XFactor

The official title is "Concert Arrangement Testing Grounds". It was originally two songs, Concert Arrangement and Testing Grounds, but I glued them both together because I didn't want to continue writing either. The ending is probably one of the worst I've made, but hey at least I 'finished', in contrast to my other experiments...

If you haven't started playing the song already, it sounds quite childish... and rightly so, because it was written back in '06 I think? I was around 12-13, can't really do the math right now.

It was my first "big song" ever, I began to write it ever since I figured out how to input chords into Noteworthy Composer.

I recently dug up the MIDI file and ran it through some VSTs on Cubase. Setting all the tempo changes took me about an hour, it was ridiculous (NWC could export tempo, but it wasn't recognized by Cubase).

Oh well, here it is, hope you enjoy this fun-filled MIDI adventure through my childhood!

     --XF--

Can someone who has Chrome try logging into their account or reply to my post using that browser? I seem to be experiencing a problem with doing both of those things. It just hangs (I haven't had the patience to see how long), and when I refresh the page, everything's fine.

Is it just me, or is this affecting other people too?

    --XF--

P.S. I posted this using FireFox...

What's a good acoustic guitar for a beginner? I'm looking for something cheap (yes, totally a beginner here), but something with a more "wholesome" sound - preferably a guitar that goes by "the guitar is as good as its player" kind of thing? (I often refer to the type of guitar... if it happens anywhere else I'm guessing I refer to the wood used )

I've heard some lighter sounding guitars before (shallow tone and bad "room" resonance) - I know they serve a purpose and that people buy them so stores stock it, which is why I'm looking for advice on how to avoid those... I have 0 experience with acoustic guitars (except listening to a lot of them), I'm very comfortable with the bass, so I'm wondering if there's a way to tell what my first guitar should be?

Again, I would probably think that the type of guitar doesn't matter for a beginner, but I would like to know what the most optimal one is, both in quality and price (which is asking a lot, I understand, so feel free to be subjective about this)!!

Thanks for your time guys!

      --XFactor--

P.S. I'm also thinking about an electric guitar, but I figured it'd be pretty useless to learn the electric without getting comfortable with an acoustic (chord fingerings and whatnot) first. Plus, don't electric guitars usually require a pedal or something to be performance/recording worthy?

Manchester United vs. Barcelona!

Anyone going to watch this or am I the sole footy fan at BandAMP?

    --XFactor--

This is the final version of Part I of III, Conquest. Vocals and percussion from external VSTs (I use a website for that), chromatic percussion, brass and strings were all VSTs that I could manipulate myself. Most of Conquest was just my memory of a commercial, film, or video game score (Supreme Commander in particular, the track "Risk and Relief", so it's really a mashup of media influences, haha! (... but thing is, I remember a tune the right way, so all my "remakes" usually end up being something totally different...) Either way, bottom line is that there might be a few recognizable themes to some, but all of it (EXCEPT FOR THE BRASS AT 7:00-7:25) is original.

Credit to Jeremy Soule, an amazing composer who created that 25-second brass riff.

http://jeremysoule.wordpress.com/about/ (my name's Tim Siow)

Part I [Conquest] is supposed to describe a medieval-fantasy kind of setting, when a squad of soldiers are going off into war. The variations signify their struggles and battles against different enemies, as well as their travelling too. I'll let your imagination do the rest of the describing.

Anyways, if you don't like cliffhangers/lackluster resolutions, you'll dislike this song a lot!  Just a warning!

       --XFactor--