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  • Indie/Pop Bassoon

    I just got myself SE1 and SE1+. I'm working on a fairly short bassoon solo for an Indie/Pop tune. It's in the lower register. And it is meant to be a bit humorous. I use staccato for the whole solo as that seems to sound best. There aren't many sustained notes. (There is only a single whole note at 155bpm.) I'm overall very happy with the library. But I'm wondering if this particular bassoon solo might sound better if I got the extended solo instrument. There are only three velocity layers and I only use the top two. At first I didn't notice a problem. But after hearing it over and over, I started to get a little worried. 1) How many velocity layers are in the extended bassoon? 2) Given that this is largely a staccato solo, I don't see anyway to use velocity xfade in any reasonable way. Am I right about that? 3) Simlarly to 2, I don't see anyway to really use expression CC. Again, am I right about that? Thanks in advance.

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    last edited

    Hi,

    First, you don't need to buy the extended solo bassoon to get the staccato articulation (Single Instrument Bassoon). In the standard library, you have staccato and the performance repetition articulations that can be great alternative (more or less attack, best single note repetition, etc.).

    To answer your questions :

    1/ the bassoon (single instrument) have 4 velocity layers, one more than the SE (you can download all the VSL manuals even if you don't own the library).

    2/ It is a matter of taste but for staccato passages, I prefer NOT to use the velocity X-fade. In fact, I only use it for large dynamic effects on long notes when the dynamic patches don't suit.

    3/ On the contrary, the Expression CC is very useful to give life to every kind of articulations (e.g. to avoid unatural long sustain notes, to support (de)crescendos, to get softer note endings, etc.)