In fairness (since I started this thread), I do think that a Wagner tuba or a bass trumpet is a lot easier to do than a good set of mutes. For trumpet alone I would want a complete set of long notes, short notes, trills, stacatto repetitions, legato, portamentos, etc for each of harmon (with and without stem), straight and cup mutes. And I would probably want trumpets and trombones with a mod-wheel controlled hat (because I'm a sick bastard). So I realize that I'm asking to increase the number of samples (and recording/engineering time) in the current trumpet set by a factor of 5 or more. Just adding a bass trumpet is clearly much easier than that.

For strings I'd be a little less demanding, because I don't see much real use for metal practice mutes in orchestral music; simple rubber or wooden mutes would be fine. So I'd only want to double the current library size. And maybe not even that because I'm not convinced that there's a huge difference between things like legno with and without mute.

I think that Herb et al made a concious business decision to eliminate mutes that had nothing to do with competence or a desire to extort money out of us users. They probably decided that the main commercial users will be film composers, who tend to favour a lush (unmuted) sound. And a complete set of mutes would make an expensive venture prohibitive.

However, having rushed to his defence, Herb, if you're listening, I really do want mutes, and I would be willing to pay extra for them if they were done in the same fabulously thorough manner as the unmuted instruments were.

string mutes are there, right? I use them all the time and love them.

I love muted solo violin. Would be thrilled to have it from VSL.

Nigel

Brass and string mutes, please, Herb. And since we are wishing, don't forget the string harmonics.

Michael Matthews

Definitely want both natural and fingered string harmonics for both solo and section strings. And if we could get a good set of harmonic repetitions, legato and portamento as well as long and short notes and effects like tremolos and glissandos, that would be particularly useful.

Everybody has his own needs,
Why don't we organize a Pool ?
Herb, is it a secret, what's coming next, new products, updates ?

Your discussion makes me think about something: When you mute an instrument, it’s almost as if you have a completely new instrument. When muted, you can do nearly every thing you do without muting it. So, for each way to mute the instrument you have a new instrument. And because you can change the way to mute during a playing note you have infinite samples do make.
It’s almost the same than to sample a human voice. “Changing the mute” is almost like changing a vowel… And that’s not simple to sample!
I’ve started to sample a singer’s voice many years ago… But when trying to put samples together, I’ve noticed that the more I added samples the more the “instrument” was heterogeneous and sounded artificial. Why? It was almost impossible for the singer to reproduce exactly the same vowel twice! Even if this evolution was not audible when sung by the real singer, it was very artificial when putting together cut samples from different context (Imagine a flute where the diameter change suddenly up to 3 millimetres…) The transition was brutal and not natural. I’ve found the solution in a huge amount of sampling and in voice modelling.
I’m afraid that we’ll have those kinds of difficulties with muted instruments like muted trumpet. So may be VSL team have already worked about muted stuff but where waiting for a mature technology to realize it properly (with the same quality as this amazing lib).
The classic sampling technology has showed its limits few years ago, and now we see that it’s an optimal method when combined with other techniques like performance tools or convolution with impulse responses. You surely heard about the Giga Piano II and the impulse responses of the board. Convolutions don’t give good results to simulate vowels or mutes but other techniques are coming…
So don’t blame them if they don’t have already a huge muted library. They might have technical issues to manage before releasing it!

Interesting... I could actually see them using a type of convolution or filtering for the mute effect. After all, that's all that a mute is reallly doing, filtering. And you're absolutely right about the size of the job -- it hadn't occured to me that they would basically need to sample *everything* again with the mutes on!!! Holy smokes, what a task!

Unfortunately, though... I'm *dying* for mutes! (And yes, nat/art harmonics, scratch tones, sul tasto, sul pont, etc. What would also be great would be some over-zealous solo string marcato attacks -- you know, the kind that actually distort a little bit. That would be awesome! I wonder how hard it is to get players to record samples of "mistakes", like these little buzzes... They could really bring sample-based performances to life, I think! It would also be amazing to have real "performance double-stops" -- intelligently mapped double-stops using a new mode of the performance tool... okay, I'm getting carried away.)

J.

"I could actually see them using a type of convolution or filtering for the mute "

Yes, they are some solutions for this.
About the convolution, you couldn't have good results with it, at least with the convolution products currently available.
About filtering, actually we could say that any DSP tranformation on a signal is a filter... So yes, theorically, we could do it with a real time, dynamic and adaptative filtering. The most important point is the modelling of the muting transformation. That's where rely the quality and the realism of it.

I for one won't buy either the chamber strings or the solo strings without at least muted sustain samples. It's that important for me. You don't really need muted col legno or even muted pizz is not so different. But muted sustain. legato, that's basic, IMO.

Alan

@belkina said:

You don't really need muted col legno or even muted pizz is not so different.

I agree that muted legno and pizz aren't terribly different from their unmuted versions. The only places one tends to encounter them are where it would be difficult to remove a mute that was placed for some other reason.

But that got me to thinking... what about muted versus unmuted harmonics? I'm not a string player, so I can't just slap a mute on and try it. Can anybody comment on the differences here?

And, on the subject of some type of filter to mimic the effect of a mute, I'd have to object to that. What I like so much about VSL is its realism. I may be a Luddite, but I think that digital filtering would greatly diminish that realism.

K

@Another User said:

I may be a Luddite, but I think that digital filtering would greatly diminish that realism.

What about convolution for space modeling? Do you think it diminish the realism of VSL instruments? You can change the impulse response to simulate different spaces and different surround configuration. Of course, until having very good tools for it, built in reveb was prefered... Is it still the case?
Anyway, I just don't know what solution(s) VSL's team will choose for mutes, but I'm shure they'll give good results (as usual...)

@MusicianDesigner said:

What about convolution for space modeling? Do you think it diminish the realism of VSL instruments? You can change the impulse response to simulate different spaces and different surround configuration. Of course, until having very good tools for it, built in reveb was prefered... Is it still the case?

Well, the math for reverb convolution is very solid. It's computationally intensive, but it shouldn't cause serious signal degradation or introduce excessive noise (if done right). And, because it mathematically models what happens to the wave as a result of the physical room, the results sound quite realistic.

But I don't think that the same could be said for mutes. How do you sample the effect of placing a mute on the bridge of a fiddle? I don't think I even understand what that would mean. It's not like the reverb situation where you can idealize the same initial waveform being acted upon by a physical space. The sound from the muted instrument is a different sound to begin with because the bridge is part of the sound creation mechanism.

I suppose you could sample each note with and without the mute, compare the power spectrum and construct a set of EQ rules that try to mimic the same behaviour. But is that all there is to a mute? Might the extra weight on the bridge also alter the frequencies of the upper harmonics? Could there be additional phasing effects or other interesting distortions?

I'd really prefer it if they were to just sample the muted instrument and be done with it.