AngelCityOutlaw

The fact of the matter is that music can be judged in a wide variety of ways. While someone taking a drum loop and throwing pre-made instrumental loops on top of that may not show a great amount of composing skill, the person in question may have great mixing, mastering and other audio manipulation skill. It's much like the people who bash these talented singers for not writing their own music. It doesn't fucking matter whether Christina Aguilera can perch herself behind the Casio Hans Zimmer style and compose on her own; she's a great singer. That's what she does. I think that a lot of this attitude comes from the fact that in this millennium, most people are participating in the creation of music in an environment that allows for one person to do every step of the music making process. A DAW, for those you out there who aren't picking up what I'm puttin' down. The problem is that just because the DAW enables you to do all steps of the process doesn't mean you are actually equipped in terms of experience or know-how to pull it off. I can't mix worth shit, I know I can't - but my music will inevitably be judged in that area as well. This is why I prefer to collaborate with others; we can each focus on our strengths and the end result is of a higher quality. With music, I think you should do what you're best at. If that's every piece of the puzzle, great. If it's just one piece of the puzzle, like mixing, mastering or otherwise "engineering" pre-made stems, there are other kinds of musicians out there who will call upon you to use that skill.

Just messing around. The point here was to try to sound sort of like the newest Devil May Cry. I apologize in advance. https://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/nightclub-showdown

Hell yeah. The main theme to the first Twisted Metal was one of the first songs I remember learning to play by ear on guitar and Slickrock Gorge from Jet Moto 2 is still among my favorite rock tracks in video games ever. I recently downloaded Jet Moto 2 on PSN....damn, that game was hard. It would be amazing if they rebooted it F Zero GX style.

Viewing using drum loops as cheating is hilarious because half the time it's just a back beat or four on the floor kick loop anyway. If that's the kind of drum beat your song was going to have anyway, you'd actually be crazy not to use a loop; you're just wasting time otherwise.

Street Fighter Alpha, Twisted Metal, Jet Moto 2 and Tekken 3 on the PS1 were the soundtracks that did it for me. I remember my parent's bought a Playstation and we got all of those games except Tekken at a video store that had a clearance sale on games. Prior to that I never paid any attention to music in games because all we had was an NES and it sounded to me like meaningless beeps and bloops. On the PS1 though, you had CD quality music and you could put the game into a CD player and let the badassery flow forth from thy speakers. I think my PS1 games spent more time in stereos than in the console.

I imagined sky-jousting whilst perched upon the back of a dragon because this sounds power metal as hell.

Well, that really narrows it down lol. I have a few people lined up to make this thing really badass; live bass player etc. So before we start going balls out and recording all this stuff, I could send you a MIDI that you can play back with Fruity LCD and tell me if you think the composition is badass enough so far.

Another question for whoever in charge of this project sees it first: In terms of "epic" songs, how do I know if what I'm working on will be epic enough? I listened to all of the examples, but how exactly are we gauging the epic scale? Like, on a scale of 1 to Two Steps From Hell, where should I be sitting at?

I've noticed recently that more and more sites have Ablock block, which is a major piss off.

Neglecting highschool has had literally no negative impact on my life at all. Now, I'm a college student with zero debt and all I had to do was upgrade English. Highschool is a joke. I also had auditioned for the local college's music program when I first attended. That required a performance and music theory exam which I managed to pass just fine despite having virtually no formal training. I decided not to do the music degree thing, but the only reason I was able to pass that audition and exam without formal training was because of all the time I spent on music when I should have been in class. Prior to that, I got the opportunity when I was 18 to work with a more experienced composer and producer on an indie-game. Something most 18 year olds probably haven't done. I'm not saying people should go ahead and drop out of highschool and join a rock band, but don't try to tell me that spending more time focusing on music instead of math class is damaging to your pursuit of music. If it's a pursuit of money and benefit plans you're after though....by all means, spend as little time with music as you can.

Because I rarely bothered to attend highschool and when I was there my teachers wished I wasn't. Then they eventually told me to GTFO and I complied.

This just makes me want to disable adblock and see what else I've been missing. EDIT: and yeah, that game looks manly as hell.

I've talked about it lots in the past, but haven't made a thread for serious discussion about it. UNTIL NOW I feel like writing with notation or notation software has somewhat gone the way of the Dodo. This make me a sad panda. As I think writing with notation has a lot of advantages. This blog post/article thing sums up most of my feelings on the modern DAW vs. Sheet music composing thing fairly well. http://tropicaltheartist.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/why-a-daw-might-not-be-the-best-song-writing-tool/ To quote Randy Newman, when you write it down on paper (or scorewriter) "You find things..." Does anyone else on OCR still use sheet music? If so, what are your thoughts on using it for composing, arranging and remixing in the modern day?

So I was using a computer today that didn't have adblock and I saw this on the homepage. Kinda hilarious given all the arguments about sexism in video games that have taken place here with great intensity. Now, I'm not pointing fingers and I have no idea how much control this site has over ads. Actually, I really don't know much at all about internet advertising. Still, I thought it was worth sharing. I do think it could possibly send the wrong message to new visitors by perhaps thinking that this site is affiliated with "male only" internet games. Most people probably have adblock and will never see it though.

Yeah, if you guys can give me till the end of the month, I'll shoot ya a WIP of the Dahaka's theme from Prince Of Persia. Speaking of which, if anyone has something like East West's Ra and would be willing to process some MIDI through it for me, that would be amazing.

Seems a bit excessive lol. I find that the hot solo+, which is modeled after a Soldano really has that..."sound" I don't know how to describe.

Awesome. I've also been trying to make arrangements of different boss themes and see if any of them are worth sending to you guys. So far I love Guitar Rig. You can definitely get good and diverse tones with it.

Still going to buy PS4 one day. Honestly, more power isn't a good argument at all when it comes to buying a console. I've played both the PS4 and Xbox One and I honestly don't find one console's graphics way better than the other. Even if the Xbox's graphics do wind up being better, who the hell really cares? I'll go with Sony because Sony tries to give people what they want rather than telling them what they want. I could spend $50 a year on the awesome service that is playstation plus and play free games or get huge discounts or I could get Xbox live for $60 a year and put up with more of Microsoft's anti-consumer bullshit. Not to mention, the PS4 is $100 cheaper. I work in a game store to make some more money to cover the cost of college and it's hilarious listening to people trying to justify their intentions to purchase the Xbox one. Basically, it always boils down to "It's Xbox; it's awesome." One guy actually argued that the Xbox was better because he could talk to it to turn it on and didn't have to push any buttons. His argument fell apart when my co-worker asked how he turns his TV on. The PS4 is the better deal. Playstation Plus, Free Games, Discounts, getting cash back after spending 50 or so, greater diversity in exclusive titles, cheaper console, and has already outsold the Xbox one 3 - 1 and I've heard that MS charges 350,000 for their proprietary OS for the Xbox One where as PS4's is Linux based meaning there will probably be more games developed for it in the end.

I happen to know one who would help out if you're still looking. He also recently purchased guitar rig 5 pro and will send you clean tracks if you want to re-amp them.

fair enough point

Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with that. What I'm asking though is that what is the point in sinking in all sorts of hours into getting really good if there is no real benefit to it outside of the game? Like, with my music example, spending lots of time trying to get good at an art can have other benefits for you in life.

So I sort of had this discussion with a co-worker today about people who are waaaaay too good at games. The game in question was Call of Duty, but I think it can apply to any game. I'll start my little rant by saying I used to be fucking hardcore at fighting games when I was 18 or so. I played them all and had most every combo under the sun imaginable memorized for the characters I played as. I recently decided to get back into Street Fighter IV and picked up Tekken Tag 2. Now, I'm still pretty good as Chun Li in SFIV because her strategies and combos are pretty much burnt into my mind at this point. However, I was in practice mode in TTT2, trying to pull off some of the more complicated juggles with Jun and then I realized something: "Who the hell cares? I don't have time for this and when I do, I could spend it doing more productive things. Like recording more guitars." I obviously don't believe that games rot your brain or other bullshit like that, but now that I'm older and have more responsibility I question what the point of being able to juggle some noob's ass all day long or hit some whiny twelve year old from across the map with the throwing knife is when it gives you almost no benefit outside of the game. I mean, sure. I guess I found Street Fighter and Tekken more fun when I felt I was getting better at the game and seeing that all my practice had allowed me to go toe-to-toe with people who would previously destroy me in ten seconds. The thing is though, that's only thing being good at fighting games or call of duty style shooters does. I wasted how many years of my life so far with music, but getting better at it has made me many new friends, allowed me academic opportunities I otherwise would not have had and even made me a few bucks here and there. I have more to show for all my dedication I guess. I suppose that what I'm asking is this: Do you think that, as an adult, putting in mountains of time and effort to become really good at a particular game is actually worth it outside of the game? If so, how?

Happy Birthday!