DarkDjinn

I'm enrolled in a certificate through Berklee Online (Orchestration for Film and TV Master Certificate) and I'm in the last week of my first class. I start my next class next week (Film Scoring 101) and I'm super excited. Anyone else have any experience with Berklee Online, good or bad? Also, if you do, are there any classes you've found particularly useful when it comes to either composition or production?

NieR was awesome! I'm behind on everything, so it was actually one of the first few games I bought when I got a PS3, but I loved it. It did get a little tedious trying to find the appropriate items to make certain weapons, and the enemies were a bit repetitive at times. But overall, great game with really cool characters.

This sounds amazing. Sending you a PM.

I'll PM you.

I want this to be a moneymaking venture, for sure. If the team I put together and I can generate enough interest and something substantial to show off, I think that Kickstarter or something similar might be the route to go in order to be able to develop the game properly and ensure everyone gets paid. I'm really hoping to find an artist soon so I can bring some of my ideas to life. Hopefully then I can get other people interested in the project. If any artists are even "kind of" interested and reading this, message me, and I can go over what I'm looking for. Thanks!

Oh man, I didn't even realize. I just looked, and now you can pay month by month instead of having the subscription/annual commitment, it's just a bit more.

You can cancel, and then you pay 50% of what is remaining for that year.

Final Fantasy VI was by far my favorite for a long time (even though I didn't play it until about 2000, I think I was in 6th grade). Then I played Final Fantasy VII (for the first time in 2011, don't judge...ok, you can judge). Now I think they're about equal as far as how much I enjoy them.

I'm also a user of the Composer Cloud and I've had it since the day it came out. I'm pointing that out to tell you that even since then, which was only a couple months ago, East West has made great improvements to the downloader and installer. There were a lot of bugs plaguing it at first, which made me very unhappy with it. Now it's smooth sailing. Regarding system requirements (and your future custom computer), I'm using: iMac (Mid-2011) Intel Core i5 2.5 GHz, 16GB RAM WD MyBook Velociraptor 2TB 10000 RPM HDD It's more than the "minimum" and I have experienced zero issues due to my system. As far as the products included, I personally downloaded everything except two libraries I think (the Strat and one other one, can't remember which). It is fantastic to have everything right there just in case I need it. I did it when they had the intro price of $30 a month for everything though. I don't know if I'd personally do $50 a month, but I also make zero (0) dollars from my musical endeavors. If nothing else, it is a great way to get an unbridled and very long "trial period". True, at the end of my year subscription, I will have paid $360 for this, but I've already found a couple of the libraries that I will get great use out of, and I'll be purchasing those once this subscription is up. So all that being said, my vote is GO FOR IT!

Hello everyone, I am putting together a small game development team. I have no experience with game development myself - I work only with music. However, I'm very interested in bringing together a few people that can work very closely in order to create a great game. First, I would like to say that I welcome any advice in this process. Next, I am specifically looking for a writer and an artist at this point, in order to talk about some ideas and get something that people can look at, and hopefully garner some interest in filling the other roles. I would like for this to be a profitable venture for everyone if possible. I would prefer that you live in the MD/DC area so that we could work in person, but if you're really interested in this (admittedly vague) opportunity, please let me know. You can check out my musical works at http://www.bradcharlesmusic.com/music Thanks, and I hope we can work together!

I've gotten really lazy lately and don't record my own guitars much anymore (ashamed to say). When I need guitars, I use Shreddage II - it's great and pretty easy to get used to using. It's not expensive either.

Finished this today. It started out as me practicing writing string parts and I added in the other stuff later. Turned into a neat little short tune. Made using EWQLSO Platinum, Shreddage II, Superior Drummer 2.0, and a couple of instruments from Logic Pro X. Feedback is always welcome but I'm not really looking for much this time, just putting this out here for you all to enjoy (hopefully). https://soundcloud.com/brad-charles/flee-or-fight-back

Neblix, I completely agree about the Hollywood series. EWQLSO is so much simpler to use, and I have had almost no luck with the Hollywood stuff. The master keyswitch stuff in EWQLSO makes things very easy to work with. To add to your list, Ghostwriter, The Dark Side, and Stormdrum 3 all have a lot of very interesting sounds. Stormdrum 3 has some great stuff in it - try out the Dragon Ensemble.

In my compositions, I have many things that I would like to improve. One that has plagued me constantly, however, is my song structure. I have a very rigid way of thinking about things. I think that part of the issue is that, after initially having interest during my middle school years in orchestral music, I got into high school and started playing guitar and writing songs with a rock/pop structure - i.e. intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus bridge, chorus - something like that. And now, that mindset that I was in for a long time has carried over into my orchestral compositions. To be fair, I almost completely ignored orchestral music when writing for a long time. This lasted from approximately the age of 15 until 25 (I'm 27 now). Over the last 1.5-2 years, I've rekindled my interest in orchestral composition, but as mentioned, I struggle with improving the structure of my works. I feel like everything has to have "musical symmetry", if that makes sense. I use the classic ABABCB structure, and while that might work some of the time, it gets old. One thing I do to try to open up my mind is listen to music that I've never heard before. Does anyone else face this issue, and do you have any good tips for breaking that cycle? I especially welcome those of you who are very familiar with orchestral composition to respond, although any comments are appreciated

First: you can cancel whenever you want, but when you sign up you essentially sign up for a year, even though you only actually pay month to month. First month is an additional one time setup fee of 29.99, so you pay $60 that first month. If you cancel before the year is up after that, you pay 50% of what was remaining on your "contract". Just some stuff to keep in mind. Ok, as for what's included, there was a list posted on the support forums: The Dark Side Fab Four Ghostwriter Goliath Gypsy Hollywood Strings Gold Hollywood Brass Gold Hollywood Orchestral Woodwinds Gold Hollywood Orchestral Percussion Gold Ministry Of Rock 1 Ministry Of Rock 2 Silk Symphonic Choirs Gold Symphonic Orchestra Gold Strings Symphonic Orchestra Gold Brass Symphonic Orchestra Gold Woodwinds Symphonic Orchestra Gold Percussion Pianos Gold Bechstein D-280 Pianos Gold Bosendorfer 290 Pianos Gold Steinway D Pianos Gold Yamaha C7 ProDrummer Spike Stent (April 23) ProDrummer Joe Chiccarelli (April 23) Ra Solo Violin Spaces (coming in May) Stormdrum 2 Pro Stormdrum 3 Voices of Passion 56’ Stratocaster Adrenaline BT Breakz BT Twisted Textures Drum n Bass Electronica Funky Ass Loops Guitar & Bass Hypnotica Ill Jointz Joey Kramer Drums Percussion adventures 1 Percussion adventures 2 Phat & Phunky Public Enemy Scoring Tools Smoov Grooves Steve Stevens Guitar Stormdrum 1 Loops Stormdrum 1 MuItiSamples Symphonic Adventures I'm liking it so far, but it obviously takes forever to download these libraries, at least some of them. I imagine you can run it in an offline PC, but you'd have to have license installed on that PC and then it expires once a month - so it would have to be able to check to make sure you made your payment and your license was renewed. Hope that helps.

Finally got everything working. On the Soundsonline support forums, there were people having issues, some having the same as me, so I'll share one hopefully helpful tip. Make sure you upgrade to the latest version of PLAY and install support files for everything that you're going to use, even if you haven't downloaded it yet. This will save you major headaches later. I've downloaded Gypsy and it works just fine now.

This is something I get feedback on a lot. Some helpful advice I got that I am now using: slow down the piece - wayyy down, if you're not a keyboard player - and play the parts by hand. That will help the humanization from the timing aspect at least, i.e. so you don't end up having really fast, super perfect violin runs (which is something I had to fix by using the aforementioned method). Hopefully that helps some. I also agree with what Neblix said though - you have to think about it musically before you think about it digitally. Even then it's really hard to do, but if you compare what you come up with with what you WANT it to sound like, it should give you at least a rough idea of the direction you should head in. Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback. Here's the deal with percussion. I was doing a "rock kit" thing with the orchestral percussion, but it sounded weak. So I added an actual rock kit (and kept the orchestral percussion), and had it do almost exactly the same thing as the orchestral percussion. It didn't fit, so I put some reverb on it to make it blend in a little better. It might sound a little weird as a result. As for the other stuff, I'll look into it. Thanks again!

Nah, nothing freezes. I started with Gypsy. I downloaded it, authorized it to the iLok. I tried to load an instrument and it said it couldn't verify the license. I deactivated the license, reactivated it, and then tried again. Same result. I tried doing it both directly on the computer and on the iLok, same result. Right now I'm trying a reinstall to see if that changes things.

Ugh, I'm already having issues with this. Glad it's working for you. It's either not authorizing correctly or not installing correctly.

Ha - I did all the same ones minus solo violin.

Alright, just signed up for it. I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes.

Here's the correct version - it was posted on 3/28/2015 in a separate reply. I like to leave all the old versions up for comparison - sorry for the confusion. This one incorporates a second source - the theme from The Addams Family (SNES). The original source had scant material, and I think the new addition is both relevant and works well. It's still a short mix, only about 2:30 I think. But it is cohesive and has a clear direction, in my humble opinion. In order to fix the aforementioned humanization issues from the first few posts, I slowed down the tempo greatly and played many of the parts by hand (I'm not a pianist) in order to give them a "less perfect/more human" feel. https://www.dropbox.com/s/r56wutktlidyukn/Fester%27s%20Quest%20Overworld%20Remix%20-%203_28_15%2C%207.46%20AM.m4a?dl=0

Also, it's $29.99 a month for 7 collections of your choice, and you get a new one every three months. $49.99 for everything (Gold versions). And the introductory deal: right now, it's $29.99 for the "everything" package, and that price is good for the first year. You can pay yearly, or month-to-month, but on month-to-month, if you cancel before your contract is up, you owe 50% of the cost of however many months you have left.

One correction: it's not for all East West products; just the Gold versions.