4,807 Forum Posts by "Khuskan"
So how can it be fixed?
I'm not going to go as far to say the audio portal design is flawed - More that it is not suitable for the volume of users it currently recieves. Back in the early days, it would have been a good idea to moderate EVERY track that goes up, but that's simply not viable.
The biggest problem stems from the concept of exposure - the same problem occurs in the flash portal. The audio portal front page is cleared pretty much daily of new submissions and while the submission count is high, the view count is dissapointingly lower. Understanding why is the key to working out how to fix this.
Firstly, people aren't coming to newgrounds for audio - It's not really an advertised feature. Since conception, the audio portal was raised as a resource for flash artists, and the infrastructure employed to make it serve that mission is very good - flash credits etc. I find the most exposure I get from a track is when it is featured in somebodies flash work, regardless of the success of the flash submission. Even if the game or movie is crap, people can watch it and think 'Oh that's a nice song, I'd like to get that'. By making this process more obvious, the audio artists will benifit greatly.
Secondly, browsing the audio portal is difficult at best. If you go to listen to a track, you get five unobvious suggestions in a corner of the page of similar tracks which tend to not actually be that similar. I'm not sure what system governs what tracks are displayed there, but I'm assuming it's based on what people who downloaded the track also downloaded before. People are not actively encouraged to delve deeper into the audio portal. You can see a list of tracks the artist has also made, but all the information you are given is a title, which doesn't give any hints into what the track is like.
The best solution for exposure, in my opinion, would be a you-tube style menu appearing in the audio player at the end of the song (or even during) listing a few recommended listens as well as tracks by the artist, with facts such as download counts, rating and genre. The artist could even pick some of his tracks to plug at the end of his song.
I also feel that the top 30 would be better replaced with a 'recently downloaded' list of tracks that have been downloaded that do not currently reside on the front page, this would garantee 30 tracks exposure every few hours that otherwise would have no impressions on the casual audio protal browser.
The search feature could also be improved greatly. At present, it doesn't seem the search feature searches song commentaries - only their breif 100-and-something short descriptions, which audio artists don't bother with anymore because they are no longer actually shown anywhere on NG. The flash portal isn't much better for searching, but there are many more ways of getting from one flash submission to another.
I also feel the audio forum does have some part in making exposure difficult. The stringent rules on advertising and plugging is somewhat counter-productive. The audio advertisements thread is long and moves quickly, and while I agree people shouldn't be making their own threads solely to advertise their music, it would be nice to be allowed to make comments and critique threads where the work can be discussed with full interaction - responding to comments isn't really enough, the reviewer can't argue their points in any way.
Being able to preview songs on the audio portal page would also be benificial. While it makes sense for each track to have its own page in the same way each flash has its own page, people aren't going to be staying on individual track pages for long before browsing away, so it would perhaps be better if a lot of tracks are available to be played on a single page. If somebody listens to a whole track, they could be prompted to leave a review and a vote.
The next problem, and arguably the biggest, is how to moderate the system. I'm sure people do upload copyrighted and stolen music, but I feel the problem is not as big as it is made out to be. I appreciate Wade has obviously made this thread in response to the massive ammount of PM's from banned users who broke the rules, but i'm also convinced that, of the people who are banned, the vast majority know exactly why and will either not attempt to submit again or circumvent the system - both of which are pointless tasks. Idealy, such powers should be in the power of the viewers, but thats a problem due to the competative nature of the audio portal.
The voting system is one of the largest flaws, and I feel the feature was poorly ported from the flash portal. The 0-5 voting system is too complicated for the number of viewers that actually vote on tracks. Also, the worth of votes is a problem. For example, if you enjoy a track and you vote 4 while the score of the track you are voting on is HIGHER than 4, you are actually harming the submitter of the track by dragging their score down. Simplifying the system to work more like the review voting system with a like/dislike/abusive choice of options would, in my opinion, bring more honest results. You wouldn't even need to be able to see the numerical score the track had achieved to guage how well it has been recieved by the listeners - instead just give a number of people who liked the track and a number of people who disliked the track. Such a simple system would also mean that the listener would have to think less about what score to give the track, encouraging more voting at the cost of having a less accurate representation of the tracks performance.
Some arbitary rules could also be enforced for the purpose of cutting down on zero voting. Vote weights could be different depending on circumstances such as whether or not YOU have submitted a track on the day that you are voting, it could also keep tabs of how many low votes that you have given and adjust your voting power in case of consecutive low voting - that, however, may not be effective as, unfortunately, there tends to be large numbers of tracks that genuinly deserve a lower score. All things considered, I feel the best way to stem zero voting would be to only allow voting with an accompianing review. The downside of this is that tracks will recieve less votes, however, it will allow much more insight into what those votes are. Intentionally low voters would expose themselves, and could have their reviews marked as abusive and removed.
Also a few other kinks - It's hard for an audio artist to keep track of new reviews on their tracks and also if their tracks get used in the flash portal. Currently, the only way of doing the former is to look over your entire body of work, and the 'new reviews' count only works off a 3-day basis, it doesn't count 'unread' reviews. The latter is even worse - You have to check each of your audio submissions individually to see if they have been used.
Finally, bring back the rewards system! Gold, platinum and diamond were a wonderful way to keep the artist informed of their successes, and really encourage people to make more tracks. Awards for getting your tracks used in the flash portals, high batting averages and high number of listens would be a good way to make submitting to the audio portal really feel worth it.
Still, those are only my thoughts from using the audio portal for the last four or five years. None of the problems I have suggested solutions to have ever put me off coming back to submit my tracks here, but I'd definatly be more active if they were addressed.
At 5/26/09 09:15 PM, Chronamut wrote: so SBB.. once you become a vegetable, what is gonna stop me from raping you? :P
STDs.
At 5/26/09 02:08 PM, Nosferatu-of-Worms wrote: I'm curious, can you tab guitar and bass parts in Sibelius? Along with the ability for polyrhythms?
Sibelius can do that, but it won't *sound* natural. The emphasis of sibelius is writing it out to musical standards, not making something that sounds good in the editor.
At 5/26/09 10:33 AM, RedHatCore wrote: Sibelius does what it is supposed to do VERY well. Sequencers do their job, but there is so much you can do with one, that you often need to "jump through hoops," whilst the refined form of composition that is considered "traditional" is very standardized, the sound you want can be written easily.
I personally think it's the other way around. Sequencers are a very raw way of creating music, you can put whatever notes you want whenever, but you have to do more work with said notes to create something that sounds 'traditional' in the way you expressed - however, they are a LOT more flexible. Within Sibelius, you are bound by the rules of western music composition, so while I agree that makes it easier to compose western style music - if anything, it channels your creativity into what could be considered the 'correct' writing style making your work sound more polished, it makes it damned near impossible to do anything else.
Sibelius is useful yes, but I don't see how anyone could use it as anything other than a scoring tool. There are so many things that it simply cannot do very well - for example live midi input, note velocity and parameters and VST interaction. Although the latter of these is getting better, sibelius can only really send notes to an external source, even if you plug it in to a massive 30gb orchestra soundbank, you're still going to get nothing like the sound you could have if you do it in a sequencer with more control over the samples.
If you don't know what type of synth you want, you should probably not be considering buying one yet.
At 5/25/09 09:27 PM, RedHatCore wrote: Having to stick to the researched, mastered, refined form of composition that has created the world's most intricate music... doesn't seem all that bad to me!
The vast majority of music these days cannot be adequately expressed in traditional score notation. Scores are fine for composers, but not for producers - they leave too much open for interpretation.
At 5/24/09 11:56 PM, Erkie wrote: Showing an image of an old system that doesn't exist anymore.
I wonder why.
Caught in the times of old, obviously.
I find the best way of getting inspiration to make new tracks is by working with a load of different people to make them, maybe a new vocalist or guitarist. Take their ideas and produce them :-)
...also drugs.
At 5/24/09 11:54 PM, Devorax wrote: Im willing to offer a hand to the creation of any newgrounds music being made. I can produce drum beats for just about any genre.
Equipment: Roland TD-9 Electronic Drumset
The drumset has over 100 different kits on it to produce sound for various genres.
So just let me know if you are interested in my offer.
If you are, feel free to post here or send me a PM.
I'll be able to send you a sample of my drumming upon request.
Pretty much any competent producer here would be able to produce the same sort of thing you can on electronic drums - what we REALLY need is LIVE drum sounds. You're only really offering a drum machine without a quantizer.
At 5/25/09 12:35 AM, slowz wrote: I couldn't find anything software wise online that lets you basically type in something and a robot will say it, or a certain voice will say it. Sort of like a Microsoft Sam thing.. thanks for the help.
Speakonia is the name of the software used in the clock crew movies IIRC. There are also other programs that allow you to use microsofts speech synthesis and record from it, but the name of the programs escapes me.
At 5/24/09 10:28 PM, ChemicalReaper wrote: Nah, for professional audio, it can go for $1200 per MINUTE! Multiply that by 2.5 (avg time per track, which is $3000), then multiply by 10 (# tracks in game), then the total amount spent just on audio is $30,000 XD I'd be able to go to college for a year just writing music for one game!
Haha, I was working off my rates, but if you're that hardcore...
Wow, 10 to 12 tracks, 2 mins each.
At contract rate, that's about $1200 if you want a dedicated artist, and that's a tall investment for a project which sounds like it's only just starting.
My advice to you is to check out the music of the regulars, see if you can find stuff that fits and ask them to cut it to the length you want or cut it yourself.
At 5/23/09 07:00 PM, TheNossinator wrote: I don't have too many problems with the functionality of Sibelius 5, and version 6 seems to clean up most of them. What specifically did you have in mind with 'annoying functionality'?
Mostly how you have to jump through hoops to get the result you want from the track due to how Sibelius expects you to stick to conventional music notation standards all the way through. You can't just stick semiquavers in and then make the notes add up to a bar by yourself, you have to manually split the bar up into quavers then semiquavers, potentially destroying any work you've done so far.
That and the bugs. Oh god the bugs. Some have been persistent since very early versions of Sibby. Lack of reliable autosave means work gets lost a lot - I remember somehow ending up with a Sibelius file that played the same bar three times... at once. Sometimes the simple act of cutting and pasting ends in a crash.
I appreciate they're probably improving it in later versions, and I'll continue using it simply because there is nothing better, but that doesn't stop me from thinking 'why is there nothing better?'.
The multi-weighted keys is only really found in very expensive electric pianos - the mechanism for changing the weight is complicated and expensive.
At 5/23/09 02:06 PM, FlamingFirebolt wrote: Does anybody know a good 88keyboard with weighted keys? :) I've been looking for a good one prefferbly midi ( Since it's cheaper that way ). I'm going to use it mainly for use with a computer so i don't need any fancy effect that come with the keyboard. Though a single piano with a build in speaker would be nice :/. I've heard of the function that allows you to turn off the weighted feel turning it either into a semi-weighted or none at all. Can someone explain? And howmuch money do i need to pay if i want a keyboard with that?.
In short, i want a 88key midi weighted keyboard with the lowest price possible. But still with some decent quality. I hope you audio-geeks can help me :).
I've been doing some looking around and for a midi only, the price is around 400 to 500 euros.
You're going to be needing something pretty high end for this, check out the Yamaha KX8 or the CME UF-80.
Weighted midi controllers are actually surprisingly rare, normally you only find weighted keys on devices specifically designed to emulate a piano.
At 5/23/09 12:54 PM, JoBo4 wrote: I was looking for a program that would help a beginner learn how to make 8-bit music. Any suggestions? Don't really feel like looking through 9 pages right now...
You'll need a tracker for that, and most trackers are free. Have a look into MilkyTracker - it's cross platform and totally free.
At 5/23/09 12:03 PM, MICHhimself wrote:At 5/23/09 10:50 AM, DJRAV3N wrote:As Rig asked, is it variable bitrate? (not at 64,96,112,128,160,192,224,256 or 320kbpsAt 5/23/09 03:06 AM, gregaaron89 wrote: Is it under 8 mb?yep, 3.5Mb
Newgrounds' flash audio player doesn't suppport VBR mp3's, so that might be the problem.
Not true, most of my tracks are variable bitrate...
There are some audio converters that do strange things when making the mp3 files, using encoders and wrappers that NG doesn't support. If your converter isn't working, try another one. Rule of thumb, really.
At 5/23/09 12:44 PM, heartless1298 wrote: Yea that is a lot of publicity and if he does have an account here on NG we should contact him directly, because he can get himself into deep shit for doing this.
CMB just needs to file a DMCA with youtube, the track will be pulled and the uploader will get a strike on his account, it's a fairly simple process.
What makes me giggle is the lengths people go to to cover up blatant self-advertising :D
Acapella has two meanings depending on who you are.
If you're a producer, an acapella is a stylish thing to call your vocal tracks. If you're a musician, an acapella is a song written purely for vocals.
Ahh Sibelius. The only audio tool designed specifically to annoy the user with its functionality.
The sad thing? There isn't anything better out there to write scores in.
Reaper is a fully featured DAW with a special unlimited trial license - Use it as long as you want without paying until you're happy with it when you can buy it.
Without trying to be incredibly blunt, if you've got absolutely no idea where to start, you're probably not going to be able to get into music production very easily. Best thing for you would be to get the Fruityloops demo and look at some tutorials to see how well you do before investing in equipment and software.
At 5/20/09 07:19 PM, Kaizerwolf wrote: Well, could you easily and cheaply get a new cord for it? Im not sure how much work that might take, but it might be a useful shot...
|
Only if it's the cord that's broken, reading about the problem it sounds more like a PCB crack in the monitor that is somehow causing sound leakage across the amp. You're lucky it's not feeding back infinatly, that would blow out your drivers - the most expensive part :O
If you can't get them repaired, take them apart and put the drivers on e-bay as spares, someone will have them.
If you've got the gear you can fix it yourself. Monitors are by no means complicated electronics, and spares are readily available at a fraction of the cost of getting the repaired for you. That said, you need to identify the error and faulty parts in order to fix it, but if you've got one working monitor and one broken, and damage way physical (likely, since you dropped them) you might be able to spot the damage by looking at it.
Else, you'll at least need a multimeter to figure out where everything is going inside and which componenets aren't performing properly.
Getting paid helps.
...also drugs. My last song was mastered on ketamine and marijuana :)
At 5/10/09 04:51 PM, Nekoprism wrote:At 5/10/09 02:47 PM, SBB wrote: Did you guys hear about this?What is it suppose to be anyway? A complement? A replacement?
There's a countdown thing on the Propellerheads site and they're complaining about it in the forums, so I guess it's real. I don't care too much for it... unless it's controlled by a WiiMote. Then they've got me for sure
Propellerheads are releaseing a new tool, Record. The countdown is when the features will be revealed - It's expected to be some way of implementing live recorded audio into reason effectively. Combining Reason with Record would equate a full DAW, supposedly.
At 5/5/09 10:17 AM, Slipstreamer wrote: And that's only half of the stuff that goes into a well-made DnB song.
But all the stuff that makes a shitty newgrounds DnB song!
At 5/10/09 11:16 AM, STEM wrote: If I play the "bass guitar" patch on the subtractor, which was the first default patch that loaded, I couldn't play any chords,
That's not a bug, that's a feature.
A monosynth is a synth that can only play one note at a time, although the subtractor is capable of polyphonic synthesis, there are artistic reasons as to why you would want only one note to be active at any one time.
For example, portamento (sliding between notes) is only truely possible on a monosynth - on a polysynth, how would the synth know what note you wanted to slide? Also, you'll notice a switch on the subtractor for Legato and ReTrig modes - these features only work with monosynth. On legato mode, the attack/decay/sustain/release envelope applies to all connected (next door) notes, while on retrig mode, each individual note is shaped by ADSR.
You can override this by turning up the polyphony value on whatever patch it is you're using, but be aware it may make the patch behave a lot differently.
-
Khuskan - Ain't Nothing To You by KhuskanClick to listen.
- Score
- 3.79 / 5.00
- Type
- Song
- Genre
- Hip Hop - Modern
- Popularity
- 45 Views
Because newgrounds needs 100% more spoken word poetry.
