AngelCityOutlaw

Faith in Square Enix is low as hell right now. With any luck though, it'll be good.

The internet reaction I'm seeing so far is brand loyalty at its worst. Basically it went like this: PS4 Reveal = "Wow, this thing looks lame and I won't be buying one." Now = "OMFG Kingdom Hearts 3 and two more Final Fantasy games that will probably be the very definition of mediocrity just like the previous 3 games!? I am so sold. Take my money."

Kingdom Hearts III? I thought that series was dead.

Nexus! and holy crap, I totally forgot about this game. I had it on the NES when I was a little kid. Also, epic remix. The transitions between the two themes, which sound to me like different keys, are not very well executed though.

Just looked up DOA 5 Ultimate...hmm. I actually think this free-to-play thing is a step in the right direction for the genre. To me, the charm of fighting games is being able to master a single character and beat everyone's ass with them. DOA 5 will feature 4 or 5 playable characters (which includes the character I usually play as in DOA) but all characters from the retail game are opponents from the start and cost like $4-5 to unlock and play as them. Tekken allows you to upgrade characters RPG style and presumably will release DLC characters down the road. So basically, I'd only have to spend just five bucks if I really want a non-DLC character. If I remain perfectly satisfied with the character I have from the get-go, I'm out nothing.

Good points. I actually do have an arcade stick and all that. So once this new Tekken comes out I'll give it a shot and possibly get into Darkstalkers Resurrection more.

I'm not a professional, but I did get to experience it when I wrote music for an indie game (which finally comes out in the next couple months!). So I'm not really qualified to give you a good answer. but I doubt that you're going to get any two answers that are the same. As it depends on what the composer does, if anything, in addition to composing. The process would be different depending on whether you are also an engineer, conductor, whether you hire live musicians, etc. Odds are, most young freelance composers still have day jobs. So you can also write about your composers awesome day job as a Starbucks barista! Also, a large amount of your time will be spent networking. So be sure to include that in your story.

I'm oldschool and still do lots of composing by playing guitar and writing it down as sheet music.

Yeah, in metal you want that "wall of sound" with guitars. The only real way to achieve that is genuine double-trackin'.

I thought the golden age of arcade fighters was the 1990s?

So a free to play version of Tekken is coming to PSN in a couple days I just found out via http://www.tekken.com/ I'm intrigued. Anyone else going to give it a shot? My faith in fighting games has been low these days.

I'll make a controversial statement as always: I started with the forgotten art of sheet music. For me, it was far easier to study music theory and analyze existing works note for note if you can see it all in notation. Any serious composer who really wants to learn how to write music will know how to read sheet music and learn as much theory as possible in my opinion. Notation and tab is how I did it for years, and only in 2010 I got into the whole DAW and virtual instruments thing. I can honestly say that this made me go back to square one in a lot of ways. Because the process was so alien to me and I'm not a keyboardist. So for sure a lot of the stuff I had made for quite some time was much weaker than what I felt my usual standard for composing music was. I've gotten around this by writing everything on my guitar instead of trying to be a keyboardist and mouse clicking data into the piano roll. It's a more time consuming process to actually write music with a DAW than with notation for me, but you definitely have a more impressive end result than just a bunch of notes on paper or software. Virtual instruments are also inspiring. Now, the biggest intimidation for me is the whole mixing thing. I'm not good at it, and I don't particularly like it.

Thanks for the feedback, T! Yeah...I really wish I had a bass guitar or shreddage bass. I must purchase shreddage soon

I have nothing to add except that this track is on the kicking end of ass kicking. Great work =D

I agree with Dan. I think that the other posts are coming mostly from a musician's point of view rather than considering the listener's point of view. I think both must be considered. How does it sound to your ears, but.... If you're making music for someone else or lots of people are going to be listening to it, you need something that sounds very good. It's like, if some indie game developer wants as close to Hollywood film soundtrack as possible, but you can't afford to book the Hollywood Studio Symphony, you should be able to sound as close to the real deal as possible. If you can't, you will probably lose out to the person who can. So yeah, in that kind of a situation, you can screw around trying your best to make some soundfonts sound as real and "high quality" as possible, or you can just buy a sample library that makes it easier to sound like how the client wants the final product to sound. The only magic "sounds super awesome AND real" button is a killer live performance and that shit don't come cheap n' easy.

Snaps makes good points.

I'm not a sound engineer, but I've offered this opinion many times and shall do so again: A Line 6 Spider III does not sound as good as a Peavey 5150 to my ears. If Eddie Van Halen played through a Spider, he would still be Eddie Van F*ckin' Halen, but the simple truth is that his signature 5150 that he used for years is still a higher quality amplifier and is capable of producing a much better timbre. Equally great music can still be composed and performed with the spider. An equally great "production" however, is a different story. The same can be said of virtual instruments vs other virtual instruments, real instruments vs. real and virtual vs. real.

Eh, maybe. Either way, it gave me a reason to rant.

https://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/a-reason-to-rock Real electric guitar and fake acoustic guitar. Yay! Basically, I just need an excuse to put some killer drop-tuned metal riffage on my soundcloud page and this little riff is actually pretty sweet. I'm also lookin' for some tips on how how to improve production of metal/rock music. So any tips you have based on what you hear in that link would be great. Thanks!

You must record two separate takes. If you just copy/paste it, you will get mono; which is the opposite of what you want. and it shouldn't mud up the sound. If it does, it probably needs EQ in low end.

This site has some great tips about what to charge for your music http://www.filmandgamecomposers.com/guides/how-much-should-i-charge-to-compose-music I like the idea that if you do something for free for them, they should offer you a service for free in return.

0.o

I have some of ProjectSAM's stuff and I recently bought the "Hollywood" expansion for Nexus; which actually sounds awesome, but like anything has its downsides. I disagree that gear doesn't matter. Someone who is skilled will make East West sound 100x better than an equally skilled person will with Edirol.It's like how I have a friend who has really expensive, good amplifiers and guitar, but he can't play very well or write music worth shit. So yeah, the music he makes with it isn't very good. However, in terms of sound quality and in the right hands, that gear totally destroys my setup no matter how good of guitarist I could be. So therefore, when I play through his gear, it definitely sounds better than when I play through my own.

Kiefer Sutherland!? That's actually a pretty good choice. I expected far worse.