It sounds good. Clearly a lot of work has gone into it. In some of the more thickly orchestrated areas, I can detect the 'organ-like' sound that dogs every sound module or software system I have used. I really don't know how to get around that (although when I'm writing, I tend to compose my way around it - 0/10 for artistic integrity though!).

Something I've found extremely useful is to pick your favourite recording and try to get your mock-up to sound *exactly* like it. You'll learn a great deal about which samples to use, reverb and quite a bit about conducting as well.

I'm currently trying to produce audios of a Requiem I recently completed, using VSL PRO and the Voices of the Apocalypse. It was incredibly valuable to mock up parts of Mozart's requiem and try to make them sound like Von Karajan's fantastic 1962 recording. I ended up using instruments and gigstudio settings I never would have found on my own.

I've found that that organ-like sound is usually less a product of the samples than performance factors. If each part is musical in and of itself, there will be literally no chance for the timing to line up on a micro level. Especially with this piece, the composer was competent enough to make sure of that for you!

Okay, it's getting much better, thanks to your help. Here's the latest:

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/beethoven_5.1_f.mp3

I made each part separately and tightened a bit of the sloppiness (like different note lengths on the chords). Still a few minor "rough edges" to fix, though.

I did listen to many recordings (and have played and conducted this piece when I was in school), so I have a good frame of reference. But let me just say that I'm not trying to reproduce the sound of any pre-existing recording. The phrasing and balance have more to do with how I'd like this piece to sound than with erroneously NOT mimicking another orchestra. So, I take the full blame! [[;)]]

- P

As has been debated elsewhere on this forum, there is a legimate question as to why one would make "mockups" of classical music with the VSL. The word "mockup" is revealing. Does the Boston Symphony make a "mockup" of Beethoven's 5th when they play it again? Stupid question. It's obviously a performance. And that's what I'm doing with this symphony ... performing it.

The VSL is my instrument -- and like anyone who's only had an instrument for 1.5 years, the performance I make ain't gonna be perfect. [:O]ops:

Even so, one of the very special things about performing these works with the VSL is that you can probe them as deeply as they deserve to be probed.

And that is how I found out how to make sense of that crazy oboe solo in the recap. (This always bothered me. Why did Beethoven stick that in there?) Every performance I've ever heard of this most-performed work fails to make clear that the oboe solo is the consequent of an antecedent phrase just before the fermata.

Have a listen to just the oboe itself:

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/b5_oboe_solo_context.mp3

Hear what I mean? What could be simpler? Well, if your orchestra covers up that first part of the oboe phrase with violins, the second part of it makes no sense (especially when most players treat the high G as the start of the solo, instead of as the end of the prior phrase).

Here it is with the rest of the orchestra:

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/b5_oboe_solo_orchestra.mp3

Of course any orchestra COULD play it this way. There's nothing inherent in this symphony that requires the VSL to "bring it out." It's not my problem that they always chose to ignore the oboe!

(For fun,here's Furtwängler conducting this bit in three different performances):
http://www.furtwangler.net/audio/lvb5/lvb5-10.mp3

In 1937, 1943 and 1954 ... in each one, you can hear that Furtwängler seems to need to create space for the oboe solo by introducing an incredible ritardando. I don't think you need that, if you keep the violins out of the way to hear the oboe before the fermata. But that's my perogative.

So, this is just one small example that illustrates why using the VSL to play the classics can be much more than just "mocking up" "demos" to help sell the VSL. It is a way for us musicians who do not have our own orchestra to engage in the same artistic pursuits as any of those analog music directors who happened to have played their cards right and gotten a conducting gig [*-)]

If you want to hear the latest version of this piece (up to the oboe solo), here it is:

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/beethoven_5.1_g.mp3 (7 Mb)

Enjoy.

- Paul

I guess this demonstrates that people use VSL for different purposes. For my part, I can't generally afford to bring a 70 person orchestra together when I'm working on a composition (at least not until that lottery ticket comes good!). I try to make mock-ups to sound close to my favourite interpretations in order to give me Giga performance files and patch selections which hopefully can be exploited make my own compositions sound more realistic. I have to say I have despaired since joining this forum. Composing new material is hard enough, but the level of technical skill and time required to make plausible recordings seems prohibitive. For example, to my surprise there are very few postings showing non-technie composers how to make Sibelius sound realistic with VSL.

@Another User said:

I try to make mock-ups to sound close to my favourite interpretations in order to give me Giga performance files and patch selections which hopefully can be exploited make my own compositions sound more realistic. I have to say I have despaired since joining this forum. Composing new material is hard enough, but the level of technical skill and time required to make plausible recordings seems prohibitive. For example, to my surprise there are very few postings showing non-technie composers how to make Sibelius sound realistic with VSL.

Although I'm not a composer (conductor, by training), I totally agree with you.

Let's assume you are Johannes Brahms and you write a violin concerto. Now, go get a Stradivarius and practice like hell until you can get it to sound just as you imagined! Maybe in 15 years you'll be done ... but more likely never. That's why Brahms got Joachim to play his concerto.

Now we're in the 21st century ... you're a composer ... you've got a choice: Practice like hell on your VSL, or find a present-day Joachim. Back in the old days, composers had their pianos and organs to grapple with. We have our computers and gear.

One likely path in the evolution of computer-produced music may indeed be the splitting of functions. Some of us (perhaps you among them?) may decide that it's a waste of time to practice your VSL and you'd be better off composing. While others of us (like me) may decide that getting the best orchestral performance possible is the goal (and NOT composing at all).

This eventual division of labor makes sense. Who can do everything well? If this scenario comes to pass, then composers may be having their pieces played by digital orchestras, without having to "play" the orchestra themselves. But, like I said, this is just one likely path that I suspect is already emerging.

- Paul

@paulhenrysmith said:

Some of us (perhaps you among them?) may decide that it's a waste of time to practice your VSL and you'd be better off composing. While others of us (like me) may decide that getting the best orchestral performance possible is the goal (and NOT composing at all).

I let my computer to generate music (midi files) from pictures and trying myself to
learn to use software instruments to play those pieces...

LG
metacomposer
www.synestesia.com

I thought of the following: In a great painting the painter knew his techniques how to accomplish it. If he didn't it wasn't a great painting. Now on the digital side people who wouldn't make a great picture in oil can still produce amazing graphics in 3D, but they have to know the techniques how to accomplish that, too. A great painter would perhaps have to go a long route to get a decent 3D picture out of Adobe Photoshop. Perhaps because the choice of tools also matters.

PolarBear

Concerning music your analogy goes astray. Painting is not performing art. Music is. Good performance can even make a bad composition a little bit more enjoyable. Bad performance can destroy a marvellous score on the other hand.
LG

That analogy is not astray at all, it is perfect.

In fact, the closest analog to sample performances is oil painting. It is an absolutely perfect metaphor. Each note, performed separately, is like a single dab of paint on a pallete.

This is not merely performance art. It is a creative collage art as well. That is another analog which fits samples - collage. The artist assembles elements which he himself did not create, yet which taken together create a new work.

Anyway, I agree with the ideas on this thread about studying a great masterpiece with an ambitious sample performance of it and congratulate the author of the thread for his work. In fact, it is probably the best way ever invented to study a score - far more intensive than merely copying a score, as Beethoven himself was known to do. In the case of sample performance, one has to copy the score but also do a complete conducting job on it. It fact, a meta-conducting job, if I may be so bold. To do a sufficiently detailed and expressive sample performance requires far more musical skill than a conductor has to have.

Just ask any orchestral player about that... [[;)]]

William, I agree completely with you. I found that putting mock-ups together to try and emulate the recordings of masters such as Von Karajan and Abbado (my particular favourite conductors) gives a surprisingly profound insight into how people at the top of the conducting profession go about their business.

In order to get closer to the great masters of the last century I have revised this Beethoven excerpt to embody the ideal sound of the 1930s.

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/beethoven_5_c1930.mp3

It's all VSL, except for the dust.

- Paul

Okay, folks, let me know what you think of this complete performance of the first movement of Beethoven Symphony No. 5:

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/PHS_beethoven_5_a.mp3

- Paul Smith
The Fauxharmonic Orchestra
http://www.fauxharmonic.com

These guys are playing like a bunch of sissies! They need REVERB! Without it you're not doing all that time you spent progamming justice.

Of course, the orchestras were smaller in those days (and also the tuning was lower). But even when I saw Franz Brüggen conducting Beethoven with a historically correct 18th century orchestra, it was a MUCH bigger sound than you're getting.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

These guys are playing like a bunch of sissies! They need REVERB! Without it you're not doing all that time you spent progamming justice.

Of course, the orchestras were smaller in those days (and also the tuning was lower). But even when I saw Franz Brüggen conducting Beethoven with a historically correct 18th century orchestra, it was a MUCH bigger sound than you're getting.

Just trying to get away from Beethoven as ponderous, overly serious dinosaur. Maybe some more reverb would help ... but I don't want it to end up all drunken and muddy. I was surprised how much of the earthy jocularity of this movement is simply hidden with a heavier hand. (I had more reverb in initially.)

BTW, if the historically correct orchestra you saw had worn what they were supposed to have worn in those days ... you might have been less inclined to call those VSL musicians sissies!

Anyway, maybe I went too far in the dry direction. I'll try another mix.

- P

Drunken muddy reverb is horrible, but you can still give it some impact without getting to that state.

Ponderous and overly serious is horrible too, of course, but the Fifth is victory - not bubbly stuff. (At least victory is the standard story. I've never stopped to question whether that's really true.)

By the way, you've done a very nice job - I certainly don't mean to put down your work.

Nick, I certainly didn't take your comments as a put-down.

I just finished a new mix with more (but not too much) reverb. MUCH nicer. (I get so used to working with the dry orchestra to get things to lign up nicely, and to match articulations across sections, etc., that I forget about the importance of reverb.)

My server is down now, so I've posted this newly revised file here:

http://homepage.mac.com/paulhenrysmith/beethoven_5_a.mp3

Better?

- Paul