Nabeel Ansari

203 GB is not the worst, I don't think. Vienna Symphonic is definitely bigger.

I haven't really been making music at all lately. Been writing a couple tracks at work, nothing substantial yet, however. Trying to make music in a dorm room sucks. My last big thing was Guile's Theme for Apex, and that was back in December.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/ISW-Rhapsody-m3064221.aspx There you go.

There are plenty of basic music theory videos on YouTube. If you're that bored and don't care about the cert, why don't you just go watch them?

The from Paper Mario: Sticker Star is pretty beautiful; kind of bittersweet but optimistic at the same time. Has 2 pretty substantial sections but many variations thereof. This is by far my favorite song from a Mario game.

These are compositional "tricks"; ornamentation to add body to the sound and performance of the music. But adding pretty sounds only helps after you have a solid thematic outline underneath (learn to walk before you run). If you reduce a song to its essential components and it doesn't sound complete anymore, that means it relied too much on ornamentation. There are less ways to perform and arrange this kind of music, and additionally, it tends to get boring a little faster. It's like relying on good mixing and neat effects to make your song sound better; same idea, just within the confines of the compositional world. Rarely ever works. That's what I mean when I say there's less substance. Not saying Phineas and Ferb suffered from this at all (zircon understands the importance of note writing), but I am saying that your "strong points" you find in the music are things I don't personally find strong at all. I guess I'm asking for you to make a better case for yourself. I haven't listened to the whole soundtrack, but have listened to the ones you did mention as exceptional, and I wasn't particularly impressed; they didn't seem the kind of "masterpiece" level of the other songs in the thread, nor did they even seem on par with Zirc's other personal discography (I.S., Antigravity, etc.).

See my above post. What kind of non-VGM music do you listen to? That might contribute to your perception. Also, it's not about layers and detail. It's about form and progression. You're looking at the vertical too much and not paying enough attention to the horizontal. You can have a three instrument ensemble that plays a more stellar arrangement than an orchestra with complex voicings. Solo piano music understands this idea very well. Check Chopin, famous for being able to write a lot of musical progression within a very small number of measures. The "length" in seconds of a Chopin performance is around the length of a VGM OST track from Fittest, but goes through a lot more substantial musical progression. I understand it's not fair to compare Zircon to Chopin, but it helps demonstrate the idea of the levels of substance you can have in a piece of music. That's not to say I don't like Fittest, but it's a different kind of music. It's game music. Identity Sequence has a lot more substance because it's a concept album and not VG music (and because he got better over the years). It's music for music's sake, which seems pedantic, but really does make a noticeable difference in terms of construction.

Not quite... PF2D is largely still background music. Stands alone all right, but I wouldn't go to a concert to listen to it (I'd go to a concert to support Andy, though ). I realize this is an opinionated thing, so you should refer to the examples to get an idea of what he's after. Fittest is a little better about it, but it still suffers from the same concept of "background music". It can just loop and loop, the sections are roughly independent and you can tack them together in any random order and have it sound just as good (and what complex harmonies are you talking about? Morsecode is the only track with "complex harmonies"). Refer to Identity Sequence, that would give a better model to understand what the "intentional" aspect of music form is all about. Generally speaking, a lot of VGM falls into this category because it has to. It needs to be granular and recyclable, but that sacrifices the thing that this thread is asking for. The kind of music asked for isn't something you'd find in level/stage themes or boss themes, but music composed strictly for the narrative emphasis (like Dancing Mad, One Winged Angel, etc. have thematic and motivic development). And most certainly, you can't link a whole soundtrack, because these gems are rarely more than a few songs from a game.

Glad to see community welcomes are so charming. *claps*

is pretty expressive, and the arranged piano collection version even more so. What Brandon is (I think) asking for is video game music that is also art music. Art music is music crafted to be "perfection", demonstrating an ideal and developing a theme that the composer wants to expand on. Dancing Mad is a prime example, but of course, everyone knows Dancing Mad. It's a tall order to begin with, game composers are usually on such hard deadlines that they can't dedicate a lot of attention to making one really stellar piece in their soundtrack. Usually you see this when tracks have pretty good 1-minute sections that are padded around with sparse instrumentation or just continuously loop for sake of length. I noticed this particularly in Darksiders 2; each track had a pretty good theme but these themes lasted only so long (maybe 30 seconds of substantial material) and then that was it. Just vamp and padding to make it longer, no musical development beyond. It's not a problem, but the kind of stuff Brandon wants is music that goes beyond that.

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I personally find Sibelius to be really convenient and intuitive. This is only for sheet printing, however; I write and produce music using a piano roll and virtual instruments.

A soldering iron is not a power tool. It does require electricity, yes, but a "power tool" is something like a drill, which generates motion on its own from a power source. Power tools aren't allowed because they're actually dangerous on their own (drills, saws that you turn on, etc. can draw blood and destroy property really easily); a soldering iron is as dangerous as a clothing iron, or a lit match. It's just really freakin hot; that's it.

Is it a liberal arts college?

Does anyone want to buy my ticket? It costs $27 for a lawn seat after tax and stuff and I'll let it go for $20. It's for the Philadelphia event on Sept. 19th. I can't go anymore because I won't be in Philly.

For those who aren't algebraically inclined or just don't look for shortcuts, here is a nifty formula: noteFrequency = currentFrequency * 2^(semitoneDistance/12) Ex. If I want C above A and I have A which is 440, I multiply 440 by 2 to the 3/12 power. If I want the C under A, this is 440 times 2 to the -9/12 power. This works starting at any note frequency, not just A.

http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/pokemon-orchestral-concert-tour-announced/ Anyone planning to go to the Philadelphia Concert on September 19? I live here, so I'd love to meet up.

Being a nice guy to your dorm mates for their engineering project.

My old music was a lot better.

You have to understand that DAW's were designed to mimic operations of a recording studio. They weren't built with "create music the best way possible" as an ideal, they were built with "digitize the recording studio mixing console" as an ideal. As a feature of how the technology progressed, a lot of the things we have in DAW's are still a relic of old studio workflows. Busses, aux sends, insert/receives, these are fundamentally extraneous things if you were to eliminate the concept of physical signal flow from your system. They don't HAVE to be there, but they are there because they were there in real consoles and it was easier for people to transfer to digital when the tools looked the same. To answer your question, we have a master fader because real consoles had a master fader. Why? Manufacturing is easier. Homogenizes the board. The "master fader" is just another fader where the sum of all the signal passes through. Also, being able to control the entire volume is just a common sense feature. In professional practice, you may not use it, but you may want to sometimes... it's preference. In the digital world, automating it is fun. http://erikhawkins.berkleemusicblogs.com/2008/02/03/the-master-fader-is-not-for-monitor-control/

I tested a low sine (~280) and a high sine (~2000) and they both sounded very loud at 0 dBFS. There was a noticeable difference, but not enough to say that the first was "much quieter". It was "a little" quieter. I am wearing decent flat response headphones, which is important, too. https://www.dropbox.com/s/h280i8o8iuzmrxb/loudness.wav You are correct in saying that you can manipulate the spectral balance to push some loudness in... but honestly, that is the wrong way to do mastering. You're supposed to (tastefully) equalize your spectrum, and will mean making your spectrum a tad unequal in volume at different frequency ranges in order to make everything a similar loudness. If you push volume into your high frequencies for the sake of loudness, makes your mix sound hot and bright and displeasurable. The perception phenomena shouldn't be used as a mastering tool for getting loudness (boost 1-5 KHz, get louder, profit! ...no.); It should be used as a mixing tool for understand that your high frequency instruments can have lower levels and still be heard. Peaks and ratios. If you have a high ratio and you whack 0 dB, your volume gets pushed down really quiet. So even a short peak smacking the limiter will make the mix quieter if you don't set up your attack and release parameters properly. It's also your responsibility to then turn up the gain to bring the resultant volume back to 0 dB. If you don't want to do this, use a Maximizer. That's what it does; it limits and then brings it up for you. You're also hitting peaks irresponsibly, those cymbal crashes are way oversaturated and end up masking your entire mix. At any case, we're derailing this topic. It is not a discussion of mastering ideas and practices. It's a discussion of Master Mi having to understand both the difference between what he sees and what he hears and also that sound layering is the art of mixing itself and that avoiding the ceiling while adding layers is the backbone of what balancing is.

Your comparison is too exaggerated and as a result doesn't hold water. Of course 150 dBSPL at 25 kHz is barely audible; I can't physically hear anything above 17.8 KHz. It's a null statement that is invalidated by the fact that you misunderstand what sound is. Sound isn't vibration; it's perception of the vibrations. You can't say dB means nothing for sound loudness if you're going to use it in the context of something that isn't sound. Instead of comparing 2 KHz to 25 KHz, try comparing 2 KHz to 200 Hz. They're different perceived intensities, yes; but they're both really strong and really similar. Additionally, you're placing way too much emphasis on the Fletcher-Munson curves of response to different frequencies. It's not nearly as potent as you make it seem. It doesn't dismantle the metric of the decibel, it just shifts it a little here and there. Incorrect. Physical energy doubles at intervals of 3 dBSPL, not 5. Loudness perception doubles at 10 dBSPL, not 5, you're correct on that one. It depends where you are and how fast you're hearing the changes. Though it is a direct correlation. It may not be 1 to 1, but it certainly is direct. It is linear and relatively consistent with some room for error because it's perception. https://www.dropbox.com/s/lfilb4b2q4sxbn3/mixes.png Observe the waveforms. Your mix is mastered quieter than Jason's. It is also overcompressed and saturated, and doesn't fill the sonic spectrum as much as his. Your RMS also has a major difference and you rarely hit 0 dB while he consistently caps at it. If you simply raised the volume knob of your mix and did a better job with balancing to not overkill your limiter, you would certainly be as loud as him. (I apologize if that was a harsh criticism, but using your own music as part of a debate is fishy territory). This is true in certain cases, though in this specific one, he has trouble distinguishing between "loudness" and "numbers". The stuff about RMS and fletcher munson response is above where he is in technical prowess; his problem lies further back in the essential understanding of how computer audio works, which is that the sound output from your computer is independent of what you hear because of the gateway of your audio listening set up, and also that you can have more layers of sound at the same final volume by simply making them quieter. Check your ears (and maybe your listening set up), it is most certainly louder.

I would love to get involved, though I am personally immersing myself in the world of DSP in both of my jobs (I work part-time at a game technology studio and full time at a Music Technology lab in Drexel) and don't think I can stretch my brain to include the analog world and also the world of circuits and physical devices at the same time. I may in the future, though!

This is incorrect. dBSPL has a direct correlation to sensation of loudness, it's ~5dB I believe to be a doubling in loudness perception. dBFS is merely dBSPL with a different reference point. However, pure amplitude does not correlate linearly. Our loudness perception is logarithmic, and decibels bring linearity to that perception. You're also irresponsibly making comparisons here: "Something can reach the maximum output of your computer--which is when it clips--and still sound quiet. The actual peak energy is high, but the sensation of loudness is low. For something to sound loud, the sustained energy needs to be high, which is where things like RMS and crest factor come in." You're saying a technically correct thing with a very unrelated example to back it up. The sensation of loudness from computer audio has nothing to do with whether something has a large or small dynamic range. It first comes from how turned up our speakers are. You can have a very high RMS yet turn your speakers off. Do you say your mix is then silent? Yes, RMS contributes to loudness. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the error of thinking that something can be quiet when it reaches the maximum volume of your DAW. The SPEAKER output is quiet here; the energy of the signals is not. Yes, technically the average can be low, but 99% of the time, this kind of dynamic range never happens without explicit use of an expander.

Remember when I explained to you that waves could be represented by a string of numbers? Think of layering two waves like adding every one of those numbers of each wave together one by one. You need to do a couple things: -You need to stop thinking about sound in terms of "how loud it sounds". Amplitude has little to do with how something sounds. Amplitude has to do with intensity, power, energy. Loudness is just how we perceive amplitude. I can raise the master volume to the maximum yet turn my speakers down. Sounds super quiet, but it doesn't change the mathematical strength of the signals being processed. There is a mathematical relationship that creates a connection between signal strength and our "loudness perception". This is called the decibel. However, it doesn't make sense to turn off your speakers and say "my mix is too quiet", does it? You need to establish reference points. If something reaches the maximum volume in your computer and it doesn't sound loud enough for you, that means your speakers are too low. Listen to any other music and realize that nothing will sound loud if your speakers are turned down. -"Is this some kind of a limitation to prevent the normal users with the standard versions of DAWs from creating professionell soundtracks with more layers or is this quite normal?" This is not a limitation, it's just a cue for you to learn some physics and practice mixing. When things have too much power, you must turn them down. I can layer 1,000,000 different instrument notes together and have it be within the maximum volume, so long as I were to make sure none of them exceeded the max volume divided by 1,000,000.