Nase

this is where i draw the line. it's not just the end result that matters. the process of creation is meaningful in itself. it is intricately linked to the end result. at the same time, i'm not against presets at all. you don't have to build your own violins to make chamber music. (ic darkesword already did that one) the point is, you can express yourself in many ways. it needn't be the creation of a new instrument (patch). composition is enough to spend a lifetime with. no one forces you to be a sound designer as well. there's so many good sounds out there already. but that "end result" sentence i keep hearing over and over, i disagree with it. completely.

i wouldn't say dishonest, but i'd say you're running danger of losing some of the spontaenous quality that may be present in an undoctored take. it really just depends on what you wanna express. no extremely polished or super rough track automatically loses its impact by being that way. it's all context sensitive. sometimes you want precision, sometimes it's gotta be loose, with little flubs and all.

gimme some guitar shredding you consider really good! like, not only impressive, but musically relevant to you. i've been listening to this one over and over over the years. it's the only tune i've found from this dude i really like, but man is it good. i find this much shred and funk combined to be a rarity.

like dragonforce, you mean? i think it's cool until they try to play their stuff live and fail miserably. idk tho, i just watched some recent live stuff by them on yt and they seem to be getting better! they probably were all too aware of the studio/live discrepancy.

oh me too. maybe i should try my luck with some cheezy elektro as well - been a while. i was still a metal kid with a slight interest in IDM when i made my very first crap electro attempts, and i felt a bit schizophrenic about how much fun it was, i think.

i got a laptop for 600 euros a year ago for what it's worth, and i can run most of my music stuff just fine. but that's because most of my plugins are a little older and cpu efficient. and because i don't really use any monster patches with thousands of multisamples. so i cannot run the high end shit, but really, that bugs me more when it comes to games audio card seems trivial to me as i'm using an audio interface to record. i didn't for the first couple months, and the sound was alright. of course, with bad luck you might get a real buzzy output or something. just sayin', $700 or less might work out fine if you aren't crazy about using all the new shiny plugins. sometimes the added cycles may be really worth it, sometimes i feel people forget about efficient coding because there's so much power available.

congrats on the achievement! i know it feels good to end up making stuff that people would call, idk, legit, lol. i think it's more than a bit cheesy. 3:20 "yeaaah" takes the cake!! haha. but it's alright cheesy. i could imagine it being ok as 'club music' in a game! imagining a lot of silly looking futuretro ravers in the background.

i think the thing here is, this vid shouldn't discourage anyone from having fun while shaping sounds. it's for people who obsess over it when they really would or should rather be making music...? even i'm like that sometimes. take everything with a grain of salt. the video highlights the super contextual nature of tone really well imo. it's that alchemy part of arranging that's magical to me - pile up 5 shitty sounds and somehow get a magical rainbow shower. sometimes anyway. in a way that's "tone" as well, just the tone of the whole piece. idk timmy, maybe you need a little experience on electric guitar to understand the 'tone' can of worms. ehh, maybe it's similar to people swearing by vintage analogue synths...while using lots of adjectives like "creamy" and "lush" to describe their preferred tone.

found it on kvr, too good not to share. spot on in my book

it's very much a kavaliersdelikt. meaning, a very trivial offense. it's basic logic that it's illegal or atleast grey territory, but no one cares too much. with the soundtrack being unavailable commercially, i think almost any composer would rather have his fans listen illegally than not listen at all. especially spc's and such. i believe many of the older game musicians are still surprised by the interest people show in them. this has opened up venues, like the game orchestra stuff, and new work for older names in some cases. when a legally grey area has such positive side effects, no one worries too much. this site is legally grey innit? it hosts them chiptunes as well.

very nice tune. idk if i can do something in time. might fiddle around later

barre is so much easier to learn on electric, i feel. if you got an e guitar available, i'd start out there.

aw, this sounds like good fun for a quick midi rip. shame i missed it.

cheers roe! i had a deeper connection with some of your dark souls remixes you posted on your soundcloud, most of them mirroring that sad/beautiful vibe as well. this feels like bgm in itself, but good bgm! introspective and serene and all dat i tried getting into dark souls last year, but couldn't get over the console-like feel or something (pc port, dunno if it's considered good). maybe i can give it more time sometime, as you clearly have! keep it flowinnn mate

killer studio chaps up for grabs, while we're atit. nice terrible name for a supergroup.

some grand tunes in there. good shit. o i should say, my rap lyrics comprehension skills aren't soo great. i just take it in and maybe construct some meaning out of the various pieces i get. a bit like listening to american pop songs as a kid. still, enjoyable. i like the delivery, no matter if i get each line.

so in conclusion, all these discussions are a fart in the wind compared to the greatness that is musical experience. we're still having them. they're clearly not music, but maybe they can be fun...it's just about understanding stuff. i like to talk about stuff and see what comes out of it. it's a bit like music, anyway...exploring and stuff. except that the syntax of actual music is more freeform, and that makes it such a liberating thing. music is so sexy.

it cannot be exaggerated. you only got your ears, haha. how else to make a choice in music? that said, i agree, use all help available, if you like using it. that part is very simple. midis are cool, and stuff. look at it as added guidance to have some decision space to navigate, just beyond what sounds good right now. theory and such. edit: ok, you can actually make a choice in music without your ears. deciding to apply theory, for example. use some chords or notes you know from theory, without knowing beforehand how they will sound in context. but then you'll judge with your ears yet again ("what sounds good now"). so it's a matter of extending the decision space through borrowed knowledge, but after that your ears are the final judge. trust me, it is not a simple question. but doing it is simple, luckily. doing things can be very simple, while philosophizing about them can be very hard. because the doing is so simple, and talking about it more often than not obscures that. that's kind of the beauty of it innit. you're right in the sense that talking about it too much is of questionable value, of course ;D so ya, just do it. and tim, it's ok that you like zircon a lot i know you're saying the right things basically, but then you forgot about them while defending one of your idols. it's alright, lol. point was, neblix didn't intend criticism of your hero, he just criticized what you're saying (which is a thing among u 2, apparently ). he pointed out that Zorkon, too, arrives at knowing what he wants through a series of accidents where he doesn't. so yeah, same thing. peace out lol

ok, let's look back! my 2 cents: 0:10 i like just how it is. the horn there even seems like a core element for the switch into swing. the trumpet however, i think it starts to suck at 0:30. if the phrase ended differently, i might like it all. so this is a point where i could've diverged from the original, imo. yknow, just in the spirit of the discussion about looking at things from the past and determining how your appreciation of them shifts. so in this case, nothing much changed for me: there's a little bit in there that i think is phrased weakly, or the timbre is wrong for the phrase, or whatever. something's off anyway. you don't really know 'til you hear a better version of it. cool to hear that you still like it. i'm happy with it, it's a nice little ditty with some surprises in the middle.

lol, i don't think neblix was criticizing your beloved zircön, tim. it's about pointing out that all musicians use some form of trial and error. if they don't, i dunno if they can be classified as musicians even. they're probably more like a living jukebox then. getting abstract about it, art is probably about finding that sweet spot between knowing and not knowing. plans are alright, but be ready for surprises of any kind. the specific way in which you react to those surprises has a large effect on your musical output. musicians are just explorers. art is exploration of semantics and symbols. our intuition has a way of making us say the wrong (non-intended) thing at times, and they sometimes end up being exactly the right thing, once we understand them in context. think freudian slip.

i agree there's probably some objectivity to be found, but yknow, buddhists call those moments satori (or if prolonged, enlightenment). it's a rare occasion mostly. but yes, the initial spark of something can be of "divine objectivity", to get grandiose about it. even there though, it's unclear really. it's not clear if a single consciousness can see reality beyond any individual coloring. i sure don't know, i'm just led to believe it, by lore and by some vague pointers in my own experience. i think ultimately, improvisation comes closest to the spark, and it helps if your music writing has some improvisational elements too. put miles davis next to soc, yknow, "there are no mistakes". in the context of goin with what feels right, maybe you'll feel bad about a very intuitively and naively written tune, but it may also be a stepping stone to something really great. the intuitive mistake has a potential to get you on the next level. this may be true for single songs, but it may also apply to a whole series of tunes and the learning path you take with them.

see timaeus, why not just go with what sounds good today? you're right, it might sound like garbage to you in 5 years. it might also sound like a hidden gem in 10. who cares? i mean, who can extend care to something one cannot predict? (rhetorical question. most everyone can, and does so maniac-like) observation in the end is a subjective experience. continued observation results in exploration. your explorations may become a seemingly objective deal as soon as they begin to influence the explorations of others, or vice versa. you have to submit to the subjective experience of what sounds good now. even what you think might sound good in 5 years is actually just what sounds good now. there's nothing else. what you're talking about is more about meeting your highest expectations, i think. regarding that, i think the natural thing to happen when you're learning is a constant shift in your ego, related to the question "how good am i at this". your possibilities expand, you feel able and good about it, but then the new possibilities teach you about many things you really have no clue about. so you feel unable and lacking, and wanna expand. it's about that next horizon, and stuff. it's also natural to look at stuff you've done forever at some point and say, hey, that sucks. it may also begin to sound really cool at a later point, for another reason. so what we're talking about, that objectivity thing, only exists conceptually. not experientially. or maybe it does, but if so we haven't found it yet. this is also what socrates is talking about, btw (you keep citing him ) not knowing means having the most intimate contact with present reality, and that actually enables you to find the most creative choices. planning ahead too much (what am i gonna deem ok when i do my epitaph) is going to take you away from that state.

solid tune. i think it could be a bit of a coin toss as far as judging goes, though i don't know the policies/philosophies these days as far as more core chiptune arrangements go. i happen to like the dry sound with the drums beefing it up. seems very intentional. vocoder touches are nice. 1:35 break very cool. bass sound mashes well with the chips too. the judges in my phantasy say it passes.

omgthanky i'm not into remixing that much these days. got a couple ideas tho...also, random compos might work. like for this one. i don't like setting out to do something specific. too much expectations then, often. maybe that'll change at some point. i wanna remix zant's battle music from twilight princess, for example. that's really hard though, atleast in my mind. i need some confidence to just try my luck with tunes i really like. it usually ends up interesting enough if i just keep at it... anyway, regarding the game, i'm glad there's a few around who can connect with it. and i'm not really one of them. lol i read about it while mixing however, and it seemed very cool. the fact alone that you can stop the BGM ingame by crushing speakers... oh and regarding the fadeout ending, that's part of the yoshi cameo. the last melody that's playin is just the SMW theme. played with SMW samples. it's just a joke, but it makes the fadeout work in my book. peace! thanks for writeup djp, thanks for listening!

yeah, that's a good way to start. it's really just about taking simple mono lofi samples and playing them across the whole keyboard, if you boil it down. and limited polyphony i guess. the dedicated vstis or trackers just give you more accurate lofi and polyphony constraints. it may become interesting to you at some point, but just working with the samples and making them sound interesting is the biggest learning experience. have fun