zircon

Well, to make money in the music industry you have to be able to accept that your music IS a product, like a tube of toothpaste, a box of mac & cheese, or a candy bar. Occasionally, a service. However, I do not think this diminishes the art. Does selling a CD for $10, or licensing a song for $200 somehow change the notes on the page? The tone of your bass drum? The soulful performance of the singer? The answer is NO. I do feel that art can be devalued by public perception, or by the behavior of the artist. The truth is, the perception that most free music is crappy is based in reality; most free music really is crappy! Not having confidence in your music and saying "hey, this rocks!" is also detrimental. If you don't think your art has any worth, why should anyone else?

Why is selling a product/service "selling your soul"?

Sorry, by "all MIDI" I mean no live instruments, not .MID format. Very few places will take actual MIDIs and even if they do they will pay much less since they have to do more work. Google "music production libraries", get together a cohesive package of ~10 songs, make sure you have the project files, and cold call 'em saying you have a CD you want to pitch.

Yes. Publishing is an active income stream and one of the few that haven't suffered much. However, actually landing a gig as a career songwriter is nearly impossible. The competition is incredibly stiff. The best songwriters are also highly prolific. Most times, when people get publishing deals, they're single-song only. Your chances are very low of getting an ESA (exclusive songwriter agreement) where you become an in-house writer for a publisher. Jingles can generate massive income. You don't need to be with a publisher to do this, nor do you necessarily need to go with a library. Music written specifically for major TV ads (no royalties involved - this is work for hire) can easily net tens of thousands of dollars. *Easily*. Even minor commercials are quite lucrative. But again, the problem is that there are established 'jingle houses' that crank out tons of music all the time. Breaking in is difficult. Music libraries are perhaps the best and most solid source of income today. Their function is to collect lots of music and sell it (license it) to clients that need it, from ad agencies, to corporations that need music for sales videos, hobbyist filmmakers, video game producers, major film directors, and everyone in between. I've been doing this for about a year and there is potential for a lot of money without needing tons of connections. It seems like there are a dozen new libraries every day, too. Just for some numbers, it's realistic that as an entry-level writer doing all MIDI stuff, you can earn $300-500 per song you write up front, plus backend royalties if the music is used on TV. Now keep in mind each song is only gonna be a few minutes, and is primarily BGM-oriented. 60 second tracks can earn $150 - very high-quality tracks w/ all appropriate edits and a unique sound can earn $1000. Do you think you can put out 40-50 songs a year of this nature? Then you might be on the way to a career right there.

I'm proud to announce that pixietricks (Jill Goldin) is being featured on the front page of MysticRadio, a popular streaming radio station that plays new age, world, chillout, and ambient music. Jill's music has been added into their rotation with selections from her upcoming solo album. This is certainly an honor given MysticRadio's high-profile lineup of artists like Enya, Loreena McKennit, David Arkenstone, and Enigma. You can check out her feature and listen to the RadioMystic stream here: http://radiomystic.com/index.asp And don't forget to check out her website at www.jilliangoldin.com. Congratulations, Jill!

Believe it or not it IS still possible to make a steady income in music, w/o teaching. But it requires a lot of hard work, creative thinking, dedication, and motivation. You have to be willing to diversify. At the end of this year, I believe I will have met my income goal of hitting 5 figures on NOTHING but music-related activities. If (or more optimistically *when*) this happens I will write an essay about it and hopefully use it as a counterpoint to articles like this one, to show how you can still 'make it' non-traditionally.

Oh shit. This is hotness. I think the main beat could be a lot heavier though. The intro is slammin' - but you could definitely pump the hell out of the primary drum + bass groove. Keep it up!

What I take away from this is that you need to really need to hustle to make any money, and DON'T limit yourself to the standard paradigm. Without giving specific figures, I can say that I've made almost 1/3 of my take-home cash income this year from SYNTH PRESETS, of all things. I probably spent a total of 20-30 hours on two banks of 64 presets for the Zebra 2 software synth. I paid $160 for the software and use the presets regularly in my own music. I've made my investment back quite a few times over. At the same time, my total profit from Antigravity is hovering around $0 - since it costs money to manufacture the CDs. THAT project took hundreds, maybe thousands of hours. Yet when all is said and done, this year, my gross income from it is only slightly more than the synth presets. Go figure.

Maybe the most depressing article about the state of the industry I've read as of late. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=8081 Edit: For anyone with a short attention span, it's an article centered around a band named "Hotspur" that has a massive internet presence, tours around (even got on the Warped tour), recorded in a pro studio, and generally works their asses off to promote and hustle, yet end up making nothing, or close to it. And NOT because they're getting screwed by a label. They're indie and they still can't make it, despite lots of fans and generally positive reactions to their music.

Gotta agree, this one is a no-brainer. High energy arrangement, great solos, pro sequencing, excellent guitar performance/recording. The production touchups to the mixing/mastering after Larry's recommendation really helped. I particularly like how the dynamic level of the mix isn't at MAX the entire time; there are enough rhythmic and textural changes to keep the listener's ears from being melted off by the wall of sound. YES

Phantasy Star 2/4.

I meant to append a emoticon to the end of that, I'm not trying to be combative here Trust me, the project has received EXTREMELY negative feedback from some people and even that doesn't phase me. The way you worded the first part of your post seemed to imply that we manipulated or influenced the review, and so I wanted to make absolutely clear that was NOT the case. That's all.

This may be the first "all-out" release OCR has done, but WE didn't write that review. The reviewer on M4G was an independent, unaffiliated 3rd party with nothing to gain by lavishing such praise on VotL. In fact, he risked credibility as a writer by being that positive. That quote, as part of his review, is an honest opinion. What are we gonna do, tell a reviewer from a respected VGM site that we're not using his review because it's too positive? Edit what he said?

I will be there, can't bring anything though.

The irony of your criticsm, Ytmh, is that the overwhelming majority of negative criticism we have received from *other* people is that we "butchered" the originals and strayed too far from the original melodies. I'm serious - you might be the only person I've seen on any forum to say we've been too conservative. Either way, I think it's impossible to generalize. "Valse Aeris" is completely different in arrangement approach and ratio of original material to source material than "End of the Beginning". As for the press quotes and 'hype', well, unfortunately in today's world things don't "speak for themselves". That isn't how it works. With programs like Garageband and Reason, and the wide-availability of cheap (but high quality) audio hardware, anyone can release music. Literally anyone can get a homemade CD on iTunes, Napster, and Rhapsody without a label. There are hundreds of aggregator sites releasing tens of thousands of songs daily. The amount of albums released in 2005 shot up by over 150% compared to 2004, and I'm sure by the end of 2007 there will be another few hundred % on top of that. All this translates to the fact that promotion - eg. publicity - is essential for any musical project to get noticed. You simply can't release something and expect people to flock to it just because you put it on the internet; even IF the nature of it (Final Fantasy 7) lends the release to greater public interest. Take it from me - I'm a Music Industry major and I spend the majority of my time reading books and magazine/newspaper articles on the subject, even outside of class. There is of course a difference between "hype" and "positive attention" as well. We asked Michael Gluck to listen to the project and, if he liked it, contribute a statement we might use on the VotL site as a positive quote (this is very common in music, or any kind of media, really.) It was his word choice, not ours. Likewise, all of the people reviewing the project are doing so of their own free will. The people on the project staff, such as myself and djpretzel, have been careful to limit our 'official' word choice and not make bold statements. If you scan through the VotL site and the first post of the announcements thread, we haven't really done any hyping.

Honestly this sounds fine to me. The only thing you might want to try is more compression on the vocal channel to level things out throughout the mix, they get noticeably louder in the chorus which probably contributes to your feeling of it being "disjointed" or floating.

I'm fairly sure Dhsu and Shnabubula don't have any scores available. Bladiator did say he had sheet music and would be uploading it in the near future.

The new PRV/smart MIDI and step sequencer supposedly make this very close to FLStudio in terms of workflow - or at least, you can customize it that way. This excites me, in the pants.

Thanks Joe I'm glad you like it!

The only two tracks with lyrics were posted.

"Breath and Dive" was written and produced by Jill - all I did was some mixing/mastering and a few string stabs. Same goes for "Hajime" (I didn't do the strings for that though.) "Winds of Change" used an instrumental I wrote/produced that was only about 2:00 long - Jill loved it and helped me to arrange an extended version with new parts, and then she wrote the melody, harmonies, and lyrics. Though Jill didn't preview the intro, the way it flows with "Breathe and Dive" is really cool; once you hear 'em side by side in full, I'm sure you will agree. The climax of "Winds of Change" is also REALLY amazing, I've never heard her sing in such a powerful and soulful style. Maybe I'm biased, but I give it two thumbs up!!

The ringtone is now available! Note: Your phone must be compatible with real/true tones and have internet capability. Step 1. Download this file to your computer (owa.mp3) Step 2. Go to www.myxertones.com and select the owa.mp3 file to upload, then type in your phone number. Step 3. You will receive an SMS message to your phone with the download link. Use your phone's internet to download the ringtone, and then set the file as your ringtone. -- Alternatively, you can just download the MP3 and use Bluetooth/USB to upload to your phone and set it that way.

I agree with Jimmy that the mixing needs to be tweaked. Bring the levels down considerably and try to re-balance them before bringing them back up to just under 0db, and then applying compression/limiting. The guitar playing could be tighter all around as it is off rhythm in some parts. Overall, the sound is a little on the muddy side. Drums could definitely use a boost in terms of rhythmic interest as Jimmy pointed out. The strings could also be improved. The chord voicings are too low; I would try to re-write them so they're higher, and less repetitive. More pizzicato + marcato rhythms instead of constant straight sustained pads would certainly help. I like the ideas presented in this mix. There's a good level of energy, and the concepts are solid. Tightening the execution would be the key to bringing this up to our standards. NO

Thanks for the comments!! I realize this is a little more metal than dnb but I had to use the guitars + vox from the original track, and I didn't want to deviate too much from how it was arranged. I'm still waiting on the band to comment on it; they're pretty popular

At this time, we'd prefer if no one went out of their way to contact Nobuo or Square about this project. Official dialogue should be left to either myself or djpretzel.