Hi there,

and good luck on Your journey with orchestration and composing!
Unless I missed a message, nobody seems to have mentioned

"The study of orchestration" by Samuel Adler

That´s the one who did it for me - also due to the fact it comes with a bunch of CDs with marvelous examples.

Best, Sten

This is probably not what you want to hear, but it could be your system.  Legatos from my spinning drive often sound too much like a Mellotron when they stream from the disk.  For this reason I am upgrading to an SSD for the string libraries.

Please don't go out and spend money based on this post: you may be able to get the sound you are looking for by following the other suggestions.  But this is something to keep in mind if you can't get the sound you want.

If your disk is fast, defragged, and has lots of free space (like 50% or more), then maybe the disk is not the issue.  I just wanted you to have all possible information.  When everything is working right and programmed right, VSL is awesome.

I agree with the good advice that others have provided here.

To reiterate something that was mentioned above, try experimenting with the dynamic patches and velocity X-fade. For example, here is a sample of your piece with some dynamic patches substituted for the legato patches, and with some CC11 curves drawn in. I used the same Orchestral and Dimension Strings that you're using, though I did omit a few of the redundant lines in the lower strings. This example is intentionally a bit over the top, and you'll probably want to be more subtle about it, but it should give you an idea of what you can do with some other patches.

Dynamic patch demo (unlisted YouTube video)

Well this may be a first on the forum[<:o)]

Usually any thread where Hans Zimmer's name is mentioned has a half life of about three days before the moderator pulls the plug on it.

Well that's sweet!  I did the same thing for my wife.  Congratulations!!![:D]  I wish you two many years of happiness.

@Popslaw said:

I agree with the good advice that others have provided here.

To reiterate something that was mentioned above, try experimenting with the dynamic patches and velocity X-fade. For example, here is a sample of your piece with some dynamic patches substituted for the legato patches, and with some CC11 curves drawn in. I used the same Orchestral and Dimension Strings that you're using, though I did omit a few of the redundant lines in the lower strings. This example is intentionally a bit over the top, and you'll probably want to be more subtle about it, but it should give you an idea of what you can do with some other patches.

Dynamic patch demo (unlisted YouTube video)

The dynamic patches are included in the Extended Library of the Orchestral Strings, and in the Full Library of the Dimension Strings. You can find them under the Patch tab In Vienna Instruments, under the second category "02 DYNAMICS" of the respective instruments. Here's a picture:

Dynamic patch location

Even without the dynamic patches, you can achieve a very similar result by drawing CC curves for velocity X-fade and volume.

The software I'm using is Cubase. I basically just played the notes as shown in the screenshot you provided. The reverb is the Sage Gateshead of MIR Pro (default settings).

Good luck with your project, and congratulations on your upcoming wedding!

@Popslaw said:

The dynamic patches are included in the Extended Library of the Orchestral Strings, and in the Full Library of the Dimension Strings. You can find them under the Patch tab In Vienna Instruments, under the second category "02 DYNAMICS" of the respective instruments. Here's a picture:

Dynamic patch location

Even without the dynamic patches, you can achieve a very similar result by drawing CC curves for velocity X-fade and volume.

The software I'm using is Cubase. I basically just played the notes as shown in the screenshot you provided. The reverb is the Sage Gateshead of MIR Pro (default settings).

Good luck with your project, and congratulations on your upcoming wedding!

When you adjust the volume of a legato patch, for example, you're changing the volume of a single sample that was played at a specific dynamic. When you adjust the velocity while velocity X-fade is enabled, you're not only changing the volume, but you're also gradually fading between multiple patches, each played at a different, specific dynamic. This yields a tremendously realistic result since the timbre of the instrument now changes along with the volume, as it does with real instruments. When you go this route, you have absolute flexibility with regard to control over the length, dynamic, etc. of a given note, but there is the minor drawback that a small amount of realism is lost in the process of fading between samples. After all, the number of velocity layers at which a sample was actually recorded is a discrete number (usually 2, 3, or 4). Velocity X-fade can be particularly conspicuous when fading between dynamics with solo instruments, as you can sometimes hear two samples playing simultaneously.

The dynamic samples offer an alternative to the above approach. Each sample is a performance of a specific note with a specific duration (e.g., 2, 3, or 4 seconds) over which a crescendo or diminuendo (or combination thereof) occurs. There are usually a couple velocity layers for each sample, so one of the layers will be played for dynamics between 0 and 88, and the other will be played between 89 and 127, for example. Since each sample is an actual performance of a change in dynamics, these patches sound much more realistic than when static patches are varied in velocity. However, this realism comes at a price. Specifically, each instrument usually has less than a dozen or so different types of dynamic patches, so you have much less flexibility over the types of dynamic changes you can produce and the lengths of notes for which you can use them (though this problem can be overcome to a great extent with the time-stretch feature of VI Pro). Also, the samples naturally do not include the note transitions of the legato samples.

Here are a couple of examples of the differences between these approaches:

Dynamic patches vs. sustain w/ X-fade

The first pair of notes are Orchestral Violins, and the second pair of notes are from the Solo Viola. The first note of each pair is a dynamic crescendo-diminuendo patch, and the second note is an attempt to recreate the dynamic sound in a sustain patch using velocity X-fade and expression curves. While the Orchestral Violin samples sound pretty similar to me, the viola example is more difficult to reproduce with CC curves (notwithstanding the audible bow change, which I actually think sounds fine). Other people will be able to do a much better job of this than I, but it should give you an idea of how the two approaches differ.

@Popslaw said:

The first pair of notes are Orchestral Violins, and the second pair of notes are from the Solo Viola. The first note of each pair is a dynamic crescendo-diminuendo patch, and the second note is an attempt to recreate the dynamic sound in a sustain patch using velocity X-fade and expression curves. While the Orchestral Violin samples sound pretty similar to me, the viola example is more difficult to reproduce with CC curves (notwithstanding the audible bow change, which I actually think sounds fine). Other people will be able to do a much better job of this than I, but it should give you an idea of how the two approaches differ.