AngelCityOutlaw

CC1 is what you want to use on the long sustained and legato articulation. It controls the actual dynamics of the instrument. CC7 and 11 behave as if they were master and channel volumes on an amplifier, respectively.

The Duke Nukem Forever of OCR. Also, congrats

When people hear of a video game involving big superheroes and Game of Thrones, they imagine things like Witcher, Arkham City or that Spider-Man game that's busted more records for Sony than one of their turntables: Games that put you in the role of these characters. Not "it's basically a movie that you can push buttons to" like Until Yawn

Some European folk influence.

Good. There are lessons to be learned here. Most of these "games" were terribly over-rated, had tremendously expensive licensing deals and failed to breach even a half-million in sales in most cases. People generally want to spend their money on actual games, not B-movies in disguise that are just phoned-in re-skins of the last game they made. RIP Telltale — We barely played ye.

Ask the people who did the "Balance and Ruin" album

"One Man's Lie"

I know we have still one year to go before this would truly make sense, but to hell with it: Out of any video game released this decade, which one would you say was the best that you played? I haven't played too many games in the 2010s, but I'm going cast the super-predictable vote for The Glitcher 3: Wild Hunt. I haven't read the novels (though I did read the short stories a looong time ago) and I just loved the story, characters, and world in Witcher. The first game was "meh", the second was "better but still not there" and the third was awesome. I love that every side quest is actually interesting and its own story unto itself. My last wish would be that there weren't so damn many glitches. Your turn, and I know you're lurking, old timers.

It would be sacrilege to exclude Twisted Metal

I like how people in the comments are complaining about "only" 20 games. Like, you guys know the size of a PS1 game compared to an NES one, and the licensing nightmare re releasing a console consisting of mostly third-party titles probably is, right? Anyway, as much as I love the PS1 (and it'd be rad if they follow up with a mini PS2), the first "next-gen" console I ever had, I just can't get bring myself to buy one of these mini consoles. I'm sure the nostalgia would wear off quickly. But I'm still glad they're keeping them alive all the same.

Well, I specifically said there's nothing wrong with things like cosplay if that's what you want to do, but I likened the creative ownership of it as being the same as remixing.

It's not about whether or not it can be confused for someone else: It's about the inescapable reality that it deliberately uses someone else's work as its foundations. Not influence, not imitation, etc. Just straight up revision. That is why I will not hear an argument otherwise. There's nothing pessimistic about this — it's simply an honest assessment of what an arrangement is. If you want to be a creator, then it simply makes sense to value your own work more than revisionist ones. This is a perfectly sensible stance as to why someone like myself can lose their appetite for remixing. I created this thread to see what individual reasons are and how they differ, not to pass judgement on their reason, but have now spent three pages basically saying: "I'd just rather write my own stuff because it's uniquely mine and no one else has any part in its creation". A position I feel I've adequately justified and defended, and see no need to do so further.

Basically, I said that it's all about what the library samples rather than how it necessarily sounds (since all the pro ones at least have good recording quality) and it's best to get this so it can be done within one patch. Even in such a case, you can still delegate articulations to separate tracks if you really want to. A barfight ensued over the second (of lesser-importance) part whereas I was expecting hell to break loose over the former. Indeed. Which is why I maintain that if one is in the market to buy a "brand-spankin new" library, or their first one ever, it makes little sense to go for one that only offers the individual elements. Reaper changed my life. Well, I actually meant a sustain/footpedal switching to the legato articulations when depressed, and all others remaining on velocity when not, but the organ-pedal switching idea would be absolutely amazing were it not for my strings presently being the only keyswitch library I use regularly!

I shall then tell you to tell Pryzm that he's too hung up on key-switching, as I'm a velocity-switching and footpedal supremacist. =P Which also solves the orchestrating/notating problem key-switches can present. The classic strategy, as I've always understood it. I still argue in favor of not layering and just having samples of the actual articulation style you want. EDIT: But I see what's happening here — Nabeel is on a quest to prove that I'm completely wrong — so I've gone ahead and googled Keyswitches Vs Single Articulations and taken from sources that deal with composers using specifically orchestral instruments. https://vi-control.net/community/threads/key-switches-vs-separate-tracks.60844/ https://vi-control.net/community/threads/multi-articulation-patches-with-key-switching-vs-single-patches.46256/ https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t48376-Key-switches-vs-Separate-Articulations#post269778 https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t41818-Key-Switches-vs--Single-Articulations#post250918 https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-for-picture/888790-orchestral-template-keyswitches-vs-single-articulations.html Some stand-out quotes: and my favourite, which is the point I've been trying to drive home: Among some of the posters, or information shared by the posters, there is no shortage of composers who've worked on everything from Zorro to Tomb Raider (Movies) who use keyswitches. Few seem to argue in favour of single articulations unless they like layering, processing individual articulations, or just because that's how they've always done it. I remain unconvinced that single articulations are the norm (doesn't really matter anyway), and I remain unconvinced that it's inherently a better method when it comes to making mockups. Feel free to disagree, I know you will, but I'm steadfast on this opinion and will share it again in a heartbeat.

Yes, that's very clever.

You doubt that sample libraries that utilize all articulations within one patch, velocity or keyswitch control, combined with the fact that it samples a wider range of note lengths, is both more intuitive and likely to produce a realistic result, in a lot less time, than using a sample library that does not have such features, and is spread out across multiple tracks? That's a very odd thing to doubt. I know for myself from using the libraries. A good example for brass, but it applies across the board, would be the Indiana Jones theme. CineBrass VS East West. I could demonstrate this for you if you want, but I honestly don't want to summon up the willpower to attempt it with Symphonic Orchestra and I know it's not doable with Orchestral Essentials. But maybe this video will shed light: Excluding his talking, he did that in under ten minutes. Now, he could make it more realistic yet by expanding those first four bars out to separate trombone patches (takes minimal effort) and adding some tempo automation, etc. And he used the keyswitch map too, which isn't as fast as the velocity map for obvious reasons. Good luck getting that kind of result with a library that requires you to juggle multiple tracks for all those articulations, articulations which SO or Symphobia straight up don't have, in that amount of time. Last I checked, both libraries cost easily as much as CineBrass. Keep in mind, these are pretty simple phrases for these instruments to play as well in real life! Sure, with Symphobia or SO you get a "whole orchestra", but forgive me if I think it's worth it to save your money. They even did the Raiders March I could still do my own mockup, with more detail, if you wanted, but I think I've made my point.

My challenge to prove it still stands

I have my doubts that "most" do from what I've seen, especially given time constraints. Also, the libraries I were particularly praising use velocity-switching by default. Individual preferences may very, but I'm not buying that the two methods are equally efficient when the chips are down. Didn't say anything about Hollywood Orchestra, but Uh huh. Again, make me mockup of like, the first couple minutes of Beethoven's Op. 59 with Symphonic Orchestra, OE or one of the garden-variety NI string libraries and then do it with something like CSS and compare the result. Be sure to time yourself. Spending money on sample libraries is, frankly, a decision far too many people in computer music take too lightly. The fact that third-party customization options are available to you, provided that you're willing to put up with an additional, unnecessary learning curve is not incentive to buy something when options are available to you that will work as you require right "out of the box". Trust me OP, if you're still out there: buying into the romantic notion that tools don't matter that much will wind up costing you and you will wind up sacrificing musical ideas to the mercy of either incapable samples, tedious workflow, or both. Over the last two years, I spent more money than I would've liked, but in doing so I got myself a setup I'm perfectly happy with, and don't see myself upgrading anytime soon simply because it can play whatever I throw at it with no hassle or convoluted routing and scripting. It's what I should've done from the start — it would've saved me so much money and time. Now, I'm left with a number of sample libraries I struggle to find a use for, and cannot resell.

Libraries like Cinesamples give you the choice, though. By default, all articulations can be activated via velocity-switch. IMO, there is no reason why any modern sample library should exclusively be limited to one articulation per track.

I'm not referring to "sound quality". Obviously, the recordings of these companies is top notch. The content they actually sampled, and the interface with which to use it, are another story. Here's the example I always use when someone says something to the effect of "samples don't matter": Make me a mockup of John Williams' Flight to Neverland with something like Orchestral Essentials and then get back to me.

I disagree with this. The better the sample library, the more intuitive it should be. I define a "mediocre" sample library as one that is incapable of playing a melody authentic to the rhythmic vitality of that instrument within a single patch. Allow me to offer a somewhat different opinion here: You cannot "get around" mediocre samples if realism is your goal for the simple fact that if you don't have a sample of something, your virtual instrument cannot play it. You can try to "fake" something by manipulating the sounds, but that almost always sounds obvious. So it's best to just write to the samples' limited ability. A good sample library will feature all standard articulations for the instrument, most importantly notes of differing lengths (Cinesamples is great at this), and you can do it all within one instance of Kontakt or whatever. East West Symphonic Orchestra fails on this account. It doesn't have any meaningful variation in short notes and it's a nightmare to use. You'll spend hours making it play the line you want, likely across several patches for one instrument, only to realize that a better library could've done it in a matter of minutes. So much "orchestra" music now is just "chord with left hand, melody with right" and banking on the fact that the lines have "true legato" as being "realistic" even though no orchestra plays exclusively legato through every phrase. Symphobia is a textbook case of such a "mediocre" library. If it takes you hours and hours to craft a believable phrase, and even then it ends with a mixed result, it's a sure sign the sample library is garbage. And take it from me, a guy who spent a lot of money and time on this in recent years: A lot of "budget" libraries really suck. It's not the advice anyone wants to hear, but the reality is, if you're serious about making realistic mockups, there are no "tricks" anyone is going to be able to give you — outside of learning more about orchestration of course — but it is inevitable that you need more capable samples eventually.

Depends on how you're defining "mediocre"

Congrats, man!

I disagree that such is an inevitable conclusion and again, there can be debate about whether or not your audience for remixes is actually your audience at all. The issue is not that they prefer one or the other, it's that they have little to no interest in so much as listening to an original track from someone primarily doing remixes. Logically, it also doesn't follow that if someone didn't like your original music, that they'd bother listening to your arrangements of other's music. I guarantee you there is a difference in audience skepticism when Metallica covers "Whiskey In The Jar" vs when a Metallica cover band says "Okay folks, we're gonna play you an original now"

You hit the nail on the head here, and I wasn't going to outright say it. But since he said it first, please forward all hate mail to Gario The reality is that tonal music and the techniques regarding composition and especially where harmony are concerned, are the result of physics and psycho-acoustics with centuries of study behind it that saw aesthetic patterns emerge. This gives us a finite amount of scales/modes, harmonies, harmonic progressions, etc, — colours with which to paint — that have been generally agreed upon to be aesthetic, and do result in formulas, but can be presented in an infinite amount of combinations. That is where the individualism, and the art, comes in. However, your ability to do this, is dependent on your mastery of the finite aspects — the craft. We live in a time where people hate standards. Because where there are standards there will be judgement, and people have been raised to resent judgement. Where art is concerned, this means your art may be judged inferior. And it takes a lot of work to hit a high standard. Under this nihilism: Atonal, melody and harmony-free music is just as great as the works of Beethoven or contemporaries like Jerry Goldsmith or Williams. Nonsensical graffiti tags, which is defacing property and undermining civilization, is just as valuable "art" as Michelangelo's work at the Chapel. Remakes, reboots, and remixes are just as significant in the history of a medium as the progenitor because "well nothing is really completely original anyway!" It's not to say these things are valueless or can't be great in their own right in context — but I will disagree, without any repentance, that they are inherently of the same caliber.