some 'orchestral' ears please?

[fusilierb]

I can hear you are using the legato patches. Here is where working with this stuff gets tricky. As you browse through your E/w folders you will see all kinds of patches you can load. Take Vl1 patches for instances. There are all sorts of short and long patches of different varieties. Each one of the patches emulates a playing technique, called articulations. Unfortunately for us, players can change playing techniques on each note of phrase. For example, your piece. Take the main lines. They all contain very specific types of short and long bow strokes. Problem is, you are mainly using one patch to try to emulate that. To my ears all the downbeats of the low strings should have a staccato articulation, maybe even a spiccato one at time. If you don't choose that sample for that one note, you don't get the recorded bite across the string you are really wanting. Then your phrases go from the these little short bows to longer sustained sections. Again, to really re-create that to feel naturally you might have to trigger a different sample for each note in the phrase. Yes, it sucks!

There are two ways to do this.

1 Take you track and duplicate it several times and then send each track to a different articulation (patch). In the tracks that now contain only short notes you have to then delete all the long held notes. I personally hate this approach.

2) In every section you also have what are labeled keyswitch patches. They load up ALL the articulations at once and then there are certain keys (that fall out of the natural playing range of the instrument) that are called keyswitches. Kontact shows them in almost a pink color and Play shows them another color. They are easy to spot as they fall outside the playable range of the instrument at either the top or bottom of the keyboard. These allow you to select, by hitting and holding the appropriate key, the articulation that you want to sound at that time. Remember in these master patches, ALL of the different articulations are loaded and these articulation switches (keys) are like on off buttons that determine which one is sounding at that time.

You're first step is to load one of these patches, open the manual to the keyswitch diagrams and then play around with different phrases while switching the articulation keys to here what they sound like. Once you get an idea of which articulation should be playing for which notes, you need to draw into your midi track a note that causes this sound switching to happen. That is how you can load one track and change between articulations as it plays.

You should start there with this piece. Replace each of your legato patches with the Master KeySwitch pattern, i.e. vl1 masterkeyswitch, for track one, vl2 mater keyswitch for track two and so on. Then take each track "solo" and figure out which keyswitches make your phrases sound more natural. Hint, all your short notes need to be either "quick up/down", spic, or stac. All your long lines will be some sort of legato patch. Play with the switches to listen to what works.

Are you using this in Kontact or in the Play plugin?

All sustained lines will have to be sculpted with CC11 so yes, you will have to figure out how to map your mod wheel to that controller. The basic idea is CC11 adds intensity. The higher the CC11, the harder and more bright the bowing. You will be drawing in gentle curves to mimic the bow pressure during sustained lines.

Give it a try. It's a lot to learn and going one step at a time is my recommendation. I'd start with your bass ostinato.

[Salty]

WOW-
Excellent! I think I might give this a try this weekend if I dont end up playin more than one gig.
Im guessing like most, we just wanna create, create, create...but Im very very happy you wrote all of that, b/c I think I can digest the Key Switches by drawing in method- will give it a shot in any case.

BTW- I use the Play module for everything.

Great advice, really!

[fusilierb]

Glad to help out. I didn't know anything about this stuff just a few (five or six now) years ago and was helped tremendously by some of the good people here. I especially like hearing really good writers jump into the samples for the first time and then hearing how their music evolves as they learn how to use them.

Since you have Logic, I almost have to recommend you start getting used to it instead of garage band. I've never used it, but it's Apple and it's the big boy version and you're taking on some midi intensive work here. So while you're getting your feet wet, I'd recommend switching to logic to "get your learn on". I'm sure the midi tools there will make what you need to do much easier.

Plus, it's 64 bit, which I'm not sure about garage band, but these keyswitch patches are big and you need to throw some processing and RAM power at them. I think Logic will be better optimized for all that.

[fusilierb]

WOW-
Excellent! I think I might give this a try this weekend if I dont end up playin more than one gig.
Im guessing like most, we just wanna create, create, create...but Im very very happy you wrote all of that, b/c I think I can digest the Key Switches by drawing in method- will give it a shot in any case.

BTW- I use the Play module for everything.

Great advice, really!

I hear you, all you want to do is create, create, create. Unfortunately, the game is now write and produce. Being a writer isn't enough anymore. You're now the engineer and programmer also. Welcome to tomorrow.

The fun part is, you now the engineer and programmer also.

[Salty]

Yup-
I agree- that its just how it is.

Thanks again- I think Im gonna be taking a stab at it shortly.

[davewalton]

I'm kinda short on time but I'll post more hopefully in a few days. Rather than tackling a long piece, I found it *much* easier to get to know my orchestral package (and articulations) by doing a series of very short pieces... maybe 15 seconds to 30 seconds at the most. Here are a few examples (using EW Gold along with some other things like Stormdrum) that I did sometime back when I was getting to know these packages...

http://www.DaveWaltonMusic.com/MyMusic/ ... feated.mp3

http://www.DaveWaltonMusic.com/MyMusic/ ... Terror.mp3

I don't remember why I did this but I also did two very short (like 10 seconds long) pieces where I used EW Gold. The first I purposely made it sound as bad as possible by playing block chords on just one (weak) articulation. The second one I orchestrated the thing a bit using various instruments for a much more realistic effect...

http://www.DaveWaltonMusic.com/PrivateA ... re-Ick.mp3
http://www.DaveWaltonMusic.com/PrivateA ... are-OK.mp3

As an aside, I only use legato patches in either EW Gold/Platinum for a single leading line or something (which is what they're really for). Usually it's either the sustain patches, the short patches or a combination of those two. Until I got Hollywood Strings, I more or less avoided leading lines with the violins because it was too hard to get it to sound right. Or if I did, I doubled it with another instrument like french horns or something. Anyway... writing to the strength of the sounds rather than just writing the music, is something we all have to do.

[remmet]

Hi Salty,

Just a couple of comments. Bryan and Dave and others have offered great suggestions.

You wrote: "Recorded everything by playing it in, took a few passes for most stuff- but am not a pianist, and do not play one on TV very well."

By this, did mean that you record the parts by playing them in real time - and then that's it, they're done? Or do you edit what you've played after the initial recording?

It's the editing stage where you can really perfect your initial MIDI recording. I spend a LOT of time editing notes for velocity, duration, exact placement in time to account for attack onset differences, etc., as well as adding CC information as needed. PLUS, once all the parts are recorded as audio and I can hear how everything fits together - i.e., the MIX stage of the process - I'll make a lot of volume adjustments, for entire phrases, for single notes, or even for parts of notes - in order to further shape the individual lines and ensure that all the separate parts blend well. (I'm waiting for Dave or Bryan to come to my door to do this for me, but they probably misplaced the directions to my house.)

I mention the editing process in part because the first thing that jumped out at me was that, in your phrasing, the note velocities were all over the place. Some judicious velocity editing would help this tremendously.

Finally, you asked about the composition itself. It was a sophisticated and ambitious piece of writing. However, the one thing that didn't seem authentically orchestral, or especially musical, was the cello ostinato that kept repeating over and over. It sounded mechanical and - generally speaking - felt more pianistic (or even electronica-like) then orchestral. You could probably rethink the function it was serving and find other ways to support the rhythmic and harmonic movement of the piece. Or, you could pass the line to other instruments to give it some variety. For example, bassoon, bass clarinet, harp, string pizz, and/or vibes and marimba, etc., etc., could be used in various combinations to liven things up and keep the orchestration fresh.

Getting really good at this is an endless quest. You are definitely off to a good start! And don't forget to have fun while you're doing it.

Richard

[Salty]

Please keep the comments coming- thanks very much for taking the time to listen and analyze.



I did play it in real-time, but did some editing of velocities or moved stuff where I messed up- although am sure could do a lot more.

I think you guys who have commented, really have excellent control of your libraries and sounds- and all of these tips are great.

My thought on the cello line is to try and shape/articulate it a bit more before Id change it- I think its something most good cellists could play without major difficulty- and it might be my poor playing of it/not using best patches, thats making it sound less good- Id like it to be very 'flowing' (like water).
but I really appreciate the thought- and might end up going that way if I cant work it.

[remmet]

My thought on the cello line is to try and shape/articulate it a bit more before Id change it- I think its something most good cellists could play without major difficulty- and it might be my poor playing of it/not using best patches, thats making it sound less good- Id like it to be very 'flowing' (like water).
but I really appreciate the thought- and might end up going that way if I cant work it.

By all means, it's your vision and you should go for it. But just in case my comments weren't as clear as they could have been, I wasn't saying that the cello line was hard to play. Not at all. I was just saying that the length of the repetitive and unchanging pattern was not typical of orchestral writing. That's why I was suggesting finding ways to make it more interesting and less static if you wanted to keep the pattern going.

Richard

[DesireInspires]

What did you use to create your music? Did you use midi instruments? I am trying to figure out how you got your sounds. I hear some familiar.