Nabeel Ansari

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.

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

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

Because she asked for free and ours cost money.

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.

you're not talking about different things, you're just wrong

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/

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.

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.

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.

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?

We really should do something like this as an extension of the Super Audio Cart project, and as a proper resource. @djpretzel @zircon

Hey guys,
Another update--I'll also be performing with Austin Wintory on Friday, and for the GANG remix competition with DiscoCactus, and I'm doing a panel about making big collaborative arrangement albums Thursday at 8:30 pm!
I'm a busy boy~

OCR workouts will be when we can fit them in, but ill for sure make announcements in the discord meetups channel. Be prepared for Nandos-fueled GAINZ.
THere isn't an official OCU concert, but I just reached out to MAG staff to see if I can sneak in a Jamspace DJ set, i'll keep things updated here. It'd be cool to have our own secret show.
Panels TBD, but it will involve me bench pressing @Nabeel Ansari, so please look forward to it!

1) They are full of licensed fan arrangements. Just because the distinction doesn't cross your mind doesn't mean there isn't a clear legal difference.
2) Loudr does not have the resources to license the entire catalog of source tunes that OCR pulls from in any reasonable timeframe, assuming it was even possible using their methods, which it isn't as @Flexstyle said. Loudr is run by like 20 people. And they're not gonna dedicate their company's resources for the next few years to getting all of OCR's catalog able to be streamed. They would get nothing out of it.
3) There is no will, nor are there resources or infrastructure, and there is no way.
4) Unlicensed arrangements aren't a "legal grey area", it is copyright infringement, and when monetizing for commercial profit has 0% chance of being defended as Fair Use (this is according to the SCOTUS). No one's "flying under the radar", and we're not trying to "prevent being noticed". Everyone (nintendo, square enix, sega, capcom, etc.) knows about OCR, and they let us continue, because all of our community output is free and voluntary.
5) Generating revenue based on the work of hundreds and hundreds of artists and putting it "toward the site" is one of the most terrifying recipes for legal nightmares I've ever heard of.
If you are so certain that you have the right answers on how to benefit the community and are so sure that setting up the required financial and legal infrastructure for all of these efforts is "moderate effort" (it's not), then stop whining and contact DJP directly to talk about getting involved with the community and get these efforts going yourself.

Learn how to sing.

A good Widowmaker on Shrine will die against a team of good everyone else
You're continually using skill as a way to try and shift the conversation of the viability of the character, when that's not really how it works. If you make suppositions like "if widowmaker player skill above a certain point and the enemy team is at or below that point or the players at or above that point are playing characters Widowmaker is strong against, then of course Widowmaker is OP HURR DURR"

We're not talking about that. We're talking about kit design, map design, overall meta (her winrate in competitive is bottom of the barrel). Skill is irrelevant; it's a team game, someone particularly good at something doesn't translate to how it interfaces with the other 11 players in the game so much as how that player is contributing to composition.
If your entire argument is that you get killstreaks with Widow, it's a really weak argument. The people you play against are shit. That is the far more likely scenario than that the general Overwatch community has no idea how to play Widowmaker effectively but you somehow do.
And for the record, Widowmaker is 4th place in KD despite her shitty winrate, so your citing of killstreaks isn't really contradicting anything; it's actually coinciding with the statistical trend that Widowmaker is good at killing people but not at winning the game.
Symmetra has the highest winrate in the entire roster, and Mei has a higher winrate than Junkrat. As for offense, Reaper has the highest winrate. McCree statistically fairs better then Pharah. Tracer fairs better than 76 (but they are both bottom of the barrel). You're right about Genji though; Shimada bro is dope.
http://masteroverwatch.com/heroes/pc/global/mode/ranked

is that a pro genji?
 
that's a pro genji.

A good Widowmaker on Shrine will die against a team of good everyone else
You're continually using skill as a way to try and shift the conversation of the viability of the character, when that's not really how it works. If you make suppositions like "if widowmaker player skill above a certain point and the enemy team is at or below that point or the players at or above that point are playing characters Widowmaker is strong against, then of course Widowmaker is OP HURR DURR"

We're not talking about that. We're talking about kit design, map design, overall meta (her winrate in competitive is bottom of the barrel). Skill is irrelevant; it's a team game, someone particularly good at something doesn't translate to how it interfaces with the other 11 players in the game so much as how that player is contributing to composition.
If your entire argument is that you get killstreaks with Widow, it's a really weak argument. The people you play against are shit. That is the far more likely scenario than that the general Overwatch community has no idea how to play Widowmaker effectively but you somehow do.
And for the record, Widowmaker is 4th place in KD despite her shitty winrate, so your citing of killstreaks isn't really contradicting anything; it's actually coinciding with the statistical trend that Widowmaker is good at killing people but not at winning the game.
Symmetra has the highest winrate in the entire roster, and Mei has a higher winrate than Junkrat. As for offense, Reaper has the highest winrate. McCree statistically fairs better then Pharah. Tracer fairs better than 76 (but they are both bottom of the barrel). You're right about Genji though; Shimada bro is dope.
http://masteroverwatch.com/heroes/pc/global/mode/ranked

This title is very misleading. You're using the word perfection as if to discuss aspects of striving for perfectionism but what you actually mean is writing music locked to sequencer grid (mechanical).
I've never met a single performer who strives for a robotic performance void of expression. There is a case for experimental/electronically enhanced genres like prog metal, but it's done for effect, intentionally, to evoke a sound. It's not the default means of expressing a performance, but a specific feeling for a specific kind of music.
I have never met a computer musician who's tried to add performance mistakes (wrong/pitchy notes, missing beats, etc.) into their humanization methods. We add velocity changes and timing offsets, but never to make the performance sound wrong, as if the person playing sucks at their instrument. If I were judging something like that, I'd scold for doing so much work to make samples sound human only to make the virtual performer sound like an amateur. 
There's no contradiction here. Everyone is striving idealistically for incredibly tight and expressive performances. It's just that in computers, the tightness is done for us, so we have to add the expression. In performance, we have the expression, but we have to perform to the best of our ability to add the tightness. This extends to cover expressions in tempo; for example, the difference between an amateur pianist doing rubato (playing void of tempo masked as expression) and a professional pianist doing rubato (playing with elastic tempo changes that keep the lines and phrases in correct proportion). This is why in proper piano practice, you're supposed to play the piece as strictly in time as possible, so that your fingers understand how it's constructed vertically and horizontally, and then you move on to adding expression and dynamic.
 
The problem with a mechanical performance is not primarily that it sounds unrealistic. That's a nasty side effect. The real problem is that it lacks expression. If something has expression, even though it is unrealistic, that is a lot more forgivable.

Maybe what you're referring to is when people write virtuostic music that requires expertise in order to play (like piano etudes or super fast shredding licks). People hate on that because they feel like the performance is distracting from the music... which is incredibly stupid and, again, juvenile as Skryp said, because the performance is the music.

This title is very misleading. You're using the word perfection as if to discuss aspects of striving for perfectionism but what you actually mean is writing music locked to sequencer grid (mechanical).
I've never met a single performer who strives for a robotic performance void of expression. There is a case for experimental/electronically enhanced genres like prog metal, but it's done for effect, intentionally, to evoke a sound. It's not the default means of expressing a performance, but a specific feeling for a specific kind of music.
I have never met a computer musician who's tried to add performance mistakes (wrong/pitchy notes, missing beats, etc.) into their humanization methods. We add velocity changes and timing offsets, but never to make the performance sound wrong, as if the person playing sucks at their instrument. If I were judging something like that, I'd scold for doing so much work to make samples sound human only to make the virtual performer sound like an amateur. 
There's no contradiction here. Everyone is striving idealistically for incredibly tight and expressive performances. It's just that in computers, the tightness is done for us, so we have to add the expression. In performance, we have the expression, but we have to perform to the best of our ability to add the tightness. This extends to cover expressions in tempo; for example, the difference between an amateur pianist doing rubato (playing void of tempo masked as expression) and a professional pianist doing rubato (playing with elastic tempo changes that keep the lines and phrases in correct proportion). This is why in proper piano practice, you're supposed to play the piece as strictly in time as possible, so that your fingers understand how it's constructed vertically and horizontally, and then you move on to adding expression and dynamic.
 
The problem with a mechanical performance is not primarily that it sounds unrealistic. That's a nasty side effect. The real problem is that it lacks expression. If something has expression, even though it is unrealistic, that is a lot more forgivable.