Forum Posts

• June 11, 2009 7:32 PM PDT

  in the topic Night Shot in the forum General Forum

  Please refer to the Group Philosophy thread, and refrain from these advertisements. The idea here is not to market but to help other composers, and even directors and other parts of the film industry to connect and clarify questions, etc.

  
  

  Please understand that further advertising of this sort may result in either not being allowed to post threads, or being kicked from the group.

  
  

  Thank you for your understanding,

  
  

  Mike

• March 26, 2009 9:17 AM PDT

  in the topic DISTRIBUTOR NEEDS FILMS in the forum General Forum

  [blockquote] said:

  
  

  Cool topic. I'm by no means an expert either but here is my 2 bits worth

  
  

  1. It would seem to me, depending on the film there is a real mix of both live elements and computer based music in film. Of course if you have a film set in the 'good ol days' or medieval times vs modern or futuristic films, it's going to affect what’s asked for.

  
  

  2. I primarily use FL Studio rewired to Pro tools as an instrument track. I use FL for any 'electronic' or virtual instruments and Pro tools for tracking anything I play live. I'm more of a musician with recording gear, than a trained composer, so every thing I do is played, whether its midi based or live. I seldom use anything featuring notation or programming notes.

  
  

  3. I definitely am not a traditional ‘composer’, as my primary taste for music is rock, metal, and blues. That being said I try to incorporate more of a composition style of writing/recording in my creation process. When I write a rock song for example I'm doing my best to make it as epic and dramatic as possible. Also I tend to shy away from modern song structures like the verse chorus verse type thing. I guess you could call a lot of my music modern day rhapsodies. Part of this is also due to the fact that I'm also gearing a lot of my music towards other mediums like games and web sites.

  
  

   

  
  

  [/blockquote]

  
  

  Glad to get your response on this! Always good to get feedback and information from all levels in the industry. Seems to me that there's something to learn from everyone. Just because people like you and I might be a little inexperienced, doesn't mean we haven't found a process that others can still learn from!

  
  

  I do actually still work on music in FL Studio. Most of my orchestral work is done in Finale, but my electronic ambient/downtempo music is done in FL. I love that program for that. Has some great synths, and the sample library and the options that go with it are pretty good.

  
  

  Thanks for jumping in on the topic..hope to get more of this going as time goes on!

  
  

  Mike

• March 14, 2009 7:00 PM PDT

  in the topic Finale/FL Studio vs. MOTU Digital Performer in the forum Composers

  I've been dabbling in writing music myself for some time (since 2000), but I haven't really ventured into the realm of film scores until the last couple of years. So, for that I'd have to say I'm a bit of a beginner. :-)

  I've never had formal training in composition, just a bit of music theory back in middle school, and I've performed in music in some fashion or another since I was old enough to make my voice heard. So, while I either don't know, or don't remember, a lot of the technical jargon that goes with it, I do know some and have experience putting notes together. Honestly, it's amazing what you can learn from simply listening to a few successful composers.

  To move on to the topic, please bear with me as I'm sure my answers will sound a bit... amateur.

  1. In my limited experience, it seems a number of directors, especially newer ones with low(er) budgets are more willing to receive computer-produced music rather than a full live score. Of course, the downside to that is that while it eases the testy budgets of the director, it puts quite a bit more financial strain on the composer, due to pressure to input higher-quality productions. Which leads to my second question...

  2. So far, my experience is also limited in this department. My most-used programs (since I submit my work electronically) are FL Studio and Finale (2008). For the project I'm working on right now, I've been writing the music in Finale, then exporting it to .wav and importing it to FL Studio to make any final adjustments and export to Mp3. The nice thing about FL Studio is that you have a decent amount of flexibility with its video player in timing the sections of the piece to the cues. Plus, if I want to enhance various sounds (such as drums/perc and others) to bring them out better than Finale can, it works well with that.

  So far, Finale has been great for writing music. My only gripe is that the Mac version  has a bug in it that won't allow you to change the reverb settings. But I do have to say that the Human Playback function is really nice. I use to write my orchestral pieces using FL Studio, but the process is extremely tedious, since you have to manually adjust the tones and volumes and tempos to make it sound how you want.

  3. As for favorite styles, can't really say too well at this point. I do tend to write with baroque influence, especially with brass sections of pieces. Hey, I played trumpet for 11 years, what can I say? :-)

  I also tend to take influence from Tchaikovsky, Copeland, Sibelius, and maybe a little John Williams (kind of hard not to, his music's everywhere http://networking.studentfilmmakers.com/file/smile/wink.gif" mce_src="http://networking.studentfilmmakers.com/file/smile/wink.gif" alt="" phpfox="image-protect"> ). I also really admire Jeremy Soule's work (game sound track composer for those who don't know), so I take a few cues from him as well.

• January 14, 2009 1:25 PM PST

  in the topic Finale/FL Studio vs. MOTU Digital Performer in the forum Composers

  Ok, I have Finale 2008. I've been writing with it for a few months, and it seems pretty decent. I like the Garritan sounds that it comes with, and it does a decent job of emulating styles with the human playback. My question is: how much better, and why, is DP than Finale?
  
  I've been considering making a move to DP for a while, but it's so expensive and I'm not sure if it's really worth the change for that price or not.
  
  For anyone that's familiar with FL Studio (which is also a great program), I'm really looking for something that combines that with Finale. I see that DP has sample libraries similar to Finale's Garritan, and it has some synthesizer plugins as well. Is the score-writing better than Finale? The info on the website (and just about everywhere else that I've seen) is sketchy at best at showing pictures and discussing the process of writing score/manuscript and printing, etc.
  
  Anyway, that's a lot to read I guess, but if anyone that knows can clarify this for me or give me some great insight, that'd be awesome!
  
  Mike