Legato Attack and X-Fade

[bhartmann]

I have Vienna Special Edition and Vienna Special Edition Plus. The problem is that the legato attack is too slow. I loaded three instances of VSL: the fist two are orchestral violins and the third is orchestral violas. Here is what I have tried: • The Detache sounds good most of the time but does not sustain long enough for some passages. • I have tried going to cell edit and shortening the attack, but this does not quite sound right. • I put Sustain in a vertical cell below Detache—under key switch C#1—and enable Cross Fade by clicking on the cross fade symbol. I then put in a series of controller 1 messages with values from 0 to 95 to cross-fade into the bottom into the sustain patch. This is not working. What is the best way to get legato passages that do not have too long an attack? The detache attack is perfect but the sustain is too short. UPDATE: When I go into Cell Edit and change Attack, Decay, and Sustain, I can't tell that there is any effect. Thanks

[MassMover]

For me it worked when I put the detache in the second cell and incremented the decay value, while also incrementing the attack value of the sustain articulation in cell 1. This way you get an automatic x-fade between the two articulations. DON'T click the x-fade button between the cells, they must both be sounding simultaneously.

[bhartmann]

Thanks very much for replying. I will experiment with your technique and see how I do. Your comments have given me some new territory to explore. In general, I find Vienna harder to use than any other virtual instrument because: • There are so many options that few users have exactly the same set of patches. • Because of the cost and the orchestral background required, there is a smaller community of users (although a generally sophisticated one). • As a result of the above, there are fewer books and tutorials available. (The manual is very cryptic.) The results you can get are phenomenal, but I really wish there were more detailed information.

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hello Bhartmann

Why don't you start your sequence with a "better attacked" sample? sfz, sus, ...

Select and start for example with sfz and switch then (during the first tone is playing) to legato.

So can start each legato sequence with a nice attack. If you have more different articulations you can also start with a dim sample for example.

They often start with a nice crescendo first.

Listen to this example. Most of the "legato bundles" got a sfz for their start (after the organ).

All the best

Beat

[bhartmann]

Thanks. The problem I was having was how to cross-fade properly. I tried using a patch with an attack and then cross-fading to a legato or sustained sample, but it was not successful.

[Beat Kaufmann]

I understand that you have a weak attack with the legato-articulation for the very first tone of a legato-sequence.

Once more:

1. Start with a "better attacked" sample (even a combination of sus + detatche for example)

2. While the first note is playing switch then to the legato-articulation.

This process will already trigger "the legato-crossing-sound" from the very first note to the second tone.

So no Crossfade is necessary!

Observe the image below. It shows what I explained above. Image

(the image is from Tutorial 2009)

Another possibility: Publish a short mp3 with the "problem". I'm sure I can offer you a solution...

Best

Beat

[bhartmann]

Thanks, Beat. Let me see if I understand you, because what I tried was not very successful. Here's what I did: • I opened a new project in Sonar, added VSL, and went to Patch Edit. • I created a matrix of orchestral violins (violins+) with staccato, detache, and sfz across the top row. • I put legato in all three cells in the bottom row. • I then put two notes of the same pitch in the staff, one that started right on the beat and one that started slightly after. • I used a key switch to select detache. • Immediately—just a few ticks—after the first note (the detache), I inserted a controller message (CC1=127) to switch to legato before the second note sounded. • This worked at extremely slow tempo (40 BPS), but not at any faster tempos. At faster tempos, I would only hear the detache. Of course, at faster tempos, I tried adjusting the position of the second note, but I was not successful. (For the record, I have a very new i7 64-bit PC with a large amount of memory. It was optimized by Sweetwater for recording, so I do not think latency on my PC is the issue.) 1-I think I am misunderstanding you. When you say "switch then to the legato-articulation," I am not sure if you mean using a controller, playing a second note, etc. 2-If the technique I tried is what you meant, I must say it is a lot of trouble. It would require constantly nudging notes a few ticks in each direction every time there was a slight tempo change. If you can explain in just a bit more detail I would really appreciate it. Thanks again for your help.

[MassMover]

No, you are misunderstanding our suggestions completely. You have TWO slots in each matrix cell. Normally just the first one contains an articulation. If you load 21S Strings violins+ you find for example in matrix cell 1A a single staccato articulation. Go to cell 1B, there you find a patch that consists of two layered articulations: Staccato in the upper slot, sustain in the lower. When you play a note, these two articulations are now played simultaneously, so you get the attack of the staccato, but the length of the sustain patch.

In the same way you should design your own matrix: put detache in the upper slot, legato in the lower. I tried it, it sound nice, you don't even have to adjust levels or attack times for crossfading, but if you'd like to, you would do this by clicking the "edit cell" button of the corresponding slot.

What Beat is trying to explain to you, is that the idea of the legato patches is to hear the transitions between two notes. Naturally, there can't be a transition to the first note of a phrase, hence the software uses a different sample for the first note of a phrase, which normally has a longer attack phase. So if you desire a harder attack, you should eather use an articulation like sfz, or the combination of detache and legato, as I just described above. But for the other notes of a legato phrase you should switch to the pure legato-articulation.

If the transitions between the notes WITHIN the legato passage is too soft for you, because you want to perform some fast runs for ex., there is no solution, because there is only ONE legato articulation in the special edition. In the DVD collection "Orchestral Strings 1" there are more: legato_fa is faster legato, and the perf_trill can also be used for fast runs.

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hello again

I'll give you a further example:

The theme here is: Changing from a single-articulatiion into a perf-articulation.

Listen first this excerpt from Mendelssohn here: (point 21.) http://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/vi-tips--tricks-3/index.php

Compare the sound with the score please. You can make out a lot of "note-pairs" - connected with a legato-bow.

If you would play all those legato sequences just with the legato articulation you would be disappointed about the weak attacks of the first note of each sequence.

The trick now is to start with a more attacking articulation which we can find within the single notes:

detache short & long, fp, sfz, sffz, sus espr, dim (>89 midi level) and so on...

How this works shall the following example show:

It starts with the articulation "crescendo 3s" and while this crescendo is playing I already select the next articulation "perf-portamento".

Now as long I have no gap between the end of the first note and the following one (portamento here) I will get the nice legato-crossing-sound between the two notes...

...even if the first note wasn't a perf-legato one.

And here is the Image which explains it much more better than I can do it:

Image Crossing sound Single-Note--Perf-Note

And here is the corresponding mp3-file

As a final information: I choose the articulations with key switches - notes outside the playing range of the certain instrument.

This example is from Tutorial 2009 as well (sorry for advertising my tutorial).

OK now, instead of a crescendo-articulation you can use sfz-, sus-, det- articulations. I believe I mostly used detaches for the mendelssohn above.

Hope that helped

all the best

Beat

[bhartmann]

MassMover, You wrote: You have TWO slots in each matrix cell. Normally just the first one contains an articulation. If you load 21S Strings violins+ you find for example in matrix cell 1A a single staccato articulation. Go to cell 1B, there you find a patch that consists of two layered articulations: Staccato in the upper slot, sustain in the lower. When you play a note, these two articulations are now played simultaneously, so you get the attack of the staccato, but the length of the sustain patch. This works exactly as you describe. Thanks.

[wwzeitler]

Also, to remember the obvious: don't forget that 'attack rate' is a parameter you can set on any patch. Sometimes in the random course of events that will be set to a slow rate. Anymore I explicitly set that [usually] to 0 (and release time too) at the beginning of the piece/beginning of each section. As a new SE user, the importance of this did not initially register with me and I experienced frustrations that sound a whole lot likes yours. Eventually I figured out that this parameter is hugely important.