty rocky, inconsistent experiences with people. If you ask a lot of those esteemed composers you're talking about if they like PLAY and it's good, they might say yes, but if you ask them if they knew that other people have issues with it, concerning RAM, voice playback, etc.. unless they don't involve themselves in the VI community much, I'd venture they would tell you they're aware of that. Furthermore, a lot of customers in VI industry aren't the loud and proud people you see on VI-C, and a lot of them aren't professionals. They might not afford finely tuned workstation rigs where PLAY's performance issues didn't matter, and that's definitely a factor here. I can tell you for example, the largest % of ISW customers (that we've been able to poll, anyway...) consider themselves hobbyists. I love it more when people come out of hiding just to scream about how people behave on the forums, making themselves out to be the exact douchebags they're trying to call out.

Like John said, each kind of thing/possibility you can do will kind of have an unique emotional effect. You just need to gain the experience seeing all of them used in different music (or trying them yourself) to gain the ability to match an effect you want for your music to what kind of borrowed chord achieves that. The end of this rabbit hole (specifically borrowed harmony) is gaining a mastery of being modally fluid; you can just mix and match different harmonies around a tonal center without any regard for sticking to a specific scale structure. Dorian, Lydian, Phrygian, etc. going from wherever to wherever. A path to achieving this mastery is what Gario was talking about, having a strong understanding of counterpoint. If the counterpoint works, the progression works, and that's a path to this fluidity. It's like unlocking a whole new spectrum of color. Remember, being a learned composer is not about writing down rules for what to do in specific situations, it's about expanding your options for what to do in specific situations. Here are some pretty common borrowed harmony sounds you might hear in soundtracks or pop music. Play the listed scale and then try the chord after having the scale in your head: In minor, IV. So in C minor, play Cmin then Fmaj. In major, iv. So in C major, play Cmaj then Fmin. In minor, V. So in C minor, play Cmin then Gmaj. In major, III. So in C major, play Cmaj, then Emaj (then Amin to resolve, it's a secondary dominant). These are just a few small examples. Like you said, the possibilities are endless.

This is just an issue of your lack of exposure to the industry at large; many people have had issues with the PLAY engine. I appreciate the snarky mirror remark, but there's a difference between arguing something because of your personal experience and arguing based on consensus. What's even more puzzling is that you recognize that you've seen this complaint "for years" but still somehow discount that and consider your personal experience an indicator that it's good software instead of the obvious outlier that it is. That being said, PLAY's latest version is actually good, so this is kind of a moot point anyway. They fixed a lot of their issues.

So because you've never had a problem with it that means it's good software?

You've provided 0 reasons why you think it takes place right after Ocarina. That's not a theory, it's just a random thought. Never mind the fact that you can't be after Ocarina but before the time split; the time split happens in Ocarina of Time. It's the branch of the ways the game's story can end. The timeline splits when Link pulls out the master sword. Timeline #1 He lives his life normally as a kid after killing Ganondorf, returning consciously to the time where he pulled the master sword out. This is what actually happens in the game. Timeline #2 A continuation of the events of the future where Ganondorf already screwed stuff up for 7 years and Link suddenly appeared as an adult and killed him. This world doesn't go away when Link returns as a child; that's not how timelines work. Timeline #3 Timeline #2, but Ganondorf kills Link instead, and new events happen in that world. The point at which events split is when Link first pulls out the master sword... but that's during Ocarina of Time, not after. After Ocarina of Time, the timeline has already split -- twice, if you count the "Ganondorf kills Link" one. But I don't, because that doesn't actually happen in the game, it's just a way for Nintendo to retcon a bunch of stuff as seeming to fit together when they wrote Hyrule Historia..

The fact that you're covering Zelda tracks doesn't change what freeware is available for you.

It sounds like you're just "not tone deaf", which most people are also "not tone deaf".

Is anyone already doing the Apex main theme?

Because she asked for free and ours cost money.

http://www.imgawards.com/games/sole/ Check it out, and vote if you feel inclined! There's a lot of nominees though, just to warn you. The music in the posted video is early prototype stuff. I've been working on all new music with interactivity and such.

Yeah, all bundles do, all the time. Black Friday's the easiest safe assumption, but there are others.

I guess I should've put one at the end of mine too.

Same here, no issues Windows 10 with any VST's. Studio One has its own beef with some plugins though.

But what they're doing IS fine, and if only people would recognize that, it would work out great for them.

So, you're looking for plugins, right? BreakTweaker and Stutter Edit from iZotope are solid. I have SE, it's insane. https://www.izotope.com/en/products/create-and-design/stutter-edit.html?gclid=CLaDqb3b8dECFcSCswodsNAKmA \ Obvious "wtf $$$" but I got it on sale for $50 recently; so it may not end your search here right now but something to look out for in the future.

First of all, it's too compressed, but secondly, the velocities DO need some work. If you've ever recorded playing piano into a DAW, you'd notice a lot of velocities are like... really low. Like below 80. There's some parts that don't really sound like they're phrased. You need to keep an idea of what are the dominant musical ideas happening. Harmonic rhythmic support needs to be quieter than melodies and short little phrases and any other kind of linear motion you're trying to bring out. Sometimes you have these long stretch of harmonic changes like at 1:50 but it doesn't sound like there's any long term planning on how the pianist is managing the phrasing. Crescendo over the whole thing? Or maybe crescendo certain patterned parts of it? Now when I say crescendo, I DON'T mean just do straight up lines in the velocities. You still have to manage the balance of voices (top to bottom, what's the prominent line, etc) I hear nothing, no kind of handling the musical ideas, and this is just not how people perform music. They're always doing something, they're not just playing the notes measure to measure. If you can send me a MIDI of the part at 1:50, I can perform it for you and show you what I mean.

CSS is better for a beginner because it covers more and has better playability. CS2 kind of touches on all the main articulations, but doesn't really cover them that adequately. For example, CS2 has legato but it's very subtle, and there's no control over it. CSS has 3 distinct speeds of legato (which all sound very, VERY good) and it depends on note velocity. CS2 has staccatos and staccatissimos, but no spiccatos. Spiccatos is a really common short for strings in modern popular music, so not the best omission. CSS, on the other hand, has it. CSS also has marcato, which is LEGATO enabled which is FANTASTIC because it means you can do legato phrases with sharp, bite-y playing instead of just the normal lyrical stuff you hear in most libs. It also has a Con Sordino simulation. If you're spending in the ballpark of this range of money you should invest in something really good so you're not left wanting more and spending more later. CS2 was my favorite string lib for a while, and CSS just improves on its spirit by magnitudes. Here's a tone comparison published on SLR: http://www.samplelibraryreview.com/developer-videos/nabeel-ansari-shares-comparison-cinematic-strings-2-vs-cinematic-studio-strings/

He's asking a very general organizational culture thing; how does a business establish a mindset and workflow to achieve a goal, which is creating something to high quality standards such that it's superior to stuff it competes with. The answer is like... it really depends what kind of company it is. At Impact Soundworks, we don't really have a system or established framework; we just hire people who care a lot about the work we're doing, and so we naturally try to do it as well as possible, and better than everyone else. It's just natural motivation. But that's because we're tiny and our business basically depends on something we release being top dog in whatever kind of novel thing it excels at. Or else... people don't buy it, and that's months of effort wasted. In other words, achieving "superior value" is a survival need.