Mixing Orchestral Stuff

[mojobone]

I kinda see where you're going, Len. Most people who hear orchestral music these days hear it in a theater, over speakers; your average Jane may have never heard an actual symphony orchestra in a concert hall, and old symphony records sound...old. In fact, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that about half the real symphonic music I've heard was played outdoors and synchronized with lasers, cannons and fireworks. Great for Sousa, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, maybe not so much for Bach and Mozart.

[Len911]

Now ya bring up another thing, the tuning. The strings don't have frets, and the blown instruments, are adjustable also. The samples would be equal tuned to a piano.

[mojobone]

Equal temperament isn't the golem it used to be. Singers, stringers and some of us guitar players and saxists play in absolute pitch, which is different from a piano's stretch tuning. It's late, and I'm tired; I'll let you google "stretch tuning", LOL. If you ever heard an orchestra that was completely in tune, it was probably faked.

[Len911]

Equal temperament isn't the golem it used to be. Singers, stringers and some of us guitar players and saxists play in absolute pitch, which is different from a piano's stretch tuning. It's late, and I'm tired; I'll let you google "stretch tuning", LOL. If you ever heard an orchestra that was completely in tune, it was probably faked.

Faked or sampled,lol!
What I meant was that they were compensated, and that the degree of compensation deviation for each individual instrument adds up to the sum of it's parts.

Note that while the guitar and other modern stringed instruments with fixed frets are tuned in equal temperament, string instruments without frets, such as those of the violin family, are not. The violin, viola, and cello are tuned to beatless just perfect fifths and ensembles such as string quartets and orchestras tend to play in fifths based Pythagorean tuning or to compensate and play in equal temperament, such as when playing with other instruments such as the piano. For example, the cello, which is tuned down from A220, has three more strings (four total) and the just perfect fifth is about two cents off from the equal tempered perfect fifth, making its lowest string, C-, about six cents more flat than the equal tempered C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_tuning

Googled stretch tuning,lol, and it is a detail of tuning, not the tuning or temperament itself. As in stretch tuned to equal temperament.

Stretched tuning is a detail of musical tuning, applied to wire-stringed musical instruments, older, non-digital electric pianos (such as the Fender Rhodes piano and Wurlitzer electric piano), and some sample-based synthesizers based on these instruments, to accommodate the natural inharmonicity of their vibrating elements. In stretched tuning, two notes an octave apart, whose fundamental frequencies theoretically have an exact 2:1 ratio, are tuned slightly farther apart (a stretched octave). "For a stretched tuning the octave is greater than a factor of 2; for a compressed tuning the octave is smaller than a factor of 2."[4]

[mojobone]

Someone once told me the first rule of string orchestration is to never hire two double bass players; you either hire one, three or four, because two basses are never in tune.*
"Pythagorean Tuning" is another great thing to google, along with "just intonation" and "harmonic series". Go down that rabbit hole, it could be years before you see daylight, again.

The reason for this is that every section has a leader, and it ain't always the first chair that's got the ears, and there's some folks that are always gonna be just a hair flat or sharp, all the time, and some are more accurate on a given day than others. This is supposedly why Albion sounds so authentic in context; they left all the detuning in! When it comes to ensembles, the more accurate the sampling is, the less authentic it sounds; take the same set of samples from Albion and try to do divisi parts, you'll be horrified by the out-of-tune-ness. When I write for horns, I gotta take into account that the louder the flugelhorn plays and the higher the register, the greater amount of pitch overshoot; it happens to sax players, too, but we call it the 'soul quotient'. I've gone as far as key scaling my sampled trumpets to emulate this phenomenon.

Out-of-timeness is another feature of human ensembles, and I really dig that some VIs let you randomize timing by controlled amounts; another old sampler's trick is to stagger the attacks of a stacked instrument. When I do this, I ensure nobody hits the note early and at lower velocities there's more 'spread'. A little humanization goes a long way, though; you don't wanna make it harder on yourself to mix.








*Actually, this is only true when they're not doubling the celli, which is hardly ever.

[Len911]

Where was it I heard, taxi tv?, that orchestral was going out of style. Thank goodness, I mean, um,

All it's ever really been is about sound design, not orchestral authenticity. Think string machines. I mean the Boston Pops was an authentic orchestra. A real orchestra is always gonna sound old, or should I say, timeless,lol! Can anyone give an example of an authentic orchestra without any other elements of sound design, I mean full symphonic orchestra that's been used in anything worthwhile lately?? I could be totally wrong, but I'm asking!

[waveheavy]

If you're not going for a recreation of a live orchestra venue, then balancing the mix ought to be top priority. Try Violin II panned right (some orchestras setup like this). Bass mostly centered.

Dear All,

I have got a comprehensive question regarding orchestral stuff and how to mix it. I realise that when I pan the instruments as per the 'seating chart' of an orchestra I am ending up with more perceived high mid range information on the left side as e.g. first and second violins would 'sit' there (and most of the other high range instruments would also 'sit' on the left side of the stage such as flutes, trumpets and bells).

How do you approach this? Or do you ignore the seating chart and mix the orchestra as you would mix any other instrumental in order to pan / balance the frequency distribution in a commensurate fashion?

I would really appreciate your thoughts.

Cheers,
Matt