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At 34 minutes ago, TjA wrote: I'll save you any shit. Free music, exclusive rights and you can even sell the soundtrack if you wanted with no payment needed.

Y'know a really good way to screw up prospects for both you and everyone else making any money in the musical field? Short changing yourself (and other composers in the process) like this. When someone is graciously offering a percentage of profits AND allowing more than one person to help him out, this only serves to hurt everybody involved; it's not realistic.

Stop that. It's hurts composers.

At 1 hour ago, benmitchell0036 wrote: I really want to hear from other Christians...

... then why are you posting in Newgrounds? Seriously, that's like walking into a Confederate camp and asking where the nearest Union recruitment tent would be.

While I'm sure there are some Christians around, you're more than likely just going to get assaulted for bothering to post about religion, if you post here. If you want a Christian response, go to a Christian forum and you'd be better off.

At 1 hour ago, silkng wrote:
I'd also want exclusive rights to the music- there's a chance the game could do well & if so I don't want any BS "omg you stole music off xxx!" claims. We could drop said rights if the game failed dismally.

Hmm, well I COULD write a soundtrack that you own exclusive rights to, but then I'd have to charge you considerably extra (and likely upfront), as that sort of deal costs the composer money in the long run due to opportunity costs. I wouldn't recommend that route for anybody, though, unless you wanted to sell the soundtrack on your own. You might want to consider inclusive rights to the music, meaning that the composer can use the music for whatever s/he pleases while you have the right to use it in your game.

Alternatively, you could organize it so that the composer doesn't publically release the music for X months, or agrees not to release the music for free. That could fix your concerns with music accreditation.

I'll help you out with music if you need SFX or more soundtrack, especially if you're paying a percentage of the profits. Just take a look at my work, if you're interested.

At 10 minutes ago, Rapacity wrote:
Well Christianity really only implies that you believe that Jesus was the Son of God; God humanized, so to speak. Some branches of Christianity put a lot of emphasis on Christ needing people to pray to Him on a Sunday, indeed, Catholics are supposed to confess and take the body of Jesus and the blood of Jesus once a week.

Yeah, they're supposed to (Confess once a month, Eucharist on Sunday). Doesn't mean that they do. Also, I don't know if you know this, but churches have something between 4-6 masses every Sunday (as well as 3-4 on Saturday, which one can attend as an alternative). Doing the math, a church can often handle thousands of Catholics a week per church. I believe the Churches that are already established are more that capable of handling the country's Catholics.

If we assume that most Americans are Christians, it's safe to say that maybe a third are Catholics of some kind, which would mean that the Churches wouldn't hold even that number of practicing Christians.

I would make fun of you and point out that the list already separates Christians and Catholics, but your estimation was accurate enough for me to actually respect that answer. Nice work.

Maybe, but Christians state that only those who believe in their leader are accepted into heaven, whereas others are tortured in Hell. If you're a Christian policy maker, your belief in eternal torment would probably shape your policy, thus making you as non-secular as possible.

Um, no it doesn't. I don't know where you're making this leap in logic. Wait, yes I do.

If you're a Christian policy maker, your belief in eternal torment would PROBABLY shape your policy...

Alright, let me correct this - no, someone's belief that another person could be going to hell does not affect their policy making because they also understand that it's a God-given right for these people to make this decision. Believe it or not, Christians that try to coerce others into their beliefs are not very good Christians, because of this.

Of course, some Christians don't do this, but a large amount of Christians do proselytize because of being taught about the Second Coming, the idea that politics should reflect "Christian values", their use of missionaries, etc, all show that whilst secularism and Christianity may not contradict each other, they often do in one way or another.

Well, yeah, I mean Rick Perry and Santorum should be enough to evidence that. That's not 'most Christians', that's 'some Christians'. Most Christians are actually not very vocal about their beliefs and have a 'live and let live' policy, as shown by the fact that the Gallup polls show nearly 80% of the country is Christian and yet the anti-secular subgroup is far smaller than this. Rather than claiming that a statistic is simply wrong because it doesn't fit your worldview, perhaps you should adjust your views on life based on what the statistics claim? Your claims make no sense in the context of what most statistics have verified for years, so there's a very good chance that you're simply wrong.

At 1 hour ago, Rapacity wrote:

At 10 hours ago, Gario wrote: http://www.gallup.com/poll/151760/Christianity-Remains-Domin ant-Religion-United-States.aspx

There's the numbers. Most of the country is, indeed, Christian. Funny that people forget that, from time to time.

If that was true then there wouldn't be enough Churches to hold all the deeply religious Christians in America.

Conclusion: the people on their house phones want their family to hear them and think of them as Christians, but in reality most are secularists who would vote against prayers in schools, etc.

Is it that people that don't fit your preconceived notions of Christianity aren't really Christians, then? I sense this going into 'No True Scotsman' territory, if that's what you think - believe it or not, people can be Christian and not fit into your mold as to what a Christian is. Also, Christianity and Secularism are not mutually exclusive beliefs, as one is a religion and the other is a philosophy (seeing that America is founded on Secularism, I would even hope that most Christians are Secularists). You can be both, if you so chose.

Wow, there's poker involved? Sounds like fun, you should've gone.

Huh, I actually think that's pretty catchy. Even if I don't agree with them at all, I think they're pretty good musicians... That's just the musician in me talking, I guess.

At 4 hours ago, StationToStation wrote: I have never met a Roman Catholic who believes the Pope is infallible (if you ask me, these people are therefore NOT Roman Catholics) or who can tell me what the different sacraments that they perform are about.

But the Pope isn't infallible, save for the case of a dogmatic proclamation on faith directly influenced by the Holy Spirit; it even says that he isn't in the Catholic Catechism. It's kind of hard to postulate that believers of this fact aren't Catholic when this fact is in fact a part of Catholic teaching.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/151760/Christianity-Remains-Domin ant-Religion-United-States.aspx

There's the numbers. Most of the country is, indeed, Christian. Funny that people forget that, from time to time.

Hmm... Well, to get back on topic, is there any agreement as to what a Gospel track should be submit as? Newgrounds doesn't exactly have too many options that are precise enough for us to be perfectly accurate, so y'all need to fudge it a little bit.

At 1 hour ago, Camarohusky wrote: Have you heard the Santorum song? Wow, his supporters are some very depressed people...

I tried to look it up, but there's dozens of them to chose from. Any one in particular that you're thinking about?

At 2 hours ago, dlxrevolution wrote:

At 3 hours ago, skyood wrote:

Black Gospel is nothing like blues, but white Gospel is sometimes like country.

lol @ differentiating gospel by race/ethnicity. Gospel written/performed by white people is still gospel. "White gospel" that sounds like country is country. "White gospel" that doesn't sound like "black gospel" or country is probably pop with Christian lyrics. At any rate, I'd be interested to hear what you'd consider "white gospel."

Well to be fair, "White" gospel is quite soft, usually involves a choir and piano/organ. While "Black" gospel has more of a funkiness to it.

As far as I've heard, but not 100% sure...

Hmm... I would actually say that's the difference between 'Baptist' and 'Protestant' Gospel music - there is a significant difference between the two. Because one group has a considerably more African American base than the other, it could easily be seen as 'Black' vs 'White' music.

At 13 hours ago, EKublai wrote: Sorry about that, i posted the same video twice.

Obama addressing crowd

That's a private video - I can't watch it...

The other video posted by Hatter, though, is Obama fighting for colored people's rights. I don't see much wrong with that, when it was an issue relevant to the time.

What...?

I don't see any videos other than someone ranting about a video. I'm afraid no one can form any sort of opinion on something that there's no video for. Unless you wanted people to comment on someone ranting about how radical Obama is, in which case I honestly don't know what the hell this guy is talking about. Obama, as of yet, has acted pretty damn centric on most issues that I've seen.

At 14 hours ago, dlxrevolution wrote:

At 58 minutes ago, Gario wrote: Gospel? You mean there's no category for simply 'Awesome'?

I would either place it under 'Southern Flavor - Blues', 'Easy Listening - Jazz' or 'Other - Miscellaneous', pending on what type of vibe you get from it (very likely Southern Flavor - Blues, though).

I'm talking about music like this for instance...

Yeah, I'd count that as Southern Flavor - Blues, myself or maybe even Southern Flavor - Country. I don't think the precise genre is on here, so you'll have to fudge it a little.

Mmm, yeah, be careful with learning music online - you never know when you come across little gems like this guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK_j2LE07G0

If you really want to push the self teaching method I highly recommend Bartok's 'Microcosmos', which goes through the very basics through advanced music in a series of gradually more difficult pieces (some of them are considered masterpieces in their own right, no less). Give it a look - just be aware that the music is a little more avante guard, so you may or may not like it.

Eh, it's Bartok - he made good music. Otherwise, a teacher wouldn't be a bad idea, at all - that would certainly hep move you forward, too.

Gospel? You mean there's no category for simply 'Awesome'?

I would either place it under 'Southern Flavor - Blues', 'Easy Listening - Jazz' or 'Other - Miscellaneous', pending on what type of vibe you get from it (very likely Southern Flavor - Blues, though).

At 31 minutes ago, onescarydude wrote:

-----------------
How to tell if someone you know self-injures.
Although there are sometimes really obvious signs of self-injury, often times the only sign is depression which does always mean self-injury. *

Wow OP. Just wow. Thanks for trying to raise awareness, but maybe you'd have more luck gaining people's respect if you didn't talk absolute BS? Seriously, as I was reading your post I was composing, mentally, a positive supporting response, but no. Just no. Upon reading those two lines I lost all respect for you.

That's almost certainly a typo, dude - that sentence doesn't even make any sense unless the word "doesn't" is used instead of "does". Think about it for a second before you jump to conclusions, there - do you ever say "In the past I found that this does always work"?

At 2 hours ago, WizMystery wrote:

At 1 hour ago, Gario wrote: Stuff

I agree that this is all true if you're writing music that has a specific goal, but when you're only writing it solely for enjoyment then it does becomes completely subjective. That's where the genre preference sort of thing comes into play.

No, it doesn't. The person may not care about the mediocre (or even terrible, as the case may be) composition behind their music due to the fact that they're just writing for personal pleasure, but it doesn't change the fact that it's written poorly. Music is, at it's heart, an aural form of pattern recognition, and whether or not a person is aware of these patterns at one level doesn't mean that they suddenly don't exist. What if the person is aware of these patterns and is trying to deviate from them? Great, then presumably they're experimenting in new forms of music, but I promise you that there is not a person on Newgrounds who could use that excuse - if there's a mistake then they're just fucking up regular musical conventions, and it is not wrong for more experienced musicians to point these errors out to them, if they know better (a whole other issue that complicates this point, as the reviewer may not know what they hell s/he is talking about, but that's beside the point).

Most music definitely has a goal, but I don't think people can really help you when you're trying to create your own sound. That's completely up to you, and if any criticism hinders that, then you're reasonable to ignore it or think more intensely about it.

Feel free to create your own sound, but it doesn't change the fact that you're not going to be completely making that sound up - the human brain doesn't work like that, it needs some semblance of order. If you're purposely breaking convention then you're already imposing ANOTHER set of rules by actively avoiding convention, but that's still a framework that you could make mistakes in. If something doesn't fall under these categories and is still out of place then the critic could still rightfully ask 'why', and if there is no good reason for something then it's perfectly right for them to tell the composer that it's wrong.

Is this all to say anyone has the right to try and stop them from writing poor music? No - that's their God given right to make mediocrity, and if they enjoy making poor music then more power to them. It doesn't change the fact that the person is pumping out objectively bad music, though, and throwing the excuse 'it's a subjective art!' is really a meaningless distraction to try to justify mediocrity. If you have a perfectly good reason to call out a critic on some given point then go for it - that's how new and interesting music is made. But there must be a purpose to the exception other than 'because it's mine and I say so'.

Seeing that there are a lot of people in here trying to justify ignoring constructive criticism because 'music is a subjective art', let's just drop that reason, please; there is a right and wrong way to do things, compositionally speaking (not just in production). Even if the composer willingly wrote something that was off in their music, there really needs to be a valid, objective justification behind it; otherwise that's just willful poor writing.

The 'subjectivity' behind music only applies to a very small percentage of comments based on the composition (complaining about the choice of genre, for example, would indeed be 100% subjective). Even in cases where is upset because they 'don't like the melody', there is often an objective, valid reason for the complaint, if you're willing to dig into it enough. If composers ignore comments about their composition process because they think the construction of music is entirely subjective then they're closing an opportunity to learn and grow. I find that 95% of people who use 'subjectivity' as an excuse would benefit far greater if they listened and mentally leave themselves open to the fact that the criticism might have something behind it - even if they don't go back and change their music, in response.

Even from people that have less experience than myself composing music, I've found it beneficial to at least listen with an open ear to every criticism given to me, and on more than one occasion I've even made changes to my posted music, because of it (and it was always for the better). I wouldn't be where I am today if I treated my music as untouchable due to it being 'subjective'.

Hey, let's post our favorite topics from that site.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/superior-court-asked-to-boot-obam a-from-ballot/

This one, for example, is about how Obama isn't a citizen, again. I thought it was an older article, but it was actually published six days ago. Impressive, to say the least, that they could interpret the law oh so horribly.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/dots-connected-obama-agents-snagg ed-on-birth-control/

Incredibly, this article actually acknowledges that the republicans are shooting themselves in the foot with the whole birth control thing. Even more incredibly, they're blaming agents of Obama for implanting the dispute among their ranks in the first place rather than take responsibility. Yeah, seriously.

Even for a super conservative site, it's amazing how off the wall it is. I've found more sensible topics in websites dedicated to how the world was going to end last March/October/2012/etc..

At 5 hours ago, Back-From-Purgatory wrote: Songs are visible publicly the moment you submit them now, approved or not.

Oh, well then I don't know what I'm talking about, then. Glad I know now, though.

At 1 minute ago, citrullus wrote: I can see it in my own profile, but from what I understand my account has not been approved for the audio portal yet. That's why I am trying to figure out if I was approved or something because it has 3 downloads, but the music doesn't show up in the audio portal, and I haven't linked anyone.

I can listen to it just fine, so you're probably approved.

You can take a look at the forums I currently moderate. Even though it's a VG arrangement site, it still has plenty of great tutorials on music production (and electronic music, in particular). If you're willing to make game arrangements it also is a great source of stringent (but helpful) critique, as well. Go take a look.

http://ocremix.org

A more direct link...

http://ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=42

Hope to see you there.

At 7 hours ago, TR0KY wrote: Well I've been composing for a while but I got a friend that told me that there are some rules about the way that you put the chords. For example you can't put E Minor if there is an A Minor. In the time that I've composed I always choose chords progressions by ear, like these two chords sounds good and thats all, but right now I want to know that rules because I want to study music

If you want chord progressions to sound decent, follow these two simple rules and you'll be fine.

1.) Parsimony: The less the voices move, the more natural the progression will sound, e.g. moving from Cm to AbM only has one note move a halfstep - the 'G' to the 'Ab'. More than one voice can move, but they will sound best when they move to notes as close to them as possible (e.g. a half-step or whole-step away).

2.) Harmonic Relation: If the chord is moving up a fourth or down a fifth, it will sound nice (like moving from gm to CM). The effect is even more pronounced if the third is major and leads into the root of the next chord (GM to CM, with the 'B' moving to the 'C') - it's a great way to end a song or even modulate to a new area, if you're so inclined.

... that's pretty much it, really. As long as you remember that leaping an octave in the harmonies to keep things within a decent range, your music will link together well harmonically. You can keep it pretty tonal if you stick to one scale, but these rules allow for expansion into chromaticism very easily. Experiment with these rules in mind and you can easily figure out what sounds good or not - as long as you can end where you began you'll be fine. Most other harmonic rules either deal with counterpoint (which I encourage you to look into when you can - it's a nifty tool) or idioms of the 18th century, which aren't really that important unless you want to write 18th century style music.

Have fun and tell me how it works out for you. Also, yeah, that other thread linked in here is awesome if you have any specific questions.

I think the confusion comes in because you didn't type out your responses in a typically poor manner. All lowercase or all caps and calling you a shit composer. At least, that's what most of the bad responses I've heard tend to do to the reviewer.

So yeah, hence the confusion.

At 6 hours ago, Thomast555 wrote: Hey guys I was wondering if the program named GXSCC was actually legal?

GXSCC shouldn't be legal. It should be outlawed for crimes against humanity.

And no, uploading GXSCC music isn't an option unless the MIDI you use is of your own creation. For example, I could use my vgmusic.com MIDI's, run them through the machine and upload them since I made them (not that I ever will), but you can't since they're not yours.

And no, you don't have my permission to do that, either. :P

At 10 hours ago, SlawterhowceBowncer wrote:

what the wtf?

Stupidest combination of words I've read today, have fun waiting in line.

Thank you for being rude about it I was not informed about what you just told me, I was going off of the simple little "hold on dude, we gotta check your shit out first" note that I read. I'd like to also tell you that adjectives of 2 or more syllables have the word 'most' in front of them, making people who use the word Stupidest in fact more stupid than the ones that don't.

heh... I think you should re-read the line you wrote - technically you just said 'what the what the fuck?', which IS kind of funny (and rude). They're human, they have a lot of audio music to wade through. Showing them patience and respect is the best route to take - they might cut you slack and look at your music earlier when you do so.

Also, adding the word 'most' is a redundancy, in this case, so that would've made his statement look silly. The suffix '-est' replaces the word 'most', in function.

At 15 minutes ago, a21 wrote: The songs in the portal are free for use with games right? I mean you don't owe them a percentage mandatory...

Licensing Terms: Non-commercial
You may not use this work for commercial purposes unless you make specific arrangements with the artist.

It's in the legal code, so no you can't simply take music from the portal for a game that's making profit unless you make arrangements with the composer(s) in question. If the game is not a commercial production (as in you're not making a profit) then I don't believe it applies, though you still need to give credit where it's due.

At 6 hours ago, Usernamemyarse wrote:

At 16 minutes ago, Jiimaan wrote: #1: did you ever make make music out of your name? BACH did.

Yeah, I have.

Greg - A German Augmented 65, em, gm... so in an analysis it comes out to Gr-e-g.

Bam.