RadicalDreamers

Just wanted to chime in to say that I have also worked as a professional copyist (though certainly not full-time -- that's fun!) to support my academic work, and would be happy to help. DM and/or e-mail me anytime.  Full disclosure: I'm a Finale person, haha.  I think that both programs are equally capable -- it's just a matter of which one you learned first.  
 
In any case, if you need help doing work with fancy formatting, I'm good at it -- down to getting the beautiful cross-staff strokes in Debussy manuscripts to render in formal printed notation, though I don't think most VGM work will require anything quite so complex.  Hit me up anytime!  And while I'm posting, anyone who can read through this thread and feel confident in responding should swing by the new History and Study of Game Music forum.  

That wasn't a project to create sheet music, it was a project to gather already available links to sheet music for OC ReMixes in one place. Definitely keep doing what you're planning to do for ReMixes.

Hello everyone!
 
My name is Nate, and my Dragon Warrior arrangement "To Endor" was posted the other day by the staff (thank you!) and, first off, I wanted to introduce myself.
 
But I also wanted to share with people something I've been working on occasionally in my free time, namely sheet music based on early video game soundtracks.
 
I'm actually a copyist by day, among other things, and I was interested in creating professionally notated sheet music based on the direct source of the music.
 
Although I started off doing it by ear, I decided I wanted to be as faithful as possible and notate the music as it was originally executed by the games. Now that I have NSFtoMIDI working on my Mac (using WineBottler) I can bring the exported MIDI tracks into Logic for clean up (the music is squeezed temporally when it's exported, and it also needs quantizing). Once I've done that, I can re-export them as new MIDI tracks and import those into Sibelius or Finale, where I can then proceed to clean up the notation, add some articulations, time signatures, and basic tempo markings, as well as formatting and neatening.
 
Below is a link to a few examples, including March of the Capricious Princess. Although I've added things like accents and slurs when appropriate, everything is as it was originally output by the system.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1snejmgq813sxvf/AAChy7jV8EmvxMyy7lDGamEMa?dl=0
 
Is this something that would interest people? The idea would be to produce sheet music for tracks that people requested, or even make whole music books for popular (or obscure!) games. I've seen sheet music around, but it is often filled with errors, guesswork, or is difficult to read.
 
Comments? Questions? Hate mail? Lemme know!

Hello everyone!
 
My name is Nate, and my Dragon Warrior arrangement "To Endor" was posted the other day by the staff (thank you!) and, first off, I wanted to introduce myself.
 
But I also wanted to share with people something I've been working on occasionally in my free time, namely sheet music based on early video game soundtracks.
 
I'm actually a copyist by day, among other things, and I was interested in creating professionally notated sheet music based on the direct source of the music.
 
Although I started off doing it by ear, I decided I wanted to be as faithful as possible and notate the music as it was originally executed by the games. Now that I have NSFtoMIDI working on my Mac (using WineBottler) I can bring the exported MIDI tracks into Logic for clean up (the music is squeezed temporally when it's exported, and it also needs quantizing). Once I've done that, I can re-export them as new MIDI tracks and import those into Sibelius or Finale, where I can then proceed to clean up the notation, add some articulations, time signatures, and basic tempo markings, as well as formatting and neatening.
 
Below is a link to a few examples, including March of the Capricious Princess. Although I've added things like accents and slurs when appropriate, everything is as it was originally output by the system.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1snejmgq813sxvf/AAChy7jV8EmvxMyy7lDGamEMa?dl=0
 
Is this something that would interest people? The idea would be to produce sheet music for tracks that people requested, or even make whole music books for popular (or obscure!) games. I've seen sheet music around, but it is often filled with errors, guesswork, or is difficult to read.
 
Comments? Questions? Hate mail? Lemme know!

EWQL Symphonic Orchestra is okay for entry level, and I still use some of the patches from an old Kontakt version (current versions run in PLAY now). They're lightweight, and inexpensive, but they are not dry recorded (they were recorded on a stage, and even the closeup mics that come with the platinum edition have some of that natural stage reverb), and most of them do not have dynamic crossfading, which is really what you want. Velocity layers are important, but you also need to be able to hear the change in timbre when, say, a horn has a crescendo from p to f, which you just won't get with most of the EWQL patches. (There are some dynamic crossfade patches available, but they are limited in scope). The EWQL Strings sound super fake, and all of the samples date back to the late 90s and don't reflect the best of current recording technology. But if you're going to get it, get Gold, not Silver, which is seriously lacking in the instrument department. At least with Gold, you will have a relatively complete orchestra set. (Platinum gives you more mic positions.)

Garritan Personal Orchestra (the version that comes with Finale) should not be used for sample mockups. Garritan sells other libraries which may be of some use to people, though I haven't been particularly impressed.
 
VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) was considered the king of samples for a long time, and they're definitely very good, but they are incredibly expensive. They've also been superceded recently in many ways.

Spitfire and ProjectSAM stuff sound really nice, but as mentioned they are pre-orchestrated sections, as well as effects. This may or may not be what you're looking for.

EastWest has other libraries besides EWQLSO, like the Hollywood Series, Hollywood Strings and Hollywood Brass, which I'm told by colleagues sound very good. But they are heavy on the system and only run in PLAY, EastWest's proprietary sampler, which has a reputation for being difficult.

Cinesamples would be an excellent choice, and all their libraries run in Kontakt, and they offer several packages for all sections of the orchestra, as well as combo packs. They're not cheap, but it may be worth it.

LA Scoring Strings is a strings library that has a good reputation. A bit more intimate in scope, but it has a high learning curve (I'm still not sure I fully understand it and I've been using it for awhile). A "lite" version is available.

Anything from 8dio, especially the Adagio Strings libraries. But again, not cheap.