Arcana

Can you describe what is on the page? I am curious about the deal but don't want to like them without knowing what the group buy deal is.

Go download csound and go pew-pew a bit! Keep in mind that C and C++ are quite different from PHP, they're tougher because you have to manage more stuff that PHP can largely ignore.

I like how that guy says, "We had all of these ideas first" and then goes on to complain that other MMORPGs took them and are implementing them.

So there may be an opportunity for me to do a mini-live show. There's a Christmas party at my work and they want to showcase some talent. I mentioned that I do music but that I haven't done anything live before but I am guessing that I might not be off the hook and may be asked to perform for five to ten minutes. What do you people who don't actually know how to play instruments do for live shows? What do you do to engage an audience and how can you set up everything? What kind of "workflow" do you use for a live set? I don't play any instruments and I don't have a lot of money to spend toward this. I currently use Logic Studio (which includes Mainstage, something that is supposedly meant for shows) and I have at my disposal an Alesis Micron and a 61-key MIDI controller with a few knobs, faders, and buttons. Oh, I also have an iPad and the Korg DS-10 for Nintendo DS. What kind of preparation can you recommend as well? Thanks for the advice, sorry for the vague nature of the question.

A bit on this topic, not enough to warrant a new thread. There's a huge discount on EWQLSO Gold, Platinum, and other stuff today and tomorrow only. Platinum Plus is down to $395 from $995, Platinum is down to $345 from $895, Gold is $195 down from $495. It's a pretty strong deal, I wish I had the $400 lying around for it.

I don't know why I was mentioned as someone who was mentioned as wanting to get on but can't. To my knowledge I've never had a connection issue with ETG. Anyway I'm not experienced enough with IRC servers to be picky about how well they work. When the decision is made, just make it loud and clear where you do end up moving to. A "trial period" would be appreciated.

Hey Jordan, nice to see you around. Too bad we missed you when we went to Las Vegas! But good to see that things are going well and that you've got some important projects going on.

This is a pop culture phrase? I've never heard anyone write or say this before today.

I've heard more than a few people say that Sony's Move is positioning itself to steal away the motion control market from Nintendo because it basically does what Nintendo did, but better. Might not be relevant anymore since the Wii's already made its money and has the mindshare, but there's an opportunity for Nintendo here to slide into decline if they're not careful.

A bit of a (late) reminder, but the entire album, which features this track among others, has been released and you can download it! Hurry! A Final Fantasy X Impossible Remix Album Thanks to Rozovian and our other artists who contributed to the album and congrats again for making a pretty upbeat and jazzy remix. I thought that this was a very creative song, done in only a few days too

Welcome to 2000!

It's not like these guys are extremely famous, hitting Top 100 charts, and stuff. They shot their own music video with a budget of 0 dollars. They're just another garage band. They sound pretty bad and everything but at least they're not making millions of dollars being terrible.

Some srs discussion on how well Kinect works: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2010/11/buy-a-house-clean-your-floor-move-your-butt-ars-reviews-kinect.ars Kind of annoyed that Ben spent the first 3 pages explaining why you still need the controller to navigate the XBox Dashboard but whateves. Kinect has the potential to be cool. Please, Microsoft. Use the heads in that corporation and some of that money in the bank and make it such that Kinect will be cool. Doing the whole Minority Report style navigation of the UI would be pretty swell, for starters.

I'm not a sound design expert, but I have the perspective of a beginner so that might help. A lot of synthesis simply mirrors what you might do with real instruments. A rock band has a lead guitar, rhythm guitars, and a bass guitar (and drums). You can pretty much mirror that setup for a synthesis setup: make a high-pitched lead, with fast amp attack and a fast release for your lead sound, put in some mid-ranged synths, detuned a bit for body for harmony, and put a low bass with fast attack and release to fill out the low end. In addition I often have extra synths for "accents" and "backing". Arppegiated synths for example make a really good background harmony that might come through as a lead as well for variety. Generally for a synth-based song I use the following rough guidelines: - Leads are high-pitched, have fast amp attacks and releases, and an LFO doing something (doesn't really matter though tremolo/vibrato/filter modulation are common). Depending on the song I might leave them a little less wet on reverb than other synths so they stand up front. I tend to like using squares and saws for my leads but that's personal preference. - Arpeggiated synths and anything that plays a repeated sequence is usually made up of fast attack/fast release, single waveform (squares and triangles work well). I try not to add too many harmonics to these. - Pads usually have a long release and maybe a long attack, depending on how long your pad is around for. LFO routing is pretty important. Use multiple oscillators and detune them for that "wide chorus" effect. Sweep your pads for extra coolness. Drown them in reverb for that huge feel. - Harmonies really depend on your song, I might construct them like leads or more like pads. - Bass that plays a groove should be short attack/short release. Triangle and square waves work well for groove bass. I usually set 12dB filter midway to filter out the high ends. Keep the bass pretty dry and close to centre. - I also like to put in some low bass sometimes, or some crunchy long bass. Sine waves as a starting point work well. Modulate the filter at a really high rate for some blasting harmonics. - Drums are, well, drums. You can often synthesize the drum parts yourself too for variety. Kicks are generally sine waves, snares/hi-hats are made mostly of noise. As you can tell the amp envelope is pretty important when shaping sounds, probably more so than the effects/filters that you apply. But, a lot of the time synths can simply be dropped into place of a real instrument as long as it's playing a similar part at a similar pitch. And also, FX are overrated. Well, not really, but you often don't need to throw on tons of effects to make something sound good. Many synths benefit from some reverb. Compress and EQ according to your mixing preferences. Delay can be fun. But it's easy to overdo it and not everything needs these effects. There's a lot of other synth types out there that you mentioned. They all kind of have their "sound" but even within subtractive synthesizers there's a lot of sound variety. To learn what TYPE of synth to use where you really have to listen carefully to a synth and learn it. I find that there's really no shame in making seven instances of the same synth, writing different patches, and using them for every part of your song. Don't be afraid that everything sounds the same or that you're cheating - you aren't. In general I find that most synths can be used for, pretty much every part of a song. Subtractive, granular, and wavetables can be used for everything. Physical modeling synths are more for emulating real instruments; the one I have is good at bells, mallets, and wind instruments. FM is great for bells and bass and gives a little more of a digital metallic sound compared to subtractive synthesis. Again, I'm not an expert (I don't even really consider myself any good) so take the advice at face-value. I am also not sure if I told you anything that you haven't already figured out yourself either. But maybe something in here helps a bit?

I saw this and it looked cool. Felt like an easy (and lazy) way for me to put down ideas by singing them, but yet at the same time making it sound cool. Anyone play with this?

What do you mean when you say philosophy? Like sound design? When to use what kind of sound, where, and stuff? You seem to be asking for more than "How do I make patches" but I'm not quite clear yet. Do you know what all of the typical synth parameters are already, like filters, routing, LFOs, oscillators, and how to get a good sound out of a typical subtractive synth?

Looks like a contributed album from many artists. For example, there's one guy who did a single: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-rent-is-too-damn-high/id399538034

Maybe it's because it's a reference to his album? (Is his album even music?)

Well if his comments to the press are any indication, I think he has the feeling that Japanese game makers are falling way behind and he really, really wanted to change things up and for whatever reason felt he couldn't do it in Capcom. Entrenched thinking, slow corporate culture, old ways, whatever. He probably felt it was more honourable to leave and make what he wanted to make rather than to try to turn a huge ship like Capcom around.

Yeah this guy's going to go out and start his own company for sure.

THinking about this... the only issue is that I don't know where I am, I rarely stay at home for Christmas now and go visit my parents/family/girlfriend's family. Though I suppose that the gifts should arrive before the 25th and all that in the mail anyway right...?

One of the best things is not to judge heavily what you make. It's really hard to do but that's why compos actually help. They force you to finish something, rather than keep thinking about how much it's not good and how you don't think you can make it better. I find that most of the frustration in making music doesn't come from the fact that you don't know it sucks... most of it comes because I don't know how to make the crappy parts not suck

This is light years ahead of your KH remix, I love the laid back sound and the quality of the vocals and the lyrics. They're catchy and yet this song is so sad. I've had the early draft version you sent me on my playlist for a while. I'm glad I'll get to replace it with one that has OC ReMix officially grafted onto it.

Note: I am not even close to as experienced with music as the others replying in this thread, but I have the Play! free edition and it loads up in Logic Studio like any AU might. You can set up the channel strip to send the MIDI channels you want to the Play engine and trigger whatever instruments are on those respective channels. It's all MIDI. I don't have Logic open atm so I can't step through the instructions but I can guide you through it if you need more help. As for the Play Engine itself, I find that it's "okay". I've had a couple projects though get totally corrupted when using it though, but they've upgraded the Play engine quite a bit. Word on the street is that they actually try to optimize for Mac OS more than Windows, but I don't know if that's true. So yes it works, but as with anything you do keep backups handy (since you're on a Mac you should have Time Machine backing up your computer every few hours).

Damn you hardcore min-maxers. Any casual noobs left playing this game? I'm like the person who goes off and does heroic dungeons and levels alts and maybe a PUG raid in my T9 gear now. My server couldn't be bothered to invite undergeared anyone to ICC and my guild doesn't go anymore, they've all got bored of it. Heh I used to be so hardcore. I haven't reforged anything on my gear yet.