davidoff

That's awesome! If only the rest of the game were as good as the music...

I really like the Water Ruin music, and I have fond memories of this game from ages and ages ago. Maybe I'll take a stab at that one!

Overall, I thought it was pretty sweet. It's got a good "chillax" vibe to it, like you said. I let it play through a couple of times, and didn't find myself wanting to shut it off. At 2:39 and 2:46, you had what sounded like a sound effect from the game (Sonic skidding to a halt, maybe?). I thought that was cool; I would've liked to hear that a couple more times. The balance was pretty good, but it probably wouldn't hurt to turn up the upper voices (does that term even apply to this genre? Maybe treble's a better word) just a tad in the spots with heavier bass voices. I lost some of the melodic material. I will have to agree with the people who posted before me that it stagnates after awhile: there's no build-up, high point, or wind-down. Harmonically, it never goes anywhere new: you can get away with that for a couple minutes, but five minutes is too long. On the whole, though, I definitely enjoyed it! Nice work!

I'm strongly considering trying to go back to school to get a master's degree in computer music composition, and I'm wondering if anyone here has ever been through that kind of program before. It's not so much that I care about the degree as it is that I want to put myself in an environment where I can focus on music pretty much all of the time. I'm sure the time would be invaluable in terms of building a strong portfolio. My undergrad degrees are in music performance and computer science, and I have a decent portfolio of acoustic works already and can build one of electronic works over the next ten months or so, so I'm not worried about meeting prerequisites. I know Indiana University, the University of North Carolina, and the Peabody Conservatory all have computer music programs, but I'm pretty much ruling out Peabody, because I went to the computer music department's end-of-semester recital awhile back and it was a real turn-off to the program. I'm sure several other schools have programs, too; I just have to do some more research. Anyway, I'd love to hear from anyone who's in or has been through such a program: is/was it worth it? What did you like/hate about it? That kind of thing.

Makes sense to me. I'm looking at the M-Audio Oxygen 88 (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Oxygen88.html). It's kinda pricey, but I can swing it and am more than willing to if it's going to last me a long time.

After reading the first few posts, I'm still a little uncertain as to whether I should be shopping for MIDI controllers, digital pianos, synthesizers, or workstations. Just to warn you, I'm as far into "newbie" territory as you can possibly get. Right now I have a computer and REAPER, which I just downloaded and am slowly learning to use. I also have some GPO instruments from years ago and I don't even know if they'll work still. In any case, most of what I write will probably be symphonic in nature and/or very piano-heavy. I play piano on a more-or-less professional level, so I'm assuming for writing difficult, involved piano parts, I'll want a full 88 (preferably hammer-action) keys. Here's where my newbie-ness shines: does the native sound quality of the keyboard I get actually matter if I'm going to be using some other piano sample in whatever software I'm using to record? I'm guessing not. If that's correct, then I can probably rule out getting a digital piano, because I already have an acoustic piano and I don't intend on buying anything for performance, just recording. It kind of sounds like what would work best for me is just a MIDI controller, but I want to get an experienced opinion before I go off spending money on something that's not right for me.

Hey, my name's Dave and I'm new to the OC ReMix forums, but I'm a long-time fan of the work being done here. Some quick background information about me: I double-majored in Piano Performance and Computer Science, so I'm both music- and tech-savvy. Though I was a pretty serious performer all through school, by the time I graduated, I'd switched my focus more toward composition, and writing music for games and/or films is now my dream. My biggest problem is that all of my composition was done old-school-style, with a pen and manuscript paper. I'm trying to get away from that and into the whole "audio engineering" side of things, and I'm having trouble just finding a good jumping off point. I'm reading slowly through the tutorial threads, but I still find myself overwhelmed by all the stuff there is to know. Are a computer, Pro Tools, and a keyboard enough to create half-decent music, or do I need a billion other things, too (or, conversely, do I even need to spend all that money on software)? I'm hoping to find those kinds of answers here, and I thought maybe trying my hand at a remix or two would be a great way to get into everything. Plus, everyone here really seems to know their stuff, so I'm looking forward to hopefully getting to chat with some of you!