stupid Q: Polyphony w/ Orch Strings I and II

[mplaster]

hi folks... okay, let me start of by saying i am a complete idiot. i dont claim to know the first thing about  orchestration or all that technical stuff. im jsut a songwriter and electronic musician who knows what he likes when he hears it...

that being said, i have a question about usage of the VI Orchestral Strings.

Okay, heres what im concerned about:

so, lets use the Orch Strings II Cello for example. it is my understanding that this is a GROUP of celli (8 cellists, according to the info ive read). So, when i play ONE single note, it is, i assume, 8 cellists playing that same note, in unison, correct? Assuming i am correct, then my question is this: when i play, say, a four-note chord, then does that mean that the sound of the samples i am hearing is then, technically, of 32 (8 times the four notes) strings being played? Obviously, if this were the case, then that would be not realistic, in the real-world orchestra sense. Or does VI somehow calculate the notes being played and "subtract" the number of notes from the available number of virtual cellists, thus resulting in a total number of strings being played never exceeding more than 8 total?

am i making sense? i dont know.. i just came to me recently though as i was composing a song... the song began sounding way to articificially "lush," and i wondered if my usage of the Orch Strings was not realistic....

sorry if i am being confusing or not explaining myself well.... i just want to do my best to make these exceptional strings sound as close as to real as possible, and learn how to use them in the most appropriate and realistic way....

thanks in advance 

[PaulR]

That's right. When you play one note - you are hearing 8 cellists. When you play 2 notes - 16 cellists and so on. That would not be realistic in the purist sense. You can still do it if you like the sound - BUT - I personally hate chords when played this way. Why? Because you may as well play a synthesizer. - - -- - The other issue you mention about whether VSL actually calculates what's going on is an interesting one - the only company that have attempted to do this to my knowledge so far is AI - or something like that. And it costs a fortune and so far seems a little disappointing. - - - - - ~So my advice would be not to play chords - but instead to build up chords through correct orchestration - in other words using say, the whole string family throughout their correct pitch areas.

[ColinThomson]

    Mplaster, here are a couple things that people here have done to get realistic divisi in a string section.

    If you layer a solo patch in with the orchestral patch, it thins out the sound somewhat, making it seound like less people are playing. So you would have to have a second track with the solo strings on it, and only have it play when you have a divisi, and then automate the volume so that the total volume of celli would go down instead of building up with the added solo patch. Of course, I don't know what libraries you have, so I don't know if this is an option. I use the Special Edition, which means I have many of the instruments, but not nearly so many articulations to work with.

    If you have chamber strings, you can just use them for divisi sections. You might also EQ the sound of more than one playing to artificially thin the sound, but I am no EQ master, and haven't really used this method.

    My personal favorite option would be to load up two different cello patches, so that when you have a melody line playing with no harmony, you have 16 celli playing the melody, but if you want to seperate into a second harmony, than you end up with 8 playing the melody, and 8 playing the harmony. Of course this way you can only play two-part harmony in the celli, but you can use this with what PaulR told you about orchestrating using the entire string section, which I would also certainly suggest.

Hope this helps.

Colin Thomson