No, it's not new.

But look at it.

Isn't it pretty?

If someone's good with photoshop or whatever program or hell, even scanned-in stuff, would be so kind as to make me a stylistic name, just like write "SolusLunes" in a nifty way.

I would appreciate it so much. :D

Okay. I figured that I'd let you guys in on a little secret, of how mah music/life/everything else is going.

FIRST THE BASICS

Music Software: Currently FL7/Reason 3
Soon to be Added: Reason 4 Upgrade/Sonar 7

List of WIPs with short explanations:

ambient.rns - 90% done - A strange song, I really had no idea where I was going to go with it. It's the type of song you'll have to listen to more than once to hear it all - it's like musical conceptual art.

apoc.rns - 40% done - an attempt at epic apocalyptic orchestra. :D

creator.rns - 90% done - An orchestral-trance prototype.

discovery.rns - 100% done - a song in the vein of Crystalline, as in, you see the origin of all things through the song. However, it's Crystalline's orchestrated counterpart. I'm just waiting for a good time to release it.

doom.rns - 50% done - A short, doomish, booming, foreboding song. You know the type.

epic.rns - 80% done - You probably know it as "End In Fire". I'm reworking it.

jazzy.rns - 10% done - all I've got, really, is a conceptual melody.

magnumopus.rns - ?% done - It's at 15 minutes and counting- a sum of all the things I have learned orchestrally. Going to be awesome. Totally don't know where I'll have it hosted. Will solve that problem when I finish it.

magus.rns - 20% done - A project I started when I got Reason, an attempt to make a remix of Magus' theme from Chrono Trigger. Not enough work put in, and as such, it just sounds like a shitty midi rip. Because it is.

phantomofthebanjo.rns - 50% done - a humorous song I'm making, a remix of Phantom of the Opera with a banjo as the lead instrument. All it really needs is a little mastering love and vocals.

strangeness.rns - 100% done - an orchestral/ambient/trance hybrid. Leans a lot more towards trance, however, it's not bad. Just waiting for a good time to release it.

tangdream.rns - 20% done - After having the original .flp on a hard disk that has since been formatted, it has been a long, painstaking process to recreate the melody- however, I have done it. There has been work put in to making it sound a LOT more professional- but the song won't be done for A WHILE. It'll probably get done in Sonar - three audio engine changes. Sounds like my personal Duke Nukem Forever.

unfin1.rns - 100% done - Despite the name, it's done. Just for a flash project not yet released.

weirdness.rns - 95% done - I'm bad at thinking up project names, I know. This one sounds very Hania-esque, and all it really needs now is for me to decide whether or not to include vocals, and if so, what ones.

smallambientintro.rns - 100% done - Again, for a flash project, not to be released at this time. Though the title explains everything.

atc.flp - 20% done - I've been working on a remix of ATC's "Around the World." Because I like that song.

weirdshit.flp - 80% done - I've actually managed to nail some of the elements of epic trance. I'm shocked. I've never been able to do it before. A few of you have heard bits of this song before- it'll probably be a while yet in development.

Yup.flp - 5% done - a tentative collab with B34T1N. Yes. You heard right. Solus is in his first collab. Shocking, I know.

Thoughts -

MaestroRage's nomination for me as Artist of the Year got me thinking. It's true, I have been drifting from style to style. I've been trying to master each one- and you've heard my shitty, early attempts, and a slow, but steady increase in skill. I feel I've mastered my ambient-chill-technotrance style, and now I'm working on my orchestrating skills- it's really a lot harder, but has been a massive learning experience for me- dynamics, for example, I now know how much they mean to a song.

I DO intend to take all the strands of skill I've acquired and weave them into a techno-trance-orchestral beast, but that day is still quite far off. That song will likely be a combination of the skills I have acquired in FL, Reason, and (soon to be) Sonar.

I just don't intend to make it sound any more appealing than it already does- that'll probably have to wait until next year.

FAQs

Why do I have so many unfinished songs?

Because most of the time I get inspiration from one of my songs and start on something new.

Either that or I get sick of hearing it and shelf it for a while.

Will you do a remix of _________?

No.

Please?

No.

Why the change from awesome technotrance to awesome orchestral music?

Mainly the same reason that I got into technotrance in the first place- I said "I can do that better."

Better than who?

A few people. Most notably, though, MaestroRage.

What's the difference between you and him?

He's gay.

No, seriously.

Well, he makes music in more of a symphonic orchestral style- spreading the melody/accompaniment around all sorts of instruments. He makes use of the full spectrum of instruments. Plus he has a hot-sounding chick to sing for him with whom he totally wants to get his hump on with. Fucking bastard.

Me, on the other hand, make more of a concerto-orchestral style- that is, I rely more heavily on the piano in my pieces. It carries all the songs, or most. Funny, though, as I don't know how to play the piano. I just find it easy to sequence.

Will you release a bit of your magnum opus as a teaser?

Possibly. No guarantees.

Where would we find the full version, and when could we expect it?

Where? When I figure out website programming and acquire hosting, you'll find it there. When could you expect it? Well, I can't tell you EVERYTHING :D

What's the next genre you plan to conquer?

Either DnB or Hip-Hop.

You guys totally didn't see that one coming, did you.

Do you ever plan to go commercial with your music?

Did it once. Went badly. Will probably never do it again. At least not for another couple of years- my stuff is so not pro quality.

Do you ever have bouts of self-pity about your relative lack of popularity on NG/lack of usage in flashes?

Not really. I never seem to feel the need to self-whore as much anymore- there are a few people who are rabid fans of my stuff, and honestly, I don't understand how they manage to hang on when I do abrupt genre changes. My fans are the damned best there are.

As for my relative lack of usage in flashes- well... my songs aren't really "generic use" in ANY sense of the term. Anything that uses my music will use it in one of two ways: Shitty - or expertly crafted around the music. My music really doesn't meld to certain situations- it forces the situations to meld to it.

Thanks for your time, Solus.

Any time, Lunes.

OTHER THOUGHTS.

I have my giant test on Tuesday and Wednesday. If I pass those... well, you can expect to get greetings from Japan in under a year. Hell yes.

And I'd like to thank a few people here for being either inspiration, pillars of support, or randomly useful :D

Chronamut, for starting all this shit
MaestroRage, for being awesome and being a target to aim at :D
B34T1N, for being a fuckwit :D
Rig, for... goddamn it, rig... FUCK YOU
RyeGuyHead, for being one of those supporters :D
Navij11, for supplying nifty tricks and things

And finally

NOT YOU

Findable here.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions?

If you would all be so kind as to add me on MSN to make real-time coordination easier... 8492nd@comcast.net.

Hi, I'm Solus, and for the CTSG Team Awesome will have ten people, each with 16 bars, at the BPM of 128. If you want to do a 1 bar intro where you merge the two parts of the song together, have at it- maybe you'll have better transition ideas than I would. But if you're going to do that, please send me two versions, one with, one without.

Genres? Do whatever feels good. (And fits. Yeah... fitting works.)

Anyways. Team Awesome members are:

[x] 1. G9
[x] 2. SineRider
[x] 3. RyeGuyHead
[x] 4. RB6ELITE
[x] 5. Jurian
[x] 6. Hadriani
[x] 7. Karco
[x] 8. EchozAurora
[ ] 9. MaestroRage
[ ] 10. SolusLunes

If anyone really wants to go last, let me know. But it will be easier for mixing if I go last... plus I have something truly epic planned. :D

Suggestions for rules? Personally, I think it sounds better when we can try to avoid as many rules as possible :D

If you have FL7 or below, or Reason, please send me the .flp and .rsn as well with the .wav, if there isn't too many external samples/vsts. Making transitions will be much easier that way.

Post the files to an external hosting site like mediafire.com, PM me the links, and I'll update the newspost accordingly.

MAESTROMOODSWINGS GO

Most notably, me trying to remix my song Tangerine Dreams.

It's just that with remixing it I have to hold myself to a massively high standard, as that song is "hyped", in a way.

I mean, I look at that song now, and I realize just how much I didn't know when I was making it. I mean, seriously.

The mastering on it is beyond abysmal.

But I know I can do it better. Like Duke Nukem Forever: It'll be done when it's done.

And the ice lead is coming back. Probably.

Seriously. Sure, you guys may think that "Ooooh, my college final exams are so hard," or "I'm totally going to fail my high school final," but in all honesty, there is no test harder or more important than the one I'm going to take in about three weeks.

It's called the DLPT (Defense Language Proficiency Test), and it is a royal bitch.

There are three parts to it: Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension, and the Oral Proficiency Interview. (Make your shitty jokes now. :D)

So why is this so hard? Because it's not in my native language. That would be easy shit.

No, it's not even in a language I've been studying for awhile.

It's in Chinese, and I've only been studying that for 63 weeks. Five days a week, six hours a day, at the world's hardest language school.

The requirements to pass are to get a 2/2/1+ on reading, listening, and speaking respectively according to the Interagency Language Roundtable Scale.

While a 2 might seem easy, it's actually harder than it might seem. Most people who are not native speakers will not get to a level 4, no matter how much time they spend on it. Almost none make it to level 5. And that's after many years of study and living in the society where the target language is spoken.

To get to level 2 in 63 weeks is nothing short of a miracle. The pass rate for the DLPT5 so far has been in the range of about 30-40%, so far. And that's just out of the 50% of people who manage to get to the test from the beginning of the course. Normally classes start with 30 or so people, and manage to lower to about 15 from the original class, and five or so rollbacks from other, advanced classes that they failed out of. I made it that far.

And hell, two out of the three requirements to pass the DLPT I'm not worried about at all. I can speak at about a level 2 in chinese (with a requirement of 1+) and easily listen at a level 2+/3 (with a requirement of 2.)

However. You ask me to READ chinese, and that's where you lose me. I've not been quite so good at it. I'd say there's about a 60-40% chance of me passing the reading portion.

"This sounds hard," you say. "But why don't you just take it a second time if you fail?"

Because I can't. Fail once, and it's look for a new job, pretty much. Since I'm Aircrew, they're not giving Aircrew post-DLPT (which is the six-month extender course for people who failed the first time around.)

All that training, and a year and a half of my life, effectively for nothing.

If I manage to pass this test, I get to fulfill two of my lifelong dreams: learn to fly, and live in Japan.

"But why are you going to Japan if you're learning Chinese?"
Because we don't have any military bases in China, silly.

"How will you learn to fly?"
Flight training. Joyous stuff. How else?

Plus passing means I get to get the hell out of California sometime in the middle of March.

THANK YOU GOD.

Anything else I might be missing...

OH YES.

Since that test is rapidly approaching, I'll probably have to pull a MaestroMoodSwings and disappear from the radar for a couple of weeks. I'll pop in from time to time, but I highly doubt I'll be able to put out any music during that time. You never know, however, adversity is a highly powerful inspiration, or so I've heard, and god knows I'll have a lot of stress to relieve. Whether I'll do that through Madden, Call of Duty or music is yet to be known.

SO IF I DISAPPEAR.

I'll see you guys on March 5th, when I'm done with all the tests. And I'll be a goddamned wreck until (and possibly after) I get the test results.

Wish me luck! :D

I want to collab with somebody.

Don't care who, don't care what we're doing,

BUT I WANNA MUSIC COLLAB.

AND MCBURGERS3 IS COMING.

SOON. Maybe I'll just make it monthly.

Anyways. DROP ME A LINE. I USE FL7. OR REASON 3. I COULD PROBLY DO 4 IF NEED BE.

I LIKE USING CAPS.

And I can, since this is MY FUCKING NEWS POST.

>:(

In other news, I finally have a decent profile pic.

WHOOOOOOOOOO

Alrighty then! Time for the second "weekly" (translation- whenever the fuck I feel like it) McBurger Five!

WITH NEW FEATURE TOY. YOU GET FEATURED ARTISTS!

FEATURED BY ME!

This week's featured artist is Hania, seeing as she has carried today's McGodlyBurger.

Seriously. She's that damn good.

For example,

THIS WEEK'S #1, AND MCGODLYBURGER:

Hypnotize- X-Rated

AND NOW FOR THE OTHER FOUR IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER EXCEPT IN WHAT KIND OF BURGER THEY GOT

Rucklo. We all know him, and love him.

AND SOMETIMES HE ACTUALLY MAKES GOOD MUSIC AS EVIDENCED BY THIS MCPERFECT JINGLE BELLS.

Chiptune Jingle Bells

On that note, I'd like to whore out the fact that we have monthly contests on the Audio Forum. Stop by and stay awhile. Unless you're a fucking idiot.

Thirdly and McAwesome,

Major Arcana- Tower, made by our one and only DEFLEKTOR.

It's awesome as he is.

Also McAwesome, is FoD's loopScream Hard.
This song wins the first McAwesomeNuggets for Loopitation awesomeness. Also, make sure you bother him to make it longer.

FINALLY!

RemiLegend's undeniably McAwesome song The Eternal Instant. Check it out if you haven't already!

That's all this... update period... someday I'll make this more regular...

FUCK IT'S WEDNESDAY AGAIN. I WILL NOT HAVE A WEDNESDAY UPDATE SCHEDULE. GODDAMNIT.

Okay. So I have had a hard time keeping up with updating the McBurgers, as it has been a hectic couple of weeks. This one is merely a placeholder for now, I'll update it for last week's burgers. Also, in retrospect, Wednesday has got to be the worst day for updates ever. Next week's burgers should come in on Saturday.