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I got myself a gamelan sample set yesterday, and this track from SoM was an obvious choice to give it a first try. http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zh5tgwzyzz2 The breakbeat/dnb part is still in its early stages, and I'll have to see if I go on taking stuff from other tunes. The original tune is pretty sparse after all. I'll let it rest until tomorrow and see if I can develop it further then.

Sampletank 2. You mean the stuff with glissando at the end of each note, right? Thanks, af, Wildcat...by now I think it could use some more improvement though. I'm happy with it generally, but a lot of bits here and there. Right about the highs, af. Bit dull.

I could say I started out with piano lessons imposed on me by my parents at age 8. I hated them. Maybe they were beneficial, or they worked as a deterrent for a while, I dunno. I started playing the guitar in '01/'02, aged 15, and soon had tremendous fun doing it, and thus got reasonably good at it within 1-2 years. Played in bands for a bit but the magical chemistry didn't happen. Then I found a crappy general midi sequencer and subsequently Fruity Loops, and found out that composing isn't all that hard (composing good stuff is though ) I still slightly regret that I didn't get into sequencers earlier; I was almost 18 by the time I really got into it. There's still a certain mindlessness you maintain during the earlier teenage years, and it's always interesting to see what happens when that mindset is channeled into something creative. I think the concept of sequencing would've always appealed to me, I just didn't know about it and didn't seek. Ah well OCR wasn't a bad place for growth, but I took the wrong approach and tried to produce stuff to gain acceptance in the community at times, and always utterly failed right from the start. Most people would advise against this approach, but I think it works for some to motivate themselves by showing their skills to a community. Not for me though, in the long run. So I went back to making music for myself. By now, I feel relaxed enough to submit something and not feel too bad if it should get rejected. So, my generic advice would be to take things as slow as you have to and always focus on the music. Duh.

Fair enuff, I see we agree on the basic question. Regarding the class sizes: It's certainly not perfect, but this way, I have more choice as a student, which is a plus. It might be a disorganised policy that somewhat indirectly suggests piracy, but still, the knowledgeable tutors are there, and you can profit from the class. Something can not quite make sense organisationally but still be an ok solution if it can't be helped. One of the reasons I enlisted at HAW is its very broad offering, and the digital stuff is just one part. Still, it's something that you'll at least want to have tried once, even if you're completely paper based. In short, it's better for me if I get to try it under flawed conditions than not at all.

I'm not trying to defend my school...you got that the wrong way. I am just a bit annoyed that, regarding this issue, you're voicing your opinion so self confidently while your experience is limited to your country and school, and you show little effort in trying to understand circumstances different to yours. Universities in Germany are still funded by the state to a large degree (Used to be completely state funded up until a few years ago). This means that a school can have a great reputation and talented professors without having a whole lot of money. Sooo...what does a reputable school teaching graphics design do when computers come around and replace good ol pen&paper, and they lack the proper funding for a really consequent upgrade to digital? Do they close it down and become alcoholics? Nope, they try to compromise. What's 'not logical' about that? It's just too tedious arguing with you when you don't use your imagination one bit. Besides, you departed from the issue. I don't really know the financial workings of my university, maybe the officials just spend everything on prostitutes. It doesn't matter either way, the resources are lacking and the students gotta get their stuff done.

.... The school doesn't direct enough money into the digital department, and I suspect that's because THERE IS NO MORE MONEY. What does one pay to study at Drexel without a scholarship, per semester? 24/7 media labs with enough computers to accomodate the whole school cost money. You pay for your 'good planning'. Fast enough connection? Not everyone owning their own computer?? Well, so far I met one person at my school that hasn't got a computer with internet, and he indeed did everything at school he had to. He was able to because the 150 other people from just the same semester didn't all do the same thing. Btw, ever considered that someone might prefer to get creative at home, not in some grey assortment of desks with macs and terribly overused mice without right click? I'll stop here...Seems like you're mostly nitpicking to come to the conclusion that laziness is still the main factor. And you're right. It's entirely possible to somehow get by without warez in my or a similar situation, the point is that it'd be a FUCKING PAIN IN THE ASS. Your situation is different, and you don't have to believe my scenario at all to imagine another believable scenario that simply isn't as comfortable as yours. 'Well at Drexel...' Seriously.

The computer labs close at 8 PM, like the rest of the school. If everyone not owning legal copies of the programs he needs only used the computers at school to get his stuff done, the place would be helplessly overcrowded all the time. Not enough capacity. Please reread the second paragraph of my post and think about whether your situation might be different GIMP? C'mon. It's not a bad app, but not in a league with Photoshop. Besides, what about all the 1st semester courses that teach doing projects in Photoshop and just that? It's an industry standard, and I'm pretty sure most people in my school who're doing some serious work with it are gonna buy it as soon as the jobs start rolling in. This is a general point regarding professional tools I think: The more serious the tool, the more users feel they owe it to themselves to buy it once they're getting serious with it.

Yup, I am. Studying illustration requires you to work with those apps in some courses, and the teachers basically acknowledge that you need to have the programs to continue working at home. Their usual advice to freshmen is to ask someone in a higher semester for the program. One of them even had the animation program he was teaching with on his USB stick for anyone in need of it. Before you go on attacking the credibility of my school, remember that you don't need incredible sums of money or a scholarship to study around here. So if the school actively pursued the distribution of pirated software, a lot of courses simply couldn't be held because there'd be no money for official licenses for the students. The Uni has their own, but those stay on the computers there.

Talking about music software, a major reason for me to go legal was entirely selfish: You can have absolutely everything, and it requires zero effort. I found that very bothersome. You can get this DVD from a friend that has gazillions of high end synths and fx on it, and the value you see in it tends to diminish. It's this mess of a million tools you can't ever learn to use properly. Maybe it's just a symptom of the capitalist mindset, but whenever I bought a tool after a year of using my established tools, I knew I had wanted it for a long time and had the motivation to dig into it. I still do pirate things like Photoshop and Flash, because while I'd never buy them for my own use, I need them for uni projects here and there. Student's licenses for those apps are still too expensive for me to consider buying them for some stuff that I'm required to do occasionally. I guess my morals regarding piracy aren't based on strict law that much, but rather on how much I get out of a particular program, and how much i can empathize with its creator. I do happen to think that a positive effect of piracy is that it enables some piss poor individuals (note: not me) to unleash their potential. Face it, open source stuff isn't there yet in every department. Still, of course I also pay for products I use a great deal because I want the brilliant mind(s) behind it to get something in return, and find it pretty sad that a lot of people don't understand that mindset and think everything's just up for grabs. A lot of my friends call me stupid for buying my music software

Soundfont is just a very old format and mostly used by hobbyists nowadays. Modern sampling formats are a lot more flexible. Which doesn't mean that SFs are useless at all. Every once in a while, I discover an awesome amateur release in sf2, and i still have the free soundfont library I built up when I was starting out 4-5 years ago. So you have to search around a lot. I enjoyed picking my fav sounds by hand back then. I still know them way better than that big chunk of instruments that Kontakt/Sampletank gave me.

It IS a wonderful and incredibely polished feeling game, stlistically. The music could be weirder to fit the general style imo, I just don't perceive Danny Elfman type stuff as wacky and unusual anymore. It still isn't bad at all. I bought it just a week ago for the full price, but don't mind it at all, the two guys behind it deserve support for their future ventures

So I tried Eve after reading this thread and convincing my previously WoW-crazed mate (account selling and all) to join me. We both did the tutorial, bitched a bit about some aspects, and agreed that it probably might be fun at some point, but seemed too much of an effort to get into. Subsequently, I deinstalled it. Next day, he writes me that he had a second session and is now totally into it. He just wrote me that he's spent the week adjusting to the crazy learning curve and is on a quest to learn the game inside out. The PLEX stuff got his attention, and he certainly has that 'job' mentality regarding MMO's, whereas I was always more about exploring the world and just having fun. Back in '05, I quit playing WoW with him pretty soon as it just seemed too tedious (and soon enough stopped playing altogether anyway). Anyway, Eve probably has a new longtime subscriber now

Mids are definitely too weak during the first part. Good low end from the kick, good high end from the hats, synths and flute. So I'd do some EQing or fill it up with something else, but don't overdo it, because the 2nd part with all those kickass weird synthlines and FX might lose some impact from that. I love the energy in that part. (Sorry, just listening via Tindeck, so I can't tell you the time, but it should be obvious) The last third is a bit sparse and directionless, but that's a usual thing with WIPs, so I can't wait what you do with it! Your sound design skills are great, so surprise us with more of that.

has more of a 6/8 feel to it. Overall, I like the reverby mellow vibe. Not a fan of the arpeggiated contrabass, sounds very mechanical and gets boring fast to me. It might work with another instrument though. I think the panning/stereo sound during the first part could be adjusted. On headphones it sounds like everything's fairly centered except the reverb trails. I find it's lacking fullness that way. The e-piano part is beautiful and soothing. The slowdown makes me curious for more to come. So right now it's an interesting song sketch. Keep working on it.

I'd say myself it's enough of an evolution from the original. I left the melody almost untouched at times as it fit in well for me, but there are a lot of other variations, some new content, and of course the timing switched to swing. So if I'm not totally out of touch, that part shouldn't be a problem. Btw, I'd recommend checking out the soundtrack. I think I'll be picking apart more songs in there sooner or later, as there seems to be a wealth of knowledge about weird harmonies and note sequences in there. As I said, this song is one of the most accessible ones, but I still found it pretty educating.

Cheers Syko! 'geographically eclectic' definitely sounds nicer than 'disfunctional' or some similar attributes I was half expecting in people's reviews Anyone got any ideas for a title? I was thinking 'Blue Bastard' or some crap, summing up the changeful nature of the mix.

Speaking of the devil, ha. Thanks Sam

Yup, Juste's theme. It's by far the catchiest tune in there, but the other ones work extremely well in game context. Dissonance being the key word there. I know what you mean, but that turned out not to be an issue to me when I turn it loud. At low/mid volume, I find it lacking fullness too, but at louder levels I enjoy the relative sparseness at some points. Like the piano at the start. I feel like it might not be able to breathe (hate that expression XD) as well if there was more sustained stuff in the background. Or the brass swells, I think they wouldn't have as much of an impact. But I might be wrong, gotta give it a try.

hrrrmmm...

Ah. I used an app called snessor so far that extracts the raw samples from the ROM. I finished doing the Secret of Mana instruments a while ago and started on doing SoE, but it's a bit of a hassle since you have to browse through a shitload of .wavs, many of them garbled noise that represents other data being mistaken for audio. Still, I find it really insightful to play around with those samples, seeing how important good sample choice was for a great soundtrack. Like single samples that sound cool across the whole register. It might be fun to base a little project around that. Like, selecting a choice of 10-20 short samples, recorded by oneself if possible, and learning how to use them inside out over the course of several tracks.

Cool. Where's the Secret of Evermore soundfont though? I still have that Jeremy Soule style tune of yours.

Groovy, great arrangement. I love the point when it loops and goes back to that Samba chord rhythm. This could really sound exceedingly awesome with the right samples.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?okyrwnbnmwm I might extend this some more, but at the moment I feel kinda worn out with it. Some of the chords of the source don't exactly make it easy to add new stuff, and I'm no Shnabubula I'm a bit proud of it though, as I'm still pretty new to writing stuff in that vein. Oh, and I have no clue if the brushed drums would sound totally weird and unrealistic to a drummer's ear. So, ready for submission?

Yeah, I think I'll boost the snare a bit at some places. Sounds weak sometimes. Thanks for the enthusiasm man. Dunno about submitting yet, I guess my laziness will decide. This has to do with my general no-clue-approach when I fire up the sequencer. Then out of randomness evolves something cool, and in the end I actually get to like that random stuff at the beginning, maybe just because it helped to spawn the rest. I could always erase the intro and write something better, but by then I'm usually too lazy/attached to it. But really, I rarely create stuff that's great from 0:00 to finish due to this. Yup, it's a small soundfont and won't sound realistic doing soloing duties. I didn't mind much as the whole instrumentation doesn't sound overly realistic. I even kinda like it, like a good fake guitar. Yeah, that was kind of the point for me posting here Bobby Keller? haha..Bobby Basement. Cute. Oyea, thanks for the FB y'all.

Oh, it's not just FM synths. The beginning is. I'd want to see an FM synth that can do brass like this... Thanks though. Good listenership is enough to demand improvements imo btw