XPRTNovice

Is it weird that I kind of like that?

That's like saying you almost decided to quit breathing. Yuck. Don't do that. I'm glad you turned around. This community is great for learning. Zircon has some great tutorials out there on youtube that helped me, and beyond those there are so many resources out there for you to learn. Good luck, man.

Wow! I am humbled, I had no idea people would like that track. Thanks everyone and congratulations all around Thanks to zircon for putting on the contest, this was a ton of fun. Who was track #1? I'm having trouble correlating the rankings with the actual tracks. Track #1 was actually my favorite, if for no other reason than the awesome trumpets.

mick, You'll definitely want to checkout http://farlandswritersgroups.com It's a collaboration of online writing groups centered around SF/Fantasy, sponsored by David Farland (David Wolverton), author of the Runelord series. The community is very tight knit and has proved a great budding ground for me as a young author (check my website if you want to read a bit of how my career has gone in the last year at http://josephzieja.wordpress.com). You could also try absolutewrite.com, but that community is considered very cutthroat and a bit snooty. I recommend Dave's site. If you do sign up, send me a PM. My handle there is "PermanentNovice". I'll help you get set up.

Love the build in the beginning and I love 2:30 ish. I think the transition into 2:30 could be a little smoother, though. I'm not a huge fan of this type of music, but I can appreciate a good mix when I hear it. The kick during the last minute was a little invasive, but other than that I think this is good.

I agree with some of the comments about depth. I feel like I'm spending a lot of time in the upper frequencies. When that bass drum first came in, I thought you were going to do something Hans Zimmer ish - tribal drums of sort would work really well behind that. It's a short source, but I think you could lengthen it with some ambiance-type sounds in there too. You've got a good haunting quality going on here. If you listen to Mark of a Beatsmith, that's kind of what I'm talking about. He took a short source and really pulled everything out of it. The end is a bit abrupt for me. Maybe you could peel away more of the instruments so it's more gradual?

This is pretty cool man. 6/8 is one of my favorite time signatures. Before the strings came in, I was envisioning something Baroque, but I tend to be a little silly. If you want to go orchestral, this could be a really cool concerto of sorts.

Dude! I've been looking for that mix forever! I found it on a website a while ago and didn't know it was up here. I love it. I wanted to collab with that guy but he never got back to me.

I just made my submission, Zircon. Can you confirm that you received it, since there are a couple of people here that seem to have had their subs lost?

Flex, I hit you with a PM.

Truth in advertising - I studied Caravan Palace and Django tunes for a week straight to prep my brain for arranging this piece. I have to submit this to the competition in two days, but assuming it doesn't win and get picked up for the CD I'd love to collab. Or, conversely, if you need a clarinet player to lay something down, you know who to call.

Thanks Flex! You nailed some things I've been trying to work on. Hopefully I can get them done before Monday night...

Ah crap! is the sourceSorry!

I actually was planning on adding some honky tonk but couldn't find the right soundfont. I grabbed one this morning and put it in there. I'm subbing this for mod review because the deadline is close. Thanks for the feedback everyone, you really helped me tweak this. Do your worst, Mods!

Thanks guys! I've done a bit of flourishing here and there and changed some things to lessen the repetition and improve the leveling. Give it a listen if you'd like! The link below has been updated. http://soundcloud.com/xprtnovice/gobble-snarf-snap

Hey Guys, I only have a few days to get this ready for the competition, so I need some help. There are some obvious problems (a couple of timing issues, the guitar at 2:12) but I'm looking for an overall critique of this. Does it sound empty or repetitive, can I add pads to make it fill out more, are there any other suggestions... I wanted to take this into Django territory, for those of you who are jazz fans. I dunno if it worked or what. Guitar and clarinet are live, all else are soundfonts or samples. Thanks! http://soundcloud.com/xprtnovice/gobble-snarf-snap Source:

Thanks guys! I'll be messing around with that today.

I'm looking for something that sounds right off a jazz record from the 1920s. Any ideas? Or if anyone knows a good way to create that kind of effect using sends, etc...

I just wanted to thank everyone that helped me piece this together. I got word from Zircon today and this will be going straight to the front page without hitting the judges forum! Thanks again everyone! I couldn't have done it without your help.

Edifying, thanks. Anyway, I think I got this figured out. I'm not used to having to switch "patterns" every time I want to lay down a new track that doesn't conform to the format of any previous track. I feel like I'm making this more complicated than I need to, but I'll do what I've always done and muddle along for now.

How do you record NOT INTO A PATTERN into FL studio? I have a beat down and I'm trying to use Sytrus to have a moving guitar melody. But it only lets me record for as long as the pattern is, then it repeats itself and layers over itself. Man, FL studio's interface is really nice but Cubase is way easier to work with when it comes to straight up recording...

Bump? I'm stuck

Oh, very nice. Very nice indeed. I think I've seen one of these. I wonder if they're going to be too high-level for me, but I'll be checking these out later. Thanks.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I'm looking for anyone that might have already separated the wheat from the chaff on Youtube tutorials for FL studio. I'm looking through a bunch now but it seems like any moron with a screen capture program and a microphone is trying to teach neophytes like myself how to use the program.