Nase

educated guess: dota became rly popular with the advent of the 'allstars' version, which was a compilation and consolidation of countless dota styled maps. also consider that like any other nonstandard wcIII map, dota used to be called a funmap. so no, not all dota variants had the generic sentinel/scourge goodie/baddie theme going. i distinctly remember a bleach vs. naruto dota. some of the custom models were really good too.

it's a nice phrase, i've subscribed to it countless times before, but in the end, i'm led to believe that how you get there always has influences on the end result no matter how you might've envisioned it. creativity is pure butterfly effect. any tiny bit of input into your system matters. becoming better at recognising chord changes? pretty huge bit of input, usable for a lot of things. it's going to change your music, in some ways, over time. for better or worse? idk man, but it might add another fun and inspiring aspect to this whole making music thing for you. can't have too many of these. i'm talking purely theoretically without agenda and am really just using halc as a practical example. i make very little music these days and sit on my ass a lot, so there you go ^^ edit: hero, the deifying bit was an exaggeration lol. again, quoting myself, you don't need every available musical skill to make great music. did you read that bit? that said, any skill can help, and getting better at playing/sequencing by ear is such an opportune and obvious skill to train when you're doing arrangements.

yup. they're good. so what dude? more knowledge of chords would still make him a musician with a slightly more varied and conscious pool of choices. i can name a hundred things my musical progress is hampered by. i'm still happy enough with most of the tunes. it's not always a result but also a process thing. everyone is a little lazier about some aspects of his craft. it doesn't necessarily result in poor crafting. just don't deify halc cause you really like his music. cause i'll show up and write an extremely differentiated and boring post to set things right nobody cares about.

it probably is. not so much but to some degree. go on and flame me. he's still got a very good sense for melody and soundscape and all that, and the midi based stuff clearly goes through a lot of stages and edits. it sounds halcy in the end, so obviously he's doing just fine with it. doesn't mean that it doesn't hamper his progress in any way. he said himself that figuring out the chords is a bitch and that he prefers midis as a base to get his remix going asap. the pretty obvious consequence is that he will stay a bit weak in the figuring out chords department. make of that what you will, it's a very worthwhile but ultimately not an essential music skill, esp. not in the digital environment. trial and error rules, and you don't really need to internalise everything western music theory has to offer to make awesome music. i know enough people who've done better stuff than i but have less of a grasp of what they're doing with the notes or chords. and it's not like i'm very educated on the whole thing...

chroxic: ear development can be a pastime. you can do it when listening to music, you can even do it silently by just imagining the intervals or humming them. it's a great pastime in class or at work. you don't need a sequencer or a piano. only your brain.

OMG you gotta try QQQQQRWR+EWRRQWWEWQEQWRqwwweE, invoker summons a C++ tab to recode his skills from scratch - so fucking imba.

totally! because it usually takes longer to find a midi that isnt trash ) yeah i wasn't really meaning to argue, sorry if that came across wrong. to be more clear, i have used lots of midis in the past, some of them ended up in remixes partially, but it usually was the stuff i had trouble figuring out and had not listened to that much. if it's something a million people have transcribed and remixed, it's usually no hassle to do myself, and i actually want to put in those notes i've heard so often manually. it's still somewhat satisfying when i've never sequenced it myself before. also, to be even more anal about what i said: no problem with using the actual midis in remixes if you feel it doesn't compromise your work or if it doesn't really matter to you. no point in being elitist about this.

having listened to it a billion times, i think sequencing would be faster.. i'm sure i'm not the only one here who randomly pictures melodies he's hearing in piano roll format. when the song is simple enough and i've heard it a whole lot, there isn't much work to do. you just know the intervals. i can understand why you wouldn't wanna sequence wily's castle. extremely easy to argue against tho: so there are a billion wily mixes there are approximately 3/4 billion wily mixes using a midi from the web let's use one of those and maek kikaz remix! in this scenario, shouldn't you actually double your efforts to create something worthwhile and original? how is starting from the same midi template that countless others have used a better way of reassessing a monstrously overplayed classic than starting fresh?

if you sequence it yourself you're likely to understand it better. apart from the theory part, starting with a midi just isn't the best way to build up a personal connection to the track you're making. if it doesn't matter to you it doesn't matter. personally, i hate opening something that is seemingly finished and reworking it in some kind of way. i sometimes like to look at midis, i also like to cut out bits and fool around with them a bit. what it comes down to: i enjoy making music more when i really get the different parts, how they're constructed, how they work off each other. you can do that with a midi. thing is you probably won't. midis are a convenience in this context, and as such they are mostly going to be used. if you're dedicated about it, i really recommend mixing by ear because in the end, there are LESS things you can do wrong. as far as didactics go. i mean, apart from all the happy accidents and musical tangents created 'by mistake', you're only training your relative pitch, pattern and rhythm recognition. that sucks right? painting is about really seeing, music is about really listening, blahdiblah. true cliche is true. that said, midis are fun and educational too. use both.

dunno if it's the best, but i currently want this one: http://samples.wavesfactory.com/?p=1150 as far as huge piano libraries go, i only have old black grand by acoustic samples. it's awesome but a grand it aint, or not your typical one anyway. more of a mellow jazzy sound. the piano market is so oversaturated though. everyone's probably just gonna tell you what he's using, so i recommend you head on to kvraudio.com and ask there. because most people on there couldn't live with just one or two piano libraries. gotta catch em all ^^

windrunner is fun because no matter how your team does, you can still have a great game. if your enemy doesn't boast mass CC (or something nasty like bloodseeker), you can usually do your damage in fights and get away in time. so if you play it right, you simply won't die much and are guaranteed to have some items if the game runs late.

ahaha that's the same rationalisation i came up with.

it's a kind of honest thing to say as it was a very nice exploit indeed, no matter if you intended or not. you released a cool and very accessible remix of the most hyped rpg ever just when it got released. how the fuck is that not an exploit? cmon now. don't call it an exploit but a 'nice move' or something then? better? XD anyway, good job ^^

yeah, i know. it's still a good thing. it means you've got a healthy desire for exploration and experimentation, and that is way more valuable than recognition of any kind. the way i see it is like this: you need to be able to write music to rearrange music. even when you just shift the different patterns around, you're writing music. the level of involvement may vary, but ultimately you're organising the sound in some deliberate fashion and tadaa, that's making music. you don't strictly need to be able to rearrange music in order to write music. you can just make up new stuff as you go. that said, rearranging offers quite a few compositional possibilities. for one, it's how a motif becomes a theme. in other words, rearranging stuff is a rather integral part of making music, and as such you can easily train it while writing original stuff. you'll probably train that skill while just writing any kind of music. like, there's this part at 0:33 that you want to come back with full force at 4:21. so you change it to major and harmonise it or some shit. and that's all there is to it, taking a familiar shape and giving it depth and development by juxtaposing it or changing it altogether. just saying, if the remixing retro VG melodies thing isn't working out at the moment, just remix yourself more. in the same song. aka thematic writing. learn to twist and transmogrify better. maybe try to limit your output of constantly new parts and just flesh out the song with interesting variations of your main motif. remixing is about working with parts that are already there. if your brain tends to drift away when faced with this particular task, it's either not your thing or you haven't fully grasped the qualities of that limitation. stupid simple answer: do more of it, do it more consciously. limit the amount of parts, maximise the wealth of interpretation. see how far you can push a melody into completely different sonic territory while still keeping it recognisable. what could be a better test subject for all this than your own shit? no legend to live up to, no classics to butcher. it's perfect.

good for you! 'oh no my creativity is keeping me from doing tributes! it's doing its own thing!! HALP' or are you saying you're too tone-deaf to successfully recreate popular melodies ;D

ok my bad. i'm getting used to it anyway... i've been having a really bad streak with the matchmaking randoms though. need more players badly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0YQP4TQdsA this guy did a plain walking, no turning test. he does make it sound like there's a fixed .11 second delay built into ALL actions. add turning speed etc on top of that. i'm not sure if his test is legit or if it has been fixed. it sure does feel like it's still the same.

http://www.kvraudio.com/q.php?search=1&ty[]=i&tg[]=7&pr[]=f give these a try first? VB3, according to many organ dudes on KVR, is just the superior hammond. there are others who favor freebies like Nubi LE. VH-2 is a good allrounder as well. Combo Model V is a bit more one-trick but it sounds great. you can honestly get such great organ sounds from freeware that spending money doesn't really offer huge benefits in sound. what you might get is added versatility (several organ models, fx like rotary speaker included) and maybe that extra bit of faithful emulation. which is hardly going to matter in a mix. i'm happy with the free ones, but VB3 would be what I'd buy based on user recommendations.

bleck: got too late yesterday. just accept the friend request and i can send the invite to you later. i dunno about lion, tensei. there's the free mana replenish, yeah. his spells are easy to land, too, but deciding on how and when to use them isn't that easy for noobs. it takes a while to get the most effect out off the CC spells and use the burst dmg in non-embarassing and helpful ways. ofc i'd play him as a noob, just because he's worthwhile to learn and still one of the easier heroes out there. lich is definitely the ultimate noob hero. just dish out your slow and dmg, spam denies and shield, wait for a good clusterfuck to ult.

lol gtfo scrub gimme your steam name

my 2nd invite is up for grabs if anyone wants it. i got mine here so i figured i should give something back. i'd prefer to give the key to someone who knows and likes the genre. otherwise there's always the danger of the player not touching the game after 2 depressing matches.

thanks a bunch for the key, tensei. seems like the social aspect is done via the steam friends system? i go by "skoshu" there. what are some of your names? i wanna play tmm.

i remember ulfsaar. some oldschool dota heroes can seem really strange though when you look at them coming from hon. he's agi. his passive makes him seem like a distant relative of predator, but then he also has scout's flurry and an ult that, together with the passive, sort of forces him into tanky builds. to do more damage. the ult also is like a reversed version of maliken's passive in the sense that you get weaker as you lose hp. weird design. how do people usually build him? full tanky, full agi, a combination? bloodstone and butterfly?

nostalgia is so appealing because it makes you remember the truly original experiences you've had, or call em source experiences or something. yknow, strong sensations, no preconceptions about them. it's one of the awesome perks of being a kid. sadly, it comes with being fuckin stupid anyway, these experiences play a rather big part in defining who you are, so why wouldn't you want to revisit them. like ella said, what you do with them is important. you can just fully regress to age 5 and enjoy being stupid and happy (and that's fine in moderation. i hope it is...) or you decide to do something more interesting. some day, we might develop some tech that allows us to browse through our minds like libraries. that's like the ultimate technological utopia for me, even surpassing the holodeck. it's also way scarier than the holodeck. it's like an OEM version of the holodeck, only featuring experiences recorded by yourself. anywayyy..until we have that, you can look at old shit and get all fuzzy about it. if you balance that out with a healthy diet of new shit and maintain a general state of awareness, it might all transmogrify into totally awesome new shit. thats how creativity works, you always build on the old. it's like a compost heap that's never cleaned out. to make my point, i don't think nostalgia itself is a problem at all, it's more like a device, a gateway that can and should be used creatively. that said, if you use it to constantly engulf yourself in childish sappiness, you have a drug problem. no big deal because everyone has that problem, to a varying degree. it's more than likely that people who express a strong dislike against nostalgic indulgence have seriously overdone it in the past.

in after prot poasting