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Category
Music Production
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Miscellaneous, Music Production
Weird: Create Your Own Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” In 10 Minutes?
Wow, it’s been forever since I’ve heard anything about Prodigy. I liked them in high school, and still find myself confusing them with The Prodigy from time to time. Well, YouTube poster Jim Pavloff has created an interesting 10-minute tutorial video recreating the track in Ableton using the original samples that Prodigy used to create the track.
Granted, I doubt you or I could ever do something like this, as you need a lot of technical know-how to do all the modifications that this guy does to the samples. Also, there is some fast-forwarding that occurs throughout the video, so it really would take longer than 10 minutes. It’s still cool to see such a widely known track recreated before your eyes on YouTube!
Are you a fan of the Prodigy? Are you surprised by the relative simplicity of this track?
[Thanks Mary!]
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Chip Music, Music Production
Bits And Blips From Neil Baldwin: A Music Tool To Rule Them All
We recently interviewed Neil Baldwin, the NES music guru and director at Eurocom, responsible for many of Eurocom games both musically and in pretty much every other development area. During that interview, we spoke about his future plans and what he wanted to do next, and 2 projects especially interested him, one being an NES music engine for the computer, and the other and perhaps the most interesting of the two, a native NES tracker, running on the original hardware!
He just released the music engine, named Nijuu. It’s sure to be a treat for all chip musicians out there, and all feedback would be appreciated as he is still actively working on it, fixing bugs and other issues. The native tracker is called NTRQ, and as mentioned, runs on NES hardware, much like LSDJ on the Game Boy. This allows you to type in notes and effects on the actual NES and create your own chiptunes authentically. The video showcases the interface and how it’s laid out, but no sound can be made yet, which explains the silent video. You can read more about both projects at Baldwin’s website Duty Cycle Generator.
What are your thoughts on these ambitious projects?
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Game Music, Music Production
Audition + Musicshake Holiday Remix Contest Announced!
A few months ago, we gave you our take on Redbana’s MMO rhythm game Audition. Hopefully some of you took interest and gave the game a try.
But whether you’re a huge fan of the game or not, if you have music remixing skills, you may want to check out this contest.
Basically, you take three Christmas/Holiday classics: Angels We Have Heard On High, Jingle Bells, and Deck the Halls. You mash ‘em up. You add whatever original instruments or vocals you want to add. You get an account on Musicshake and post the song there. If people like your song more than anyone else, you could get your song featured in Audition! You can also win an iPod Shuffle and a couple of other nifty treats.
You have until December 21st to enter your remix. So put your Santa hat on, bust out whatever music-mixing software you have, and get to work!
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Film, Game Music, Music Production
A Conversation With Timothy Wynn: Composer, Conductor, Commander, Conqueror, and Mars Separatist
One of the biggest surprises in the gaming universe this year came hammering along this summer in the form of THQ’s sandbox-styled actioner, Red Faction: Guerrilla. In fact, this weeks marks the release of the third downloadable content package some five months after its initial release. Not only is it widely regarded as one of the best games of this year, but here at OSV we’re quite confident it’s one of the strongest soundtracks as well.
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit down and have a lengthy conversation with Timothy Wynn, the game’s cinematics composer. As you may already know, I am quite the fan of this soundtrack and was quite curious to hear the genesis of this score and its process. Click the jump to find out the very interesting tidbits behind the genesis of the score, how Wynn conducted it himself, and how he lovingly punched my technical musical prowess right in the balls (yes, I deserved it, but he later agreed with me… sort of. You’ll just have to read on.) (more…)
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Game Music, Music Production
Fallen Earth Sound Team Interview: Icarus Studios
Recently we sat down with Mike Franke and Enrique Varela, the audio director and lead composer at Icarus Studios to discuss their recent work on the upcoming post-apocalyptic massively multiplayer online game, Fallen Earth. The game, developed by publisher of the same name, FALLEN EARTH, LLC, presented a unique challenge for the director and composer as they work to create aurally interesting voyages without overpowering the gameplay experience.
Click here to listen to an audio sample from the soundtrack; the piece is entitled “Day’s End.” And after the jump, read our full interview with the Icarus Studios team. You’ll also find another audio sample after the interview! (more…)
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Miscellaneous, Music Production
Special Interview With “Auto-Tune the News” Creators, The Gregory Brothers
The Gregory Brothers are some of YouTube’s newest celebrities. They started out humbly on the ‘net, doing “Debate in Song and Dance” videos for the 2008 presidential race. They’ve since expanded to general news (though mostly political news, still) with their “Auto-Tune the News” series, which is taking the ‘net by storm.
We know it’s not game or anime music. But if this isn’t “nerd” music, we don’t know what is.
In our interview with them, we ask about their work as a “family” band, the Angry Gorilla character, their take on politics, their music, and a whole lot of random, hilarious stuff. These guys (plus one girl) are some of the most interesting people we’ve ever interviewed, and they’re definitely what we would consider a “rising star” in the world of internet celebrities. Fortunately for them, they’re making their way through actual talent, rather than silly memes and viral trends.
After the jump, our exclusive interview with The Gregory Brothers (and lots and lots of embedded YouTube).
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Game Music, Music Production
Exclusive Interview With Ryo Kunihiko, Regarding NCsoft’s “Aion”
Ryo Kunihiko, aka Yang Bang Ean, is the composer for NCsoft’s newest MMORPG, Aion: The Tower of Eternity. The game is currently running in Korea and China, and will soon be making its debut to North American markets (it’s currently in closed beta for us English-speaking gamers).
This score marks Kunihiko’s first major game soundtrack. For the most part, he has operated as a solo artist, and as a composer for film and anime. Being a Korean who grew up in Japan, he has the advantage of being able to cater to both nations’ markets.
After the jump, check out our exclusive interview with this unique and prolific composer. To our knowledge, this is Mr. Kunihiko’s first English-language interview on the ‘net. (more…)
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Film, Game Music, Music Production
A “Chance” Encounter: Interview With Lord of the Rings Online’s Chance Thomas
Today, friends and family of all ages, gather round and join us for an interview with one of America’s greats in VGM history.
We were able to speak with Chance Thomas, a composer who has worked in TV, film, games, and other media. His first “big break” into VGM was Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire. Since then, in the last decade, he has contributed to well over a dozen titles, including (most recently) Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and the Mines of Moria expansion. He is also partially responsible for the creation of the Grammy award for original videogame scores.
After the jump, the full interview with Chance Thomas. (more…)
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Music Production, Software
Review: Spectrasonics Omnisphere
[click]
“Oooh!”[click]
“Woah…”[click]
“Wow, that’s weird!”[click]
“Oh, I’m so going to use this later.”[click]
…Take this type of scene of auditioning patches, and then stretch it out over several days, and you’ll have some idea of what our review time with Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere was like. Of course, this began after I managed to cram all 42+ GB of sample data onto the test workstation. We won’t talk about how long that took.
This new virtual instrument is technically the follow-up and replacement to Atmosphere, Spectrasonics’ previous mega-sound bank, but as far as features and size goes, there is no comparison. Sure, their new flagship synth is massive, but it’s also packing crazy power for synthesis and effects processing.
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Music Production, Software
Cakewalk’s Sonar 8 updates look sexy, but…
I was a loyal Cakewalk customer all the way from when the software came on floppy disks all the way up to Sonar 4 Producer. It was then that I ditched the software and its yearly updates due to the competition offering more of what I wanted in a sequencer. Oh, and some crappy customer service incidents. Software updates since then have barely tempted me to come crawling back, but the latest, Sonar 8, looks to have some nice new features.
Create Digital Music has the details on Sonar 8, including many of the new additions like easier recording, improved performance, and some new plugins. I don’t make beat-based music, but the new Beatscaper looks like fun. My beloved Samplitude has an excellent transient shaper plug, and now Sonar is keeping up with the neighbors with their addition, Transient Shaper. The new TL-64 Tube Leveler also seems like a nice addition.
For sample junkies, Dimension Pro comes free with the upgrade, weighing in at 8GB. It includes Garritan Pocket Orchestra. I’m probably most interested in TruePianos Amber Module a selection from the half-modeled half-sampled TruePianos VSTi plug. Guitar Rig 3 LE also comes free for those that dig digital guitar effects.
All this stuff is great, Cakewalk. But in all of that, nothing listed here is valuable than mouse wheel left-to-right scrolling or one button to bounce all VSTs automatically to new tracks, seperated by midi channel. I’d rather have workflow improvements than all of these plugins. Seriously, bring me one-touch automatic bouncing of all active VSTi to new tracks, and I’m back.
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Music Production
Technique rant: Keyboarding and grace notes
You know what a grace note is right? It’s that note before the note; an ornament that is short and leads into the next note, usually. For keyboardists, they’re that little quick note we add before a pickup or start of a phrase to show that we’re badasses. While originally intended to be an ornament for the phrase, note or figure, grace notes have turned into a bad habit for some keyboardists, and in invitation for craptastic noise for others.
I’m ranting because I’ve heard too many crap grace notes from piano players and keyboardists this month. Some budding keyboardists are doing it backwards. They’re accenting the grace note, leaving the written note hanging! In a sense, the original note is the grace note. Even worse, some are pedalling the grace notes on piano, holding them through to the written note. The killer for me is when the grace note is so long that the player actually alters the musical phrase. I won’t say any names, but I’ve heard some pretty ungraceful grace notes lately, some so bad that I want to stick a pencil in my ear.
And, while I’m still hot, I want to call out those people that sequence a piano or keyboard part and then quantize the grace notes. Wake up! This is even happening in commercial music. I recently pulled out a Boyz II Men cover album (don’t laugh, it has a great acoustic-ish cover of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature”). One track on the album reeks of quantized grace notes. What gives, people?
Original Sound Version
Nerdy music. Covering videogame music, chiptunes, anime, demoscene, doujin music, production, remixing, software, gear and more.Got tips? tips@originalsoundversion.com
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