ShrackAttack
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Posts posted by ShrackAttack
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The discs were fine though (although my Stormdrum 2 has some the instruments only play extreme right, though I'm told I just need to reload the samples onto my hard drive).
Same exact crap for me lol. A lot of the samples from Eastwest are just poorly edited period.
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I'm looking for a plugin/soundfont that will simulate general midi or something close to it (Reaper's GM is screwing up hardcore for me
) I want to write a few tracks I'm doing in general midi before actually taking them to samples. So I'm curious if anyone knows a pretty good one out there? I don't necessarily need the best of every instrument type, but I really just want to find one or two packages that encompass everything decently. Thanks
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I sold everything decent my barb had and made roughly 300$. I probably could've put my stuff up for more but wanted it all to sell. My brother has sold absolute TRASH items compared to what I put up and a few of his sold for 50-70$ each. It makes no sense.
As far as barbs go, sure the game is hard past Inferno act 2, but once you get even pretty decent gear you can mostly blow through the game. Some elite packs are just impossible though without the best gear, but once you're in godlike gear (20% string of ears, stormshield, decent helm of command, lantern ring) you can pretty much face roll the entire game without paying attention.
I was around 1000 vit/str, 850-1050 resist all, 55khp, 26-30% block, and I think 15-18k dps or so depending. Went Frenzy, wrath of the berserker, earthquake, revenge + provocation, ignore pain + iron hide, and the armor + resist shout for most of the game. Passives were the obvious, both armor ones + superstitious usually.
Whats a bit more hilarious is now I just bought a bunch of straight strength + critical hit chance to do weapon throw spec for super cheap and im farming with a wizard/witch doctor combo and am doing ridiculous damage. However, i have to play with basically zero escapes and everything one shots me. I'm running about 1700 str + 52% crit chance with only around a 1200dps 2hander. And most of my gear is trash since I basically have no actual gold anymore
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Sorry that my sentence structure wasn't that great, but the key words there were "if I could".
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That doesn't make any sense.
You'll still have to use PLAY if you buy them separately. They got rid of Kompakt a long time ago.
That's my point. I wouldn't purchase them again if I could only get the PLAY version. I'm not telling him to go buy the Kontakt version, since its obviously unavailable now. I also wasn't telling him to not buy the complete composer's collection, since if you're going to buy 2-3 of their products anyways you may as well just get extra crap for the same price. I'm just giving my opinion that I think PLAY is pretty terrible and which Eastwest products I thought were decently useful.
I still have yet to experience anything in PLAY that earns this kind of ire. It's not wonderful by any means, but I don't personally get the criticism on it myself.It's just the lack of customization imo, though the engine used to crash incessantly for me (but its fine now). Kontakt allows you to do infinitely more to your samples. With PLAY you're stuck with the way they think it should sound and a few options to screw around with or rendering down each sample as audio files and putting them into kontakt yourself.
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If I had it all to go back and do over again, I would not buy the complete composer collection. The PLAY engine is just flat out bad.
I'm more of an orchestral guy myself, but if I could I would only purchase Symphonic gold, Stormdrum 2, Ra, and the pianos and preferably use them with Kontakt. Goliath, Voices of Passion, and Choirs really aren't that great. Though I will admit I've never spent much time with the wordbuilder since the learning curve seems like a huge pain in the ass. Symphony Gold and SD2 are pretty much a staple though, but I wish I had more control over them like in Kontakt. The only reason I ever use MoR is for the black kit, occasionally I'll use a bass. The guitars just sound overly fake. I had really high hopes for MoR when I bought it 2 years ago, but I just really ended up not caring for it that much which was disappointing. Though that could easily be user error.
Overall, while I think Eastwest stuff is generally good bang for your buck, if you plan on doing music professionally ever it is a good idea to go other more specialized routes.
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I read a while back that they are not allowing the other mic positions for Gold to be purchased anymore until they are fixed, but I could be wrong.
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There are a few elements that play into making game music memorable:
1) If you're referring to older nes/snes/n64 music you notice that most of the most memorable tunes are just short and to the point and are usually only around 0:45 to 2:00 in length and then repeated incessantly. For obvious reasons, you remember something much easier when you have listened to it much more (IE Pop radio). Even if you don't particularly like or care for a song, you still will find it memorable just because you have heard it 70 times.
2) One reason you remember certain game songs so well is due to the visuals that go along with the song. Just listening to a random song once and going on your way with no actual game to go with it won't really make the song 'memorable'. The point is that if you put each individual medium (the visual, the audio, or the story behind it) on its own then it will probably be a much weaker idea. But if you combine: Terra's struggles in FF6, the visual events in the game, and Terra's theme song you create a much more memorable concept. It is the story behind the song that helps to make it so memorable and recreate that nostalgia for you. If you went up to a random person on the street and had them listen to Terra's theme a couple of times they would probably either just call it shitty game music or think it was an okay song. They wouldn't have that same connection with the song as you did.
Now I'm not saying that the music doesn't stand on its own legs, but all of these elements are what really create something nostalgic for us like a lot of old game music.
3.) Obviously good writing
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PMed my application.
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I'll send you something within 2 days if you're still taking auditions.
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Also sent you an email.
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Finally got some real progress on this
, sorry for the delay. Going to try to send a nice WIP probably around March, maybe sooner. -
Sent a pm in case you end up still needing some help.
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I've been keeping up with what I've done about every 6 months since last January and have tried to write down goals every time to push myself to do and learn as much as possible. I find that if I set a lot of high goals and try to reach all of them I usually have a pretty good year, even if I don't quite do them all.
Some of my goals for 2012 are:
1.) Do at least 5 paid music composition gigs, 2 paid sound design gigs, and 3 paid performances.
2.) Win AMTA composition contest again.
3.) Improve my orchestral production values to a much higher standard.
4.) Release 2 small percussion Kontakt libraries.
5.) Progress on my remixes for the Dragon Warrior and Secret of Mana projects
6.) Learn cajon and at least 2 new instruments.
7.) Revamp website.
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Samples only don't matter if you're not working.
With that said, 50-90% of the work involved in producing music professionally is using and programming samples.
Which is why you can spend so damned much on those suckers.
I mean I agree, but he can have all the samples in the world and his music will still suck if he doesn't know what he is doing.
I have no opinion on Reaper, but I will say that if you're interested in composing or producing music, you should make sure that your DAW is GREAT for MIDI and CC editing.
Especially if you want to make the ancient VSL Orchestra set in Komplete sound good.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with the midi and cc editing in Reaper either, but it is just in its infancy right now. The tempo map is sort of a piece of trash, but it is workable. Reaper is still good enough to be used professionally for orchestral music. I'd prefer a midi setup similar to Sonars, but Reaper isn't quite on that level MIDI-wise is sort of the point I was making. You can still make old stuff sound very nice. And I really recommended Reaper due to its cost since he is just starting out. If he buys a decent orchestral bank, he probably doesn't have the money for a nice DAW too and Reaper is the best thing you can get for the $$.
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REAPER is more or less free (it's like 40-60 dollars, and it has an endlessly renewable free trial), but user-unfriendly. If your brother is not prepared to sink a lot of time looking up a bunch of stuff to just get a single instrument loaded in, it's a safe bet to say that Reaper is not for you. It's a poor man's Fruity Loops Studio, in my opinion, but some of its features (like its tracklist, it's way of handling patterns) are actually pretty intuitive.
I really disagree. It takes the same amount of time to load an instrument on reaper as it does any other DAW. And Reaper is also one of the best DAWs for editing audio quickly, if not the best. I will say Reaper has its fair share of MIDI problems, but its certainly not going to hurt a guy who is just starting out. Those problems are mostly related to the tempo map and CC controls (though the CC isnt that horrible). Saying Reaper is user-unfriendly just because you don't know what you're doing is like me saying FL studio is unfriendly just because the few times I tried to use it I closed it out of frustration (because I had no idea what I was doing in it). Certain DAWs will just work better for certain people.
If you want my honest opinion on what you should buy your brother here it is: Skip buying expensive samples and help him pay a professional composer to teach him how to write music and how to approach music. The composition is what is really going to matter, not what samples he is using. He can deal with samples later and upgrade them slowly over time. For now I would stick to something like Reaper (super cheap and still high quality) and free orchestral soundfonts so he can learn the digital side of things first. Or if you really want to get him something a little better sounding get him an older version of Komplete off of Ebay (he will need this anyways) and let him learn how to make those orchestral samples sound nice. He'll also get a lot of extra high quality stuff he can screw around with.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Native-Instruments-KOMPLETE-6-Bundle-KOMPLETE6-/380377197326?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item58903f6b0e#ht_2602wt_1396 - 300$ and comes with so many things he couldn't begin to even get through them all in years. The base orchestral sounds it comes with CAN sound very nice.
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Send me one if you'd like.
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Same, kinda bummed I didn't even see this until now for some reason. If someone pulls out and you need another person let me know.
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Reaper is incredibly stable for me. Honestly, it is probably the most stable DAW I've ever used. The MIDI options still need some work, but it a great tool and is still very usable for midi work. Though I find myself using it a lot for SFX work. And you can't beat the 40 dollar price tag.
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I started playing music in the middle school band as a percussionist in the 6th grade. I ended up doing a lot of the whole marching band thing back in high school and had thought about pursing DCI for a while.
After I got out of high school I had no idea what I wanted to do... I pretty much picked a college at random and went thinking I wanted to be a computer programmer. That first semester I chose to do marching band and take percussion ensemble, from there I just sort of kept signing up for music classes and ended up choosing "Music Technology" as my major 2 and a half years into my degree study, while still having no real clue what I wanted to do or major in. Music Tech was just a 'temporary' thing at the time when I chose it. 6 months after that (around 2009) I took my first computer music class and started on my first DAW "Digital performer". I was freaking AMAZED at the possibilities even though the first thing I ever did was utterly horrible, which was a very bad Chrono Cross track remake (I think of People Imprisoned?). Years prior to that I had been listening to people like kLutz, Ailsean, Zircon, and that same Shadow's theme remix that overcoat mentioned.
I started actually trying to write my own, original music a little over a year and a half ago. Since then, I feel like I've improved drastically since that first crappy Chrono Cross track remake in digital performer. I've pretty much been reading everything I possibly can on music, sound, production, audio implementation, etc since then and try to work on something every day. I graduated college 9 months ago and due to that hard work and absolute persistence in a short amount of time I am/have:
-Working on SFX/music for 2 games of high quality (unfortunately unpaid, but work nonetheless)
-Won a Music Teachers Association composition contest for my state at the highest level
-Teaching percussion to high school kids/performing for pay
-Interning at a record label
I am hoping that within a couple years I will be able to support myself monetarily off of JUST audio and not have to have a part time job to supplement it, but for now I can be content with what I've accomplished in a short time I think.
I will say that trying to do music for a living is a very discouraging business. Comparing your track you just made to someone who is much further along can be very humbling and extremely frustrating when you can't understand how to make yours sound similar. Becoming even decent at music composition and production takes many years and I know a lot of beginners expect it to just suddenly happen (Myself included until recently) but its much more of a slow evolution. It takes constant persistence and a lot of hard work every day for years. It is very encouraging to know how a lot of the people you look up too now started out that very same way and that most people were not just born writing great music, but achieved it through practice and discipline.
and TLDR
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I would still recommend picking up Adler's book when you get the money, Meteo. I was going to suggest it, but Dannthr already had.
And I bought that midi orchestration book out of curiosity so maybe I'll let you know if its worthwhile in a few weeks
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This doesn't answer your question at all about a Kontakt guide, but here is some of my critiquing if you want it.
From my one listen through that track:
-The samples sound atrocious, especially the brass. I know Kontakt brass is not very good, but you can do more with it by layering other articulations on top of each other to beef up the sound. Also play with the velocity/expression/volumes more...everything sounds super robotic. Since it looks like you're mostly using solo instruments with only one layer...I would really recommend against it. Especially for a beginner it's going to sound like garbage. I'd say stick to using whole sections. For instance, use multiple trumpets instead of just one solo Forte piano/staccato patch or an entire brass section to get a point across instead.
-0:46-0:48 you need some kind of transition into that buildup...its just too abrupt and sticks out like a sore thumb. It comes out of absolutely nowhere. If that is what you're looking for, that's fine...but to the normal listener it will just sound weird.
-If you're going to use a source like that and try to do something orchestral with it...you're going to have to add more to the whole mix harmonically (in my opinion) to beef it up a bit. It sounds like you added a couple things, but I only listened through once and don't really remember the source that well. A lot of what is there just sounds out of place to me (either you're using the wrong articulation/patches or its just wrong notes).
-As far as positives go, the initial snare sound comes off fairly decently and the track is a good idea. There's a lot more specific things I would comment on, but I have to leave. Maybe I'll edit the post later.
EDIT: And honestly, it really comes down to being less about samples and more about how you're writing the track. Everything will sound better when its written correctly.
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I will say Hollywood Brass sounds quite nice
, but that's a whole different topic.
Orchestral: "Carvahall ~Tales&Trials~
in Post Your Original Music!
Posted
You did a good job at keeping the piece fairly interesting and expanding your melodies. I liked the first half a lot more than the second half personally, though.
Try toning down your horn usage a bit in the piece and workout some more orchestration, it ends up getting a bit repetitive after a while. Also, your lead is almost always coming from the right ear (probably since its mostly horn
). Regardless, try to maybe vary that aspect up a bit as well or add a counter melody on an instrument panned left.
And I realize f horn is an awesome instrument (one of my favorites), but give the other instruments their time to shine.