Nase

that's one good answer. i like to liken it to storytelling. a story is a sequence of events that becomes something much larger than the individual events (if it's any good). a good story is an exploration of your heart and mind and can give you a hint of everything there is to feel. so music is abstract story.

why do you like music? "cause it feels good." why does it feel good? "??????" you can point to lots of things you enjoy in a thing, like the structure of it or your favorite application or whatever. however, you can't really explain your enjoyment in the end. you can write up a history of how that enjoyment might have come to be, but you cannot explain the fact that there is someone there to feel enjoyment. all questions like that point to the hard problem: consciousness. the two questions are basically enough, but let's break it down further by including the evolution argument: why does it feel good? "because over the course of evolution, our perception of frequencies arranged in sequences evolved in a way that we can derive pleasure from." ah. on that matter, why is that so? why do i need to feel this pleasure thing in the first place? or anything else for that matter? can't i just be a robot that feels nothing and just makes decisions based on complex algorithms? but in that case i'm not even me anymore, i'm actually not at all! why does the universe need "me" to feel all this? WHY AM I? "ok dear that's enough, take your pills."

awthanks! <3 yeah winter is coming. mood is down, phlegma abound. if all goes well i'm in brazil in 2 weeks though. maybe good for sum inspirashun.

fav olremix by shael riley, other than juese belmont: http://olremix.org/remixes/100 fav brunzolaitis mix: http://olremix.org/remixes/573 fav olremix by myself, feat. dasaten on bass and recorder: http://olremix.org/remixes/724

yeah man, go to olr. make an acc and write some random shit. the site needs some lifeblood. posting remixes is actually possible again, but only 10 or so people are left browsing the forum from time to time. it was a really fun site. i might make some more mixes if i find the motivation.

what's interesting, this is a very male/male culture thing. the internet still has this feel of a very male style playground, even though the numbers are evening out on paper. males often like to use the internet to seem strong and unintimidable, cause interaction is round-based and no one sees you crying in the corner in the heat of the moment. the riddle of people being assholes on the internet. it's totally a gender thing. a virtual space for males to act "manly", i.e. strongly opinionated and spiteful. but, it's not strictly a matter of intellectual evolution. you can see it in its lowest form in some dreadful YT comment chains, you can see more evolved versions of it when people on here try to one-up each other in philosophical matters, or whatever. just a matter of more clever sophistry, and pretending to listen to the other, while you're really just scanning the post for inconsistencies according to your paradigm. ways to pick the opponent apart. it's not even consciously malevolent. it's just how most people are wired. the recipe for oldfashioned manliness: stick with your paradigm, don't really listen to your opponent. else his paradigm might somehow creep up behind you and swallow you, and he'll suddenly start making sense! there's an art to actual listening, and it's far beyond anything associated with debate. it works best in a real life setting, and it's really hard with written text, with people you don't really know. it really is a mystical art, and it's something that women typically are more gifted in. really listening means suspending your judgement and just feeling for the situation. listening in that way results in empathy. it also results in massive confusion, because if you go down that road, sooner or later you'll realise that there is no right and wrong as such, just different states of being. some of them may be characterized as poisonous, but that's not really wrong either. unpleasant maybe. sorry if this makes no sense to you contextually...but this is precisely what it all boils down to. the only way feminism can be successful is by reminding everyone of the female qualities that are potentials in all of us. in C.G. Jung's words, people have to re-discover their animus/anima. then the problem is history. before that, people will just dabble in trite discussions...like, equality in video games. superficial waste of time.

so this is like a small tuba? can't help you, just hearing that name for the first time

haha hope you get some use out of it. as tempting as these no-brainer deals are, it's not very rewarding when you never end up using the plugin for much at all. just speaking from experience made me feel like randy marsh, yknow. ALL THOSE BARGAINS!!!

looks fascinating, although the gameplay seems very mysterious to me after watching the trailer ok, i watched again and read the text messages this time. i think i got an idea what it's about now. liking the abstract vector visualisation, hope this piques people's interest!

yeah i wanna do more of these random masturbations again. OLR used to be my main outlet for that. oh yeah, OLR is accepting songs again. just as a hint to myself.

here, have a silly demo. https://soundcloud.com/skoshu/samplewank-404 ending is complete brainfart!

i'll probably give the guitars in there a try soon. they don't seem bad at all, but the patches are basically just the different guitar staples (strat, les paul, etc) at different pickup setups. i don't quite get this emphasis on sampling all pickup settings when the sampling effort could've gone into doing cool stuff like vibrato or pinch harmonics or bends/slides or whatever, and mapping those to high velocity on some patches. so expect solid but uninspired patches in the guitar domain. they did a couple mute patches, but none where they're mapped to low velocities. i'm much happier with not as extensively sampled instruments that still let you do some cool shit. some of the ethnic instruments have some cool keyswitched articulations, for example. they're by no means comprehensive, but fun to play around with, and that matters most to me. i'm glad the ST2 patches are included; some instruments in there really captured that spirit, despite being archaic by software standards. like that mandolin that goes into tremolo at high velocities. i love that stuff.

just use a good amp, and FL pitch notes are your friend!

yeah, though i wanna stress sample size ain't always important. there are a couple excellent patches in the ethnic library, and some of them are at 40 MB, some at 4. for comparison, the large pianos sound good, but they have eco variations at just over 50 MB, and those sound pretty good as well. so it's very much about a good balance, and most of all careful sample selection. i've seen enough huge multisamples that don't make a huge difference because the velocity layers don't add a lot of expression to the instrument. so, some of the world patches could've gone from decent to great if they just added a couple megs of evocative high or low velocity layers, for example. another example: i'm sure i could get a good lead guitar sound out of ST3, but i expect i'll often just return to Ultimate Guitar Kit. 60 mb soundfont, but just the right layers for an expressive lead sound.

mini-review: the sounds i've tried so far are mostly good stuff. the basses really stand out, they're excellent. drums are good, keys seem decent as well, though i haven't sequenced/played them that much yet. some very cool brass patches, big improvement over ST2 there. strings are what they are, and miroslav that is. they seem well FX-ed and patched together though. the ethnic department is nice as well, though you notice that most of the patches are rather small there. which brings me to one point of critique: i wish the detail of sampling had been spread more evenly. i can see why you'd want to include one really detailed gigabyte piano. there are a couple extensively sampled ones though. then, for comparison, the only new accordeon sound in ST3 is 1,20 MB, just for example. well, it sounds decent for that size. in the end, it's all about good patches, and some really good patches are very small. but still, i was hoping for some more expressive velocity layers, esp. in the ethnic domain. but owell. talking about good patches, as i said, most of what i tried is serviceable to excellent. the big exception isn't important to me, but it may be to some: the synth sounds suck. i just deleted them. final point of criticism: too much cpu. i don't know if ST1 had the same issue at release, but efficient programming this is not. it might have to do with the fx carried over from other IK products...good sounding stuff no doubt, but could have used some optimization, or some kind of eco mode. Interface is nice. not a real beauty, but nice layout. anyway, overall i'm happy. completely worth the upgrade price. it's a bit of a downer that i won't be able to really max it out until i get a new computer in a couple years. running it on a consumer level laptop bought this year. it's workable, but adding new sounds isn't a carefree process like it was with ST2 when i got it. ______________ just initial impressions though. gotta do some more tunes with it now.

oh no, funny robot lady wants me dead! i don't know, it's sort of an abstract first person fairytale. i think it works on multiple levels, and could work for younger children on that level. ok, it's pretty scary, but eh. i watched watership down at age 7. portal? piece of cake compared.

i know the feeling. one possibly comforting thing i can say is that the actual loss in skill is never as bad as one makes it out to be. i've noticed it has a lot to do with confidence, something you just develop and maintain naturally when you're playing regularily. once the confidence is back, your playing flows better again, and thus the skill re-emerges. so it's not like you have to relearn everything. it's more like remembering what it's like to feel good playing music.

ok, it's kinda fun again as long as i don't overdo it. dota seems like such an excellent tool to check your rage levels. it's much easier to keep my cool now, and not succumb to accusations and such. it's still pretty addictive though. gotta work on ending the session at the right time, before i move into zombie mode.

no, in the soundfont's settings i mean. i think most of my soundfonts have different velocity settings by default. as in, 0-127 velocity doesn't equal 0-100% volume. so there should be a setting for changing that, up to 100-100% volume.

that's creative exploration, and a good thing. it's really just a matter of observing if your approach leads to possibilities widening up or narrowing down. as it happens, possibilities widening up is the only workable definition of "getting better" i've found so far. another general rule is that your possibilities tend to widen up when you're having fun. my reservations against BTTLO exist because i know that this mindset can decrease fun if too dominant. that's the gist of it.

i don't know if you can break the link, i just thought it likely. isn't there a way to rescale the range of volume percentage you get from 0-127 velocity?

well, everyone at his prefered pace. myself, i grow very bored with tunes when working on them for, say, more than 2 weeks. my main issue is with the 'better than the last one'. i know this makes sense to some degree, but it's never an absolute measure. my 'better than the last one' from 5 years ago is a completely different thing than the BTTLO i might strive for today. it's not simply a 2D curve of getting better with every song. it's a 3D journey in spaceeee! the craftsmanship aspect, in my experience, tends to take care of itself as long as your expression is flowing. i'm not sayin that everyone should write a tune a day or anything at all. it's just...healthy to not measure your improvement/experience growth song by song. truth be told, it's actually best to not measure it at all and just keep goin. you'll amass XP, and you'll get better in that sense. it can hardly be avoided. that is, unless you keep repeating yourself over and over. i sort of felt like that before i took my long break. in that sense, i can relate to wanting to take your time very much.

oh you two. you're so cute together!

ahh, swiss cheese. no one can do it better! i'm liking the sound here, very warm and welcoming. no need for more transparency or titeness in my book.

all games, all good man. i'm glad i got to play in the woods, and i'm glad my dad wasn't a VG critic like my mum, so i could enjoy that a fair deal as well.