Josh Whelchel

We've got PART FOUR: Studio Gear up!

As soon as you can afford Izotope, I'd get that - if you have any ear at all for mastering it will help a lot. A lot of people however will still prefer to outsource their mastering, which ultimately I recommend, but when you have time and budget constraints - Izotope is the way to go. (Just avoid presets, use them as starting points only)

Any and all of what you've described fits. (:

There is a new application page here: http://www.jwmusic.org/sfc11-apply/

I'm not sure if it's entirely clear, so I'll clear it up here - I'm not looking for submissions of original material until AFTER you've been accepted on the project. This should dodge the issues you've mentioned. But for the record, it's a PG album, and we're not interested in hardcore-rap, but pop/rap/r&b is certainly open to be included.

Part 3 is up! Yup, check out http://www.jwmusic.org/sfc11-artists/ for more info on being an artist. (:

"New Music" refers specifically to newer classical music, sometimes referred to as art music. Example:

I approve of pongball. Just sayin'

Songs for the Cure is looking for musicians for its third-annual compilation series. I'm looking for REMIXERS -and- ORIGINALS, but you can find all the details on the website for submissions here: >> http://www.jwmusic.org/sfc11-artists/ >> Apply Here To clarify some of the information here, the DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION/AUDITION is OCTOBER 3, but your music doesn't have to be finished until FEBRUARY. Any and all are welcome to apply, so please do! In the past we've had these OCRemixers participate: - Big Giant Circles - The Prophet of Mephisto (Brad. Burr) - Mustin - FFMusicDJ Thanks, y'all! - Josh Whelchel

Right off the bat, the opening shorter string bites need more... "bite." Go with a Spiccato articulation or something that effect. The synth is harsh and in the same as octave as most of your orchestration which makes it muddy and hard to listen to. All around with the synths actually, I can just never get behind any of them. Also, arrangement-wise, you really haven't done enough variation from the original for this to stand on its own for me, either. That said! The percussion is pretty good, I especially enjoy the tamb., the crescendos later on are also pretty fantastic. I'd say maybe take out all of your synths altogether and replace their ideas with something orchestral, see if that works because you have a much better sense of how things go together in that setting, and if not then go back and find a synth that sounds better. The point of that exercise is that hopefully you'll have found a more appropriate octave for the line. Hmm, okay, hope I don't sound too critical, because it's a good start! I do think you'd need a -lot- more deviation for this to pass though. (:

Awesome stuff - what's the significance of 12.03.2007 - it was my 20th birthday ;

My advice: listen to them. I am still an undergraduate student, and I lived in the dorms on campus for two years. You simply are -NOT- going to get any musical good out of that laptop. I have a separate laptop that I do all my college/school things for my Comp Sci degree and my Music Composition degree that have nothing to do with the software I use for music production outside that realm. Here's a picture of my dorm room with my "gear" in it from 2009. I simply took the dorm supplied desk, built the little "bridge" for my monitors and monitor (heh), and it worked very, VERY nicely. I mostly used the headphones really, for obvious reasons, and I'd also like to add that I shared this room with another person. I also err on the side of being more social and outgoing as far as school events are concerned - I attend football games, all that fun stuff, go out on the weekends. Doesn't keep me from knowing when to focus and get work done, which is an important balance you'll have to have. As far as needing your laptop for convenience, you'll find that online applications are making this super easy - but beyond that most software that you'll likely use for school was developed for really the crummiest of computers to operate on. If it's something high end like in the digital design field or something truly intensive, your school should have labs for you to work at - which, even with a desktop and laptop, I still use quite often. Just sayin', it can be done. (: EDIT: Also, EWQL Play will expel ROT all over your harddrive for how much use you'll give it, rendering a laptop's lifespan mooooterific.

Why hasn't OCR jumped on Bandcamp yet - they have support for multiple artists. Lossless love.

Heyo! Likey, here's some advice: The synth that comes in in little pieces originally, that's a great idea, and the soundscape is full around it. But the actual choice of synth is poor in my opinion. It's a good start, but it definitely needs more 'bite,' or at least it needs it once the percussion picks up. The guitar is a big NO for me, mainly because it's not real. I think if you a real guitarist to do it, it'd help a lot. Also, in the section where the guitar comes in, you could really benefit from changing things up a lot more from the source. Get really free with it - lead guitarists LOVE to improvise and run with ideas. Later you start to do this, but it takes a little long to get there in my opinion (but once you do, it's very good!). One thing I LOVED, and wish you had more things similar to: When the guitar in the second section goes out and the synth comes in, their timbres blend and crossfade in a pretty magical way. I hope that these comments don't discourage you, but rather you should set the bar for yourself a few notches higher and always strive to make it punch more. I definitely think you want more punch. Try turning down the reverb on a few of the not-so-important parts as well, that should help.

Thanks everyone! Version two is up up and away.

I've started a pretty involved series on how I wrote music to the game "GunGirl 2" on my blog. You can check out the soundtrack at http://music.jwmusic.org/album/gungirl-2-original-soundtrack before reading some of these indepth articles I'm writing on the composition and production elements of this soundtrack. PART ONE: Cohesion PART TWO: Making of Anomaly (Guitars and Violin and much much more!) Bonus: Score to "Libera Me" PART THREE: Working with Live Performers PART FOUR: Studio Gear PART FIVE: Mixing PART SIX: Looping and Mastering Enjoy (:

Welcome to hell, mate - I started getting this problem a while back in Cakewalk. I have to make sure that Play is the FIRST vst loaded in any project I use (until I upgraded from 2->4gb of ram). I haven't checked since i did that. I suggest reordering them if you can. Other fixes that I've done just to get a dumb VSTi to work include opening a blank project with just the VSTi I have a problem with, then close it and open my real project. I literally have a folder called bootup that's got NI's Battery, FM8, Massive.... etc. that I open one at a time before opening some of my projects. ;_; Productivity snatch.

Good choice - I've been using this library for a while now (with a very long and slow learning curve too, I might add), and it's definitely not even worth it to get Silver. You pay only a little more to get Gold which has a LOT more articulations, and it's really all about your articulations. Get Gold Complete really if you can, and soon you can get the additional mic positions too (which is a nice addition). You don't need Platinum to get all the recordings, but you'll be limited to 16bit - anyway, it's not a bad route to go. You can do this: http://music.jwmusic.org/track/kyrie-immanis (:

I did this a WHILE (read: very long time) ago. Enjoy this heinous creation:

Current: Source: Final Fantasy Tactics Tracks: And I Ran Away / Memories / Ultema: The Nice Body I haven't named this yet Early draft-bean (; old v1: http://www.tindeck.com/listen/owus

This is pretty awesome, but technically I have a few suggestions: The drums are incredibly dry and a little loud in the mix, which kills some of the edge for me. It relies fairly heavily on the source, which is good, and the divergences are awesome - I'd like to see maybe some variation when you repeat the main motif (1 5 8 6 4 5). Maybe play with it or the rhythm or something to that effect to add ample variation and treat our ears with more play on the source. You do enough around it that's fresh that it's generally okay, but this is just my suggestion to go a little further. Yup, yup, !

Thanks all! I reposted it - and in general I agree with comments about the game; however the fun there lies in the actual gameplay. Unfortunately the trailer just doesn't do it justice. Thanks! (: