JohnStacy

You could also do music yourself, or work with a musician, to turn your poetry into songs. You could use the poems as lyrics, and edit them to make them fit to a melody of an existing game tune, or you could write original music with the poems as lyrics. As somebody who has tried his whole life to write good poetry/lyrics, and failed miserably, I would jump at the opportunity to turn somebody's poetry into a song.

*sir* JohnStacy because I'm a knight now. Checking in.

It was called "Slightly Overcooked Freezer Pizza." I will use this comment to explain that album and why only one track of it exists. The album was intended to have a release on loudr. This was before I was active at OCR, and decided to submit the most complete track. I did all arrangements, and the performers listed above were going to record everything. In the second half I also did some recording on euphonium. This is the only track from that album and recording cycle that will see the light of day. It was split into 2 acts, divided down the middle to leave a logical place for an intermission. That was for the concert that would happen, more on that shortly. The album wouldn't have passed OCR for multiple reasons. For one, the arrangements were overall very conservative. Some could argue that they were midi rips. A few of them, like this one were more sophisticated arrangements, which is why I chose this one to submit. The first track of each act was not video game music. The first one was an arrangement of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, and the second one was the theme from the Pokemon anime. Production value was shaky in a few spots. I was learning how to record instruments and how to mix them at the same time and learning by experimentation. There are some things I can't fix purely because I can't record again. Some of the tracks are also too long. The finale was 14 minutes long, and it included 4 tunes, as a medley. The album was a failure for several reasons. For one, I had very limited resources to work with. I had to work around people's schedules and eventually I wasn't able to get the same people back to record. Sessions were divided by acts. One day I would record 2nd saxophone player on Act 1, doing 3 saxes, and then come back another session to get Act 2 recorded. Act 1 was finished recording, and was in the mastering stage. This remix comes from that, and is the most complete sounding. I will post a link to a soundcloud playlist that contains the recording of the concert performed at West Texas A&M University. The arrangements are somewhat different in the live version, mainly with an absence of doubling instruments. Saxophones play only saxophone, whereas in the album they doubled on flute, clarinet, and bass clarinet extensively. Trombones no longer double on euphonium, and the horns no longer double on mellophonium. The concert was a success, with a large audience, and was very well received by those who went to it. The album will remain unfinished. I'm keeping the arrangements and will revisit them at a point in the future when I have better opportunities to record and make a much more presentable project. Here is the link to the concert

At first, I read that as Greek composer from Brazil and was very confused. I'm listening to the examples posted on your site right now. The electronic and rock/pop examples really shine. You definitely have a talent in those areas and can pull them off really well. You actually remind me a bit of my mentor from a long time ago, who was an EDM artist. So yeah, be very confident in your skill in those areas. The orchestral examples were still good in composition, but the sample quality wasn't as good as it could be, notably the brass, which sound like the standard library from Logic. Overall you have style down pretty well. When you posted an example of a spy game, it sounded like what I would expect from a spy game. When you posted an example from a fight game, it sounded like what I would expect. A little different, but still good in style. The only thing is the sample quality in the orchestral examples. That's not really a deficiency on your part, since the composition is good.

I'll do it.

The last week or so I've been working with recording. I've been experimenting with what needs to be done to make a good recording, regardless of performance quality. Assuming the performance quality is decent, what can be done on the recording side, with microphones, post production, and other effects to make a finished product with good production values? What I have below is a recording I put together of the Super Smash Bros Melee Opening sequence. Details about this recording: This was recorded in a medium sized room with no reverb. The room is very dry and dead. All reverb was added in editing. I used two microphones, an MXL 990/991 combo. Both of these are condensers with one being a pencil. Click here to see the microphones. The microphones were arranged with the pencil being about 2 feet from the bell, a little off center, to record direct sound. The other one was facing me from the other side of the room. In the youtube video below I have the final mix as presented for the world to see. I did virtually no editing on the actual recorded tracks, only on the mix. For each track, I balanced it so that the indirect signal dominated by 75%, with the other 25% coming from the direct signal. The tracks were converted to mono after balancing and then panned to create the illusion of staging. Parts 1 and 5 were panned +30, 2 and 6 were panned +10, 3 and 7 were panned -10, and 4 and 8 were panned -30. On the mix, I used an EQ to reduce the midtones, a compressor to help with volume normalizing (I also used this to up the gain to a more normal level). I used a reverb plugin, and also a directional mixer to widen the stereo by 150%. Below I have several versions. The version with no editing retains the balance of 75/25 mentioned above. The youtube video is the final mix. This is a recording with no editing. This is a recording with just the direct signal. This is a recording with just the indrect signal. What can I do to increase my production value? If I were recording for your project, what would you like to hear in my recordings? Do you have suggestions for things I should do differently? Thank you for your time.

It only happens on Ocarina of Time. I just started a playthough of Majora's Mask, and it works just fine. All of the music is normal there, including some of the shared tracks. After finishing Ocarina this time around, there were quite a few tracks affected, the most notable being the short one that plays when you interact with the master sword in the temple of time. I can attempt to post videos showing it later. I can't really think of anything I've done that could have muted things, I haven't used the cart for anything other than normal gameplay (except for a short period where I did a little bit of crooked cart a long time ago.) I have interacted with SPC music to mute tracks and play with it and whatnot, but nothing with n64 music. Other games I've tried that work fine are Paper Mario, Megaman 64, Yoshi Story and Pokemon Snap, which all work fine.

Backwards, the fakebook is the illegal one, the realbook is the legal one. The realbook was actually illegal up to its 5th edition, and most fakebooks were illegal because they didn't get a license. Now there are legal versions of both, the Realbook being specific to Hal Leonard Publishing, and fakebooks being the term by literally anybody else who chooses to use one.

The whole thing about the video game realbook is that it's a collection of lead sheets, not piano sheet music or some other thing like that. Just melody and chords. Great for a jam situation. Which, I do happen to be working on, and am happy that there is this conveniently located thread of suggestions to include that I need to get working on.

I'm not really much of a gamer anymore, as I don't really keep up with playing new games, and haven't for quite a few years. I watch people play them and am always on the lookout for new game music, but I just don't play that much anymore. Occasionally, however, I play through older games I have and still get enjoyment out of them. I love the older games, and nostalgia plays a key role in that enjoyment. I even have a portable SNES to play on the bus when on tour. My n64 is from around 1999 or 2000, and the copy of Ocarina of Time is from around that time too. I know they're getting old and worn down, partially because I have lived in West Texas my whole life and if you've ever lived there you know that you accumulate an inch of dust or dirt a week even if you actively clean the place because of all the cotton fields and otherwise open expanses of dirt everywhere in this part of the state. I have to get the cart positioned just right in the slot to get the game to run, and the game will randomly crash during normal gameplay. Recently, I've cleaned everything extensively, and it runs better than it has in years. The reason for this post is a strange happening that has started. The music doesn't sound right. It's not distorted or jumbled, so it isn't the standard issues I'm used to hearing about. What happens is some instruments are muted. What instruments are muted is random, but it's consistent for each track. For example, one of the string ensemble tracks in Hyrule Field is muted every time. As a result, there is no melody in a few sections of that track, and in one section, there's just horns holding whole notes with no melody over it. Hyrule field consistently plays back like this now. In the fire temple, the background music is silent a lot of the time. I am playing a 1.2 cart, so it doesn't have the Arabic chanting that was present in earlier versions, rather the generic choir ahhs. However, the percussion is mostly absent. There are quite a few tracks that have been affected, but I haven't finished this playthrough so I don't know what all has been affected yet. I'm not really worried about the gameplay, or even if the game will stop working for good soon, I just find it weird that this thing happens. Maybe there's a bit of ROM corruption or a damaged pin, but beyond that, I'm at a loss as to what actually technically is going wrong here.

Recently I was gifted a new set of microphones, which means that I finally own my own set and don't have to borrow a set anymore. Even better, it's the same models as the ones I was borrowing! Tonight, I recorded two french horn quartets as an experiment. The purpose was to experiment with microphone configurations and balance to create different sounds. I created a survey to gather opinions on the recordings, to help determine what directions I can take when recording for projects. The details of the experiment are given in the survey description so I won't write them here. The main concept was balancing between direct and indirect sound. With a trumpet or a trombone, you can get away with recording direct sound, and the result is characteristic sounding to those instruments. However, with the horn, the characteristic sound is mostly indirect reflected sound. Most of the time, when you hear the horn on recording, there is a blend of direct and indirect sound to replicate the sound of the horn that would be heard in a concert hall. The rest of the time, the sound is mostly direct with a little indirect mixed in (listen to this to get an idea of direct sound, this to get an idea of indirect sound). For this experiment, the environment was a medium sized dead room, with virtually no reverb. The performances are not perfect, album quality performances, so minimal compression or EQ was added, only being used to boost the overall volume of the recording to a more normal level. Music was chosen by being the first pieces I grabbed from my library. I would like to thank you for reading this post, and also for taking the survey. Your feedback is highly appreciated! Click here to take survey!

Following this thread. This is more or less a list of "If there was a VG Realbook, it would need these tracks in it." And since I'm making one of those, this could be useful for that. Butter Building (Kirby Series) Lost Woods (Ocarina of Time) Overworld (Every Super Mario Bros.) Ending (Super Mario Bros 3) Chocobo Theme (Final Fantasy) Slider (Super Mario 64) Tetris A and B Themes The Moon (Ducktales) Fourside (Earthbound) And I'll stop there for right now.

Not this time around. I was just reading and a little confused about terminology.

Oh. Alright then.

I'm unfamiliar with your last project, I looked at that project thread and am not sure what you mean by this, No ReMixes, just covers? What do you define as a cover?

I'm not a multi instrumentalist anymore. I used to play actively Horn, Trumpet, Trombone, Bass Trombone, Clarinet, Saxophone, Flute, some piano, Bass, and guitar, although I have performed on virtually every wind instrument at some point or another. My process went something like this: Started horn in 6th grade band, was very bored with it because horn players don't play real music until high school. Since I was bored, I got a trumpet and started learning that. Stuck with both trumpet and horn for a few years, then I learned trombones. I kind of took a shortcut, doing the British thing and learning treble clef Bb trombone. Trumpet and trombone use mostly the same positions/valves, so the learning curve was nonexistent. Just had to learn where the slide positions were. Later that turned to treble clef euphonium and tuba, which all use the same fingerings as trumpet. This whole time, I also cheated and used the same embouchure for all the brass instruments. I didn't sound like a professional, but I was in high school and sounded good enough on horn which was my primary instrument. Total time spent learning all the brass instruments? Not very long. I never actually practiced euphonium or tuba, I could just pick them up and play them because of how similar they are to the other brasses. While this was happening, I got a guitar and a keyboard for different Christmases. This meant I had two guitars now and an electric keyboard. One of the guitars I already had, it was a family instrument. So I used the new guitar to actually learn the instrument, and the old guitar I tuned down an octave and played it like a bass. I learned both at the same time. The piano I learned to read chord changes, but not actual piano sheet music. For what I was doing that was perfectly fine, since I played in a Christian praise team that only read chord changes. That was the extent of those instruments, and I haven't really ever gone back. I can read guitar and bass music, but never have any times where I actually need to play them anymore, since nobody asks me (there are real guitar and bass players out there). Piano I occasionally play in jazz combos and at churches, so it's a viable source of playing experience and income. The woodwinds I learned over the course of years. I learned saxophone and flute at the same time because of a long story I won't get into here where I couldn't play brass instruments for 6 months. I borrowed a flute and alto sax and learned those somewhat proficiently, and the rest of the woodwinds were easy enough to learn because the fingerings are similar. Except oboe and bassoon. Those instruments make sense in a very different way. I haven't played the woodwinds in a performance in years. Again, there are real players of those instruments everywhere. I did play them a lot while teaching, and that was to model a good sound and technique for the kids. But if I had to pick up a flute or clarinet for a performance, I am reasonably certain I can still do it, because I've kept fresh on fingerings while composing and teaching and the sound will come back with a little bit of practice. The whole time I was in college, the horn professor begged me to stop playing the other instruments. I was playing both trombones in the jazz bands, as well as trumpet for gigs, bassoon and clarinet in the reading band, and horn everywhere else. Then one lesson at the start of a semester I played really badly on horn (I had just gotten done playing trumpet in the jazz band, and ran down the hall to my horn lesson). The lesson was over at that point, and in a very nice way I was told, either you can keep playing all the instruments and sucking at your primary, or you can focus your work and actually be a good horn player. I was threatened to be kicked out of the studio because I was actually getting worse at horn. I had my own horn, which was bout $10000, and I didn't want to waste all that since I couldn't afford to do anything else, so I stopped doing everything else after that semester. Tl;Dr You can be a multi instrumentalist and be good at it. Part of it is being efficient and practicing solid fundamentals that carry over to other instruments. You aren't going to have the same problems for all instruments. If you practice bass, your drumming isn't going to get worse for any other reason than you're not practicing your drumming. With brass instruments, like in my case, trumpet playing messes with horn playing because of not practicing horn and because of the difference in embouchure. You are right though, now is the best time for you to learn these things, since you have time and don't have to worry about money. But you also have to pace yourself. You're trying to do too much. You can't learn all the instruments to the level you want to learn them to at the same time. You will exhaust yourself. If you learn a few of them well, with solid fundamentals, then gradually add more to your arsenal, you'll have a much more pleasant experience.

It may be late to get in on this, but could I be listed as a performer for french horn? I would like to start recording for as many different people as possible.

Here is the link This was written as a gift to my wife. It is one of quite a few solo piano works I have written, and I'm really getting a hang of writing for the instrument despite the fact that I can't play it.

Here's the Updated Version

Thank you for your thoughts. I'll do some editing tomorrow (it's late now and I need to get up early), and will try to fix everything. Since everything was recorded separately, it shouldn't be too difficult to fix panning and mix things.

7/4 screws with my head. This is a really nice mix. It grooves really hard, and the sections where the groove drops out are really well placed. I like your choice of sounds that you use for leads. At 3:21, the dropping out of things is especially nice.

I changed the panning, everything now fits in a much narrower radius, and the Saxes aren't far right anymore. As for the thing at 1:22, I don't hear a difference or notice anything. Nothing in the DAW is peaking or anything at that point, so I'm not sure what it is.

I've since done mixing work and have improved the overall mix, creating a much more finished work. https://soundcloud.com/john-stacy-6/ice-climber-3

Hello. I have recently gotten into arranging video game music seriously. Before it was never anything significant, but now I'm putting my chops as a jazz arranger to work! Here I have a track from an album I'm working on of big band video game music. The album is a work in progress, but this is one of the more complete tracks. It is the theme from the Ice Climbers for the NES. Which can be found here The ensemble is the JohnStacy Orchestra, a big band dedicated to video game, anime, and similar styles of music. For recording, it is a multitracked ensemble with 2 sax players playing 5 parts, 1 french horn player (me) playing 4 trumpet and 2 horn parts, 1 trombone player playing 4 parts, a tubist, a drummer, and a pianist. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8065011/Ice%20climbers%20copy.mp3 The track features Misael Tambuwum on Piano and Jacob Rives on Trombone. This is mostly complete, although I will gladly take advice from the community on how to improve it. Thank you for your time.