@goran c said:

The stylistical flexibility of the VSL really is unique. Almost anything can be achieved, depending on one's production skills and sound aesthetics.

Unfortunately not everybody can see that, often too busy looking for a Zimmer sound, not that there's anything wrong with that, but there is so much more.

@Errikos said:

I'm greatly concerned as to what the future will bring, for these 'noises' and 'shrieks' that you mention (but also 'ostinati' etc.), I don't want them to grow into something even more substantial. Because, let's face it, most of your buyers couldn't notate those 'noises' and 'shrieks' if their lives depended upon it. I am (just in case anyone's missed it) against fraud in general, and when a charlatan presents a demo/score to a director, where less than half the notes have been composed by that charlatan, it makes me crazy... 

Everybody: If you can notate it / MIDI it, do it. If you can't, IT'S NOT YOUR MUSIC.

I'm no musicologist or anything but isn't this usually notated as a cadenza?  Boroque/Classical music in particular used cadenzas extensively.  A lot of Bach's music was comprised of cadenzas too but they were still Bach's compositions.

However, I think you're missing the point that Errikos is making.  It's one thing to hire a saxophonist to improvise 20 or so bars in one of my compositions but it's a whole other thing to load up the "saxophone cadenza" patch into my sampler and press C5 to activate it for 20 or so bars then bounce out the final mix and call it all my own.  I'm assuming that you gave this saxophonist at least a credit line in your album right?  I think that is what troubles Errikos, and me too come to think of it, that no credit is givin where the credit is truly due.  At least I think that's the point Errikos is making.  I'm embarrassed to admit it but sometimes Errikos talks and he may as well be speaking Greek because I'm not sure what he's going on about.  And, as chance would have it, Errikos is Greek. What a coincedence!  But I've learned a lot form his posts if I might add. 

And let's take the argument EVEN FURTHER.  What about the sound engineers who mixed and mastered your composition.  Most of us do it ourselves using presets but if you're fortunate enough to have somebody else working on that for you, should they get some co-composition credit as well?  Afterall, they are the ones filtering out the bad frequencies, the mud and seperating out all of the various parts within the piece so that you can hear the main themes counterpoints etc. Although it is more crucial a step in Rock/Pop and Electronic music sound engineering is truly an art in itself.   

@jasen - Thanks for the kind words.

@civilisation 3

Thank you for making my points in your own words (and not knowing it of course)... The saxophonist that will provide the solo SHOULD receive a credit somewhere on your CD - Sax solo by So&SO, which would be your acknowledgment that HE wrote/improvised that part and it was not your music. It was his melodies following the harmonies/rhythms that you provided. I can't believe you're considering NOT giving credit to that player - actually, I can... But that is not what I said. I am not referring to a short section of a whole piece (like where that sax solo would fit), but to this endless cloned aural diarrhoea that has become indistinguishable from soundtrack to soundtrack, and from composer's website to composer's website these days, because the basic musical building blocks have been the same; downloaded, and then cut and pasted from one part of the computer screen to the other... Hmmm, great artistry...

MIDI a drum roll? Of course not; you'd get it from the library presets, BUT, I said that you'd have to be able to MIDI, OR notate the music in order to be considered yours. If you can't notate a drum roll, we have even less to talk about than I thought. There's more: Is it a snare drum roll? Is it a tympani drum roll? In this case you must specify pitch. Soft, medium, or hard sticks? Does it start or end on an accented note? Etc. etc. Basically the more you define, the more the music is yours, the less you define, the more it is NOT your music and it is a COLLABORATION based on some ground rules and ideas that you provide, but still a collaboration. I mean WAKE UP people!!!! Would you consider me the writer of a script if I hired someone ELSE and instructed him - "I want a seduction scene here, it takes place in a bedroom of a hotel, between Paul and Mary (see I'm giving the names of the characters...), they're in their early-20s, and they're university class-mates, and she succumbs at the end of it. Now YOU sit down, and write the 2-pages-long dialogue..." Would this be considered my work because I provided the idea and the setting?....... Or I could give the same instructions to two actors. That would be called IMPROVISATION on their part, and I would not get credit for writing the scene. In music, we really have con-fused everything these days...

Also, how many times do I have to say that I differentiate between the absolutely generic presets that VSL provides, and the index-finger-symphonic-chord or index-finger-section-chord/rhythm that cripples/incompetents-targeting software companies provide? You yourself say that software like Animato furnishes you with ideas you would not have thought of. Well, where do I say something different? I bet that if in the future there is software that can write the piece for you (but for which you will be providing "important" aspects like the key of the composition, tempi, notation-font, title...), you would buy it, and proudly put your name as the composer at the top. I am talking about you after all and if you look closely at what you say, you don't contradict anything but my classification of you (and similar others) with the term 'musical cripples'. I stand by that nomenclature and there's not ONE composer I respect that ever worked in the manner you describe.  - No, I don't respect Cage as a composer, and as far as the aleatoric passages in some Lutoslawcki, Penderecki, and Ligeti works are concerned: a) They specifically wanted "random" in those sections, but they could notate one version of those passages (i.e. they had the knowledge), and b) those passages form secondary musical material (in most cases), not the basis of the main composition. In Threnody for example random forms the main idea, but that was the most accomplished way to notate the score to get those desired results.

And where is the reductio ad absurdum  you furnish me with proven? And what do you mean when you say that what I say is only my opinion?.. As opposed to whose?... Of course I speak for myself - maybe you don't - and my opinions and aphorisms are out there in the open for acceptance or criticism. However, as you proved in that other thread, you don't know how to argue, you're just a reactionary, and an IGNORANT one at that when a) you called the melodies of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Chopin, Puccini, Bizet, etc. "paltry" (your word) compared to the melodies you admire (but no examples were given for comparison), b) when you elevated the musicianship of a street performer above that of Bruckner (and I'm sure over everybody else in the history of western music before 1950), c) when you referred to musicians such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, as my 'straw' men, etc. There are other instances in which you displayed the "breadth" of your musical horizon, but what you said in this last post of yours speaks volumes anyway, so I won't say more.

Because of this thread, and where I see musical creation heading, I decided to sport that motto of mine as my signature from now on, maybe some people will wake up to themselves...

To risk some (perhaps) bad humor (apologies if there are places the tune is not known-and if not known, you are probably better off <smile>)

To the infamous tune about bottles of beer...

One hundred preset arpeggios to use,

One hundred preset arpeggios,

Press a key down,

Noise all around,

Ninety-nine preset arpeggios to use.

Etc., etc., etc.

Serious comment: I find it personally sad the way that the creative process is seemingly continuing to be defined downward.  Why worry about hard work and effort when pre-recorded building blocks are instantly available?  I will confess to not being a "great" composer by any stretch.  But better to do the best one can seeking to create one's own original material than rely on the prerecorded presets of others.  Better to be an original on the skill level of a Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf than a clone.  Even he occasionally created something fairly good.

I think there is a basic misunderstanding going on about the purpose of some sample libraries which contain pre-recorded ensembles doing things.

The purpose of these libraries is not to have idiots holding down a button and calling it their composition. It's to solve a problem, where the big great sample libraries can have certain giveaway moments of sounding unrealistic. Certainly my purpose in making my libraries was just so that in my productions I could blend in something that sounds very real over the top of VSL or HS, to paper over the cracks so to speak.

Now, if some idiot who has no understanding of music wants to hold down a few notes and make compositions by trial and error, well, good luck to them but they won't get very far before it makes no musical sense.

And now let me interrupt that thought with another which goes back to the original post - VSL and Hollywood Strings.

I was just working on something (which I wrote myself, no 'auto-Zimmer' button used 😊 ) and I thought I'd put the same MIDI through VSL and Hollywood Strings:

http://www.ooberman.net/dg/HSvsVSL.mp3

Blind test time. Which do you think is which, the first or second? To be fair I need to say that no work has gone into trying to get it sounding real. It's just raw quantized MIDI going straight into simple sustain patches, in Hollywood Strings and in VSL Appassionata strings. So yes, a much better job can be done than this, but it reveals something about the raw sound of each, and it also tells you what kind of results you can get with basic quantized MIDI.

Which is best? And which is which?

😊

I think the first half is Hollywood Strings, second half is VSL.  There is definitely more room sound built in with the first half than the second.  Which can easily be fixed with MIR or any reverb for that matter.  Also, the sustained is a dead give away for me as it has a severely disconnected sound when trying to play legato lines without any altering to the sample.

Maestro2be

@goran c said:

The stylistical flexibility of the VSL really is unique. Almost anything can be achieved, depending on one's production skills and sound aesthetics.

Unfortunately not everybody can see that, often too busy looking for a Zimmer sound, not that there's anything wrong with that, but there is so much more.

Since this thread has become like a killer in a slasher movie who keeps popping up when you think he's dead, I will add that I just listened to Session Strings which is another example of something different that you can do with VSL.  So-called "Contemporary" strings are simply dry smaller ensembles, which are all possible in VSL. 

It is the depth of sound that makes VSL stand out above the others.  Someone here was complaining about how it was stupid to use classical pieces or famous film pieces to do demos.  That is absolutely wrong, because the demos taking on the challenge of the greatest, most wide-ranging  music show the superiority of the VSL approach.  Ever notice how all the other libraries demos are all "written-to-the-sample" demos?  Guess why.  Try doing Vaughn-Williams 2nd Symphony or the score to LOTR with Session Strings.  Or Hollywood strings. Or Ma and Pa Kettle's Strings, or whatever...    [+o(]  

@dagmarpiano said:

The purpose of these libraries is not to have idiots holding down a button and calling it their composition.  It's to solve a problem, where the big great sample libraries can have certain giveaway moments of sounding unrealistic.  Certainly my purpose in making my libraries was just so that in my productions I could blend in something that sounds very real over the top of VSL or HS, to paper over the cracks so to speak.

Now, if some idiot who has no understanding of music wants to hold down a few notes and make compositions by trial and error, well, good luck to them but they won't get very far before it makes no musical sense.

VSL need also to hear what the idiots need,by improving the product,to become easier to use again for the idiots.

@whlederman said:

VSL need also to hear what the idiots need,by improving the product,to become easier to use again for the idiots.

That way there will be more idiots to buy product and we all can enjoy the nice sound of VSL

No no no no no no no no no no no, absolutely and resolutely not!! What the giftless one-note-triggers-a-hundred-events / copy-paste / "press enter to generate" / arpeggiator masters really need, is a brave look at themselves in the mirror and subsequent bowing out of the industry ASAP. VSL and other companies don't need to be responsible for even more bad and cloned music in this world; this is not comparable to world hunger, their music is not necessary, indeed it is unfathomably harmful. The giftless, DJs, etc. already got more tools than they ever should have, and that's why the world of commercial music is following the world of 'serious' music down the barracks-toilet drain. Yes, the $ carrot is dangled in front of VSL's face continuously (and they do care about money - see fiasco of Pro Edition to Cube upgrades a few years ago, the post with the most pages and fury ever in the history of the forum...), but money isn't everything (otherwise why isn't everybody out on a street corner every night for additional income?)

This recent idea that every epic movie scene is expected to sound a certain way, every horror movie scene (not just the deadly ones, but also the narrative scenes, the follow-up scenes, etc.) to sound a certain way, every action movie scene to sound a certain way, etc. It is a disease these days, I mean where is the room for some imagination anymore? For some idiosyncrasy and character? For creativity as opposed to re-creativity? And you're asking VSL to help the giftless? To do what? Usurp even more of the industry using other people's skills? To what end? To keep propagating, forcing Quarterpounders down directors'/producers'/audiences' throats, when they could instead be dining finely if all orks were left to their own devices and naturally left to perish, leaving the deserving practitioners available? Wouldn't everybody except the orks benefit? And no, there sadly isn't enough planet around for everybody, as they don't have a niche, they are a gangrene, eating away the whole body of work by methodically and geometrically reducing the standards and plunging aesthetics to a bottomless septic tank some mistake for a well. Bottoms up!!

P.S.: Unless you're requesting VSL to keep making their software 'easier' in terms of keep removing computer-related clutter and problems, making it even more intuitive for a musician to use to its potential. There of course I would be in complete agreement.

@Errikos said:

they are a gangrene, eating away the whole body of work by methodically and geometrically reducing the standards and plunging aesthetics to a bottomless septic tank some mistake for a well.

So does this mean you are opposed to them?

Having just relished Barcelona's masterful, ingenious Champions League win, I thought, how great a parallel to musical creativity their game was. They unravelled M.U. completely and that's no small feat. The constant accurate passing, the exploitation of the geometry of the football field, the peerless elegance of their solutions to any structural problem posed, the imagination that made every other team during the rounds seem pedestrian by comparison... The exquisite solo efforts reminded me of great lyricism (totally absent in today's soundtracks), their mid-field game was beautiful counterpoint (as opposed to a comatose arpeggiator), their unexpected action combined with bravura of execution was a majestic display of scintillating modulations and vibrant (as opposed to catatonic) rhythms.

In sweaty, muddy, monosyllabic football those qualities get both recognized and incalculably rewarded. In fine arts....

Errikos, you clearly prefer the older film music style, which is more lyrical, complex and subtle than the current minimal style favouring lots of 8th staccato notes playing minimal chord progressions.

I *did* completely agree, until I did a couple of TV documentaries for a German director who had what I thought was an obsession with Philip Glass and minimalism. I hated the way that he kept forcing me to remove my melodies, my chord sequences, and replace it with long circles of minimal 8ths, arpeggios and limited chords.

But it gradually also opened my eyes to a different way of seeing music. Music being put into the background, used as if it was a type of image filter; just creating space, emotion, momentum.  Loud in the mix, but something that, via hypnotic repetition, is something that the watcher tunes out of, can't hear any more, because it is doing nothing that takes your attention.  Then in that role it can subtly manipulate emotions without seeming to be there.

I had no idea about this way of working until I was forced into it, not because the director wanted me to be lazy or sound like Zimmer, but because he wanted all the emotional impact but without any distraction from the dialogue and imagery.  It opened my eyes.  If you listen to the music in isolation then you could view it as either hypnotic beautiful minimalism, or some kind of awful lazy repetitive cut and paste of 8th notes.  Either way, this wasn't all about the degeneration of music into some kind of terrible toilet, it was about music performing the role that the director wanted.

@Errikos said:

P.S.: Unless you're requesting VSL to keep making their software 'easier' in terms of keep removing computer-related clutter and problems, making it even more intuitive for a musician to use to its potential. There of course I would be in complete agreement.

http://www.audioimpressions.com/

@dagmarpiano said:

Music being put into the background, used as if it was a type of image filter; just creating space, emotion, momentum.  Loud in the mix, but something that, via hypnotic repetition, is something that the watcher tunes out of, can't hear any more, because it is doing nothing that takes your attention. 

But this is something that great film music has always done.  Listen to any of Herrmann's cues for "Psycho" for instance.    It is not going on and on with irrelevant pretty little melodies or subtleties.  It is creating a mood that has given audiences the jitters all over the world ever since it came out.   And they are not even aware of the music, only the suspense on screen.  So what you are talking about is nothing new.  It is simply effective film music. 

However I don't mean to be as argumentative as some others here as I actually agree with a lot of stuff you have been saying and think that people are just looking at things from different perspectives and refusing to see someone else's point of view.  I have heard some minimalist things recently - like the score to Sixth Sense or some stuff by Silvestri and others that were very good.   Though it is interesting how Silvestri could switch from minimalism - like in "Shattered" -  to the powerful full-tilt brass scoring in "Predator."   That is not something many other so-called minimalists could do. 

Dan: I was initially going to write a small dissertation addressing and arguing every point in considerable detail. However, I thought against it for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that although it would take me a long time to write, most here would ignore it or just scan it for a minute, whereas Dietz or an employee of his would have to tearfully comb through it carefully for potential improprieties (see? I do have a heart after all...)

Instead, I will relate two film-scoring episodes:

1. When Star-Trek TMP was being post-produced, Jerry Goldsmith was contracted to score it. So he did, and following the big symphonic recording cue that scores our seeing the ship for the first time, the director, the editor and a couple of other people were skeptical! Goldsmith himself was really happy with the music, but the director not only told the confident and fresh Oscar winner that there was something wrong with the cue, but that he also couldn't put it in words! Eventually he said that what was wrong with it was the absence of a 'theme'. So, Goldsmith with all his authority and confidence did not fight for his great music, and instead re-wrote it, coming up with - if not the very best - certainly one of the best fanfares in soundtrack history. The director was wise after all (as in Robert Wise).

2. David Lean hired Maurice Jarre to score his adaptation of Dr. Zhivago. He was very happy with Jarre, as he had used him in Lawrence of Arabia and Jarre not only got one more Oscar for his film, but the music became an instant classic. Hiring him again confirmed his acknowledgment of his composer's talent. So when that confident, Oscar winning composer brought him music after music after music, Lean kept rejecting them all, while Jarre obviously thought the tracks were fine! Eventually and in desperation, Lean sent Jarre on a paid weekend away with his girlfriend hoping inspiration would finally strike. Jarre returned from the trip with - if not the very best - one of the best melodies in soundtrack history, which won him another Academy Award, and became an even bigger classic than his L.o.A track. Again, the director was wise, and discerning...

And it's not that these two top professionals had turned out bad music and had to be straightened out... However for me there is a far bigger problem than the avaricious proliferation of softwares like 'Orch' ('Ork'), MacSessions Strings Pro, Dispiritoso, etc., or the Zimmerization-locomotivation-STANDARDIZATION of film-music. It is the complete absence of aesthetics and discernment on the part of current directors and producers. If they are happy with soundtracks like Tron 2, Star-Trek (latest), Inception, etc., there is no way any of them would have asked Goldsmith and Jarre to re-score their already great cues. Hence, no great film-music is likely to be composed henceforth (nor any has in my opinion during the past 20 years save for Williams, Morricone who still write 'music', and a couple of singular exceptions - but count how many great scores were written in the 20 years before that), however people will argue that films can be served with this universal minimal drone-like writing.

If you want to talk about real minimal and effective AND characteristic soundtrack, have a look at Eyes Wide Shut. Plus, arguments can be made how any epic, action, romantic, comedy movies could have been scored by a rock band, a solo sax, or fully electronically (even period movies). So they could. So what? Why take ten steps back? Why not serve the movie AND have a track in the end that can stand alone on its merits AND is characteristic AND can only have been written by the one composer (one recognizes Williams, Barry, Morricone instantly). Why not? You want to know why not Dan? (And I ask you because if you had anything to do with the notating of those Animato orchestral cues, you can write music) 

Because today's composeurs just can't do it!!! They do not do this "minimal" scoring by aesthetic choice or like you because a director demanded it. They don't have the vocation's chops to do otherwise. Hell, they don't even have the chops for the Zimmer-Trevor crap!!! That's why the aforementioned softwares get developed for them; not for the justifiable reasons you gave. All they can hear in their inspired brains is (someone else's) chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga, some vapid top violin line, some feebly harmonized brass chords (no counterpoint), and the banging of their richly resonant heads against some toms and taikos (as if all movies must have "ethnic" backing). That is the extent of their creativity, and they even need help to sequence that....

If you (not you personally) are a good/professional composer that occasionally/when required writes a minimal score (a la Sixth Sense), it will be a good one, and good for you. If you just "want to be" a composer because your girlfriend is impressed this way or because you think "anyone can do it", well, I can't stop you, spontaneously combust you, or banish you into a black hole of another universe; but I wish someone would...

Directors and producers: It's really your fault those people are not rotating my tyres or laying tar. Will you  p l e a s e  begin to cultivate yourselves by listening to great music as well?...

@whlederman: Yes, I know, I am childishly awed by the operational idea, but I am one of the last persons that should offer opinion regarding interface-comparisons, I am not computer-savvy compared to many people here.

@Errikos said:

1. When Star-Trek TMP was being post-produced, Jerry Goldsmith was contracted to score it. So he did, and following the big symphonic recording cue that scores our seeing the ship for the first time, the director, the editor and a couple of other people were skeptical! Goldsmith himself was really happy with the music, but the director not only told the confident and fresh Oscar winner that there was something wrong with the cue, but that he also couldn't put it in words! Eventually he said that what was wrong with it was the absence of a 'theme'. So, Goldsmith with all his authority and confidence did not fight for his great music, and instead re-wrote it, coming up with - if not the very best - certainly one of the best fanfares in soundtrack history. The director was wise after all (as in Robert Wise).

I didn't know that about Goldsmith and it is startling since that is truly one of the great film melodies of all time.  Though this story is quite the opposite situation to Herrmann's, who was never told what to do and always left to his own devices.  The famous example being the Psycho violin screeches for a scene that was originally supposed to have no music. 

However, those fine directors and producers of the past were also extreme exceptions.  There were many bad producers in the past who couldn't tell a Herrmann cue from a loud belch.   In fact, if you go back to the "Golden Age" studio era of the late 30s through 40s, you will hear so much utterly banal, pseudo-Rachmaninoff-Liszt-Tchaikovsky drivel that it is as impressive as the current chugga-chugga-boom-bam Zimmerisms.  The conclusion being that film music ALWAYS deteriorates into the laziest, easiest way of getting a job done UNLESS the composer actually wants to make something of it and create something worthwhile. In other words, it is individuals who can create something better even if they live in a  time when technology is making it very easy to produce large quantities of junk.  

The moral of the two stories I related here (three if you add Hitchcock's initial wish for the shower scene to have been scoreless, and his subsequent relenting when the unbridleable Herrmann presented him with a cue anyway), is that a creative man should never take the path of least resistance. Or, if you prefer, that a composer worth his salt, will always rise to the occasion (instead of becoming a dead weight to that occasion, thereby sinking it). Those scores would not have existed if a) the executives were artistic simpletons, and b) the composers were unable to meet those high standards. How many composers can do this today? I have said on another post, that in many of today's flagship expensive A-grade films, the most incompetent, deficient, inept professional to be hired, by far, both in the creative and the technical crews combined, the whole production in fact, is the composer; unequivocally! The worst 'extra' comes a distant second.

Speaking as an owner of the Vienna Instruments Cube, I agree with Daryl that the Appassionata Strings 1 and 2 needs the additional articulations and, from my perspective, the "creation" of a Violins 2.

The next aspect is one of sales and price point. This L1 and L2 business makes Vienna into an expensive library. I would get rid of that, bundle AP 1 and 2, together, and come up with a price point that competes in the US market, even if it means setting up VSL USA and duplicating in the US and shipping accordingly to reduce fees.

The MIR technology is a fabulous thing and I'm looking forward to MIR Pro. But the whole concept is having what Silicon Valley used to refer to as a closed system.

A far more open system approach would be to insert aspects of MIR into the VI player as has been done similarly with the 1.9 release of LASS, and dragging on stage as with WIVI. This act alone would "clobber" the criticism that VSL is hard to mix with, which is why other libraries with pre-positioned seating/panning sell so well.

Power Pan moves stage left and right. Ernest Cholakis' TILT filters move stage front and back. Somewhere a marriage...