Kat

It depends on a few things, really. First thing to look for is whether the keys are weighted or not, as this will impact how you play it(and you want something you're comfortable playing). Fully weighted keys are the most realistic and aimed at piano-trained players. The weight varies across the board like a real piano and allows for easier realism and a better dynamic response. Semi weighted keys are evenly weighted and offer a somewhat realistic response. Unweighted keys use springs instead of weights for an overall heavier feel. They can feel sort of slippery and if playing fast passages it may seem a little uncontrollable. Unweighted will be the most cost effective, though, while fully weighted keys will be the most expensive. After that it's all about how many keys and what features you need. Most tend to come in 25/49/88 keys. Do you just need it for general midi input, or do you want knobs/pads/faders/wheels for better control while playing? First and foremost I'd actually suggest checking out Guitar Center. While they closed their Canadian location(last I checked at least), the US locations ship to Canada and allows you to check out in CDN while adding all taxes/duty/etc. That keyboard you linked is a synth-action(by it's description), meaning unweighted. The four-way knob is a pretty cool idea for a portable keyboard, and the addition of 8 knobs and pads will make up for only having 25 keys. If you want something specifically designed to be portable that's probably one of the best in my opinion. There are a lot of 49 key controllers at a similar price point, but none of them have the same features. I found the same one(in a limited red color) new and on sale at Guitar Center as well. If you're willing to pay a bit more, the M-Audio Oxygen49 is more or less a direct upgrade. It has 49 keys(semi-weighted) and 8 knobs/pads, along with 9 faders and separate pitch and mod wheels. Also includes a port for a sustain pedal, and a code for Ableton Live Lite. It also automaps to most DAWs(but not FL Studio, if you go that route), making it relatively plug-and-play. Also allows for octave shifting and switching DAW channels via buttons on the keyboard itself, along with a play and record button.

For DAWs it's largely preference nowadays as they usually have the same features. FL Studio comes with a small selection of sounds even at the base level, and the $99 intro version is functional enough for most things. It also comes with free updates. You have to get one of the higher editions for recording, however, but when upgrading you only pay the difference. Cubase is a nice choice and my preferred DAW for recording(and it's really friggin stable), but only includes a small amount of instrument plugins. It's also fairly expensive and you have to pay for the updates(though these are usually big version changes, like going from Kontakt 4 to 5, for example). For instruments, Kontakt itself comes with a nice enough library. If you don't have Kontakt already, it's well worth the cost simply for all the relatively cheap plugins that require it. I'd also suggest anything by Impact Soundworks. Great stuff at a great price. Celestia in particular has a lot of synth/strings/pads of decent quality with a good amount of sound design built in. Xpand!2 is an excellent choice at $99 and includes a TON of synth sound options(including drum kits, bass and lead guitars, synth orchestra and pads, etc). It may be the most cost effective option for what you want to do. You may also want to listen to some of the Super Audio Cart demos - it's geared towards a lot of older console sounds and it might just suit your needs. For a drum kit, I'd suggest Drummic'a by Sennheiser. It's free and works with the free Kontakt Player. Sennheiser basically made it to demo their mics. While the site is in German, you can register pretty easily and get a registration code sent. Then just register Drummic'a with your Native Instruments account as usual and you're good to go. As an added bonus, having it registered to your account qualifies you for the crossgrade version of Kontakt(which is the same full product, but costs a lot less). ISW's Shreddage Drums is another good drum plugin and a step up from Drummic'a. For interfaces, the Focusrite Scarlett Solo is decent and includes a line in for guitars as well as a mic line with 48v phantom power. There are some better Focusrite interfaces for slightly more, though, so it's more of a budget choice.

That's mostly composition rather than any specific instrument, but as for weird/funny libraries? Stroh Violin Mouth Trumpet Glockenpillar Canjo Harmonette The Keyboard Pretty much all of them require the full version of Kontakt, though. If you want plucked strings similar to the Goat Simulator OST, I'd imagine a Koto VST would do the trick. ISW has a nice Koto VST available(also requires Kontakt). There's also Celestia, which has a ton of additional sounds available alongside some koto plucks. You could probably make something humorous with all the instruments and effects it includes. On the "Free/Cheap" side of things, I don't know too many weird/funny libraries that don't need the full version of Kontakt. There are probably some free plucked string VSTs out there that would work for a Goat Simulator styled sound.

Glad you enjoyed it. I might give it a shot at some point, but I still have a ways to go on piano arranging.

A work-in-progress arrangement/mock-up of Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec leading into Liberi Fatali. Both are intended to be faithful recreations(with a few personalized aspects) rather than full remixes. Fithos is primarily an attempted sound upgrade, whereas Liberi Fatali was already an orchestrated piece.

Boom. It's less of a WIP and more on the "complete" side of things, though. I just want to humanize a few parts and touch up some of the articulations. Maybe clean up the mix a bit - it all sounds reasonably clean to me, but there's always room for improvement(in which I'll probably enlist the PYGR boards).

Well, yeah - before hyper-realistic samples were available(even to professional composers) a composer who wanted it to sound realistic would, if necessary, spend hours and hours doing what they could with the tools available. It was either that or hire actual musicians. As timaeus says, though, humanization is usually done as the song is written and as necessary rather than as an afterthought. I would venture to say that it's an integral part of the song writing process, whether you aim for realism or just what sounds good to you. It should never "hold up song writing" because it is a part of the writing process. Even working with realistic samples you'll still often have to put in hours of work to make them sound realistic. I'd hardly say 2 years of piano playing is necessary. Anyone with a little time can pick up a MIDI keyboard(even a cheap one) and with a little practice have enough of an understanding to translate basic ideas into actual sounds. There are portable MIDI keyboards for $30-$40(or cheaper even) that connect via USB and do the job just fine. It's not huge investment but as Neifion put it, it's an essential one.

Haven't been lucky enough to get the Odin FATE yet. Been trying to keep up on my dailies and spam Palace of the Dead to cap my lore tomes. Finally got around to finishing the Heavensward MSQ. That final trial was pretty damn fun. Now I'm focusing on gearing up. I'm at ilvl.190 now with mostly i200 Eso gear(and some i145 stuff I'm replacing), almost got enough Lore tomes for something. The SCH Padjali weapon seems better than the lore weapon as far as stat weights go so at least I don't have to worry about that.

Tried some PVP for the first time today. It's freakin' cancer. As a scholar grouped with a WHM and AST I really couldn't do much healing, so I mostly put shields on everyone as needed, put miasma/DoT/etc on targets and went for the tomes we had to capture. Blinded the crap out of any bard/mech trying to snipe out the healers. First time one of the healers went down I revived them with the PVP revive and insta-healed them to full health. Happens again twice throughout the fight. Shortly after some of the party start complaining about the PVE raise skill being used(which I hadn't touched in that match), and someone points the blame on me. I correct them, but get asked if I'm actually healing. A few minutes later: You have been dismissed from both the party and the duty. Think I'll stick to PVE. So, uh..how about those posing rangers? It's a silly event, kind of a nice break from the usual stuff and not terribly grindy. Also, heavy armor gear that any class can glamour.

Just a short piano arrangement of the opening theme to My Neighbor Totoro, although it only covers the first portion(before the extra harmonies come in). I may expand on it later. I mostly did it to practice transcribing by ear and also because I was on a Studio Ghibli kick earlier. Original:

Some random Sonata Arctica tracks while I eagerly await October. Hyped for The Ninth Hour! I recently finished Ecliptica Revisited. It was pretty good as a re-release with some noticeable changes. It didn't deviate too much from the originals though - some songs were a step or two lower, or had slight tempo alterations. The mixing was kind of eh though.

Ahhhh, almost got something. Just gotta do a few very special finishing touches...

I gave her the Scavenger role so she loiters around on the edge of the battlefield and makes me more money, so I guess there's that. I have a couple nitpicks. Having 7+ people on the battlefield at once is cool, but it also gets really chaotic. I've also run into situations where several enemies use particular spells(I'm looking at you, Earth Gale) repeatedly, causing you to get knocked up, fall to the ground, get up, get knocked up, fall to the ground, get back up, etc. Circumvented by switching characters to deal with the problematic enemies, but if your party happened to cluster together so help you. Relating to the that, I sort of disliked having the battles on the same map. It's obvious they designed the maps with huge battles in mind, resulting in some very generic/linear paths. It was annoying because the maps often railroad you into battles by having larger areas with fights connected by small pathways. This is probably because of my love for Xenoblade Chronicles X, in which the terrain wasn't tailored for most of the battles. You just had to deal with whatever environment you were in. The crafting is top notch though. While I do sort of miss SO3's Inventing it is satisfying to actually get to craft the stuff yourself and see the results right away. As for the length, I'm only a few hours in so far. The pacing does feel rather fast if you just go through the main story, but I'm going off and crafting/grinding/sidequesting a lot. I'd imagine the people complaining are just rushing through the story. So I've also heard the post-game content is rather lacking. As spoiler free as possible, is this true? SO3 had a ton of stuff, from all those extra Sphere levels to the official post-game dungeon. I never properly played SO4 so I'm not sure about that.

So I know there was a general Star Ocean thread a while back that seems to have been lost, but I haven't seen anything about this game recently. I know it only hit NA about a month ago. I'd read that they tried to go back to their Tri-Ace roots for this one, and that they'd also taken inspiration from Star Ocean 3. I enjoyed 1 and 2 and 3 was a favorite of mine, so I decided to give it a shot despite the negative reviews. So far, it's ok. The game looks and sounds great - While the graphics aren't exactly next gen, they're very well done and certainly scream Star Ocean. Likewise, the music is pretty nice(although I'll admit nothing has been super memorable so far). The battle system seems to have taken it's roots straight from Star Ocean 3, with adjustments for new systems and the like. It has a gambit-like system where you assign up to four roles to each party member, which adjust their battle behavior and adjust stats a bit. The characters, while somewhat generic(Hey look, another blue haired swordsman leading the cast) and trope-filled, still have pretty cool designs. They're sort of likeable. I mean, if you're a fan of JRPGs or Star Ocean in general it won't come as a surprise. There are little bits of charm/lame puns everywhere. In a marketplace area I walked by a woman who proclaimed "I could look at these wares all day long...". Oh, and she was looking at a guy across the street, not a stall. A weapons vendor, meanwhile, wanted to 'axe' me a question. Overused? Sure, but still caught me off guard. Speaking of weapons vendors: Honorable nitpick: In the very first town there's a weapon/armor merchant proudly manning his shop and touting about how great his weapons are, whilst standing in front of several bins of fruit and vegetables. Not a trace of any sort of weaponry or protective gear around. So, anyone else playing this?

A straight orchestral cover of Rim Elm originally done for an MNP compo. The goal was to change it from a simple lighthearted town theme into more of a grand capital theme without changing the structure of the song much at all. I've changed it a bit from the original compo entry, as that was a rushed entry.

Not nearly as bad as the atma grind IMO. I find legendary medals(which are "rare") almost every time. It says they drop rarely from FATEs when you get silver/gold, but so far every gold rank I've got has dropped one. Are there two mounts? I only saw the Whisper mount for getting all the minions.

I'm over on Goblin myself. Finally for my PotD weapon and mount, but I still run it for the materia and exp. Also enjoying the Yokai Watch event.

Got around to finishing and submitting something, thanks to the extension

Well, after about 5 failed 41-50 runs(some of which the group intentionally wiped because of too few upgrades) I finally beat it. Excellent run with several upgrades, so now I'm sitting with a +28 weapon and +22 armor. Grind is gonna be real though.

I just started Deep Dungeon, but it's fun so far. Weapon is up to +13, armor at +14. The drop rate is silly but ilvl235 so I get why they want it to take time. I also like being able to get an absurd amount of exp per clear on other classes, or extra tomes on my 60.

Yokai Watch event looks pretty awesome. I'm really just getting back into it though. I started losing interest when HW launched and I realized I probably should have done all those main quests, and I finally trudged my way through them.

Meanwhile. . .I'm not sure exactly why this Pokestop exists or what it's supposed to be. Since "Awesome" is practically Chumlee's catchphrase I feel like it's a Pawn Stars reference, but I'm sort of in the middle of Oregon and it's at a retail store, so...

Is it the iPad2 Wifi or iPad 2 Wifi + 3G? The wifi only model doesn't have actual GPS services whereas the 3G has wifi built into the 3G chip. The game uses GPS services specifically to accurately track where you are, whereas "location services" estimates via the network. I'm not sure if Pokemon Go even supports location services, as the tracking isn't accurate enough for Pokestops and gyms and the like.

I went to challenge that gym today only to find that instead of the measly 130CP that was guarding it earlier, it's now populated by several 800+CP pokemon. RIP.

I've seen like 3 churches around here that are also Pokespots. There's also an Abby's Pizza nearby that serves as a Gym. Some of the GPS stuff seems a little wonky right now, though. I can be right next to or even inside Pokestops and be too far away.