tgfoo

I love Iria. Iria and Vampire Hunter D on SciFi's saturday morning anime (remember that from way back in the mid/late 90's anyone?) are what got me hooked on anime in the first place.

Yes, I also rather enjoy the slice of life genre. Also, if you liked Haibane Renmei check out NieA_7. It's by the same people and is, well, awesome. Yes, Zetsubo Sensei is great too. Have the 1st episode of the second season downloaded, probably watch it tomorrow or sunday. Seto no Hanayome was good, but about half way it felt like they were doing pretty much the same stuff in a slightly different manner, but the show definitely finished strong. I haven't seen any of the other shows, but I have the first episode of They Are My Noble Masters in my queue of things to watch. And this is why I don't like recommending shows... I always forget to mention certain shows, usually because it's been a while since I've watched them. Though my favorite random comedy of all time is still School Rumble. (Pure awesome) And 100% agreed on Macross Frontier.

I saw mention of Code Geass and Gurren lagann. Those and Seirei no Moribito where my favorite shows from this past year. The only show from the winter season that I'm looking forward to is the second Minami-ke series. If you like pure, random (plotless) humor, go download the first series (the second one is being done by a different studio, but with the same voice actors). What I'm really looking forward to is this upcoming spring season which has the second half of Code Geass and Macross Frontier. Macrass Frontier looks like it's going to be awesome from the one teaser episode they've released thus far.

I've heard of situations like this many times from other composers. Unfortunately, music/sound design is usually one of the last things to be added to a film. With sound design, unlike music, you can often make a quite a bit of the sounds without actually seeing the film, and then stick them in at the end. With music, it's a lot harder to do without a locked version of the film. Sadly, this happens often where production runs over budget and behind schedule and directors/producers expect composers to work with very little time (and very little money). Really, all you can do is either refuse to do it with that scedule or just suck it up and try it. At least with the 1st cut you could get a feel for the movie (unless it changes drastically in the 3rd cut) and write some basic themes. Keep it simple, because you won't have time to do anything too complex and involved. Also, it sounds like you're dealing with a very inexperienced/poor director.

I've never seen a FW 800 interface in that price range. Just go for a FW 400 interface.

BT released those so people could remix some of his songs, I believe it was part of a competition.

Hey, I kinda like that song. And I can hear the similarities... but only cause I was looking for them. But definitely not the same. But if you wanted to go on about songs that have similar chord progressions/runs in them, I can think of loads of them...

Just took it, short and simple.

I think tgfoo was referring to Zetsubo Sensei which went up to episode 6 then all the subbing for it stopped. Gurren Lagann had the BSS subs which was just amazing and three other big subtitle groups on it, so nothing to complain there. Yes, I was talking about Zetsubo Sensei, sorry for the confusion.

Yeah, it's a great show. I've been a little sad because I haven't seen any new eps subbed recently. A shame, it's really funny.

I really liked this show. Not my favorite show from the summer (I personally liked Darker than BLACK and Seirei no Moribito more), but it was fun to watch and did provide the most "that's fucking awesome!!" moments of any of the shows I watched.

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11849 However, it didn't seem to cause much of a buzz when I posted about it.

First, just to correct you, Stormdrum comes with an Intakt player and a Kompakt player, not a Kontakt player. Now, Intakt plays audio loops, and Kompakt plays the single hit samples. Kontakt (there full sampler) can open both the Kompakt and the Intakt patches. This is especially useful because both Intakt and Kompakt have been discontinued by NI.

Just to let you current Logic users who haven't upgraded to 8 yet, the interface has a VERY different feel too it. I like the single window interface (very Final Cut like) but it's weird using it with Logic. Mainly what I'm loving about this from my limited use with it is audio and midi "take" recording, audio comping, and the ability to add multi-timbral, multi output instruments with a few mouse clicks instead of having to spend a couple minutes in the environment to set one up (thankfully, they didn't get rid of the environment though). Oh, and including 5 jam packs and a bunch of other new sounds. Some people have said this is more like a Logic 7.5, but with so many work flow improvements, I'm really enjoying it.

Yellow Tools is giving away a free version of it's Independence sample with 2 GB of sounds. http://www.yellowtools.us/cp21/cms/index.php?id=399&shownews=527 Normally Independence requires a dongle, but the free version doesn't require it, however you do need to download and install Yellow Tools key manager for it to run which you can find here: http://wibu.com/download_user.php?lang=en The sounds in the library are pretty decent to, especially considering that they are free.

I'm guessing that the mix you submitted was an audio captue directly from Sibelius, right? If so, then that has a lot to do with the problem. Playback from the notation programs are good for hearing what you've entered into them while you're composing, however, they aren't up to par for producing pieces for listening. Your best bet would be to invest in a sequencer. You can still compose in Sibelius and then import the midi into your sequencer, load up the necessary samples and then tweak your piece to get it to sound more realistic. Also, like Sil said, each library has it's strengths and weaknesses. Things that may sound good in a real orchestra might like horrible using certain sample libraries. So learn the libraries strengths and (more importantly) it's weaknesses and write accordingly. If you find this hard to do, one thing that can help is to get scores for pieces that you are familiar with and try to recreate them with your samples. Not only will this help you get more comfortable with your samples and help with your realism, but score study is also a very good way to learn composition, instrumentation, and orchestration.

If you could stretch out an extra $200 you could pick up the gold pro xp bundle. It will give you a a boat load more articulations and better quality than an full orchestra library you'll find for $300. Also in that price range is VSL SE Standard. Not as nearly as many articulations, but (imo) sounds much nicer than any sub $1000 library. However, if you can't pull one of those, or you just want brass, zircon's recommendation of the Project SAM stuff is a good one. The complete brass collection though would cost around $500, though you can buy the individual sections piecemeal.

Logic also has a notation view.

You may also consider getting PCMCIA firewire card. That would give your computer firewire ports and would open up your interface options.

Yeah, what analoq said would work. Also, if you upgrade to iLife '08, that version of Garageband has an mp3 export feature built in (along with a few other nice upgrades).

Another endorsement here. I was one of the friends sgx dragged to see it. I kinda was interested in seeing, but I probably wouldn't have if he hadn't invited me to go along. Definitely glad I did. Also, De Niro's character in the movie, amazing.

I really liked this movie. It had me laughing throughout most of it

I've tried many different sequencers over the years. Started out using Reason 2, but decided I wanted plug in support. I tried out FL, Cubase (2 or 3, not sure which version was out at the time) and Sonar 3. Wasn't a fan of FL, didn't really mesh with Cubase so I ended up with Sonar. I decided I wanted to switch to a Mac, cause well, I got annoyed with dealing with Windows and my uncle tried to convince me to go to ProTools. Tried out ProTools 6.9 on his portable rig when he was down here visiting over christmas, but found it's midi implementation lacking. I had heard many good things about Logic, so I went to an apple store and gave it a run. I decided to buy it and have been happy with if ever since. After I got used to the work flow, I fell in love with it and have probably saved a bit of cash because I can still get by with it's included effects plug ins (imo the best set of packaged plugs with any sequencer). I've also tried out Traction 2, P5 v2 (demo and got a run through of the full version from SGX) and Live Lite 5 and 6. P5 and Live are pretty cool programs, though they don't really fit my work flow or my style or music, though I was tempted to buy Live just to play with it cause it's such a fun piece of software. I'm tempted to pick up DP, just to see if I like it but I see no reason too since I'm happy with what I have now.

I'd say watch the original movie first (not necessary, but it is a classic and was there first). The watch the SAC, 2nd Gig and Solid State Society. Personally, the GitS tv series is one of my favorites. And if you feel like it you can watch the Innocence movie, but it really is just a big disappointment.

A couple things, the reason your sustain pedal acts like that when plugged into a slot for volume control is because a sustain pedal sends out only two values: 0 when it's not pressed and 127 when it is pressed. This is because sustain (midi cc 64) values between 0-63 is no sustain and between 64-127 is sustain. Hence when you plug the sustain pedal into volume, it sends a value of 0 for volume (min volume) until you depress the pedal and then it sends a value of 127 (max volume). As for changing it into a soft pedal, I know in Logic you can put a midi transformer in that can change values (such as changing the value of pedal up from 0 to 127 and pedal down from 127 to say 64). Since I'm not familiar with it, I don't know how to do this in cubase or if it's even possible.