Nabeel Ansari

1. I agree. 2. The easiest way to see if someone has a budget is to look at their team/company, their access to assets and other services they're utilizing for their game, whether for the game itself, for marketing, etc.. If they're taking advantage of resources that cost money, they have money. They're simply not allocating it toward our service because they're trying to shortchange us. Unless it's a completely blind gig where we can't see anything about the game and just have a single point of contact for work specs over skype, we can put two and two together; it's not rocket science. Again, I'm not saying free work is always a no, but if there's nothing compelling you to work on the game specifically (out of interest, passion, etc.) time is better spent looking for bigger (bigger can mean more compensation, or more interesting, or more exposure) fish to fry, especially if the developer demonstrates they don't really value your contributions. In short I don't agree with working on a game for peanuts just because you want to work on something. That doesn't really help ("swing at every ball" is a myth). You have to be getting something out of it, otherwise your time is wasted. 3. I agree.

In what world does that look like an NES to you? Have you actually owned an NES? You could've at least picked an image that actually, you know, looks like an NES, like: (Yes, that's a Pi in there) The point still stands; I don't care about Raspberry Pi's, or setting up an emulator environment, and I don't care enough to rip open an NES just so I can put a Pi inside of it. If I wanted to emulate stuff, I'd do it on my actual computer and spend $0 instead of $75. Emulating is also not supporting Nintendo (something I'd like to do).

Just like the rest of... who?

1. $100/minute is not a standard rate, at all. Standard rate is around $800/minute. But that's for full professionals because that's their cost of business. If you're an indie/hobbyist, you can charge much lower. I don't see anything particularly wrong with $100/minute. 2. A dev will pay for music if they understand the importance of budgeting out for quality creative work. A dev who has a budget but doesn't allocate it properly for music likely doesn't understand the importance of good audio, which makes it even more likely they don't know what they're doing, and the project will be of no benefit to you (someone who doesn't know what they're doing is not likely to make anything good). So even as a free portfolio piece, it doesn't really net you anything. Maybe gives you some music to sell and post on your page, if you retained the rights properly. (***See way below) 3. You shouldn't worry about making the music itself "worth" $100/minute. Music is not a commodity, it's a creative service. The price is based on your cost of doing business. If you can make music fast, make good revisions and listen carefully, then that is what makes your service worth more. In other words, the better you are at communicating and doing your work with a good turnaround, that justifies your price, not so much the quality of the composition/production. If the dev doesn't like your composition/production, it's probably going to be difficult to get them to pay anything for it. 4. See above. ***This is a way different story if the dev doesn't have a budget, i.e. they can't pay you. Then it's not an attitude problem, they simply just don't have the money to give you. For these kinds of projects, you'll want to negotiate a portion of revenue, and rights to sell the soundtrack (with some kind of revenue split there as well). You should get some piece of the pie. Unless it's not being sold, then obviously there will be no compensation, and you're doing it on passion. Lastly, the most rare case is if it's project where the pure exposure itself is actually valid (again, this is rare). If it's something that'll be so big and gain you actual exposure, networking opportunities, recognition, etc. then it's okay to work without compensation. This almost never happens, though, so be very careful.

MindWanderer was talking about Raspberry Pi's. They're just regular computers with Linux on them. Emulating the NES is as easy as downloading https://retropie.org.uk/ and then just DLing ROMs of your favorite NES games. That being said, I don't give a shit about Raspberry Pi's and they don't look like a NES, so I'm gonna buy a mini-NES.

Pokemon GO and then this. Nintendo's really maximizing that pre-NX revenue. I wonder what they're planning.

dopex

Your mistake is requesting rational discussion from someone who clearly has no interest

This sounds like an issue with your installation. Try reinstalling Kontakt. Or, as DJP linked, could be a Service Center metadata issue. I say this because it's impossible for a sample library's code to render Kontakt at all unstable and unreliable except in the very few cases where it performs file I/O. These are things like loading convolution reverb impulses, and loaded presets using the internal preset system. However, these are things that many, many sample libraries do, and have never caused issues except in some cases during SAC testing when users were allowed to rapidly randomize SAC settings by mashing the randomize button without any safeguards in the code in place (and we took care of those before release). Even still, none of the above usage cases of Kontakt's file I/O have anything to do with libraries disappearing and nki's being forgotten from DAW projects, and no SAC testing has ever come up with this issue prior. So it really does sound to me like a DAW/Kontakt installation issue. Does it not happen with other Kontakt libs?

Where do you guys get this stuff? I have not met any researcher who approaches inquiry like this. It doesn't make any sense. >_> You can't start on a premise that you can't disprove something and then derive conclusions from that. You have to prove it can not be disproven before using it as a premise. A lack of counterargument or lack of counterexample doesn't prove anything, nor does it disprove anything. Lack of evidence is not, nor is ever considered a valid premise to support some argument or counter argument. Your relation is backwards; if something can not be scientifically investigated, it can not be disproven. That's not the same as the converse. Every mathematical proof can not be disproven (because that would violate tautology, and dismantle logic in general...), and according to you/Shadowe that renders mathematical proofs illegitimate concepts/things that can not be scientifically investigated. Sorry for going down the rabbit hole, but there's a baseline of literacy in logic you need in order to have thoughtful discussion. :/

What the hell kind of logic are you smoking? A concept is legitimate if and only if it can be disproved? Does that not mean that all legitimate concepts render themselves illegitimate by virtue of the requirement of being disprovable? You've talked yourself into a paradox. I think you may be trying to hint at the concept of a "loaded accusation", but the way you explain it isn't at all how it works. Perhaps you're also not really being careful about the use of the words "prove" and "disprove" as well. Proving is an objective endeavor, and so is disproving. It's non-negotiable, objective truth. Perhaps you mean "refute the claim" or providing counterargument in any fashion, in which case I would agree with you; it's something that's so loaded that it's impossible to disagree with. The only other alternative is it being universal truth, like 2 + 2 = 4, also impossible to disagree with (though I'm sure some people on this forum would find a way).

Yeah, I'm a fan. Critical analysis without the condemnation and agenda pushing. Notice how the YouTube comments, notorious for being a cesspool, while still having dissenting views, is filled with people posing questions and playing devil's advocate rather than flaming and hate.

Pretty much, Alex knows what he's doing. It'll blow CineSamples out of the water.

I'm not really sure if there's a reason to focus on one specifically, unless one is particularly deficient like was the case for me for a long time (had to set production aside since my comp was bad and it distracted me from improving it). You need to be able to do both, especially to do pitches and make your portfolio look impressive. A large amount of gigs still expect the composer to be a one-stop-shop, especially in mobile games. There is a point however where your composition will get better but other people won't really notice. It's up to you at that point if you want to keep improving it, otherwise keep streamlining the production skills. Fast composers can charge more and get more work because dey so fast.

@Nathan Allen Pinard There's not really a need to separate orchestration and composition in terms of this discussion, as we aren't talking about the strict industry definitions of these terms but rather the general concepts, especially in the context of how OC ReMix dominantly talks about the musical process (which is very different than how it's talked about in the industry).

here guys, I did a thing for Don Bodin: http://www.samplelibraryreview.com/developer-videos/nabeel-ansari-shares-comparison-cinematic-strings-2-vs-cinematic-studio-strings/

So... you said nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Gorgeous! Don Bodin asked me to do a little more detailed comparison of out of box sounds between CSS and CS2. Here you are: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15510436/File Sharing/Sole Theme for Sample Library Review.rar This contains the naked theme in 8 versions. Four mics for CSS and four mics for CS2. No mixing, panning, EQ. No external verb. All nki's are set to default -6.0dB and mic volumes are set to 0.0db. MIDI Data shown in screenshots (as you can see, there's barely any humanization done). Here are the notes from the RAR:

Rendered the Sole theme through it: (be wary of giant nabeel face) This was the same theme in CS2 (at :39):

It's really good. Bought it 5 minutes after I got the email.

Right. This is Scoring 101. Melody is often inappropriate in many dramatic contexts. But I have two things to say: 1) Just because you can get by in the career by playing some Omnisphere presets or a piano + harp doesn't mean it's the only way to do it. It's certainly the minimum effort way to do it, sure. Subtlety doesn't have to be simplistic, it can still be creative and designed according to thematic sound identity, and a huge sign of a good score is how good its subtle parts are with respect to the rest of it. 2) There's way more to composition than melody. Like, way more. Melody is actually one of the simplest/most exploitative mechanisms in composition; it's everything else that's really advanced/complicated. And sure, you can argue that stuff is unnecessary to get by, too. But I find the discussion on how to "get by" kind of bland and unnecessary. I guess it's worth observing for those who aren't really in the know, but personally I'd never give advice to someone to settle as a "low-hanging fruit" composer, so to speak. Their careers never really go anywhere. No, they don't have to be Bach. But the great thing about creative work is that there isn't some ridiculous dichotomy where everyone is either a super-smart academic fugue composer or someone who plays some drones. There's a lot of in between talent, you know, and that's a perfectly okay place to aim for. I'm not asking people to be the next John Williams, I'm just asking them to put some thought into their work.

I... am confused at how any of this is disagreeing with what I said. Your second point seems to imply that all of those considerations aren't compositional ones, which I explained isn't true. Both "composition" and "production" themselves are nebulous terms, so in my post I clarified that concerns of timbre, dynamic and articulation are counted into "composition" when I say "composition" is more important. Performance is also in there by extension of "articulation", and humanized samples (or a good live recording) falls under performance. But I mean... yeah, there's a baseline of bread and butter production (like, the mixing and mastering kind, not the sound design kind) where you won't get gigs if you're bad. But as a general question, or career advice, I'm kind of confused what the thread is asking for. For career advice, yes, probably bread and butter production trumps composition if other composers serve as an example. But I'd say only to a point, there's a point where it's good enough that the layperson (game developers count too, just because they're paying you doesn't mean they know what they're doing) thinks it sounds good without noticing maybe stray frequencies or a slightly muddled reverb tail and it stops helping. If you want the career to grow and have CONSISTENT gigs (being a composer devs go back to, devs recommend to devs, and composers recommend to devs), you need to create a sonic identity, and that starts delving back into (my liberal referral of) compositional aspects. Would also point out that the film industry example is a little moot, because films (at least ones with budgets for live orchestras you're talking about and proper management, so not indie films) generally have audio handled by a team, and the composer isn't really solely responsible for the production aspects. Obviously the ones who do multiple jobs well are more valuable and see more work, but the way it tends to happen is that there's a dedicated audio engineer(s) making everything squeaky clean. If talking about indie films... the bar is lower (lower than you'd think) for production, considering what a lot of indie filmmakers dig up from licensing websites and are satisfied with. Otherwise, a composer with good production is well-equipped for those in-betweens, tight deadlines, TV, games, low budgets, etc. There's no reason *not* to get good at production.

Composition, regardless of genre. The false assumption here is assuming that composition is orthogonal (independent) as a concept to production, as if they don't influence each other. In genres like orchestral, the production is simpler because the arrangement takes care of filling the sonic space and providing interest. In genres like EDM, production itself becomes an element of composition as it begins to shape the timbre and dynamics of the music. "Composition" isn't just notes. That's, well, notes. Composition is literally a mixture of composite elements, the notes are primary, but rhythm, timbre, dynamics, articulation etc. are also compositional aspects. There are tradeoffs, and you can supplement deficiencies in one by enhancing another. Complextro, for example, is an advanced form of composition entirely based on rapid firing between different musical fragments with various timbres. Some people would consider that production, though, since it's often done by chopping up and processing different wave files. However, if we're just talking about production as a means to an end, i.e. "mixing and mastering" where we're EQing, balancing, just trying to get an overall good "quality" of sound, that's secondary to composition and its performance. You can still communicate a good idea through a murky lens. What you can't do is expect a bad idea to look shiny through a crystal clear lens.

if it's offtopic, then yeah, nobody should in this thread, they should start their own

I don't really care about the timeline other than the actual fact that Majora's Mask takes direct place after OoT.