Nase

The biggest problem with FL and more 'free form' music isn't really the pattern thing but that it still doesn't do time signature changes. You can theoretically do anything in it, but it discourages the user from switching signatures. If you do you'll often have to dismiss the bars the piano roll shows and do your own counting.

yeahyeah, i'd feel insecure about my skills as well, but it really depends on the playing field. if it's an iOS game for example, i've seen enough decent games with shoddy sfx. just bad or obvious stock sounds that feel out of place. probably mostly cases of a single dev inexperienced with audio deciding to do it himself, but either way...an amateur can top that tenfold if he has the dedication.

I've been playing it all along. Cut me open and have a boozefest; i bleed pure vodka by now. Idols are gonna be idols

I dunno man, your average platformer only needs so many sounds, make em yourself even if clueless, learn, have fun. Resorting to specialised libraries is understandable when under pressure and time restraint, but cmon, the odd freelance job that people around here like you might get? Make it a labour of love and take the time to learn, or don't do it. Talking out of principle, good news that it's not an issue anymore.

You need a basic grip on compressors/limiters then. While just using stock loops can be boring and called lazy, if you use a slicer to play them back you can go from minimal or no modifications to complete rearrangement of the individual hits. Don't dismiss loops as a sound source, the most complex drum programming you will find in electronic music is based on breakbeat loops.

All the scandi names made me remember a good one: Nils Petter Molvaer! Acid Jazz/Future Jazz or whatever you wanna call it.

Anyone else got into the latin jazz stuff via The Sims? Jazz infused Salsa or Samba, Bossa Nova, that stuff. I like how a lot of it excels at something i'd call concealed complexity. Like, really smooth and fluid compositions to the point where some might call it fluff. Pretty accessible or even infectious to most people though, yet there is a lot under the hood if you listen closer...like when you analyze it a little, you sometimes think "wow, shouldn't that sound harsher and jarring by the notes? Why's it so damn smooth?" A good reminder that notes are only one part of what makes up a tune, maybe. Found this guy from Seattle on SC, he's awesome at these styles: https://soundcloud.com/datroof

suppose i can relate to what you mean, an evening at a jazz bar (not that i've spent many) can get tedious when the brass overindulges in one excessive solo after another. Same goes for other instruments to a degree but the forte sound characteristics of e.g. piano or bass are less in your face. That said, i like all of it in moderate doses. Truth be told i love so many cliches. Orchestra Hits forever!!

Lou reed and laurie anderson doing jazz, wut. I haven't been keeping up. Ozric Tentacles i remember as v cool but having little to do with jazz. I like horns.

Or gypsy. Django rox. Also @ metal man: A lot of later Zappa stuff could be labeled as jazz in spirit, though i know of nothing that really sounds like jazz jazz. But he's totally rhythm&blues based, and did complex, experimental, everchanging stuff. Sort of an alternate reality jazz, if you will.

Oh hai feedback. Weird! The bass and drums used to be louder at some point, but then i dialed em back and liked the rhodes focus. It's probly a bit extreme, but eh, it'sa jaam and the EP player obviously is the band leading egomaniac Interesting the instrumentation sticks out for you. It's not something i put the utmost thought into - if anything i start out with some barebone funk staples, and then the piece goes semi-jazz. But yeah this one is about looseness. Doing weird stuff with tempo automation. I find the super loose sections quite interesting in that they sound pretty damn humanized but still have something vaguely artificial going on...maybe like a computer trying to be human rly hard but overdoing it, hehe.

Exactly, that's why i could never summon up the drive to make one. I hope i'll put out a series of tunes someday that kind of automagically form a storytelling sequence, however vague it might be...until then, no album from me i guess.

Like restaurant music hahahha! Dude i don't know jazz well but don't you think that's a little ignorant?

No worries, pushing your own boundaries is never gonna lose its satisfaction i don't think, it's just that the avenue of boundaries you wanna push might change radically over time.

Did you fucking hate it when you abandoned it? 'Cuz that's the part important to the argument Timmy, allow me a broad observation: seems pretty obvious to me you're a talented dude, but i do notice how your ponderings are centered a lot around the technical and technological side of things. It's a natural stage i suppose - i'm still kinda stuck in it myself, but have dealt with it long enough now to know i'm tired of it. I need a different mode now to tickle me fancy, and i'm still kinda looking for it. Use it happily as long as it provides inspiration, my dear mad VST scientist, but know that there are other pretty natural stages where you'll probably grow a little bored with that.

I wouldn't be opposed to a view like that. Tried to phrase it carefully when i wrote the bit in reply to zircon - it's not a right or wrong thing, it's different perspectives that can be valid, and i shift back and forth between them a little. To me, one valid thing to improve on is the ability to appreciate very different things. When we follow down a path of learning, it can often happen that we focus on a very specific path, and anything that doesn't lie on that path becomes less desirable. I think the interpretation you went for in above post kind of applies here: something you might find embarassing at a certain development stage can have much potential, and you're shunning it cause it seems silly/not serious or whatever. Maybe it's just genuinely good already to another set of ears that doesn't have the same set of expectations as yours, like wanting some specific polished electronic sound or whatever. I mean, ok, everyone has stuff he's still embarassed about, but don't you have the opposite as well? Stuff you were embarassed about while making it, then coming back to an unfinished mp3 render 2 years later and thinking "hey, that thing is weird but so cool! So different than what i was trying for so hard at the time. Why was i frustrated?" And yeah, i think some things are hard to repeat/pull off again! You might have all the technical abilities to repeat it in theory, easier than ever before, but your creative mojo just flows differently today, and when you try it ends up going somewhere else. Maybe i'll find the kikuta interview with the bit i paraphrased. Not sure if there was more to it. It's just something that struck me as odd/interesting when i read it ages ago, and it kinda stuck with me. There is a liberating aspect to it: there is no need to reach your previous 'quality standards', as it's not possible in a way, anyway. What you're going to do now is just that: different.

nope timaeus, what i'm saying is almost diametrically opposed to what you're thinking. not saying it is that way, just trying to offer a very different perspective. "objective" is another word i find troublesome in the art context. it basically has to leave the building once you're talking about creativity/expression. it belongs in the "craft" realm.

zirc, to offer a counterpoint on that...you've met hiroki kikuta, right? he has sort of an interesting view on it. he claimed that he isn't a better (read improved) musician than he was 10 or 20 years ago, just a different one. I'm still trying to decipher what exactly he meant with that, but i think there's something worthwhile to that way of thought. i do believe in improvement in the sense that you accumulate more and more experience, and expand your craftsmanship, but at the same rate, there can be things you once did with passion and did well that are not repeatable by your today self. it's easier to observe from due distance, i.e. in other artists: earlier works by someone that you really dig for what they are, yet that person has "moved on" and considers that old stuff boring/embarassing/whatev. attachment and overexposure to your own stuff has a way of distorting perception. i'd never say you for example haven't improved, but i do think this attachment feeds that sense of and need for self-improvement. gotta say, your focus on self-improvement has a very wholesomely american ring to it, lol. maybe you'll look at your whole body of work someday from an increased distance and view it all a little more kikuta-style, hehe.

o.k., maybe i do get your definition, and maybe i'm 100% effort by it as well. my point i guess is, to put it simple...a fly banging against a window again and again is showing 100% effort to get out. based on its capabilities, you gotta give it A+ for effort. music or any art ain't just about "keeping at it", it's just as much about "letting go". even laziness can be a positive factor at the right point in time. don't think one can overthink all this from a philosophical viewpoint, but can appreciate you're more pragmatic about it. what anyone might say about this is going to be more of a crude simplification of the process, something like "well here's what i've done so far and it kinda works well for me so i'll call it my 100%". and maybe that's true to a degree based on your experience so far, but it's not the whole story. i'm not strictly talking about slowly scaling up your 100% over time (gaining skill). the really interesting part is: flashes of genius. short bursts of 10000%, stuff that happens rarely and can't be well explained with your previously acquired skillset.

well here's the trouble - my "100%" is entirely mysterious to me. i don't actually know how it works and precisely how to achieve it. i'm willing to believe that it's a little less erratic for some other folks, but not hugely so. again, just talking about "effort" seems empty to me. you need other overused words like "flow", "inspiration", etc etc. just pure 100% "effort" is meaningless when you got nothing to say that'd require the effort to get it out in the first place. basically, IMO all artists are a little bit craftsmen, but more than anything they're FOOLS. acknowledging that seems the first step in the right direction. creativity at its heart is fool's work.

uh, yes, it says more about the effort than anything. otherwise i don't quite get your definition of "effort". when you're inspired and grooving and all that you don't need much effort, stuff just flows. effort means work imo.

pfft, effort. i think it's a pretty common thing that an artist's quick lazy track gets lots of recognition while another one he considers his recent masterpiece gets little. and it's not even necessarily wrong - a lot of really brilliant tunes were written in half an hour. the muse is elusive; polishing can be good but turd polishing is useless.

the thing about physical albums was you just could afford a few as a kid, and listened over and over. on many, my favorite songs changed over the months/years. a few things i considered filler or weird became absolute favs. that's one good thing about less choice in music overall and no option to cherrypick single songs to download - you're forced to be a bit more patient with what you got. people tend to forget that any enjoyment they ever get from anything involves a bit of a learning process. put chocolate in mouth > benefit! learning process right there. chocolate is an easy pleaser though, some tracks are more like coffee or whiskey.

don't know it, but i can tell you it's from Game Gear/Master System for sure, not NES.

Leaving out the cash question, i suppose the main question is if you enjoy albums yourself. I don't know your age, but this has changed a lot with the mainstream internet era. Albums used to be a given, the only way to publish a larger, deeper sampling of your music. That given is gone, so all you have to ask yourself is if you enjoy the format and can use it to express something.