Garrett Williamson
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Posts posted by Garrett Williamson
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BEATING EVERY SINGLE EVENT IN MELEE HOLY CRAP
Event 49 is the worst. Event 49 is the absolute worst.
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There's nothing similar between "Sugar" and "Beat It". In fact that's almost shameful that one would compare them. I'm sorry, that sounds overly bias and harsh and what-not but one is done by a genius performer and the other one is by a guy who's making half-decent singles just to make more money than his brilliant self and his brilliant band back when they made Songs About Jane.
Quite honestly "Sugar" sounds almost too similar to "Last Friday Night". It's so similar that it almost sounds like Maroon 5 just went in and said "let's make Katy Perry's song with my vocals and different lyrics." They're not so similar that Katy would sue them, at least I wouldn't think. But they're very similar. And I still think Katy pulled it off far better.
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Yo, I didn't actually. You may have sent it before they updated the site because it looks like the messaging system is a little messed up for anything that was sent prior to the big forum update.
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Yo sorry, haven't gotten around to working on anything yet. Been busy with a couple other things and nothing is sparking in my brain yet for a good remix arrangement. I had one but I started to think I might be able to do better.
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I think what he means is by charging really low, or working for free, you're making it harder for those who compose for a living because they either have to charge less themselves, or face losing work. It's gradually making it less viable to be a "working composer". It's not that composers just care about money, but we gotta eat. We gotta survive.
So I think the argument is more aimed at the hobbyists who have a primary income from elsewhere, who compose for cheap or for free, and who make it harder for the working composer who composes as their sole income. It's not that we don't love making music, or that all we see is dollar signs. We're just in a situation where we rely on this for our living, and it's hard when other people do our job for free.
As a side note, it doesn't bother me when a developer tells me they can't pay me for my work (i.e. they don't have the budget). It does bother me when a developer can pay me for my work (i.e. they clearly have the budget), but doesn't feel like they should. I feel like developers are more and more encouraged by the oversaturation of free and low-cost composers to not feel like they should have to pay for music. And I think that is what is watering down the quality and integrity of music, because most indie games simply go with the cheapest option.
It seems like the "middle class" professional composer is slowly going extinct. Either you're a big-name composer who has enough clout to make a living working on high profile AAA titles, or you're working a day job and composing on the side for little to no money. No room for the guy who just wants to make a modest living doing what he loves.
^Neifion took the words out of my mouth, hahaha
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Cool cool!
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I want an F-Zero roller-coaster like space mountain on crack and a Fire Emblem themed Medieval Times restaurant.
This sounds like a great idea.
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A Mario themed rollercoaster would be amazing! Or something like that.
Hahaha Mario roller coaster? I feel like Mario would have one of those dark rides with the typical Peach-gets-kidnapped story.
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Disney is basically the Ottoman Empire of media. Everyone loves and remembers the good things they made and did internally, but history forgets its brutal conquest and slaughter.
Every studio has its hell. Honestly Disney's history is not nearly as bad as many, actually. But no history goes without its big bs moments or decades or even centuries hahaha
I would've loved to work at Disney in 1935 but I would've hated to work there any time between Walt's death and the late 80's (or even currently). Anyway, that's going a little off-topic. You're definitely not wrong, I can't disagree.
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I used to work at Disney World. I live 20 minutes from there still. And I'm totally with Angel City Outlaw.
Disney already owns the rights to (or just flat-out owns) a shitload of media properties. The last thing we need is to see Nintendo added to that list.
This is true. I do honestly jokingly say a lot that "Disney will eventually take over the world" and I mean, you're definitely right. They've bought out so many companies.
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Hell no, the mouse must be stopped.
I knew someone was gonna say this.
I'm a hardcore Disney lover. So long as we aren't speaking of a couple films including Frozen.
I freaking love Mickey Mouse to death. I have Mickey Mouse stuff all over my room. I have more Mickey than anything. xD
So that's the thing is that Nintendo has always felt like the Disney of video gaming to me. Mario has felt like the Mickey Mouse of video games to me.
And that's the other thing is like, since I feel that way, I also never go to Universal. I've been quite a few times but I take Disneyland/World over Universal easily, no question. So I feel like to spend a couple hours in the Nintendo area and then basically not be interested in much else at Universal is inconvenient. That's more of a me-thing, though. Overall I just see Nintendo as more fitting for Disney. Universal seems too "cool". Sorry, but as cool as I think I am enjoying Nintendo, we all know Nintendo is not the Xbox 360 with Halo 3 on it.
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Really excited. Only thing I'm pissed about is that it's with Universal, not Disney. I feel like Disneyland/World would rock Nintendo a lot more and it feels like it makes more sense in Disney. Idk, I know Disney likes to try and stick to Disney stuff for the most part (though there is a store in Epcot's Japan area that has a *ton* of Nintendo stuff; they flashed a crapload of Pokemon stuff in the front windows and the store is not small). Universal seems more reasonable but Disney seems more fitting. Some or a lot of you may disagree but that's how I see it. I've always seen Nintendo as the Disney of video games.
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Metallica.
Not including the drummer, right?
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Again, I'm no FL Studio user, but since you started with GarageBand and FL Studio is just now coming to Mac (making it fairly unstable), it only seems reasonable that you get Logic Pro.
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I'd say my biggest influences are Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Dirty Loops, Foo Fighters, The Beatles, Paul McCartney, tons of underground old school Hip-Hop, 80s/90s music, and rock/hard rock/very specific types of metal (metal that is actually music, thank you very much). I have tons but those are the main ones.
When it comes to video game music, mainly Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Fire Emblem, Metroid, some Halo music, and other stuff lol. Koji Kondo is one of my biggest inspirations (if not the biggest inspiration) when it comes to the legitimate composers. Jun Senoue also writes great melodies for the Sonic games, and Martin O'Donnell's just awesome because he is.
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I haven't used FL Studio so I can't say but I'm a Logic Pro 9 user and have loved it to death since day 1. I started with GarageBand so if you're familiar with GarageBand, it makes Logic Pro way easier to figure out. Also, Logic has plenty of fantastic presets, though I encourage practicing creating synths from scratch if you are into synthesizer sounds a lot. If that's not your thing, then don't worry about it.
Also, live instruments built-in to Logic Pro are really nice as well. The pianos are pretty good, and the electric piano, clav, and organ plugins are absolutely amazing. The orchestral stuff is acceptable and you can easily get away with it in a lot of cases, though it can't pull off some of the stuff that a super high-tech third-party plugin could. But if you learn how to get around it, you can still get some good sounding orchestral stuff.
Also, FL Studio is coming to Mac? Like Flexstyle said, that's gonna be a little iffy to touch if it's gonna be a newcomer to Mac. Probably gonna be pretty buggy and will take them some time to fix it all up.
Since it looks like you've been working with GarageBand, I cannot express enough that Logic Pro is the way you wanna go. It is absolutely the best decision. The industry standard is Pro Tools but Logic comes close behind and Pro Tools is mainly used for engineering in bigger studios and stuff; I personally don't prefer it in probably 80% of my circumstances. Especially since you're saying you rarely use live instruments, Pro Tools' MIDI interface is not nearly as good as Logic's, but that may just be because I've learned Logic's and am so much more familiar with it that every time I need to use Pro Tools it's just frustrating.
TL;DR, Logic Pro. Definitely Logic Pro. I haven't touched FL Studio but just hearing what your needs are, especially with the note that you've been using GarageBand, Logic Pro is the way to go. And like someone else brought up, go to any Apple store and you can mess around on Logic Pro on one of their computers for free for a long time. They didn't kick me off of it for like an entire hour one time. I don't know when they would, other then when they would have been closing down. Haha!
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Hey there! There may be variant answers to this--some which may be better than mine. I bet someone like zircon would have some great input on this that's likely better than what I say, but here are mine, in the order that you asked:
- From my experience as a composer, it's been word of mouth or simply searching for someone, though there are quite a few video game composers out there, so that's often a tricky situation for the developer. What I see a lot is composers finding and going to the developers themselves.
- I assume this question is about what the dealio is with paying the composer. The way I charge is by the minutes in the track. So I charge a specific amount of money per each minute of a song. So if someone charged $200/minute, a 3 minute track would be $600. Some charge per hours of work they put into it but I personally don't prefer that. And I usually ask for the payment before I send the finalized version if the director or whoever is in authority approves of the track.
- Are you asking how much it costs? It depends on the composer. Some charge more than others, though I wouldn't say it's ok for anyone to be charging too low as that's harmful to the industry but there also is such thing as too high. Some will charge $100/minute, others will charge something like $300 or even $400 a minute, but usually it's negotiable--or at least, it should be. I can't say what the standard budget would be but if we met in the middle with my two extremes, somebody charging $200 per minute and each song was--let's say--2 minutes long, that would be $400 per song and if you need 10, that would be $4,000.
- As for what type of music you want in the game, I don't see why a composer would argue with that, unless you might be giving the composer the freedom to tell you what he/she thinks about doing that style of music for the game. It's your game, not the composer's, so whatever you want is what they need to give you. You are trusting that they will pull it off and maybe even give you something better than what you expected and they may even go a little out of the spectrum and experiment; maybe you'll like what they did, maybe you won't. But it's ultimately your decision what makes it into the game. Also, the developer can always ask for adjustment, but some composers charge a little extra for modifications. I usually only charge extra for modifications if I'm putting a lot of work into tweaking it, but I rarely do that; in fact I think I've only ever done that once. I usually just give grace and tweak it with no extra charge, though I don't know what other composers' view is on that, and I sometimes work with an audio supervisor who basically is the one asking for tweaks and then hands it to the director who makes the final call.
- As for who owns the work, I've signed contracts before that basically state that it is the composer's work, but the developers own it and control it, at least until the game is released. I'm really bad with words so that was probably a horrible way to say it but basically I've signed contracts that just say "this is your work and we respect that but you cannot share this publicly without our permission or you will be fired". That type of deal. Does that make sense?
Man, 4 years! You guys are committed! 16-bit/Genesis-style? Love that. I have an obsession with Genesis-style games. Sounds like a cool game! I'd love to help you guys out if you need any! Hopefully my answers were useful!
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wtf did you guys do to my forums
what button does what now
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Hey, if you wanna work on Prelude/Id~Purpose/Conquest/any FE:A song, that's cool. I assume you're still doing Prelude for your first song? I know people have been busy lately, I've been studying for final and haven't had much chance to work on songs. Just get it to me whenever you can in the next couple of weeks.
Yeah man, Prelude and Id - Purpose (and possibly get some Conquest in there but we'll see). And ok cool!
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Yo, I'll try getting something to ya by the end of April. Kinda got caught up in some stuff and haven't been able to do much, but I'll work on it as much as I can.
EDIT: I'm so sorry guys but I'm probably gonna need to drop the Speed Highway remix. There were probably a couple others you may have wanted it, so go for it. Just don't think I'm gonna be able to get to that one. Still workin on the Emerald Coast/Windy Valley remix but haven't really made many changes and I don't know if I'll have something to you by the April 30th deadline.
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What a bitchin' song, indeed! I'd love to put you down!
And with that, we have representation from all sub-series! If anyone FINISHES their track and would like to work on a possible extra/bonus track, that would be a-ok
!Hey so I was thinking about taking "Conquest" over for Chris and I may implement it into something, but I think a better decision to represent Awakening would be " - Purpose". Is it possible that we replace "Conquest" with that and I somehow implement "Conquest" into one of the two tracks? I really like the melody in "Conquest" and I'm trying to see how I could use it.
EDIT: Also, kinda got busy, haven't been able to start working on anything yet. Will try to have a rough WIP of "Prelude" to you by May 1. Gotta get another WIP of a Sonic remix done by that point too.
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Project M not at CEO this year?
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Fasdfkjl. Angel took Conquest. CURSE YOU ANGEELLLLLL.
Jk, I wanna claim something from Awakening before it's too late for sure, though not sure if I could get something to you by what is it? April 20th?
Can I claim "Prelude" from Awakening? Another one I have a cool idea for but isn't too popular or iconic is I think just called "Can we take a rest? Please?" (gotta lost those titles).
And lastly, I think one of the most iconic tracks from that game is probably "Id - Purpose" which is a fantastic track and if I can have a really good tight electric guitarist to back me up on that one, then I might be able to rock that.
What I can claim with 100% confidence as of right now though, is "Prelude". Is this ok?
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I express interest in this. I sent an email!
Speeding Towards Adventures: 25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog - History
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Oh dang, Flying Battery's out?? Part of me wants to take that but as you probably have realized I've been kinda busy and haven't gotten anything done. I'm open to taking it if no one else will because with my style I know how I can take advantage of that track. But again, I'll only take it if no one else will (but why would you not??).