big giant circles

Aight boys and girls, mine is done and done. Woohoo!

Several NFR's, I take it since you work at Sweetwater, right? Man, I had the chance to snag Maschine for dirt cheap when I was at GC, and in retrospect I wish I had just because the controller looks slick, but it's honestly just something I probably wouldn't have used much of as far as the software itself goes.

I'm not sure I'll be able to deliver on this, and you can thank FL studio for a botched product. I have had so many problems with FL8 files loading into FL9, I'm pretty thoroughly disgusted with Image-Line at the present moment. At this exact moment, I am 100% unsuccessful at even opening my project at all. I started it in FL 8.5 (which can no longer be used) so it won't load in FL8, and it's definitely not loading in 9, despite running the diagnostic/recovery tool on it about 20 different ways. *EDIT* There's hope after all. After spending about 2 hours trying every possible work around, I've managed to recover the project. Whew. Man, nothing will get a musician more furious than not being able to access past work.

K, I guess I'm cool with the vox level on the newer version. I'm gonna go ahead and say YES. OA and DS, if y'all could hit up his v2 and throw down a YAY or NAY, that'd be awesome.

Do you really play the zither? If so, that's rad man. I'm on board with everything OA and Palp have said. The style calls for some repetition, so I'm willing to accept some of it, but I would definitely try to trim this down by a couple minutes or so. I'd say 4 minutes, MAYBE 4 1/2 MAX should be a good length for it. I don't really have any severe production gripes. I realize that may seem hard to do because in this style of music, you're pretty much just doing it the way it's usually done, and us asking you to cut out some of that may seem kind of pretentious/demanding, but that's just what our guidelines call for. Meet us in the middle with a resubmit, and I think this one could see the front page. RESUBMIT

Also, since we're at 2/2, I guess I'll go ahead and email Brad.

I see no reason to not pass this on the condition that the vocals are brought out just a little bit. I think granted the style and FX, they don't necessarily need to be a TON louder or anything, but maybe even if Brad just pulls back the gated guitar just a little bit. Because once he drops it at 1:53 the vocals seem at a nice level. Very cool mix, pretty smooth. Good jorb on the singing, even if you had to use some AutoToon. There were some minor conflicts here and there where you were playing major chords under a minor melody (or the other way around) but they're not so standout that it spoiled the whole track. YES(conditional re: slight tweak on the vocal mix)

Sing me a song you're the piano man! Hope it's a good one!

Haha, awesome. PBS song, lol. Definitely. Man, sounds very happy and fun and now I want to go run around the mall hugging strangers and jumping around like a general idiot A couple minor production gripes, but they've been mentioned and nothing worth repeating or dealbreaking in that area. I cringed at :43 because you've got a direct note conflict there where the melody is in a minor key but your strummed guitar plays a major key--I don't see how that could have been intentional because it's not a good sound. Heh, don't worry, though no one else has mentioned it, 1:40-1:41 was not lost on me. All in all, this song is a really good example of a jamout to the progression of the source, but weaves seamlessly in and out of referencing the melody and free-styling over top the chords so that the reference remains wholly intact. And it also does a great job of taking a very short melodic riff and expanding it most effectively for a really enjoyable 3 minute track. I nominate this track for the "Happiest ReMix of 2009" award. I do wish you could fix that part at :43, but considering it lasts like a second, I can live with it. OA-OK

Hey is the OCR server going to be up for this? Also, will the infamous jetpack be present? Man, I love that thing. The only thing better than the jetpack is the jetpack and telletubbies!

fixed that for ya Thanks for the comments everyone! This mix does indeed feature the conversation music, but *technically* it's still Synapse/Hong Kong Streets because in the game rip .UMX, it's all one file, so I figured it'd be cool to throw some of that in there. Also, yeah, I thought "Siren Synapse" was especially clever myself since Alex has been known as Siren, plus, a synapse is "the point of connection usually between two nerve cells". So kind of a metaphor for the collab, I suppose. Anyway, thanks again for listening. I strongly strongly encourage everyone to be sure to read Alex's interview (if you haven't already) because it was not only a lot of fun to pick his brain, but he has some really cool/interesting opinions/experiences to share on a lot of things! Also be sure to check out his blog once in a while. And if you like his music from Deus Ex, Unreal, Unreal Torney, etc, then DEFINITELY spend a few bucks and pick up his album - Era's End. It's fantastic!

groovy man, don't mention it.

Well, here's a handful of suggestions and some general guidelines. You're probably not going to find anything with absolutely amazingly-super-awesome realism in that price range, but you'll find a few that will do alright. Wanting something larger than 61 keys in that budget is really limiting your choices, too, so you may actually want to consider making do without 76 or more keys. If that is a dealbreaker and your $1000 limit is stationary as well, then I'd probably suggest something like: the The Yamaha MM8. Pros: Actually DOES have 88 keys Decent for the price Cons: Keys are weighted Sound quality/realism is not much higher than entry level home digital pianos. (In my personal experience) Not extremely intuitive for beginners. Otherwise, if you can afford to raise your budget a little bit, I think you'd probably enjoy the sounds a little better in the following: Korg M50 Pros: Better sounds than the MM8 Synth-action keys Some pretty cool combination presets (good for live use) Touch Screen (I suppose that's a pro and a con, really) Available in 61 keys as well Pretty lightweight, so nice for gigging. Cons: Korg keyboards have probably the highest learning curve out of all keyboards I've played on (again, that's just my opinion) Uh, that's really all I can think of Roland JUNO Stage Pros: Good sound quality/realism Pretty easy to learn & use Lightweight Cons: can't really think of any. I'm not entirely sure this has the "combination" mode thing like the Korg does, but it might. I don't remember. Now then. If you're willing to settle for a 61 key, You can save some money by getting the 61-key M50, or something like the Roland JUNO G which is really similar to the stage, but has some subtle differences, but pretty excellent sound quality for $1000. Or, you could snag something like the Yamaha MO6. I happen to be extremely partial to the MOTIF series. I think they sound awesome and they're fun to use and have great solo patches as well as combinations/multis for jamming live. If you're feeling really ambitious and want the best sound quality you can get at a pretty reasonable price (higher than $1000, but far less than the $3000+ ones you saw), then consider buying a sound module and a MIDI keyboard. You could buy the Yamaha XS Rack which is literally the brains of the MOTIF XS series (the XS8 is like $3500 at regular price) without the workstation. So while your functions are limited compared to the full thing, your sound quality is not. Then simply snag something like the Keystation 88 for $200 and you've got a pretty nice setup for playing in a band, and recording MIDI into your computer, and all for around $1500. So anyway, these definitely aren't your only options, but they're a good start. And like I always tell everyone, it's not always bad to consider taking what you want, and going one step further. (In this case, maybe bumping up from the $1000 range to the $1400-1500 range). Why? Because more often than not, people go ahead and pinch their pennies and get what they need "right now" and don't leave themselves anything to grow into. Getting a little more than you need will ensure that you're not just blowing your money on something that's too much top-of-the-line, which is safe in case you just simply decide it's not for you, or has too many bells & whistles that you never even use, and also that you're not going into any kind of crazy debt either. Anyway, remember, use our zzounds.com link if you actually end up buying one (http://www.zzounds.com/a--925434/) but feel free to shop around because not only is the tax and shipping free (unless you live in NJ), but they'll match any price if you happen to find one for lower. In the meanwhile, head to your nearest Guitar Center and they'll probably have all of these keyboards available for you to play around on. (Just remember though, they'll charge you tax and probably sell you a demo model, so tell 'em you'll think about it and then buy from zzounds)

haha, actually now that you said that, I don't really know any 88 key keyboards that are not hammer-action. would you settle for 76 or 61?

how about keybed? weighted? synth-action? 61? 88? those are going to be your biggest factors in the quality of the sounds you get for the $1000 or less price range.

what's your budget?

Oh man Kontakt 4 is making me all warm and tingly so far. That is all.

man, this forum can handle ranting. rant away, brother!

Just got mine today. Installing right now.

same here.

Well, yes and no. I'm highly intrigued, but I don't really need it right this second. But I'm definitely going to keep my eye on it and I may buy it down the road. *edit* Man though, they're definitely on to something with the pre-installed hard drive. This 5+ disc installation thing gets old!

lol, that's exactly what they've done. Did you not check their site?

Eh, I don't think that's quite the case in this situation. Maybe for synths, where the entire download is usually under 100MB, but when you're dealing with sampled instruments/libraries like Omnisphere and Morphestra, it's just not practical for a company to offer everyone a 20+ gigabyte download just so they can try it out. There are alternatives, like simply providing a limited library version of the plugin, but the risk there is that the sounds might not accurately represent the full thing, or they just might not appeal to a particular tester who may say "oh, this instrument is not for me" when really it very well might be right up their alley, but they just didn't have a chance to play with the sounds they would have liked better. Simply having music demos available are by far the safest way, because it's understood that what you're hearing is only some of what's possible.

Those are all valid and true points. However, I think this is why I've really developed more of an affinity to these "out there" type instruments/libraries because they are presenting new sounds that were formerly either impossible or else highly improbable to achieve. Omnisphere was pretty much the first (I mean, no amount of oscillators can sound like a torched piano) but there's always going to be new combinations of cool sounds out there. And since I don't personally have the time to go out and develop/design them all, I'm largely intrigued by that stuff. Which is why I personally think Morphestra looks pretty darn cool. I've also got Acoustic Refractions for Kore, and it's just as cool. I know that spending time to fully dive into an instrument is definitely a good thing, but it also isn't exactly terrible to just explore more unique sounds.

haha, very nice! I liked the John Williams one as well