So our own LadyArsenic attended a talent show this past Thursday where she decided she was going to sing Hallelujah written be Leonard Cohen, performed by James Buckley while performing on the piano blindfolded!

The talent show went off to a rocky start with a bunch of losers who decided disrupting the talent with insults and loud obnoxious noises would be hilarious.

Nervous as hell knowing the kind of audience was awaiting her, she braved out and despite their best efforts she got through the full performance, and managed to rally... a little support ;D.

Watch the clip for details.

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Also a huge thanks to everybody who suggested the wonderful music in the last newspost. I have been indulging in acoustic masterpieces for days now, if you do have any other suggestions, please let me know!

For as far as I can remember i've always liked to go out of my way to try and find some great solid music from a multitude of media. It started off with some pretty amazing music from a couple anime series way back when. Like X TV, ./Hack Sign, Ghost in the Shell, Blood+ (all incredible soundtracks if you haven't heard already). Moving movie soundtracks of course are no exception with brilliant and epic music from Dark Knight/Pirates series, Lord of the Rings.

And don't get me started on game music, a deep and personal favorite of mine. I absolutely love the stuff.

Heroes of Might and Magic 4 and 5, Paul Anthony Ramero changed my life man. Online games like Cabal, Knights of Honor, Age of Empires 1-3, Strong Hold, Call of Duty 2, 3, 4... the list can go on forever.

This is where Newgroundians come in! I've been putting aside a couple hundred dollars to go soundtrack shopping and i've finally reached the point where I think it's time to start spending it. I need as many suggestions as possible to your favorite soundtracks from any type of medium. Game, movie, animations, whatever. Dig deep into your brain Newgroundians! The more obscure and lesser known the better, but don't let that stop you from recommending the classics either!

Barrage me with your knowledge, i'm eagerly waiting for it!

The past couple weeks i've decided I don't want to do my computer science degree at Ryerson University anymore.

I wanted to do music. I wanted to finally admit that things were going to get better once I got into a reputable composition school, and firmly understand how music works guided by professionals and leaders of the industry.

It turns out, Maestro will have no such luxury and it's all my fault. I never learned an instrument (yes you may all point and laugh at my incredible failure), hell I started music from ground zero at early 17. I didn't even know the 7 notes (I thought there was an H in there somewhere, durr). I am going to learn the piano, this is a given. But I will need to spend 5 hours a day, every day, for 3 years to get to the level these universities want in order to get in.

I don't have 3 years. I don't have 5 hours a day. I guess I don't have a shot.

I don't have a shot, which means i'll have to make my own. This dream dies here, i'll have to find a new one to fill in.

EDIT
I suck at expressing my meaning. I'm not quitting, i'm simply given up on going to music school, i'll keep this fight running forever.

Epic War 2 has been released! Play it :D! It's awesome. The developer of Epic War made this truly inspiring sequel Epic War 2. A great honor to be a part of this project!

In other news, I've decided to start showing tracks in the works to interested members through youtube clicks (like below). This way I can show everybody what's going on behind the scenes while releasing tracks for download only after approval of the director and developer of the project's they're for.

This song in particular is still not fully finished. I'm adding LadyArsenic's incredible voice to it later tonight. This particular song is for a secret project atm (I don't want to give away any info without the developers permission). It is however a remix and remake of my much older song Dark Skies, lovingly called now, Dark Heavens ;D!

Enjoy! I apologize for the crappy rendering. I don't know how people get good sound on YouTube, any ideas or suggestions how I can make clips not sound like crap would be awesome!

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Regarding the call for animators
A lot of great news I wanted to share with everybody! First as some of you may be aware, Glen, a new and promising animator on Newgrounds is interested in knowing who would help him animate this colossal movie! After much talk we decided what better place to find these animators then here on Newgrounds!

This movie is going to be something big, something very rarely done before and I have full confidence in the talents available in this great site!

Here is much more information/clips about Suzuki Tsunami & The Scarlet Steels

Interested? This is the schpeel.

- All interested members please email (selcukbor[at]gmail[dot]com)/pm me if you're interested with a link to your work (on or off NG). I will forward and direct all of them to Glen (you could pm Glen yourself but we both feel this way would be faster)

Glen will look over the interest shown and from there decide if there is enough manpower to help him finish this.

If so he will provide a script to animators he wants to work with. Styles are not an issue, everybody is allowed to use their own style as long as it's at an acceptable standard (which he will decide). The script must be followed of course as faithfully as possible to make a uniform flowing movie. Again to emphasize that style is not a huge concern to Glen, but quality of animation is! So don't think you have to emulate his style. Of course not every animator will work on the same parts of the script, again it is up to Glen to decide who does what part of the script

frame rate, length, dimensions, all of this will be discussed and distributed later through the script.

Here is the animation uploaded on NG in HQ

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and here it is on NG
and here is me scoring the same scene twice, for fun and giggles

Regarding getting Custom Music
Steven, manager of Melinium Music Company is interested in bringing the team to NG and get involved for the up and coming games and movies developed by... well... flash movie and game developers.

Shoot him an email at smelin[at]meliniummusic[dot]com regarding information about your project. There is a fee involved and Steven has said he is willing to negotiate a percentage cut based model over flat rate (as in you pay him xx% instead of $xx per minute of audio).

Contact him with questions or offers.

That's all for now, phew!

So I had promised you guys a while back to show you some takes on an animation clip I was scoring for Glenbw (a fantastic artist) and he had sent me a clip for a trailer. I had created 2 songs for the trailer, the second being used and the first being improper, discarded. I never uploaded those songs to NG (might some day), but I wanted to show you these anyways.

A few points. I am aware that the piano is rather shoddy and mechanical at times. The piano I was using at the time had few velocity layers and expression was very difficult with it. I did my best.

Take 1: Rejected theme

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Take 2: Accepted theme

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Now the reason the first was refused was not because it sucked ( I tell myself this every morning... it helps keep me... ALIVE X'(!! ) but because Glen was looking for something more along the lines of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata.

I loved expressing what was happening on the screen with the piano, expect another trailer clip (much more impressive both musically and content wise) very soon.

Some pretty important news!

Firstly, this account may be changing it's name! That's right. Over the past couple months, nearly a year now me and LadyArsenic have been heavily collaborating on many songs. Even if one has no direct imprint on the other's song we are constantly exchanging ideas and suggestions. She's uploaded her own tracks here and we've uploaded our company songs.

all songs with -+[TITLE]+- are of her design
all songs with _-={TITLE}=-_ are of my design
all songs with »§« at the beginning is a collaboration effort (there should be a lot more songs with this symbol)

So in short, since there may be no sign of a co-author system for audio soon and i've grown tired of being given credit where it's not due (even when i've boldly written a song was of her design), we are looking into changing this account into our company account. Symphony of Specters as some of you may know. We opted for sos.newgrounds.com but may not get it (taken, but inactive account)

So what does that mean exactly? Will MaestroRage disappear entirely? No, rather, I will work behind the face of this company we've founded, which aspires to provide high quality custom scoring for flash developers and animators at very reasonable rates or cut basis *ie, a certain amount of the revenue of the game/animation uses ads, or a very affordable rate if it won't, or a cut of the sponsorship of game/animation if the developer/animator wills it*

I will still hang about, do what I do for Newgrounds and for our fans. If anything this new face lift will increase activity from this corner and provide even more entertainment, more free content and do our best to ensure a higher grade of quality as the flash scene here makes it's way to the professional market.

In time we hope to expand our roster, include more local NG musicians and really be a useful contributor to all.

In other news, I have also opted to take up AS3. Before I make the mighty leap of purchasing a copy of Flash CS4 (lawdy pretty pricey) I want to do my research into the language first. I've written plenty of java/VB.NET applications now so I feel switching to AS3 language shouldn't be too hard as it is also a object oriented language (kinda). So i'm hoping to pick that up and potentially make a few interesting applications! I will be under the tutelage of one The-Titan whose sprite and coding work I absolutely admire, so my transition into this new language should be even less painful.

This won't mean i'll slow down on the music front, but it can be incredibly frustrating working with just music. With programming see you can work uninspired because you know the classes you know how it connects (or research it if you don't) and you can keep hammering away at it. With music, if you feel uninspired, tired, bored, or god forbid, all 3 at once. Progress is slowed and trucking along is an difficult task.

So here's hoping the best, wish us luck!

I wanted to show a few clips of some people who do an awesome job on the piano.

Firstly, a real life (OMG YES I HAS ONE!) close friend of mine went ahead and played Molasses from Batman Returns composed by Hans Zimmer/James Newton on the piano. Pretty impressive, take a listen.

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listen, enjoy.

and the return of another great composer delights me. I would like to welcome back MJTTOMB from the dead. He did a pretty damn good job on his recent performance.

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This baby. It`s adorable.

a note of appreciation :D! I can't hope to find a better place. I don't even submit to any other portal because Newgrounds is more then I can handles ^____________^

With that said i'll go back to work, but first i'll go check on my-OH NOES!

:'(

EDIT: Seriously people, read the post before saying goodbye. I can't make it any easier then bolding, italicizing, underlining, and hyper linking the ONE AND FIRST SENTENCE, that would let you know this post was a hoax. Then again this is one of the reasons I love newgrounds. A.D.D. all around!