Goran, thank you for your comment and suggestion. I agree with you that the English horn line sounds kind of ugly at times, especially with the repeated notes. I spent a lot of time trying to clean it up, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I found it especially difficult to avoid the "machine gun effect", both on a small scale with individual notes and a large scale with the longer repeating phrases. Do you have any advice as to how to improve this?

Thanks, Errikos, for listening and for your comment. I'm still quite new to all of this, so I don't yet have an established work flow, but for this piece it was something like this: First, I just entered the score into Sibelius by old-fashioned mouse clicking. My computer is quite wimpy (older Athlon processor with 6 GB of RAM), and my piano skills aren't great anyway, so real-time input isn't an option for me. After spending some time with the score and working out how I would conduct the piece in terms of phrasing, tempo changes, dynamics, etc., I entered all of the tempo info into the score. I'm never satisfied with the accelerando/ritardando lines in Sibelius, so I usually just end up assigning a new metronome mark to about 30% of the notes in the score. Incredibly tedious... Once the tempo is all set, I go through and assign patches to each instrument, which takes a long time since I'm still becoming familiar with all the available patches. I usually do about 4 or 8 measures at a time (or whatever is appropriate for a given musical line) and then move on to the next instrument.

The next step, which is the most tedious part, involves adjusting the start times and lengths of each note through the Properties window in Sibelius. This takes forever! It just makes my ears bleed when multiple instruments start or end notes at exactly the same time, and while the humanization feature in VI Pro goes a long way toward fixing this, I still find myself tweaking just about every note so that it sounds more natural. I understand this sort of thing is easier with a DAW like Cubase or Logic, and I hope I can one day learn to use one of those. I also spend a lot of time adjusting the individual velocities of notes to correct spots that sound awkwardly loud or soft.

The reverb is MIR Pro running through VE Pro. I used the Grosser Sendesaal for "In a Mosque" and the Teldex studio for "In a Village". I don't know what I'm doing with regard to mixing and such, so I basically just place the instruments on the stage and hope for the best. Also, my computer is only barely able to handle MIR, so I'm not able to get any feedback by real-time playback. 

Thanks again very much for listening.

Brian

 Brian,

I commented before on the Village performance - your In a Mosque is truly a fine performance, ranks with anything I've heard in VSL sample performance.  It is because of your true musicality, which comes through in the phrasing, the dynamics, the espressivo that are so perfectly shaded.  I am tremendously impressed by this.  VSL absolutely should have this in their demos.  It is one of the most espressivo I've heard and I have no criticisms!   It is just great.

I desperately want to do the Procession of the Sardar, one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.  You are inspiring me to do it with these other movements from this great suite.   O.K. - I swear now I will do it!   I just decided.    And then ----   maybe if we get someone to do the first movement, we can force VSL to include the entire suite in their demo section.  At any rate, yours definitely should be!  Awesome job! 

Thank you, William! I'm truly flattered by your comments. I'm glad you liked it.

I can't wait to hear your Procession of the Sardar. It's a wonderful piece, and I know you'll do a beautiful job. It would be great to have a VSL version of all four movements, though we might have a hard time finding someone to do the long first movement...

Please keep us posted when you finish the fourth movement!

Best,

Brian

Thanks for your description of your workflow Brian; it sounds to me too laborious to be worth skipping the DAW process, for my uses. Best of luck with your projects.

Brian had to do things in a scaled down way because of his computer system, but his musicality allowed him to create a better performance than a lot of ones done with huge, dream systems.  What impressed me most on these is how the individual musical lines sound, even single notes, so distinctly expressive, in an extremely realistic way.  Completely dispelling the usual dreaded "notation playback" effect. 

However, we've now got to find someone to do the first movement if I'm going to do the last, as in the end I will certainly be reduced to an enfeebled psychotic pawing at an unpowered keyboard...

@Popslaw said:

Goran, thank you for your comment and suggestion. I agree with you that the English horn line sounds kind of ugly at times, especially with the repeated notes. I spent a lot of time trying to clean it up, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I found it especially difficult to avoid the "machine gun effect", both on a small scale with individual notes and a large scale with the longer repeating phrases. Do you have any advice as to how to improve this?

Unfortunately it won't be of much use to you, as it involves MIDI driven manipulation of the Attack parameter - I work in Cubase, not in Sibelius. If you can somehow access the Atk parameter  from Sibelius to "round" the attacks, you can probably (at least for the greatest part) solve the problem.

I am wondering what articulations specfically caused the problem.  I actually didn't notice very much of a problem of machine gun etc.   I had experimentally played this particular line, as I have the score, and remember it has a lot of legato followed by a new attack on the same note. I've noticed before that with VSL legato articulations, a repeat note after a legato connected note will sometimes sound too loud as it is programmed to alternate with a different attack note than the first attack (prior to the legato) and that note has a somewhat stronger attack.  I have found that adjusting the length of the legato note before the second attack will alleviate the problem some.  I think in VI Pro there are some additional parameter adjustments that could be experimented with.   But anyway it wasn't very noticeable here.

Apparently Sibelius does offer some control over the attack parameter, so I'll do some experimenting with that. Thanks again, Goran.

Hi Brian,

  I've been absent from the forum "for a while", and couldn't listen to your performances till today. Really nicely done, I'm really impressed!! I felt somehow more "confortable" in the mosque than in the village :-), but both are truly expressive, beautiful performances, and the careful attention you paid to dynamics, phrasing, etc. is obvious from second 1 to the very end of both pieces. I'm also very glad you're finding your way with Sibelius.

  Also looking forward to listening to William's version of the Procession. Congratulations on a magnificent job!! 

Hi Servando,

I'm sorry for having taken so long to reply. I only just now noticed your comment.

Anyway, thank you very much for listening to the performances and for your kind words. I, too, am patiently looking forward to William's version of the Procession.

Best,

Brian