Nase

haha, the good ol american superhero comic. nothing against it, it's good to see the genre evolve and carry on, but seriously man, there's SO MUCH OTHER STUFF TO BE FOUND. i'm not even talking about manga or graphic novels shmovels specifically. if you really like comics, you owe it to yourself to check out more french comics. you probably know of Tintin and Asterix and all that old classic adventure crap, but trust me, it didn't stop there. as far as newer stuff goes, I can heartily recommend pretty much anything by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar, and Christophe Blain. These guys have collabed a lot over the years but also have a lot of solo publications under their belt. Trondheim started the 'Dungeon' saga, which is sort of one giant Dungeons&Dragons meta-spoof; it's immensely funny yet immensely epic. basically, it explores the 'Dungeon Keeper' premise, except that the dungeon masters are actually pretty normal people who have to get acquainted with the logistics of maintaining a dungeon. the storyline spans over several centuries. Sfar in particular has a tendency to reinvent himself with every project he does. of all three artists he's probably the most experimental one; he still manages to construct very satisfying story arcs and all that. Blain seems more in touch with the classic adventure comic, but without all the annoying mannerisms of the Tintin era. check out 'Isaak the Pirate' if you can, it's an awesome read. Anyone ever heard of the Heavy Metal magazine? it's pretty shit nowadays, but in the 70's/80's it helped redefine what comics are and what they can be. Moebius (Jean Giraud) was at the heart of this development. no matter if you like his psychedelic and somewhat esoteric/new age-y style, it's hard to name a single individual that might have had a comparable influence on comic artists in the last couple decades. he actually was a driving force of inspiration for quite a few mangaka, which is worth noting because usually mangaka are inspired by...other mangaka. Anyway, he's still putting out stuff today, albeit at a slower rate. Richard Corben is another name that comes to mind, started out with classic american horror comics, lots of titties and gore and all that, then went on to publish longer stories in Heavy Metal. his style is so intense and unique, i simply can't get enough of it (the tits are nice too). It's possible that you've seen some of his work even when you've only read Marvel/DC your whole life. I remember him doing a pretty awesome Punisher episode, as well as a TMNT comic, among other things, lol. those were just a couple names, the list goes on and on. anyway, if you're perfectly happy with what the big traditional american comic publishers offer, then that's fine. just be aware that they're not known for taking risks and making their workforce happy. the american comic has been declared dead over and over, and while i doubt that that'll ever really happen, it's a testament to the problems the medium faces, by no means exclusively but especially in the USA. btw, if you want some meta literature on the long and arduous road of the evolution of comics as an artistic medium and all that, Scott McCloud's stuff is a pretty good read.

http://www.acousticsamples.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=23 don't own it, but the guy makes good libraries and the demos sound nice as always.

synth1 (boring). it doesn't do everything but my needs are simple enough most of the time. it does the job. if i want to delve deeper or just waste my time with endless twiddling i go for fabfilter twin or oatmeal, among others.

yeah it's a fucking dilemma. frankly, i don't get why every single host developer hasn't stolen the slide note feature from FL yet. also, every VSTi should support it. it's just that good.

yeah, i already feel bad about writing that by now, haha. it was an awkward statement to begin with and i kinda didn't grasp how inflammatory it was yesterday. i shouldn't have started with comparative pie charts to express my appreciation, i guess. that said, if i check out 10 songs on the site (wip boards or posted, no matter) and find one i really love, that still qualifies as 'plenty of' good music for me. let's try a different approach: your stuff was inspiring to listen to. that doesn't happen to me every time i listen to music. i is happy.

hey david, i don't really like 95% of all music that much. ocr music still compares favorably when it comes to my general quota of showing any interest at all. i'm not saying it's shit music, i say i don't care much for 90% of it. you're spot on with the soul-o-meter comment, it's entirely subjective bullshit, but it's bullshit i wanted to say. i just can't help it. i'm a grumpy man and i have to express how badly my synapses want to be tickled the right way and how a lot of stuff just doesn't do it for me, no matter how much excellent musicianship and production wizardry is involved. mind you, this isn't meant to be some stupid dualistic rant. there's some stuff on ocr that i love for both its production and composition. it's just that it's rare. because the really good stuff is rare. fact of life for me. i hope that helped putting my statement into perspective. it's touchy stuff i know. sorry for the deviation man.

fuck yeaaaa i know how disproportionate the effort/feedback relation can seem with music. never devalue your own opinion, but i can only ditto the praise for bob-omb. a sufficient amount of soul can override any production obstacles, and this has more of it than 90% of the stuff you hear around here. bonus points for the ms paint video. edit:listened to all tracks now, heaps of cool things in there. all too messy production does get in the way sometimes, but the concepts and structures are wonderful for the most part.

i like to listen to pretty much anything when i'm high and hope for an augmented effect. goa, stravinsky, slayer, AFX, you name it. yeah, i know that wasn't very helpful ^^

Nase likes this.

awesome! kinda sloppy playing at times, but that actually grew on me. very human piece. didnt hear the old version, bass seems in a good spot now. no real complaints about the mixing. i believe the judges will have a bit to say about medleyitis (transitions) and possibly mention some sloppier spots/loose rhythms (as i said, i personally like most of those). but i think you're on the safe side cause it's really fun to listen to (and seems like enough of an evolution from the originals, a very natural one at that) don't take my word for it tho..

guess i'm missing something? i don't hear anything that sounds like a tremolo. i'm hearing a few plucked notes that don't sound like they're coming from a guitar, but they might as well be one with fx on top...

the bowed nasal sounding chords? could be a classic mellotron string sound.

i doubt you'll find a good emulation of the wave channel in any of those plugins. the wave channel is kind of what makes the game boy sound. the 2 pulse waves and the noise channel are pretty much like in the NES (except you can hardpan them). the "pooBoy" demo at least doesn't really sound like a gameboy. too clean. sorry, but i think you'll have to go hardware if you want to make actual game boy music. for NES music, famitracker is definitely close enough, but i don't know of anything in pluginland that does justice to the game boy.

not sure if i want to use this, but damn isn't that ad fucking brilliant?

point me to the worst video of that kind please. i had a pretty good veggie routine going for a couple months, but the old habits have kicked back in. i really wouldn't mind being more disgusted by reformed meat and the likes.

never been gone around here. i ate one 15 years ago and had to throw up a bit later. didn't taste all that bad though...

sounds like lsdj really. but before that came along, hardly any composer bothered to do this crazy wave channel stuff (which has become kind of a standard by now). so yeah, this definitely was ahead of its time.

Wheeeeeee, Aleksi!! gotta check that one out. His recent stuff is so awesome.

the thing is, musical parts are very codependent. the part you perceive as the worst one has a chance to become great once you mess around with the other parts or add new ones that build around it. if you're talking about a whole section of a song that doesn't really work out, then i agree; sometimes it's better to start fresh than endlessly fixing something that wasn't very good to begin with. once the parts are getting smaller though, i'm having more trouble simply declaring stuff as bad. if i kept the part in the project file, it usually had some aspect i liked about it to begin with, and the question really is: will i be able to fit it into the track? or will i be able to build the track around it? personally, i get a lot of fun and reward out of making unlikely connections between stuff that doesn't seem like much of a match initially. so yeah, i do think that 'delete worst part' kind of oversimplifies things when you put it in a musical context. for me, it's more like 'shape your pool of existing parts into something that sounds cool and deliberate'. dunno, maybe you'll find that distinction less important than i do. basically, my opinion on any kind of system is that it means compromise. that's ok, because utter freedom is confusing. in this case, your goal is to maintain a steady output of solid quality, but you will probably sacrifice some opportunities to do something really crazy you didn't know you could do. your brain will inevitably grow attached to the system and declare it as its zone of comfort. but you know, that'll always be better than just randomly dicking around without any results. that can always happen if you're giving yourself more freedom than you can handle.

polishing/endlessly rewriting stuff is just hella boring and more often than not makes me feel sick of the track. if i'm doing something just for my own enjoyment, i usually prefer to start a new tune instead. what can i say, i believe in edutainment. i feel like i learn more when i'm not obsessing over some project until it's perfect. i've also listened to older stuff that kinda grew on me because of its roughness. i think one of the most prevalent problems of amateur artists is that they're so set on achieving their predetermined goals that they will not recognise how powerful those happy accidents can be. learning to turn weird musical flubs into something that makes a tune memorable (and possibly evolves into a stylistic element of the artist) is just as important as any analytical ability imo. possibly more important. it's the same in any field really. just like the holy grail of figurative drawing...as the typical teenager, you either draw something that you deem realistic, or your drawing sucks plain and simple. it's not hard to see that this leaves less room for experimentation. of course the craft aspect of art is important, but i dunno...i see it getting enough love. we live in a decidedly left-brained society. (the left hemisphere is the sequential one fyi ) keep refining your procedure, if it feels right it probably is for you. for me it is not and never was. that doesn't mean i never made or make shitty music, because i definitely have :y i just decided to accept and leave it. good stuff comes around eventually.

Heroes of Newerth.

good ol krautrock

Uhuh. I don't think E-Bison said anything like that. The question isn't if you should use the information available, it's all about how you use it. Slavishly sticking to a map made by someone else when starting out on a musical journey bears the danger of, well, very boring results. The driver's license metaphor is soo bad, seriously. Making music probably won't get you killed. If i could crash into a tree without getting hurt i'd do it all the fucking time. Something interesting might come out of it. To sum things up with another crappy metaphor, use the knowledge available but don't be afraid to steer away from the road. and crash into trees. lots of them.

Secret of Mana final boss: http://tindeck.com/listen/ulhs i was stoned out of my mind and thought i was writing great progshit. listening to it the next day was both hilarious and disappointing. Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion Stage 1: http://tindeck.com/listen/bkvu was testing some orchestral samples. extremely cheesy. technically an ok arrangement though. Secret of Evermore medley thing: http://tindeck.com/listen/dxnd more boring orchestral fluff. oh, and spiritual followups to 'Bros with Dix' that annoyed me after 30 minutes. http://tindeck.com/listen/obrv http://tindeck.com/listen/gujq enough for now, time to listen to other people's miscarriages. nice topic indeed.

in the end, i'd leave those questions to your own intuition and experimentation. people are gonna mention some examples of widespread consensus such as 'better leave the bass in the center'. definitely makes sense most of the time, possibly holds true for all the music you'll ever be doing, but that doesn't mean it's the best thing to do universally. not meaning to kill the start of a discussion btw, as i could learn a lot more about using the stereo spectrum. just pointing out that as ever so often, there are no real absolutes to be found.