Hale-Bopp

Took the survey. I didn't realize before the email I got that someone just 15 minutes away from me was writing something up about the site. Small world!

Great interview! Grant should totally come to Magfest. He can meet up with Tommy and talk VGL, jam some jams in the jamroom and have a real good time and just hang out. I understand he doesn't live too far away now.

Anyone know if a Banjo-Kazooie demo is coming out anytime soon? We just got a 360 recently and are looking forward to that game more than anything else at the moment.

Yeah, personally I don't understand taking away desirable functionality and replacing it with not-so-desirable functionality, unless there's a whole new DS demographic out there that I'm not aware of. I use the GBA slot for all kinds of games, so it's pretty ridiculous that they're doing this. I think they're only going to confuse average consumers, especially those who buy games that require the GBA slot. I'm also tired of seeing Nintendo jump on various bandwagons, almost reluctantly, then doing a half-assed job with things. I'm talking peripherals, online functionality, whatever.

Maybe you're experiencing the ensuing trickling affect of Bush's scare tactics. We're doomed!!

Anyone else catch the blaringly obvious parallel between the mohinder scenes where he's showing off his power/changing and the 1986 version of The Fly. Everything that was happening was an homage to that movie. Before the bathroom scene, I told my wife that I think he's going to turn into a monster and tear his skin off. Well, sure enough... Also, how about the guest appearances of some old time heroes like Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) and The Greatest American Hero (William Katt)? Very cool! I guess they did all those things for old-timers like myself.

Thanks, I had fun with it. Hopefully we'll see more VOCR rounds sooner rather than later.

Results are posted on the first page!

OK, songs have been posted in the first post of this thread and voting has commenced. Remember to read the rules before voting. Enjoy, and once again, good luck to the contestants!

Alright, rock stars! Time's up. No more submissions will be accepted. I'll be organizing all of the entries soon enough and will link to them in the first post of this thread. When that happens, voting will begin. I'll lay down some additional rules and highlight them, so please pay attention when you see those. Good luck to all the participants!

Went to the booth. Saw the show. Bought the CD. Drank to the CD. Passed out to the CD. Rinsed and repeated. Helluva weekend. Back to work.

OK, so I literally just walked in the door back from vacation and now I'm catching up on stuff online. I'm very happy to see a few entries in my inbox waiting for me. Hope to see even more soon. I'll check out what I have so far once I get settled back in, but just letting you guys know I'm back. Rock on. \m/

Alright guys, I leave for vacation tomorrow, so good luck with your entries and see you all when I get back! Remember: All entries are due by 9:00 pm EST on Tuesday, September 2nd.

With Bahamut's permission, I'm posting here to give the heads up that the 3rd round of the VOCR competition is well under way, just in case anyone missed it and would like to participate. We haven't had a vocal comp for some time, so I figured people might not be looking for it over at the competition board. If there's enough interest by new participants, then I might consider extended the deadline by a week or two. link: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17574

I think that would be fine. I guess I draw the line where a person's voice becomes almost completely unrecognizable as sounding 'human'. If anyone has any doubts as to whether they think their track is acceptable, feel free to send me a sample of your work and I'll let you know what I think. I don't want to stifle anyone's creativity by any means, but just try to keep the effects usage within reason.

Silly kids and your video game music. And what's up with putting vocals over this stuff? That ain't right. What is wrong with you people? Ignore my sig.

Great stuff! What a team you guys make. So complimentary in every way. What else is there to say, you guys rock.

Well, I'd PM The_Orichalcon about it, but he never replied to my previous PM from a few weeks ago, so I'm guessing he's not around for me to ask him about it. Though I don't think it would make sense to move the thread out of the competition board, it would be nice if perhaps there was a mirrored link. But then I wonder, if that gets done for this competition thread, is it fair to all the other competitions who don't have topics in the community board, or does it really matter if those are already established and aren't in need of the extra exposure? I don't know the answer to that, but just throwing that in there w/respect to the other competitions going on. But yeah, it would be nice to be able to do that. Not sure who I'd ask about it though. Hope everyone's doing well on their entries so far! Halfway point is coming up soon, but plenty of time left, even if nobody's started yet.

Your peak limit is something you should have a visual of in your recording software or whatever hardware is handling your microphone input. To do this step by step, you first wanna make sure your input gain is set to zero before you start. Then you wanna place yourself where you wanna be when it comes time to record your voice. Make sure the mic is where you want it to be in relation to yourself. This can be tricky, because if you move around at all while recording vocals, the levels can change dramatically, so try and keep yourself planted in one spot. Then start singing as loud as you plan on singing and while you're doing this, slowly raise your input gain until you see the level just barely hit the yellow and stop right there. That's your peak limit, generally speaking. If you're in the red, bring it back down to green and start over. Anything in the red will give you distortion/clipping. Just mess with it until you have a comfortable level that just barely touches the yellow. If possible, kinda keep an eye on it while you record to make sure you don't hit the red. I think that's about it. If I missed anything, hopefully others can chime in. Hope that helps. Let me know if I need to clarify anything. Also, check out this page for some more detailed, juicy info: http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_record_vocals.htm I guess it sometimes depends on a number of factors, including personal preference. I don't have a perfectly set way of doing things myself, since I'm still trying to figure out all this mixing business. I find though that I usually have to make the vocals louder than I think they're supposed to be, cuz I get a lot of comments from people saying they can't hear them in my tracks. It pays to get lots of feedback. The more ears the better.

omg, if this happens, please look for me. I wanna be there for that. whatever the case, I totally wanna do some kind of acoustic jam thing with you at some point. and of course, I'll be trolling the jamspace to rock out whenever those drums are available. Speaking of which, will the v-drums be coming back?

I'm guessing it doesn't make too much of a difference as long as either way you have your peak limit set before hitting the record button. You obviously don't want clipping/distorted vocals for your initial dry tracks. A hardware compressor will help you with that while you're recording in though.

Awesome. I'd say in the interest of fairness, no, because there might be those people entering who don't have the capabilities of creating their own instrumental tracks for one reason or another, plus I think it might take some people's focus off of the vocals when it comes time for judging. I don't want voting to be in any way swayed by that. I'm curious. Do you run all of these effects live as you record vocals? In a typical setup (and anyone with more experience can correct me if I'm wrong) you'd run your mic to an outboard compressor, then from the compressor to your recording medium, then once you have your vocal tracks recorded, then you mess with EQ and reverb in the mixing process to get them to settle into the mix how you want.I haven't had a working hardware compressor for some time, so I've been mixing all my previous songs with vocals just by riding the faders, which I really loathe doing. I'd love to hear from anyone who has a better solution to that issue.

I understand. I knew it'd be a bit more of a challenge, so I wasn't sure how everyone would react to it. Personally, I'm the type of person that prefers to create my own melodies whenever possible not only because it's more fun, but allows me to be more flexible, as the possibilities seem nearly infinite when given free reign...but I realize that's not everyone's cup of tea and can sometimes even have the opposite effect when one has too much freedom. Though in this case, since the progressions of the song are laid out for you, hopefully that will narrow down your train of thought as you try and come up with something to put on top of it. I thought about coming up with a melody to offer up to anyone participating who prefers to work that way, but then I thought that might not be such a good idea because a) it would be more fun to challenge you guys and give you something new to try out and getting something out of that and I don't want to create your ideas for you because you know what ideas work for you better than I do, plus then your creation would lean more towards judging my creative thought process rather than your own. Also, I think that I'd be prone to writing it for myself because that's how I think when I write (I know my own voice so well that it's easy to write for), which wouldn't make much sense for what I think might be obvious reasons. Anyways, I understand the challenge you're facing. Hopefully you'll look at it as something you want to conquer, so at the end of the month you can say to yourself "I did it!" and feel good about it. That's what I'd like to see anyways. Also, I know none of us here are made of money, but when you are able and willing to get a keyboard, I highly recommend getting one, especially if you think or know you're gonna be doing this sort of thing a lot. I think you'll find it indispensable in your creative workflow, regardless of how you normally go about things. I enjoy ranting about this stuff, so I hope nobody minds too much.

If I ever feel like I can't come up with a melody in my head or just by improvising with my voice, then I'll mess around on a keyboard and try and come up with something. Just play one note at a time and don't worry about harmonies just yet. Sometimes looping a verse or chorus over and over helps while I play along.Glad to see some responses, you guys!

I loved him on that show. He even brought some of that charm with him to Indy IV and it worked pretty well, I thought. Hope he has a speedy recovery.