KVR Charity Fundraiser

Hello everyone,

We are supporting the KVR fund drive for Save the Children run by Luftrum this year by offering a few of our products and a special lifetime subscription for bidding. All proceeds from the bidding go directly to Save the Children, a charity organization, with the intent of being sent to help children in Syria. Consider checking out the massive array of items available for bidding from a variety of amazing developers and companies around the world, which we are honored to be able to list our products next to.

Here’s what we are offering:

• two bundles of all the Versilian Studio products including: Dan Tranh ($25), Xylophone ($15), Tubular Bells ($10) and Zither (free). Available in 32- or 64-bit VST + AU and Kontakt format!
• One lifetime subscription to all VS products produced now and forever!

Follow this link to the one and only official bidding thread on kvraudio.com.

In addition, note that 25% of all our profits this month will be given to the charity at the end of the month. I’ll be blogging as we make progress and with the final total! I’ll also be putting up a few special side-projects this month to encourage donations including some small but unique sound effect libraries that will be available for free or donation.

One last bit of business- anyone visiting our store might notice that you get a 10% discount if you purchase two or more items. 🙂

Keep compos(ed/ing)!

-Sam

Dan Tranh VSTi Released!

We are pleased to announce the release of our latest virtual instrument, a deep-sampled Dan Tranh. As far as we know, we are one of the first people in the world to sample this instrument, and the very first to really explore it fully including live tremolo, live vibrato, round robin on pretty much everything, and tons of awesome effects. Feel free to check out the product here for more information.

A Warm Welcome!

Recently I invited two great Newgrounders and fellow composers to join the ranks of Versilian Studios, Skye Wintrest and Nimble (Jose), and they agreed to come onboard! This is a huge turning point for this little company and I hope to bring more people in as time goes by so it can function more as a collaborative organ than a lone floating cell. As part of this, I also (AGAIN) redesigned the site to get rid of the dark medieval feel and replace it with a bit more art noveau/art deco feel (I get them mixed up all the time for some reason), mainly because I’ve been playing lots of that glorious thing called Civilization V lately…

Skye specializes in ambient/electronic music and sound effect synthesis.

Jose is a fellow Finale user and specializes in all sorts of modern musical craziness from jazz to post-tonal.

Be on the look out for their music and links to their stuff showing up on the site soon, and also for possibly more people joining the team!

As always, Keep compos(ed/ing)!

-Samulis

P.S. Did you download my zither yet?

Guide to the Orchestra- Dev. Blog 4

Recently, I’ve been working with an artist on some art for the history section of the site, as well as some consulting for the design of the site. He gave me some great feedback and made some stunning header pieces, parts of which will be incorporated around the site. Above is one character he drew for the site.

The site is really starting to shape up! With the audio side of things figured out (thanks to Flash), everything is starting to fall in place. I also had a great new idea for the range diagrams to save space and give a more modern feel- a frame at the bottom of the page with tabs to see the various instruments’ ranges and other information. I ordered some books on orchestration and reference materials which I will be studying in order to get some more content and better explanations.

I have also been interviewing a variety of composers from around Newgrounds and the greater internet. There’s a whole wealth of knowledge and advice, and I can’t wait to share all this! 😀

In other news, I am still looking for anyone interested in helping out with the site. Get in contact with me (samulis@live.com/contact@versilstudios.net) if you are willing to write, draw, play, synthesize, or research!

Guide to the Orchestra- Dev. Blog 3

So much is going on… First off, the website got a bit of redecorating, and I rebuilt the menu bar from scratch so it’s a lot cleaner and nicer looking (see image below).

The big thing I got figured out was the playback of audio on mouse-overs on the instrument pages. I ended up using Flash to do this- mouse over the little eighth notes before a word and you get to hear the audio streamed live in full quality!

Lastly, I plugged away and wrote a considerable amount of tutorials on game scoring and also sent off some e-mails to people for interviews.

Guide to the Orchestra- Dev. Blog 2

So I figure now is a good time to explain exactly WHAT this site is… A Guide to the Orchestra is exactly what it sounds like it is (for the most part). The site has several sections- Reference, Instruments, History, Forms & Styles, and Composers.

• Reference– Articles and tutorials for Composers, Game Developers, and “Beginners” that go through everything from selecting the right music to score your game to counterpoint to when to concert etiquette. Much of this section is planned to be supplemented by outside sources with tutorials from people who know more than me about subject matters (like industry-experienced developers and composers).
• Instruments– Every instrument in the standard orchestra has its own page that goes in depth on what the instrument is, how it sounds (with audio examples that will, if I can do it right, play on mouse-over), its history, general use in orchestration, and etymology (a little something inspired by Kevin Macleod). All this is researched carefully by me… so it’s REALLY slow work! (if you, o’ random person perusing the internet, are interested in helping, by all means! Comment or e-mail me (samulis@live.com).
• History– A general overview of each era (not going to kill myself on this part) and the evolution of the orchestra.
• Forms & Styles– Various mainstream forms and styles explained here, partially inspired by the forms section on Kevin Macleod’s site.
• Composers– Short (3-5 sentence) bios of major composers in chronological order. Links will probably lead to Wikipedia pages.

Yeah… and it’s mostly a one-man project at this point; also note that I have no formal training aside from two semesters of basic Music Theory and what I have learned from various books and the internet. Hence my openness to anyone interested in helping stepping in.

I’m aiming to have this done in a few weeks/months. I already have half the woodwinds section done, the harp page done (it’s about as large as the instrument is… well, maybe not THAT big, but it’s longer than flute and clarinet combined, I’d say), as well as several of the reference pages and so on completed.

Guide to the Orchestra- Dev Blog 1

Just a quick update on the progress of my web project ‘A Guide to the Orchestra’!

I recently added a neat new feature- buttons on most pages that bring up a synopsis and also a ‘learn more’ button with links to helpful things to check out for more information on the instrument. This will make the site more accessible to those who aren’t interested in all the information and fluff and just want a simple run-down.

The synopsis of the entry on flutes.

In addition, I’ve added some more reference material to help people out and redid the organization of the reference material.

Next up:

• Audio playback
• Finish Woodwinds and move on to Strings!

New sub-website Under Construction

Howdy all! I’m working on a new sub-website for Versilstudios.net. This site will have TONS of information for everyone from composers to musicians to developers on everything from the instruments in the orchestra and their sounds to which filetypes and bitrates are best for what use. It’s mainly a solo project, but a lot of people are helping in little and big ways to move it along.

If you’re interested in helping, drop me a line (samulis@live.com) or add me on skype (lord-samulis)!

Home page WIP

Product Brochure

Product Brochure

Want to learn more about what Versilian Studios has to offer? check out our new product brochure!

Website Update

I have updated the website with a few changes:

• Navi bar is now always on the far left and is visible even with small screens and so on… down side- no longer travels with you as you scroll (at least, for now). 😦
• Images/resources have been resampled- website total size is only 10 MB.
• Updated page names to now include ‘Versilian Studios’ and added additional tags on main page.