KaelitioN

Ahem. OK stop this before someone gives links to Culture Club , Boy George or gets rickrolled

I love the Wiki

That's very conspicuous (and slightly ironic)

Well I'm bringing this back to the front since it's over a month old , but in case the OP still hasn't found a solution, if he has a relatively new MacIntel , he could use either Boot Camp or Parallels to install XP onto a seperate partition or as a virtual machine, then copy his data files over , and install the game on XP as if it was native. It's an alternate suggestion to finding an actual emulator. Hope it might help.

Well you seem to have eased up on the compression a bit , although there are places that still sound somewhat squashed. If you want to place a compressor on the master bus/out , please keep your ratios moderate. So far I like where this is going , although you still have some work to do in getting coherent chord progressions to work with your melodies and having it all make sense musically. If you can get acquainted with some theory, it would help, although it probably isn't a necessity. I don't know what your musical background is. It always helps to listen to music of a similar genre that you enjoy and learn the techniques involved in making it for a good reference. This doesn't mean copying anything , but may give you some ideas as to how to incorporate some styles into your work. Once you know which chords work well together with your melodic lines (or vice-versa), you will have a better understanding of how to build solid movement in a track that makes sense to the ear and sounds less like semi-random passages. Something as simple as listening to those "epic"-sounding film trailers can provide alot of insight into making a piece that flows, builds-up , climaxes , and gives feeling. I personally feel that very good music should do at least one of two things (or both). It can tell a story without words , just by using our emotional responses to sound, and it can make you feel something real , without any actual real-life events (the music itself can create emotional and physiological effects. Feeling sad, angry , violent, afraid, etc.) Good film soundtracks do exactly this. They accentuate our emotions in certain parts of the movie by using the same responses we have to music in sync with the parts of the movie that require those feelings. That's the essence of music really. Conveying feelings, emotions, ideas, and moods through the medium of sound. Understanding which sequences of notes/chords/progressions/melodies/etc create the responses you desire for your audience, is the key to writing great music that your listeners will really feel. There's alot to learn and it takes time. Music has been a part of my life since I was 12 , and I am now 26 , and I'm still always learning. I think we all are regardless of our level of experience.

1.Analysis/review/interpretation of snippets of Billy Joel material. 2.Conclusion: Billy Joel is a self-contradicting, selfish, <insert random insult>, dick. [/rage and frustration] edit:jacked by Jovian. 2 quick 4 me ya know

Now , how does this make you feel?

Liontamer , if you were the one who changed my name when I asked in a message to admin@ocr a few days ago, thanks. All I knew was that I asked , went to the bathroom , came back , and had a new name. My jaw dropped. Very impressive (whoever it was if it wasn't you). edit: you know my reasons.

If you're making this into an orchestral arrangement score , then I think you might want to lower your compression/limiter settings a bit since classical arrangements normally go easy on compression to conserve the natural dynamic response of acoustic instruments. Looking at the audio almost the entire track appears to be brick-walled a little below 0db. The short staccato strings sound mechanical at some points so although I don't know which library you used I think you should vary your velocity levels see if that helps. I have an idea where you're trying to go with this and so far things are going well. I hear too many string parts however . There's more to an orchestra than string sections. The percussion adds interest but sometimes gets drowned by the various strings ( this ties in with the over-compression I mentioned earlier). That's all I can say for now at least for my personal opinion. Would be great to hear a revised version with more headroom and some more varied instrumentation. Sounds interesting so far.

http://www.humanoidsounds.co.uk/ I've listened to the demo sounds of Scanned Synth 2 , and it sounds cool , and I might want to buy it , but since they ask for "whatever you think it's worth" , I have no idea how much to give to the guy for it since I'm used to either very expensive synths , or delicious-sounding freeware. Have a listen and give me some feedback on how much this would be worth for you guys.

I undertsand the convenience of physical modeling compared to huge sample sets , but something sounds fake when I listen to the demo songs compared to Ivory

Keep in mind that when people play your song , they will probably have their own EQ/Bass boost/ surround set up , so if you do it for them when you mix , and they do it again for themselves , the results might not be too pretty

i would be seriously interested in this , since most of the mixes I pull end up being over-compressed or too flat and I would like to see how other approaches might work. I'll PM you

It's going to depend on whether you'll be recording live instruments or using softsynths or a combination of both , and what you're budget is. Everyone is different and you need to do alot of research for yourself first , but it's always a good idea to start with an audio interface that can playback and record 24bit-96000hz with good ASIO driver support , then a USB/MIDI keyboard to control softsynths , plus a DAW to record to and play the softsynths from ( the most affordable and easy to use DAWs right now are FL Studio and Reaper I think). Try them out to find one you're most comfortable with. I play piano and guitar as well so for software I can't live without Synthogy's Ivory and Native Instrument's Guitar Rig. These are awesome programs and aren't too expensive , and if you want realistic drums you can't go wrong with BFD or EZDrummer (these might break your budget though , depending on what you're budget actually is). If you want everything free , a good piano would be 4Front Piano VST , and there's some interesting freeware amp\cabinet models around the net. check here http://www.kvraudio.com/ you can search for any free VST that exists (almost) the rest is google and playing around with what you can find , and read the other threads here at OCR , they are for your convenience Good luck!

Software like Melodyne and Cubase 5 can extract pitch info and note on/off from monophonic audio clips (like .wav) , convert to standard MIDI , and dump it onto a MIDI track. I've seen the Cubase 5 video demos do this , and I think Melodyne can even work with polyphonic audio (I've never tried this though so I'm not sure how the results will be).

I would think that the most practical thing to do would be to bounce when the machine is having problems , but then do final renders with all freezes off. I may be wrong , but if you're rendering from freezes , you're rendering audio tracks down to audio tracks , and depending on the bit depth and sample rate of your bounces , you may end up with a slightly lossy render.

I'd hear some chromatic-percussion-tine-toy piano-type layer on top of the main melody line , perhaps filter delayed an octave higher , lends itself to something like a very lullaby-ish , relaxing floating atmosphere. Some ambient percussion would work alot to keep attention , something light , reverbed , with maybe automated panning around the stereo field (these are just things I think would fit but it's your direction/discretion)

I think the only real thing that's distracting are the 2 short staccato bass hits that don't line up with the fundamentals (this was mentioned before). Other than that , flesh this out a bit more and it's readily enjoyable.

Sounds fine to me. It feels "slightly" off tune somewhat , but still fits the chord structure (Dm toA7 or C#dim then he goes to something like Dm7 instead of A7 , but it still works). If anything the instrument might be slightly detuned

There is a VST from mda called degrade , which brings anything down to 8-bit and you can also bring down the sample rate. Very lo-fi glitchy effects. Then just add regular sine , saw , square , and triangle waves from any virtual analog VSTi (even FL Studio's 3XOsc) , add the Degrade plug-in , and you have decent models of the NES sound chip. http://mda.smartelectronix.com/ These guys also have some instruments for lo-fi old keyboard modeled sounds: http://www.pethu.se/music/instruments.html

It's going to depend alot on your source material , whether it's mostly live recordings , VSTis , etc. Generally , the more elements you have in a track playing simultaneously , the more complicated your mixing will be , so use your elements wisely and try not to have too much going on at once (4 elements at any given time is usually a good average i.e. percussion , main instrument , background instrument , bass , some effects). If you have much more than this , try to bring them in and out in different sections with volume fades , filter cutoff automation , anything that ramps up the levels smoothly in and out. Use EQ mostly to CUT frequency ranges out that take space for nothing. Boosting frequencies means boosting your overall signal level . The same perceived boost in a range can be had by cutting out areas surrounding the range you want emphasized. Use your EQ by ear and sweep around the ranges until you find a sweet spot you like that no other instruments might be using too heavily , then cut a bit around that sweet spot to open up that space. This is one example. There are a dizzying number of ways to do this and everyone works differently. Use some compression when you have an instrument/element whos volume level isn't consistent enough for it to stay balanced and you need its level to stay relatively constant. You can also compress drum tracks to make them fuller , or make use of attack times to have the striking part "snap" and cut through the mix. As for the entire track , you would definitely want to bring in a brickwall limiter to push the levels of the entire track up without anything going over the peak limit (anything over 0db on a digital track = nasty-sounding distortion). There are alot of tutorials on the net. A good place to start would be here: TweakHeadz Lab Electronic Musician's Hangout They have an entire "course" on everything audio. Take a look.

That can be frustrating. I know there's sfPack , sfArk , sfArkXT , etc. Sometimes if the soundfont was compressed with one version of sfArk , using a newer (or older) version might not work . In any case , I managed to decompress the fonts I got from DarkeSword's page but the only one I kept was the drums_industrial. Maybe I'll get the orchestral font soon enough. Soo , yeah . Basically , once the file extension of your soundfont is .sf2 , you should be able to load it into your host app. You can try to drag -and - drop the sfArk file onto an open window of sfArk . That seems to work even though clicking the font and choosing 'decompress' or 'open with>sfArk' doesn't . It's weird .

As far as flexibility is concerned , I'll agree. I like using soundfonts because they're just easier on the eye at first since you have everything on one score. Plus , soundfonts are (most of the time) made to resemble/model sets or kits that already work very well together. I don't use soundfonts when I'm actually polishing off a track . That's where the flexibility of individual sampler channels comes in (I'll extract single .wav samples from the soundfonts I use the most then tailor them individually as necessary). Thanks. This looks interesting

Okay , I'll make a request . I need a soundfont of a drum set (preferably GM mapped) for use in breakbeat/drumNbass type music. The only ones I've found that remotely resemble this is the industrial font from DarkeSword's site (just the All Industrial patch) and the X- Static Goldmine font from Hammersound. Let me know if you have anything useful . Thanks.

Thanks for the announcement GL. Hopefully , the newer members won't bypass this thread as they do the stickies. I know exactly what has prompted you to do this , and I agree. Although these kinds of questions don't bother me personally , it probably will upset other members of the forum , I'm sure. I know how you feel , which is why I try to answer these questions as politely as possible , but at some point , some decisive action is necessary or else the problem will remain unsolved. When I first came to the site , I did not once post a "Where can I find this sample or that soundfont" threads. Why? Simple. Because I enjoy finding things myself , and resort to asking when all else fails. Or if I need more professional opinions or suggestions. And one of the first things I did when I came to the site was read the FAQ . So I was already well aware of the fact that sample/soundfont/etc. request threads were a common redundancy in these forums. Basically , I did my homework . It's just too bad that not everyone is like me , however. If you are refering to new members posting requests for things that are already abundantly present in the forum as is , then fine. It could work in one sense.It will make the forums cleaner , I guess. The only thing that might be of a disadvantage with this solution would be the same new members posting threads like: "Where did my post go?" "How come my topic got deleted?" Some might get the point . Others might get confused , maybe even believe that the deletion of their posts/threads is just a bug in the php coding or something. Unless you decide to send every newb who gets their post deleted a private message relating to the subject, they might not know how to interpret it (unless they read this announcement , of course). That will get the point across but do you really want to send a messge to e v e r y single person who gets a post deleted? I doubt it. It's very time-consuming for something that shouldn't even be necessary in the first place, but I guess it's a good solution. You're doing a fine job of moderating the forums , I find. But I still think that more mods can help (it seems you already have one hell of a workload), or at least if all the regulars could help out to some extent (I know alot of them have been already).I've made some mistakes , that's for sure , but I still try to keep my respects for these forums in general. I hope everyone else who joins can , as well. That's my opinion anyways.