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From articulation to no-articulation string samples

Discussion in 'Tips, Tricks & Talk' started by Jure Jerebic, Oct 18, 2021.

  1. #1 Jure Jerebic, Oct 18, 2021
    I saw JW live yesterday for the second time (front row too!), and was able to see how much violins/strings actually play that isn’t audible otherwise in the mix. Depending on the piece, they seem to be constantly shifting between articulations, and now I’m eager to try more of that. I wanted to check if that’s also something others here tend to do and is perhaps one of the reasons for using Performance Samples and the Sample Modeling stuff; to have that freedom of immediate expression across different articulations rather than being frustrated with articulation switching or writing longs/legatos separately, then spics, then tremolos, etc…I think we’re so limited with these libraries, and maybe not even for the sound, but this immediacy of expression thru fast articulation “switching”. Of course, once stuff is written, then switching to a library like Berlin Strings and using the actual articulation samples to make it more realistic (for 99,9% of us that don't record with live orchestras).
     
    Marian Szewczyk and David Healey like this.
  2. #2 Marian Szewczyk, Oct 18, 2021
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2021
    Nice. Hope you enjoyed Berlin ;) Some of my friends went too. I missed it, sadly. Yeah, JW is an absolute master of all these subtle nuances, that give every piece that final 1% to perfection. Things you barely hear, but which give his music that unique "magical" feeling. Also, knowing and utilizing the full range of capabilities of every instrument so well. I'm nowhere near that, naturally, that's why I'm fine with my libraries for now. But even for the most basics things, strings are always the biggest challange. They're so versatile, so expressive, and therefore so hard to do virtually. I have no experience with Sample Modeling or similar. I think though, the problem is not only the quality and capabilities of the library, but actually having to perform it. In a live orchestra, you don't only get all the instruments with their amazing sounds, but also the virtuosity of every skilled player along with them, every single one doing their best to bring your piece to life, with their years and years of practice and experience. I don't think we will ever stand a chance coming anywhere close to that, doing it all by ourselves in our DAWs with a little MIDI keyboard and modwheel. I'm not a huge fan of AI in music, but I think one day, it might be a good help for kind of "intelligently" and "autonomously" bringing more life and virtuosity into every cue. Kind of like NotePerformer does, and it's not bad, but not quite there yet.
     
  3. #3 Mike Verta, Oct 18, 2021
    Real players do not play using rigid articulations. They perform a billion microarticulations in the course of a line. I demonstrated and discussed this at length during the Live Brass masterclass. This is why sample libraries which break notes into Legato-Staccato-Marcato-etc. are so grossly inadequate. The only way these sample libraries work is when the music conforms to them - long lines of mechanical staccatos or marcatos played one after another - which is exactly what's happened, and why live players are so universally miserable. They're constantly asked to play unmusical phrases in unmusical ways. Today's orchestral music, with few exceptions, is merely the "sound" of an orchestra, as conceived by people with no orchestral experience and little musical training or skill.
     
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  4. #4 John Russell, Oct 18, 2021
    Hey, new here.
    Just getting started with writing with sample libraries after having played "real" instruments for years. Mike is definitely right, but "inadequate" does depend on the task. I'm having a blast making my ideas kinda sound like music. I'm an amateur so I could see if this was my job these limitations might chafe more.

    This issue of "not every line is just an endless series of staccatos" though is why I've been going with a single track for all patches and use expression maps (cubase) to switch articulations on a note by note basis. Maybe it's just the way I'm thinking about the part but I feel like it makes it easy for me to just think about what I want it to sound like and make each note staccatissimo, or sfz, or whatever the library supports. I _could_ do this with split patches across tracks, but honestly, I probably wouldn't.
    Yes, it's not the millions of microadjustments and I am struggling to make this sound like I want.
    Maybe I'll run into issues with this when I go to mix or run into settings that I REALLY want different for different patches (track delay is one I'm dreading but so far Cinesamples quantize-mode, where it has consistent delay for all short and legato patches, is helping me out with this. )
     
  5. #5 Mike Verta, Oct 18, 2021
    John - that you're having fun is great. I exclusively use sample libraries which allow me to play; libraries like Aaron Venture's Infinite Brass. The speed and musicality of performed lines is far superior to other options, and worth giving a try.
     
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  6. #6 Jure Jerebic, Oct 18, 2021
    Yeah, that's why I'm leaning into getting something like that, probably the Sample Modeling Strings, those seem to be right up that alley. I want to be able to perform ideas in real time, as I hear them (or as close as possible), and not stop, go to another articulation, record a few notes there, then go back to the main one, screw that. So I'd be using these only as a writing tool, and then once the ideas are down, I'd go in and actually use the individual articulation samples from Berlin Strings etc. to make it sound more realistic.
     
  7. #7 John Russell, Oct 18, 2021
    The "get the ideas down" part is one I've been struggling with as well. I've tried combinations of
    - play it on the piano. I can kinda do melody lines on the piano but since piano wasn't my instrument I wonder if it's limiting what I write to what I can play
    - have an audio track in my template always hooked up to a mic so I can just sing what I am hearing with all the ridiculous sounding sound effects I'm making with my voice/mouth to get the idea across. Then I try to orchestrate that.
     
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  8. #8 Mike Verta, Oct 18, 2021
    There are no wrong approaches to getting ideas down, but you should absolutely work on your piano chops and learn to compose there, first, before worrying about orchestration. For the better part of 10 years now, I have heard countless pieces which try to substitute sounds for harmonic and thematic development. Writing on piano lays bare the truth of how much music you're actually writing. If it "doesn't work," without needing other instruments, it doesn't work. One can play everything from Rite of Spring to Axel F on the piano and it works, because it's music. Every great composer in history wrote on piano; it was sufficient to generate centuries of beloved music. It's how I learned; how I'm teaching my son. It's fun to be able to hear orchestral sounds, but unless you already have a working knowledge of true orchestral balance and/or a template which behaves absolutely realistically in terms of balance, orchestrating on samples does more harm than good. 95% of submitted mock-ups by "composers" today is utterly unplayable, featuring impossible balances and relationships out of ignorance. This has compelled live groups to have to record sections individually, so they can be artificially rebalanced to match bullshit mock-ups, which musicians absolutely loathe, for obvious reasons.
     
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  9. #9 Stephen Limbaugh, Oct 22, 2021
    Another option to add what to maestro Verta is saying...

    One thing ***AFTER*** the piano chops are developed that can be very useful in rendering realistic, musical lines that are idiomatic of the instruments for which you have orchestrated your music, is to watch a lot of masterclasses on Youtube of conservatory kids performing standard orchestral excerpts for a world-renown musician. Listen to the pieces of advice they give, and apply those techniques to when you ride a MOD wheel, expression fader, etc. Practice those standard orchestral excerpts with your samples. That learning will seep into your writing making it much better.

    Oh, and for full orchestra stuff, watch rehearsals with great conductors -- will learn a lot about phrasing especially.

    My tiny disagreement with Mike is that I think you can get pretty close with Vienna Symphonic Library stuff. There are so many parameters that while not being the fastest to make a good recording of a piece, there are a billion combinations of CC, articulation layering, and sample start manipulation with which to work.
     
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