Arcana

I'm wondering if anyone here has had the opportunity to really play with the Tenori-on. http://www.global.yamaha.com/design/tenori-on/ I saw one at the store and played with it (for not long, maybe only about 10 minutes) but it seems like it would be extremely fun to experiment with. I've put it on the list of things that I am actually consider buying. However, it's quite a steep purchase at $999 and there are apparently a few issues with it such as having a bad MIDI Clock, and terrible samples (which you can replace). But, it seems extremely fun and something that I could learn to work with to create some really cool patterns on the fly when hooked up to a computer.

http://soundfonts.darkesword.com/ You need to extract the sfpack files into sf2 files first. Darkesword's Soundfont page above has a link to the program.

I agree with most of this especially the downplaying of the opinion that people have of you. A lot of people post on these forums and follow the music. A lot of people get posted on OC ReMix and no one ever pays attention to them - it takes more than just getting one mix up, you have to be prolific, productive, and dynamic, as well as involved in the community now. It's a good end goal, but it takes a long time for music to become intuitive and to recognize what the standards are. It's really easy to deceive yourself into thinking something is awesome just because you made it.

I really do enjoy the bombastic, aggressive sound of the EWQLSO free stuff I've used so far (yes their strategy is working, using their limited selection of about 15 instruments has gotten me to consider buying their program).

At the moment most of my output is spent doing one-hour compos, which pretty much don't demand good sound quality at all. Right now I'm using a lot of the EWQLSO Play! stuff for the orchestral samples and quite simply I have more fun laying down haromines (and spend less time doing humanization) with the expensive libraries vs. something like Squidfont. But you do bring up a good point, maybe it'll be good to finish a few songs before I go around buying new tools and I thank you for the reality grounding. Still please feel free to extoll the virtues of Kontakt and Komplete, especially since it appears to be quite popular on OCR and other people may wish to learn about it. Also please feel free to discuss orchestral libraries since I've been curious about them for a while, one reason I'd get Kontakt is for orchestral stuff. I asked the guy at the store what the differences between Kontakt are and the EWQLSO stuff was and he didn't really give me a great answer, mostly that the Play! engine sucks. He told me that the Vienna String Library stuff is more "classical" and dry compared to East West.

Hey, I'm thinking of grabbing Kontakt 4. Not only does 78.41% of OC ReMixers seem to recommend Kontakt, but it is also the preferred sampler of famous names like Zircon and Rellik. What I'm wondering though are the benefits of these bundles - namely Komplete and the Komplete + Kore 2 kits where you add about $100 extra for a bunch of softsynths. Does anyone have an opinion on how good Komplete is for me? At the moment I use Logic Pro and most of their default plugins - it has a decent guitar amp (Guitar Amp Pro), a good drum machine (Ultrabeat), decent synths (subtractive and FM, along with some cool modeling synths) and a really cool impulse response reverb (Space Designer) and I'm pretty happy with them so far. What I'm mostly aching for are good orchestral/ethnic/world samples, and possibly Shreddage How are the synths in Komplete? Anyone got some user reviews? Is it worth the extra $100 or 200? Also what exactly is Kore? The guy in the store was saying that it's for "managing my instruments" but I'm wondering if anyone has a bit more information. Kore 2 seems like it's meant more for live performance, but I'm wondering if it's been useful for anyone for tweaking parameters. Thanks guys,

The instant I saw this I knew it was a joke. I just wanted to ham it up and fake outrage, because you don't want to be that guy who's all like "THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A JOKE GUYS CHECK THE CALENDAR". I was pretty certain everyone else was hamming it up too (though Emperor actually got banned for it which is kind of funny but sad at the same time). But after going through this thread I'm not so sure anymore.

I just finished the game. It's 1:30 AM and I supposedly gotta get up in four hours so I'll write back when I get home after the weekend. There's a pretty large laundry list of issues I have with the story in this game but I'll go through a few highlights. -begin spoilers- I had a bunch of "general story pacing" issues with Disks 1 and 2, but overall they're not really big issues. I'm going to deal with elements of the story itself. First, I was extremely annoyed that everything in the game was revealed by Bartandalus. Everything - from the fal'Cie's purpose to the nature of the l'Cie to the reasons why the stormtroopers... I mean PSIComm could never hit Lightning or Snow or any other one of our heroes with their billions of bullets. Why does this annoy me? Because so much of the game is based on what he says. He's a villain. And villains lie in order to get people to do things. When you're reading a book, it's not really essential to know what the "truth" is, but I think for a story as long as this one, and especially where you have to get motivation to play as a consequence of the story (or, alternatively, as a motivator to get more story), it's important for the player to know what the "truth" is. It's simply not enough for the director of the game to presume that the player is invested enough in the characters to support their quest of "running away for a bit of a vacation", and then to presume that the player will believe the primary villain long enough to think that yes, in fact Orphan dies in order to destroy the world. I mean, in the end it turns out to be true (phew), but then there's like at least three or four Deus Ex Machina elements that happen at the very end of the game that really make me scratch my head. The whole "hey we turned into Cieth but hey-look-we-decided-not-to-be" was really really cheesy. Besides the ending, the other issues I had with the story generally amounted to the following: 1) The world wasn't developed enough. It's strange to say of a 50+ hour game, but I think the biggest problem I had with the entire game was that I really didn't give a damn about Cocoon and would have been pretty damn happy to pitch a tent, settle down, and start a farm on Gran Pulse. The reason is that Cocoon really isn't shown in a flattering light for most of the game. The citizens are sheep. They're all antagonistic toward our heroes. There's maybe six minor characters from Cocoon who are important enough for us to care about, but we really don't learn more about them other than their names. For a couple of foreigners who've barely lived in the society for two weeks (Vanille in particular), they're awfully attached to it - at least Fang had an attitude that I would have seen as more realistic - "I'll follow them because they can help me, not because I really care that much about the world". I suppose it might just be a personality thing but it could have come out better, especially if there were more scenes in the backstory part of the game (which, unfortunately consisted almost primarily of the 13 days leading up to the main events). 2) The "goal" isn't clear, from a global view. As I mentioned, the only antagonist (other than their supposedly-timed fates) is Bartandalus, and the entire story is delivered by the main villain. Maybe I missed a cutscene, or maybe it would be more interesting if I had unlocked all of the "legend" datalogs, but it would have been great to actually learn about the world through what could be considered a less subjective source. This is pretty critical because virtually the entire game is supposed to be based on preconceptions and biases of the population, and this gets turned on its head at the end (the reason why people turn into Cieth for example). 3) The pacing is off for almost the entire game. Too slow at the beginning, then it gets super-rushed, then it slows to a crawl as it opens up to the exploration-allowed part. Then the last ten hours or so are delivered in another huge rush of events. I think I had issues with how character interactions pretty much stopped after you got to Gran Pulse. There were two or three cutscenes, but they were pretty much extra fluff and didn't reveal (what I would have thought) to be important information about the character's motivations. Of particular importance, now that I've seen the end of the game, would have been Vanille and Fang's previous relationship before they were turned to crystal especially since it seems like they're pretty damn important in the grand thick of things. I think the "trial" of the character Fang at the end was interesting, but as I watched it I felt that I should have watched this cutscene 20 hours ago, and that this classic "test of the hero" should have been done earlier. I don't know if this is like some kind of RPG convention, but lately I've been finding that most RPGs tend to have a story structure in which you get a clear "calm before the storm" - that is, where you are very, very clear who the end boss is, where he's located, and how to kill him. Your characters are comfortable, they like each other, and they're ready to kill him. In the meantime, the game quietly also hands you a "go explore these extra bonus areas" card. I really didn't get this from FF XIII - because the main conflict (the fact that the characters are going to turn into Cieth) isn't resolved when you get down to Gran Pulse. In addition, though the characters were supposed to have faced their trial when they got their Eidolon, it was pretty clear that some of them had it easier than others - Lightning got a free card for example, Vanille's was virtually out of nowhere, whereas Sazh's was extremely intriguing. There's other stuff I'm sure but, well, it's late and I'm going to go to bed. I mean I enjoyed the game and I think the combat system is pretty awesome, but the story progression leaves a bit to be desired. I think that this extremely linear storyline actually works pretty poorly for a game like Final Fantasy. I dunno, I guess I finish the game and I have pretty mixed feelings. -end spoilers- okay done

The copyright lawyers got to you didn't they? Didn't they?

How do we know that the ReMixinator isn't just a bunch of songs that someone created ahead of time, and when we select those songs, it just plays back these songs? How do we REALLY KNOW it's generated in real time?

The A.S.S. hasn't come out with this yet - there's no megamix option on it (yet).

Guys, I have a problem with the Remixinator... whenever I select the same parameters it always gives me the same song. Can this be fixed?

I bet Darkesword bought shares in their company. He's gonna get rich off of this. Mark my words.

So if the Remixinator goes away tomorrow, we'll all know that it was due to diligent copyright upholders like you and me.

The part of the vocals on the female vocal solo-piano Schala remix are the same as .hack//ROOTS "God Diva". NOT ONLY DOES THIS THING MAKE REMIXERS OBSOLETE, IT ALSO ENGAGES IN MUSIC PIRACY THIS IS AN OUTRAGE WHAT DOES OCR HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS IMA GET THE RIAA ON YER ASSES

Since you bumped this old thread, it's probably a good time to remind everyone that the expansion pack, Dragon Age: Awakening was released a week or so ago. I don't know if I'll pick it up myself, but it's definitely something that would be of interest to fans of this game.

I started making music using Reason and it was really fun, and taught me a lot about concepts like signal routing, effects chains, and mixing. The interface for Reason is actually quite good. The synthesizers make sense, it's easy to see where your signal paths are, and you can make some really, really awesome effects that I've yet to replicate in any other program I've used (you can do crazy stuff like mapping LFOs into another synth's pitch and then mapping that back into the other synth's LFO rate and you end up with synths that basically interact with each other.) That all said, I moved on to using Logic Pro one day and I haven't really looked back. As DJP and others have said in this thread, the ability to use external plugins is extremely useful. I don't know if I would say 'essential' in quite the same way he did, but, depending on what kind of sound you want, you might simply be unable to recreate it in Reason (this goes especially for orchestral samples). Everyone else who's getting serious into music might be using Kontakt or East-West Symphony Orchestra or Omnisphere, but you can't because of your choice of program and sometimes it feels limiting. However, it's quite possible to create lots of OC ReMix quality work with Reason alone with no need for anything else. If you're more about making music with what you've got, rather than purchasing new toys, then Reason is a great way to make music for years. Its sound is good, the samples and presets for Reason are a really good base to build an array of interesting sounds from, and with Record, you're able to integrate external sounds as well without a problem. But if you've been using FLStudio for a while and enjoy it and don't see any reason to change (remember, Reason is an expensive program) then I don't see it being a good investment to get Reason. If all you want are different/better sounds you might be better off buying a 3rd party plugin.

I visualized you saying this like a Gangsta and I totally laughed.

I think also a lot of people also get into OCR with the belief "I'm going to get posted on OCR" without a thought on exactly how much work it takes to, well, get posted on OCR. I think it's pretty much agreed among us that if you make it onto OCR, you're a pretty good musician. And, if you don't realise that it takes a ton of hard work (I still believe it's years) and practice to become posted then you, well, end up working and getting frustrated in the short term. I've had more fun with music when I just stopped caring about standards and just created stuff.

I disagree that it's simply for personal bias. It is possible to put a bunch of people together in the same room, put a bunch of people together in a different room, and then ask them to play a game against each other to win. Unless you sample the populations from a pretty homogenous group, you're going to have some pretty vast differences within teams. - The people who want to win, and who try to organize their teammates so that they'll win - The people who are there just to enjoy the game - The people who try to dispense a strategy for others to follow - The people who don't want to be there because they don't like the idea of killing other humans in a game Among others. It's a continuous spectrum, but I bet that if you position these two teams against each other for an hour it'll be not that hard to decide which ones are "hardcore" and which ones are "casual".

Damn you've managed to totally put the onus on me to look up and explore these things on my own time. I was curious if the psychological aspects had to do with gaming, or had to do with spending money, specifically. Because there are a lot of elements that I would think are common to almost all modern games, like positive reinforcement, low barriers to entry, etc. My personal definition of "hardcore" vs. "casual" is an attitude toward the game rather than a time commitment. In my opinion, a "hardcore" person is willing to spend time practicing, studying and analyzing data, as well as going through numerous repetitions and experiments, to become "good" at some element of the game. A casual person doesn't care about those things. It's the same criteria I'd use to describe someone who plays soccer or does research or some other activity. Most people don't agree with my definition though.

At the same time, I've used a premade loop only once ever in my songs and I stayed away from presets until I started doing one-hour compos. I stayed away from MIDI rips. Why? Because people on this site said they were bad. I kind of wonder if that stole away a few years of fun especially since I heard of so many people here starting by doing MIDI rips, loop rips, and presets. I've listened to your early work (you posted them once in some thread). I thought they weren't bad from a compositional standpoint even if they weren't solid technical achievements. But I know what you mean. I did about two years of band in elementary school and that knowledge hasn't translated to any benefit in my remixing. I played baritone for two years and nowadays I have no idea how to create a bassline. The irony! But I do believe as well that sound design/production and composition are nearly orthogonal skillsets. One reason why people who get onto this site nowadays are so good - they're able to do both. Yes, how an individual approaches music is up to that individual. However, it doesn't mean that you can't detect and establish trends using publicly-available data. I mean, what's someone going to do with the information anyway? It's just curiosity. Also, I did state in my hypothesis (it would be wrong to call it a theory as it's untested) "by today's OCR standards", which I *believe* started in around 2003ish. I'll check when I start gathering data.

I still believe that this is true. Feel free to prove me wrong, but you'd have to do it not by finding one or two exceptions - you'd have to sample the population, take the average experience they have, and see what the distribution is like. Then you'd generate a random sample around the mean of 5 and do a t-test for comparison. Maybe I'll go through this thread and see what the result is, I haven't actually crunched the numbers myself.

Of course someone out there, somewhere, is going to be better off than you. It's kind of hard to compare yourself to Darkesword and bLiNd and so forth because they've been like, doing music for almost as long as you've been alive But, I still think that you're going to have an advantage because you started young. By the time you hit 30, you'll have spent half of your life doing "careful listening" to music, having experience with looking at project files, and having the flexibility of thinking about what music sounds like and what music is and what needs to be done for creating music in your mind. My argument is that starting when you're 14 and doing it until you're 20 is going to be a different beast than if you started at 24 and did it until you're 30. There's so much that your brain does to hardwire itself as you grow older and it's a mental challenge for someone who's had this mental wiring to rewire the brain to think differently. I also think that you're quite fortunate to be able to start at your age and learn from people like Darkesword and zircon and bLiNd. The community as a whole has matured significantly since it started up ten years ago. The barrier to entry is significantly lower now than it was back then, since software audio production programs are coming down so fast, price-wise. In addition, you've got so many people in this community who are able to help who simply didn't exist in the community eight or ten years ago. This actually goes as a general good thing for the community. People are better able to collaborate. We have broadband, we have screensharing, real-time voice communication, increased air travel opportunities, increased frequency of real-life meetups, and all of that. The community, even though it's grown larger, has grown closer because of the improvements in technology. Not long ago it was extremely rare to find out someone's real name. Now it's as easy as friending a single person from OCR on Facebook and then reverse-engineering that person's friend list. Since you ninja-edited: How long have you been making music for? Six years? Assuming that he started in 2004, then he has six years of experience. You don't tell me what you actually think, but I'm going to presume that you mean "the reason I think you believe in this whole theory". The real reason is that it's just an idea I had based on talking to a lot of people and asking them what their experience was before they got posted onto today's OC ReMix. And social studies do work and are able to give some sense of generalizability to people, given certain factors. There are always outliers but there are many trends, too.

What kind of cheap psychological tricks are unique to Farmville/Mafia Wars that are not unique to most other games like Bejeweled or Peggle? (or World of Warcraft, or Heroes of Newerth or Team Fortress 2 or Mass Effect)