Nabeel Ansari

Mathematics is the least obfuscated field of study in STEM. Sheet music and conductor scores, on the other hand, are of the most obfuscated things in music history. That being said, FL's great. It's as obfuscated as you make it, and you can make it not at all.

Thanks for writing my college letter of recommendation, Zirc.

Agreed. I don't like it either. People tend to bandwagon and it's a little nauseating. But I do take issue with more objective points: 1) "Somehow 100x better recorded" Recording techniques and equipment are far superior than those over a decade ago. As are the digital representations (sample rate, bit depth) and additional detailing (round robins, recording time for more articulations). 2) "scripted" Do you know what scripts are? It's obviously fruitless to tell you something is great because of scripts if you're not even aware of their purpose. Scripts are code pieces designed to carry out particular functions. A common use of scripting is achieving legato; I can smoothly trigger "note into note" noise when I am playing legato on an oboe library, for example. EWQLSO doesn't have this. Specifically, it tries to brute force some amplitude enveloping to try and approximate it when you hit the "legato" button, but honestly it sounds pretty terrible. A huge blow to realism right there. This is why EWQLSO composers don't write music with lots of space and attention on a single instrument group, it would sound dry and with jagged attacks. 3) "sounding like Hans Zimmer is easy now" I hate to break this to you, dude, but Hans Zimmer hasn't been writing any meaningful music for a long time. Maybe back in Lion King days. The reason it's easy to sound like Zimmer is because his music is just sound design; once you capture the sound, just lay down some 16th tonic runs and a horn crescendo and that's it. It's not an achievement and it doesn't take talent. The goal of creating virtual instruments is not to make it easy to sound like a Hollywood composer, it's to ease the pain of not having access to live musicians. If you don't consider yourself to care about what the instruments bring you, that's fine. You're one person out of many others who do care, and that's why they buy this shit. Because it makes writing music easier. The music they want to write (not the music YOU want to write). Not everyone is trying to emulate Hans Zimmer. 4)"action trailer/cue" I think you again misunderstand the demographic of these libraries. It's not specifically targeted at people who want to make generic Hollywood cues, it's generally targeted at the computer music community, which also greatly consists of people who are looking for instruments that sound good and offer performance control. It's not about giving people a library that'll make them a quick buck. That's a very naive way of looking at things. I think you need to learn to accept that not everyone aims for commercial success with least effort and involvement (like you do) and these people may find the labor of music composition and orchestration... *gasp*, PURE FUN. For fuck's sake, dude. You're talking about this on OverClocked ReMix forums. The amount of people on here who are trying to be professional musicians is smaller than you'd think.

Not gonna answer your other points since they are A) off-topic (I even said "this question is not in the scope of this thread" and you went and answered it anyway) and full of straw-man (nowhere did I say anything about "real music" or "originality") and not worth the retort. Because if you're a computer arranger/orchestrator (and are trained to know how to write music) instead of just a home producer, Grosso literally disables you from doing what it is you specialize in doing. It's a waste of money because it has no pertinence to what you do. To clarify, for you, an arranger's job is similar to that of orchestrator, but also has the ability to make musical decisions like changing chords, melodies, forms, etc. instead of only pure aesthetic decisions (like choosing when your woodwinds and which ones will do a fluttery thing). The term composer used to mean an arranger who additionally generates his own musical ideas instead of recycling other ones, but nowadays it just means anyone with a computer, some production skill, and some concept of major and minor scales. That being said, in the case you're an arranger, orchestrator, and/or the more traditional kind of composer, Grosso limits your ability to take advantage of your skillsets (individual control over instruments, dynamics, voicings, etc.). If you're none of those things and you're the kind of composer who gets music out of his machine no matter the methods, then Grosso is probably better for you. (As I said in the last post, so I essentially repeated myself to answer your question). Not everyone writes music the same, so Grosso's usefulness depends on the person. I'm not sure how much more clear I can make that. Moving away from general advice and more specifically targeting this to someone like you, the easiest, cheapest, and most autonomous solution possible is more worth the money for you. Be careful, though, because that road is leading to being out of work, since people are making strides in computer generated music and not too far in the future this kind of generic recycling is something you won't need to pay humans to do anymore. (We've already created a categorized database of phrases, just make a system that'll piece them together. It's not as challenging as you might think.) And the more comprehensive we make accessing the phrases, the easier game devs can directly just plop them into their game without the need of a specialized "music guy". tl;dr Some people like control. Grosso has none. It's not about originality or integrity, it's about preferred work style.

Basically any time you see sheet music in the Kontakt screenshots, you can assume it's a library which writes the music for you. I know nothing about this >_> For clients, yes, it's easy to please them using this kind of software. On the flipside, you're doing yourself an artistic disservice by not understanding what you write. Sure the end product is great, but is it really your musical voice, or someone else's that you sort of pieced together to make something you like? The question is subjective and outside the scope of this thread, but my point is that Grosso and other such libraries are super convenient for getting good orchestral sounds really quickly, but should be treated as separate kinds of products than sample libraries because of how you use them. To someone looking for a set of orchestral instruments that they can write for (especially someone versed in the art of orchestration), Grosso may be useless to them because it takes them out of the driver's seat, which is where they are strongest.

Grosso isn't an orchestral sample library, it's an orchestral phrase library. It has pre-recorded phrases and chords, you don't get per-note control. It's like Action Strings from NI. It's a personal issue of what you consider composition, but if you're after the kind of composition where you write all the notes manually, it won't help you with that. That's its difference from Da Capo.

Two people arguing about a price isn't as informative as the official word from the site, so I literally brought what the site said. Not paying $50 to buy another iLok. Someone else can do that, and I can instead get a better library on a superior engine, taking advantage of modern scripts, having all of my instruments from one instance of a plug-in, better file compression methods, etc. (and also not have to pay $50 when I lose a dongle during a move). There's nothing inherently wrong with EWQLSO. There's also no reason to get it over a modern library, "if you're serious". It's old, it sounds old, and the software behaves like it's old. That's a pretty reasonable price for a full orchestra. Do you understand the kind of work it takes to bring a library like this together? The musicians and studio time you have to pay for? The vast amounts of editing and mic control?

Anyways, I'd have to think carefully about it. I'd only get it after I sell EWQLSO (I'm sick of PLAY and iLok bullshit), but the thing is, I need to think about what I'm losing by going from a giant individualized library to what is essentially a few ensemble patches. It won't do me much good to learn proper orchestral arranging with ensemble patches, but then again, I do own Miroslav Philharmonik and can layer the two libraries to both have the high quality sound and the proper arranger's control. Another factor is deciding if I want to buy the actual "Cine" line. It'll be a waste to get this if I get the full versions later on. This would be $200 for me, and the Cine line after discount is $1105. Really steep, but so much more control.

just...

That's not at all what I was saying and if you continue responding to such an idea, then I will just ignore you altogether and assume you're not responding to me but some phantom straw man (see what I did there). Same goes for Meteo.

Cool. So we agree. No, it isn't. So there's no issue here...?

Good points (could've done without the prodding). But I'm not talking about reduction rates for people who don't have money, I'm talking about not accepting low rates for people who do have money. There's a subtle difference. And you're taking what I said about the industry a little too seriously. I'm not saying the industry will fall apart because of reduction rates (that's called a straw man ), I'm saying working for cheap for clients who have money but choose not to give it to you is setting a low bar for yourself and tells that client that good product doesn't have to be paid for. If you don't agree that the first step to solving a problem is avoiding its propagation, then we have a fundamental disconnect and that's the end of that discussion. Also, if you're actually bad at making music and charging for it like in the Virt scenario you pointed out, I'm pretty sure there's no good reason to hire you anyway. I don't see the problem here. The person doesn't get paid and the client finds a better composer (there are *plenty* out there). To answer your question, I would take the $20,000, which bunks your whole scenario. Try understanding my argument instead of twisting it to sound ridiculous and in your favor. I have no patience for people who do otherwise.

If you read the price tag, it says "Name Your Price". So, you can opt to not pay for it.

I tried Google. http://gamemusic4all.bandcamp.com/

The problem as Timaeus said is that there is an inherent dishonesty towards musicians and composers in the industry. For example, game teams will allocate large sums of money for programmers and artists, but tell the composer they don't have a big audio budget. It's not that they don't have the money, it's that they don't think you're worth that money and they pump it elsewhere. If you pander to their "budget" in these kinds of scenarios, you're going to perpetuate the problem of unfair distribution of wages. Maybe you don't care that you're hurting the industry by doing so, but you are. It's food for thought, at least. Also, of course maybe other clients won't have a dishonest budget; there's no real way to tell, so the important thing is to have a minimum flat rate so you can at least survive. If you have a dayjob, then softening towards their budget number won't really hurt you that much. It just won't help you that much either.

If you want to complain about sexualization in games Dragon's Crown is not the game you point at

Metal Man the excessive smilies in the topic post makes me suspicious that you're a bit drunk. But fine, I'll play. 1. Piano 2. Acoustic Drum Kit 3. Acoustic Bass 4. Violins 5. Violas 6. Cellos 7. Horns 8. Synth Instance (I'll use it for a pad) 9. Synth Instance 2 (I'll use it for leads maybe) 10. Flute 11. Oboe 12. Vibraphone 13. Acoustic Guitar 14. Electric Guitar 15. Organ 16. Harp

I'll be there with my Ocarina.

I can not appreciate you more

Let's just hope you don't talk to their developers