XPRTNovice

You shut your dirty mouth! I would have accepted "Hire people who can actually voice act for Heavy Rain", but NO!

Hmm...I think I would have changed the ending of FF7. It just didn't close enough loops for me. I always thought that game would have been absolute perfection if they had just spent more time on the ending. [spoilers - highlight to read]I just don't care enough that Red XIII had puppies...itself a scientific impossibility, considering he was the last of his species [/spoilers]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=7835033&sku=B69-0824 This seems like a pretty ridiculous deal - $280 with the rebate? I don't NEED to upgrade my tower, but at this price I am seriously considering it. I could probably re-sell the computer I have now for about $200, and it's only a 4 core with 8GB DDR2. Would really love some experts' opinions on this before I pull the trigger.

I think this statement is a misconception that the general population has, and it stops them from getting where they want to go. Krug is right - calories in vs. calories out. 1 pound of weight equals about 3500 calories. To lose 1 pound a week, you actually physically must consume 500 less calories than your maintenance level for that week. Now, you can make that gap happen two ways: diet and exercise. To "work off" 500 calories, you can bet on doing probably about an hour of medium to high intensity cardio. Or you can NOT eat a few things. In my opinion, it's way less time consuming to NOT do something than to do an hour of something Zircon, I'm not sure what your workout regimen is, but you might want to take some focus off cardio. If you lift weights, try lifting BEFORE your cardio. Lifting is going to burn the carbs you have available, and then the cardio can start to work on the fat stores. If you just do cardio, all you're doing for the first 20-30 minutes is burning carbs that you just ate. If you're not lifting weights, I recommend starting. There's a misconception that cardio > weights when trying to lose weight, because people associate lifting with bulking up. Mix it up a bit and I bet that will do two things: get you the results you want and make working out less abysmally boring. Personally, an hour of straight cardio - ESPECIALLY if I'm doing it on some repetitive machine inside a gym - is worse than watching daytime television. Also - studies show that long-term low intensity cardio (walking for an hour) does better things for you than short term high-intensity cardio (running 3 miles). EDIT: Zircon, if you want to go extreme with your diet, try going paleo for a month. If you cut out cookies and cake but your meals mostly consist of bread, pasta, cereal, and rice, it's going to be REALLY tough for you to see results. I know they're cheaper and they generally taste good, but complex cabohydrates just aren't good for you, despite what the FDA's food pyramid tries to sell us. The mountain of evidence that shows how damaging to your intestinal track processed grains are is growing veeery fast. My wife is beyond knowledgeable about the nutrition side, so if you want some reading material, let me know. Everything I know I've learned by osmosis from her.

I find that the more flexibility I have, the worse I make my mixes because I don' t know what I'm doing. The group strings do have a lot of verb, but the solo strings are dry enough that you might be able to play with them a bit. I know a lot of people that say they don't like EWQL because the verb is baked in. So far, I've had no issues with it because I'm not going to be using orch samples for anything that doesn't require reverb, you know?

If you ever wanted to try Vibram 5 fingers but didn't want to pay $100, now is your chance: http://sport.woot.com $35

I bought EWQL's composers collection for like $500 on ebay and so far I think it's awesome. I got gold orchestra/choir. I've played in bands and orchestras for the last 20 years, though lately I've been having trouble finding one I enjoy. I'm not a string player though, so when it comes to programming strings I don't often know what I am doing. Favorite pieces: Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no 2. Fucking win. Also love the Planets by Holst (particularly Jupiter), the Firebird Suite, Rhapsody in Blue ...

When you say "loud vocals," what do you mean exactly? I sometimes sing loud but I'm not like screaming or anything...

Just looking to clean up a bit of my mic inventory, because I'm a small time studio dork who is looking for quality over quantity. I have a Shure SM58 and a Audix i5 that I never use. My real question is - do I actually need dynamic mics for studio work? I think the immediate response would be "Yes, for your guitar cab", but I don't own a guitar cab, nor will I likely ever own one. Any electric stuff I do goes straight from my guitar to the preamp. I also am never going to be micing drums, so that's out, too. All the stuff I record live are: Vocals, sax, clarinet, trumpet, french horn, mandolin, acoustic guitar, flute, whistling. Given the above, and that most of the time I get suggestions to use either large diaphragm condensers or ribbons - and the fact that I never gig out - do I really need these two dynamics? I could sell them both and then use that money to get a sweet KSM32 or something like that. I just can't think of a scenario where I would want these two anymore. I have the MXL990/991 combo, and I want to get rid of those two for some better stuff. Mic experts - unite!

Oooh ooh wait I think I know this one. Mastering is actually an album term, when you bring every track on an album in line so that it all sounds alike in volume, timbre, etc. You kind of apply the same principle except you're treating almost all the songs on the album as a single track that you need to apply things to. Yes? Do I win?

Hooray for being a noob and not knowing most of what any of you are talking about!

Well, there's never been a time when ALL musicians made a good living doing what they do. You CAN make a good living doing what you do. Maybe. With luck and a lot of perseverence. There are a lot of high school music teachers that would resent that statement. It's all about what you love. If you want to work low hours and make some actual money, then yes, high school sucks and you should try for college. But if what brings you joy is impacting the lives of young people with music, and you have no issues working 15 hours a day toward that goal, then a high school music teacher may be the best and most rewarding job you've ever had. I know lots of music teachers that think this way. Teaching PRIVATE lessons is an AWESOME gig. I used to make $40 an hour in my house in my spare time, and there's nothing even remotely difficult about it if you've been properly trained and can articulate yourself properly. It's very unlikely you'll make a living doing that, but it's a great secondary source of income if you're only making 30k/year as a full time music teacher.

Man, I'm trying to become a professional musician and a professional author all while holding a day job. From experience with other people I know that have successfuly crossed from the M-F grind into the arts full-time, their biggest advice has always been to persevere. KEEP PLAYING. KEEP WRITING. Keep doing whatever it is you want to do, and never make the excuse that you don't have enough time. Everyone I know that's been successful in the arts has been successful because they only got 4 hours of sleep for 2 years as they worked 3 jobs to try and get to the top. Myself...well, I'm not pushing so hard on the music side, but I've written 4 novels since 2010 and I've been spending money going to conferences and workshops. I also work 2 jobs and do freelancing work as a voiceover artist.

Sweet, thanks, I'll give this a shot when I get home. You just saved me lots of tedium.

Hey Cubase users (I'm using Cubase 7), I have a voiceover job I need ot finish and I'm trying to figure out how to do one of two things. 1.) Put some sort of marker in a single audio track so that when I mix it down, it breaks it into 25 separate files. 2.) If I were to, instead, record onto 25 separate tracks rather than use the marker method, export each track into a separate file. I've had to do this a couple of times the mute/unmute/re-export way and it's kind of annoying. I feel like there's a better way to do it but I'm still really new on the software side of things. Thanks!

I'm a super bachlor. Just don't tell my wife and unborn daughter.

Imma havea baby in 4 weeks!

I've been married for nearly 6 years. AND A BABY COMETH.

Wait, I thought squats = running 24 miles with 260 pounds on a bar on your back? Cuz that's what I did.

Two things. 1.) Leg day: They day when I regret that I put my music studio downstairs. 2.) Added some cucumber to my protein shake. Result: AWESOME.

Many happy returns, MX

Yeah, I get that. The NES had a certain plastic smell, and you were almost always exposed to it because you were sticking your nose in cartridges or the console itself to blow shit out of it.

See? SEE?!? Everyone likes them!

Rite. Actually I just put it on OCRemix a lot of the time. If the place has internet I can use my phone and stream it, or I'll use what I have on my ipod. Other than that I like a lot of rock: Symphony X, Muse, Dream Theater. I actually really dig the Persona 3 soundtrack for working out, too. Sometimes I will listen to non-pump up music, but I won't go so far as Chopin. Maybe some acoustic guitar stuff like Andy Mckee or whatever.

Oh man, there is some seriously good shit in that RAR file uploaded. I definitely don't feel like I deserve to be on the winners' board. Congratulations to everyone; I think this could be a cool album just as a package of contest submissions. I'm listening to "Following Forgotten" right now and I feel like it's actually changing my mood. I love it.