zircon

Yep, to be clear this is supposed to be an instrumental only. I'm writing for a company that is specifically asking for "hip hop instrumentals" for media licensing (TV, film, games, etc.) Unfortunately I can't take the harp out because that first phrase you hear right at the beginning is just one big sample. The whole track is pretty much built around that sample so I can't change it, but I appreciate the advice on that anyway.

Again thanks for the tips guys! I updated the track with more.. stuff. http://www.zirconstudios.com/music/wips/HH%20Track%201.mp3 Also, it's pretty cool that myf is doing so well. Funny to think that last time I saw him (in person) he was "Mythril Nazgul", a guy who was accused on OCR of sounding "too white"

Here's what I came up with after a few hours of work. Good start? http://www.zirconstudios.com/music/wips/HH%20Track%201.mp3 Gonna do a variety of styles, but this one is more along the lines of that J Dilla stuff. Only thing I'm sort of confused on is the bassline.. not sure how to pull that off.

Wow, thanks for the detailed advice! Vagrance, VERY helpful links. Looks like the key elements are (1) lots of gritty, grainy MPC/vinyl/movie sampling and (2) phat kicks and snares that aren't necessarily drum machines.

I'm going to be doing a CD of hip hop instrumentals. Most likely NOT gangsta rap style stuff, but to be honest I don't listen to enough hip hop to really know what's current (I tend to find songs way later than everyone else.) Can people here name and preferably link to some examples of modern artists in this style? Specific songs/videos would be especially helpful. To be fair, I already know the REALLY mainstream ones, so maybe people a little less popular than Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Eminem. Underground hip hop is fine too.

What do you mean by Regen rings? Fort bracers..? That's 3 item slots being taken up when you could just have one. It adds significant HP and EHP - that's my argument for By the way, here is why Rampage is awesome. People that play him by charging first are not necessarily playing him right. You should start with a normal walkup (E.Marchers) which is plenty fast, then, at close range, Ult (~1.5s stun), attack once or twice (might proc a stun), Charge (~2.5s stun) and then more attacks. That's quite a bit of stunning.

2k gold for 300 HP, 20 extra points of reduction and +6 health seems reasonable. By my estimation if you're in "mid-lategame" you definitely have HotBL AND Boots AND portkey AND probably hood too. The 2k gold is not going to get you Behe heart which costs over 5k. 3k is a massive farming gap to cover. Even if we disagree on this item though, we can ALL agree that people who buy 2-3 HotBLs are dumb

I still don't agree. You don't need Hood (Headdress) against every team, but Lifetube and certainly HotBL allow you to easily jungle indefinitely with no items. Your natural regen... doesn't. That being said, I'm curious now to try the buildup to Hood to see how that works for jungling (in theory you get nice regen from that too.)

Extra fort bracer = 120 HP. HotBL = 300 HP and +40 EHP per time you're attacked. Also, I didn't mean regening 1k HP IN a teamfight, I meant BETWEEN teamfights - ie. if you're roaming.

Then obviously you didn't visit VGmix, since the whole site revolved around a 'chart' system that sorted mixes from 'best' to 'worst'. If we were to improve our WIP/completed system here we could easily have the ability to sort by game, just like with normal OCReMixes.

I'm sure a system could be devised here where completed songs could get some good attention (we could perhaps integrate our existing tagging system, for example.) There are plenty of possibilities. VGmix was certainly not stranger to the problem of songs getting lost, though. Unless you were a top-rated track (the vast majority of which either were OC ReMixes or would have been had they been submitted here) you were lost in a sea of other average or below-average mixes.

I really don't tire of Chrono Trigger hip-hop mashups. Awesome job!

We were fighting a team with four heroes that focused on physical damage. When you know you're going to be the focus of a lot of physical damage, HotBL is a solid option. If you're attacked 10 times (not unusual in a short time period) you will block ~280 damage. Add that to the 300 HP and that's a significant increase of your "effective" HP vs. physical characters. It also gives you nice regeneration - +6HP/sec is +360 HP per min, which means in between teamfights you'll regenerate, from HotBL alone, possibly 1k+ HP. If we were fighting against a nuker team, I would have gone Headdress. If they had a ton of disables, I would have gone Shrunken. Both give similar increases to survivability and are, IMO, the three top protective items. True, though against some teams it doesn't do much (ie. AOE teams, physical teams.)

http://replays.heroesofnewerth.com/match_replay.php?mid=11964246 25/6 as Corrupted. Possibly the most farmed I've ever been; I hit 25 before anyone and ended up with Geometer's Bane, E. Marchers, Symbol of Rage, Shieldbreaker, Helm of the Black Legion and Dancing Blades. I could practically solo their entire team as I began to get farmed. CD is a really powerful hero. His only weakness is lack of stuns but he's so fast and good at chasing it almost doesn't matter.

Sindra, it's not just virt who is working on the new VGMix. He may be one of the conceptual designers, but he has a whole team of volunteer coders. However, all of them are busy as well. It's a massive project - you make it sound like it's just virt, but that has never been the case.

Rampage is hilarious. He's actually a pretty great hero, IMO - even without the charge. What makes him great is that he basically gets a massive steroid skill for almost nothing. Even without maxing it, the aura/damage skill will give you a solid +60 damage by level 6. No hero I've played comes close to Rampage's damage output at his level. The only possible competition is Soulstealer, but Rampage is far more durable, can obtain more than +60 damage easily, has a built-in stun, better chase, etc. If you compare him to Pestilence, maybe he is a notch worse, but not by much. Rampage has a comparable proc that he can max much earlier, better average movespeed, much higher average damage, and a comparable chase that doesn't make him take more damage. His Ult is nothing special but is still solid. While Pesti is (relatively) fragile and requires farm to carry, Rampage is a sick ganker and heavy damage-dealer the entire game. Also, while I was playing Rampage earlier Bardic did the most epic thing ever. A teamfight had started mid and I began charging from behind our tower toward an enemy Thunderbringer. As I entered the fray, Bardic (as Pebbles) THREW ME into Thunderbringer. The sight of Shredder on a giant charging rhino being thrown by a stone giant into a 10-man teamfight is just the definition of awesome. Once I landed, I proceed to ram into Thunderbringer and tear apart basically all their INT in short order. To top it all off, 10 seconds later I was killing Wildsoul and Pebbles threw Booboo into him. I'm laughing even just remembering this.

Best thing ever. Happy birthday Vinnie! Or should I say... Ray Romano?

Yeah, it's like a big fat bullseye.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15videogames-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 Relevant?

Actually, I didn't think the production here was all that bad. The major problem is lack of reverb on the orchestral instruments and especially the piano, but most of the time the actual sample quality was passable, and I liked the tone of the synths and drums. Definitely focus on adding some tasteful reverb and even delay, though. Sections like 1:33 and 2:33 have a lot of energy but are overcompressed. It sounds like you have a lot of low-end on most of your sounds. Use an EQ to cut the low (~100-150hz) frequencies out of everything but the actual bass/kick sounds. This will help clean things up. The lead violin sounds were also pretty quiet, especially after the heavy distorted guitar instrument comes in toward the end. However, I really liked sections such as 3:31. The mix there was great! The arrangement is VERY well-done. You have a creative interpretation that takes the sources in an interesting direction, and the flow of the remix is great. You don't have to change anything there, IMO. This one isn't far from our bar. Just keep working on your production (namely EQ, compression and reverb.) NO, resubmit

Jimmy JUST posted that Was this staged? Either way, hilarious.

Unbelievable. Best chocobo theme yet.

Presonus interfaces work in XP64.

Uh... it's incredible science-fiction, yeah. I don't get it. Why post about what is obviously a hoax? Edit: Oh, it's some kind of DJ mix. Heh, OK, that's cool.

Wow, this is very, very cool - puts my dnb album to shame