KaelitioN

Ahem. OK stop this before someone gives links to Culture Club , Boy George or gets rickrolled

I love the Wiki

That's very conspicuous (and slightly ironic)

Well I'm bringing this back to the front since it's over a month old , but in case the OP still hasn't found a solution, if he has a relatively new MacIntel , he could use either Boot Camp or Parallels to install XP onto a seperate partition or as a virtual machine, then copy his data files over , and install the game on XP as if it was native. It's an alternate suggestion to finding an actual emulator. Hope it might help.

Well you seem to have eased up on the compression a bit , although there are places that still sound somewhat squashed. If you want to place a compressor on the master bus/out , please keep your ratios moderate. So far I like where this is going , although you still have some work to do in getting coherent chord progressions to work with your melodies and having it all make sense musically. If you can get acquainted with some theory, it would help, although it probably isn't a necessity. I don't know what your musical background is. It always helps to listen to music of a similar genre that you enjoy and learn the techniques involved in making it for a good reference. This doesn't mean copying anything , but may give you some ideas as to how to incorporate some styles into your work. Once you know which chords work well together with your melodic lines (or vice-versa), you will have a better understanding of how to build solid movement in a track that makes sense to the ear and sounds less like semi-random passages. Something as simple as listening to those "epic"-sounding film trailers can provide alot of insight into making a piece that flows, builds-up , climaxes , and gives feeling. I personally feel that very good music should do at least one of two things (or both). It can tell a story without words , just by using our emotional responses to sound, and it can make you feel something real , without any actual real-life events (the music itself can create emotional and physiological effects. Feeling sad, angry , violent, afraid, etc.) Good film soundtracks do exactly this. They accentuate our emotions in certain parts of the movie by using the same responses we have to music in sync with the parts of the movie that require those feelings. That's the essence of music really. Conveying feelings, emotions, ideas, and moods through the medium of sound. Understanding which sequences of notes/chords/progressions/melodies/etc create the responses you desire for your audience, is the key to writing great music that your listeners will really feel. There's alot to learn and it takes time. Music has been a part of my life since I was 12 , and I am now 26 , and I'm still always learning. I think we all are regardless of our level of experience.

1.Analysis/review/interpretation of snippets of Billy Joel material. 2.Conclusion: Billy Joel is a self-contradicting, selfish, <insert random insult>, dick. [/rage and frustration] edit:jacked by Jovian. 2 quick 4 me ya know

Now , how does this make you feel?

Liontamer , if you were the one who changed my name when I asked in a message to admin@ocr a few days ago, thanks. All I knew was that I asked , went to the bathroom , came back , and had a new name. My jaw dropped. Very impressive (whoever it was if it wasn't you). edit: you know my reasons.

If you're making this into an orchestral arrangement score , then I think you might want to lower your compression/limiter settings a bit since classical arrangements normally go easy on compression to conserve the natural dynamic response of acoustic instruments. Looking at the audio almost the entire track appears to be brick-walled a little below 0db. The short staccato strings sound mechanical at some points so although I don't know which library you used I think you should vary your velocity levels see if that helps. I have an idea where you're trying to go with this and so far things are going well. I hear too many string parts however . There's more to an orchestra than string sections. The percussion adds interest but sometimes gets drowned by the various strings ( this ties in with the over-compression I mentioned earlier). That's all I can say for now at least for my personal opinion. Would be great to hear a revised version with more headroom and some more varied instrumentation. Sounds interesting so far.

http://www.humanoidsounds.co.uk/ I've listened to the demo sounds of Scanned Synth 2 , and it sounds cool , and I might want to buy it , but since they ask for "whatever you think it's worth" , I have no idea how much to give to the guy for it since I'm used to either very expensive synths , or delicious-sounding freeware. Have a listen and give me some feedback on how much this would be worth for you guys.

I undertsand the convenience of physical modeling compared to huge sample sets , but something sounds fake when I listen to the demo songs compared to Ivory

Keep in mind that when people play your song , they will probably have their own EQ/Bass boost/ surround set up , so if you do it for them when you mix , and they do it again for themselves , the results might not be too pretty

i would be seriously interested in this , since most of the mixes I pull end up being over-compressed or too flat and I would like to see how other approaches might work. I'll PM you

It's going to depend on whether you'll be recording live instruments or using softsynths or a combination of both , and what you're budget is. Everyone is different and you need to do alot of research for yourself first , but it's always a good idea to start with an audio interface that can playback and record 24bit-96000hz with good ASIO driver support , then a USB/MIDI keyboard to control softsynths , plus a DAW to record to and play the softsynths from ( the most affordable and easy to use DAWs right now are FL Studio and Reaper I think). Try them out to find one you're most comfortable with. I play piano and guitar as well so for software I can't live without Synthogy's Ivory and Native Instrument's Guitar Rig. These are awesome programs and aren't too expensive , and if you want realistic drums you can't go wrong with BFD or EZDrummer (these might break your budget though , depending on what you're budget actually is). If you want everything free , a good piano would be 4Front Piano VST , and there's some interesting freeware amp\cabinet models around the net. check here http://www.kvraudio.com/ you can search for any free VST that exists (almost) the rest is google and playing around with what you can find , and read the other threads here at OCR , they are for your convenience Good luck!

Software like Melodyne and Cubase 5 can extract pitch info and note on/off from monophonic audio clips (like .wav) , convert to standard MIDI , and dump it onto a MIDI track. I've seen the Cubase 5 video demos do this , and I think Melodyne can even work with polyphonic audio (I've never tried this though so I'm not sure how the results will be).