AngelCityOutlaw

Finish this. I command thee

All good points, Moseph.

I personally think it is ridiculous that they specifically want you to SING the notes. During the audition, we clearly determined my ear is pretty decent. The instructor would play a melody, scale or chord on the piano....and I would play it back on guitar perfectly or near perfectly. I can do the same on piano as well. So...even though my pitch is good enough, it doesn't matter because I can't do it with my voice? Who fucking cares? If you can play by ear, you have the skill. Doesn't matter what instrument you can do it with. Then the instructor said something I completely disagree with. That "vocal pitch is essential to writing music as well." Bullshit good sir, bullshit. He's saying that you have to be able to sing to effectively write music? I don't think any of the working pros on these forums would agree with that. Wasn't Beethoven...ya know....kinda fucking deaf? So yeah, even though I can't really sing they still passed me and were willing to let me into the program. I really do think they saw it as a way of getting me to spend more money.

Well, I passed my audition on the guitar, sight-reading, theory and aural skills were good...on guitar. But I am not a singer and therefore I found it difficult to match pitch consistently with my voice. They were willing to make an exception, but on the condition that I take singing lessons there....another $450 on top of costs already over $1000. These singing lessons would unfortunately have to be taken in place of an aural skills course which all involves matching pitch with VOICE. So this means that I would have to go to the college for another half a year for just a single course. A course I don't want to take. So even though I would be accepted in, I turned the offer down. With music, I like to play in bands and would love to compose music for a professional video game one day. I can continue to improve my skills in recording and playing using my own self study as well as lessons from other professionals; lessons that I can start or stop at any time and cost a whole lot less than college study.

So, three days ago I started upgrading English at my local college so that I could take music next year. The music program at the college is pretty good so I'm quite enthusiastic about it. I spoke to the program administrator as well as the coordinator/instructor today and they are willing to let my academic requirements slide and let me start the program next week. Pending an audition on electric guitar bright and early monday morning. Needless to say, I'm sitting here with my guitar right now and going to practise my ass off this whole weekend. So aside from the songs I am going to play, I'm also working on just focusing on my technique in general. Does anyone wish to share some really great, technique-building exercises they did that work well for you? I already have a lot of things I do, but more exercises and Etudes couldn't hurt!

So, I have long desired to get a few of my personal favourite compositions done professionally. I've saved up a bit of cash over the past while and checked out a bunch of recording studios and their costs. To be specific, I can record MIDI via MIDI Keyboard and I can record my guitar directly in via a line 6 POD. I'm satisfied with that; I can live without Tube amps worth thousands. I want to get the MIDI replaced with superior virtual instruments (and possibly some more live performances) and all the tracks mixed and mastered by people with the gear and the experience to do so. Before I would go ahead with this kinda stuff, what else should I consider? What kinds of questions should I ask the studios? etc?

Basically, Calum said what I meant to say in my post. Only he said it in a less douchebag sounding way.

If you don't already have one, I'd start with scorewriting software like Sibelius 7 (Sibelius is shit in my opinion, but it's popular), Finale or Guitar Pro because DAWs are crap for composing/arranging music. Speaking of, to do the actual recording, mixing etc. You would need a DAW such as Reaper, Fl Studio, Ableton, Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase...the list goes on.

Honestly, I'm not sure which is better production wise since I am not a mixer or anything like that. But what I can say is that if people are just going to bash your music, no matter how skilled they are, just tell them to eat shit and move on. If it is legit criticisms, then it is a different story. With music, there are a lot of people out there who are either: Good, and they know it. Or, grossly exaggerate their own abilities. Both of which gives them this feeling like they are entitled to shit-talk music they view as inferior. It's the same kinda thing with guitarists. "Your tone sucks because you're not using the same amp and effects I like" or, "you can't sweep at 200 bpm like I can, so you suck at guitar" kinda thing.

As a friend of mine put it the other day, "Worry about your art, not your pride. If it sounds good, it sounds good."

There's lots Xenosaga - All the cinematics. Jesus christ, I thought I was playing a game. All PS1 Tomb Raiders - Controls were a constant nightmare. Ninja Gaiden II - The last three bosses of the game; you have to fight them all in a row and can't save. I'm sorry, the game was quite fun for the first half, but its difficulty is one of the few where it is needlessly high, cheap and actually killed my interest in ever playing through it again. Uncharted 2 - All the god damn gunfights. Apparently, Naughty Dog's idea of "adventure" is "massacre a russian dude's army." Other than that, I loved the game. Street Fighter IV - Whenever you have to fight any new character that isn't Juri. All the others just proved to me that Capcom is out of ideas for new characters. The Darkness - All the parts where Jackie goes to WWII hell and how his grandpa was the first to wield the darkness. Pointless bullshit. I didn't play it, but I did find out that Jenny becomes Angelus in the second Darkness game....wtf?

I see a lot of threads about popular music "borrowing" from VGM or vice versa, but I thought we should talk about popular music where the lyrics are about or reference video games and popular musicians who are gamers themselves. I haven't seen any threads about it....I think. For example, this song

I really think it is less about the samples themselves and more about how they are used. I've heard recordings made with "low-end" sample libraries that still sound awesome because the composer really understands how the instruments are played and so the humanization was great. Isn't that the goal of using samples to compose orchestral music? To try to make it sound as real as possible? No matter how awesome the sample library is, it is really up to you to make the performance sound convincing and it's not going to sound like that right out of the box. Don't forget that for the pros, just ONE library isn't going to cut it. They like layering a lot of different sample libraries together AND real orchestras. Made with Orchestral Essentials - Made with East West Symphonic Orhcestra - Made with Miroslav Philharmonik - I think they all sound great.

Word of caution if you do get Orchestral Essentials: Shut off the built in reverb. It just sucks way more CPU than it's worth.

I just got Orchestral Essentials by ProjectSam in the mail today actually. I've just begun learning how to use it. So far it sounds great though.

http://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/f-zero-gx-mute-city Well, I tried out your suggestions. It's not perfect, but I'm still proud of it. Sounds better than most of my guitar stuff so far.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll see what I can do. and I honestly didn't know that.

Okay so, two big issues I've had a hell of a time conquering with recording my guitar is latency and a lack of mid range. I have made this little guitar cover of the mute city theme from F Zero GX as an attempt to fix those issues before I return to working on my Remix for the Castlevania remix album. http://soundcloud.com/angelcityoutlaw/f-zero-gx-mute-city-wip-2 How does it sound to you so far? Do the guitars cut through? How is the guitar tone? Also, here is the original version

I recall back in the days when the band "Dragonforce" was pretty popular, people often accused them of playing slower in the studio and then speeding the guitars up in the DAW. Now I'm not sure if that's true or not, and people I know who have seen the band live give me conflicting reports, but I really wouldn't be surprised if some professional recordings have done this. Another thing people always complain about in the world of pop music is auto tune. Big debate over auto tune...Hell, I know some people who absolutely refuse to use samples of any kind, drums include. I'm genuinely curious to know what everyone's opinions of such things are. Are you a purist who believes speeding up/slowing down tracks, pitch correcting etc. is absolute sin or do you believe that all is fair in love, war and the music studio?

Well, I can't help you on mix related things. But I can say that I like the arrangement so far. I like the variation you have on that intro melody. For some reason, I feel as though that part has a bit of an asian feel. The organ part from bloody tears fits in there well.

Okay, so on the POD HD that I bought recently and used to record the guitars here, I realized that there is a pedal sim before the amp sim. For some reason the pedal sim is by default cutting out a shitload of mid range and boosting lots of bass. So I'll have to re-record the guitars I guess.... Hey....I'm a noob with all this crazy new music technology and recording.

That's not what you said about them before...

Thanks! I can try changing up the phrasing and what not on the main theme each time it repeats. I shall try! Thanks for the tips! ....I'm not certain what you mean. If you're talking about the staccato part at the start of the main melody then I really don't know what to say.

Thanks for the quick feedback Bahamut! Strange thing is, I actually do have the rhythms double track and panned. It's probably just my sub-par mixing overall that is responsible for that.