VSL announced a new offer for solo strings today. It has two samples for cello only, so far… violin to follow.

And, aside from a certain roundness - and absence of reverberation - my own writing for VSL cello in the Solo Strings I pack is not that different… encouraging.

This does prompt me to ask: could the degree of wetness/dryness (I use MIR Pro), overuse in either direction, be responsible (in part) for any artificiality of tone… a sensation of synthesis?

I know this can be done 😊

My first forays into realism began with an experiment to slide up and down (actually left-right, of course, acorss) the wet-dry (reverberation) spectrum.

Although I have MIR Pro inline in all my VEPro 6 channels, I think that an easy mistake is to try and accentuate 'realism' by having too much 'atmosphere' in spurious echo.

For the moment, Dry is more real-sounding.

Anyone ese?

Two other parameters which make the Solo Strings Viola sound less realistic appear to be:

1. volume/dynamic:the softer the more pleasant, and
2. pitch: above C4 it sounds harsher (more like a saxophone!) than B3 and below

I wonder whether Andi and the wonderful VSL experts could help us here, please?

thanks, Mark, and  the others who have made recent contributions -- just spotted these now. I must say I'm coming back again, one year on, to my original question as to whether it's worth investing in the solo strings vol. 1 above the SE set for use in notation software and find I'm as confused as ever!

As the number and nature of articulations are (or from the list seem to be) much the same then any improvement must be down to 1. a far larger number of velocity steps and obvioulsy samples 2. smoother and more organic programming of the articulations. Is there anything else? I have made some headway in getting better sound from the SE.  Again, it would be very useful to trial the full package as that would answer my most important questions within hours. If this really isn't possible, has anyone here used both and can tell exactly in what way Solo strings vol. 1 is better than SE or would even be able to demo an example of both in a string quartet (or similar) using best practice in both cases?

The situation in notation software has now of course changed and Dorico is likely to become the programme of choice for many, especially when at least the initial playback features are fully implemented as this should make it easier to get the best out of VSL.

David

David,

Yes - and thanks for keeping this thread going! These are important matters, aren't they.

The solo strings have more articulations than the strings in the SE do (I have both), of course.

But I believe the ways of controlling and using them are essenmtially the same.

I too would welcome any and all guidance as to how to make the most of the various arrays of combinations of which they are capable.

another update after working quite intensively at creating new scores out of earlier string quartets which originally were simply recorded into Cubase. The patch which most often makes the ghastly screeching noises so often heard is the default "normal" or sostenuto one. "legato" should be used whenever possible for expressive music.  With the Special Edition, I 've found that provided there are no long notes then substititing "rep" can work for many figurations and tends to give a cooler less vibrato sound. In "detache" the vibrato is often too strong and "short" is simply too short unless the music is fast and metronomic in which case it often works well. "spiccato" has more character than "short" but only very short notes. Looking again at the full articulation list for the Solo Strings 1, the control of vibrato, among other things would surely give more scope for improvement without much extra effort.

Vel XFade mostly doesn't work for slow music with solo strings in SE becuase there is simply too much vibrato and other oddities (though I might try yet again combining with Expression in different ways to see if there is something I might have missed -- again any suggestions welcome). What I somehow missed earlier from Andi's guide and is potentially very useful is the ability to write Vel XFade on/off commands directly into the score in Sibelius. Fast music can get a wilder, more spontaneous rendering and there are probably also individual passages in more meansured sections as well which might work. It is starting to add up! Here is an example of one of my recent endeavours -- still much to be done but I feel it's really coming along now.

https://app.box.com/s/pnopcvxml3cjg5v6a6cv34i55g47m0i5

David

Thanks so much, David; this is extremely helpful.

I have a growing 'Help' file of my own. I have added all your comments to it.

I'll try them out.

How exactly do you get 'rep' to work, please?

Are we approaching a stage when we might even venture a (collaborative) FAQ somewhere - perhaps text, explanations and sound samples?

I'd be keen to help/participate.

Would Andi jump in to support?

Hi Mark -- glad you found my observations of some interest. "rep" is just an abbreviation for repeat and like all the other articulations mentioned is just called up as a Sibelius technique (CTRL+T). "rep", which is basically short for legato repitions is supposed to adapt itself to the speed of the music being played thought the finer points elude me so far. I expect you've already seen Andi's helpful "Optimising Sibelius Playback  in Vienna Ensemble"? However, it could do with a more detailed explanation on the thorny question of velocity XFade. For instance which setting change what and how best to combine, if at all, Expression with XFade. The manual is little use as it does barely more than just list the options.

It's possible that we might together have something to contribute in terms of a help file but I suspect most of it must have been covered elsewhere though not always easy to find. I find I am too uncertain in many areas and often opinions vary considerably as to which are the best techniques with someone like Beat clearly knowing exactly what he's doing.

David

Hello David!

Expression is nothing more than an additional volume fader. In most cases I would leave this fader in the same position. For making volume changes during a project, you can automate it with CC12, if you have loaded one of the VI presets for Sibelius.

Best regards,
Andi

David,

Thanks!

I tried the addition of legato; but it didn't seem to me to make a lot of difference.

I suspect that this is because any single setting has to be changed/activated alongside all the others and the various combinations thereof.

This leads me to suggest that the most useful way to build a document or guide - rather than describe the effects of the many settings, sliders and articulation marks individually - would be to show how they operate in tandem.

Especially since some must be cancelling one another out?

And - presumably - because various parts of the range of others will have different effects depending on which others are accentuated/diminished etc.

One approach would be to describe which settings to change first and which should follow.

And in which order.

@andi said:

Hello David!

Expression is nothing more than an additional volume fader. In most cases I would leave this fader in the same position. For making volume changes during a project, you can automate it with CC12, if you have loaded one of the VI presets for Sibelius.

Best regards,
Andi

that's right, though it's only relatively recently that I fully understood this. Volume is designed as a main volume and Expression responds to the marked dynamics in Sibelius. Or rather I should say that CC11 responds to the marked dynamics in Sibelius and it is up to the user to decide whether to allocate Expression or Velocity XF to CC11. Indeed you can do both but that can lead to some pretty weird effects and I (in common with others I have read) don't reccommend this approach.

So --which to use? They are most certainly not the same in the way they scale dynamics and i'm not sure how often this point has been made clearly. Using the VSL House Style and CC11 for Expression, the dynamic range is too great leading to pp or quieter being almost inaudible. Reducing dynamic range can help but I haven't found an entirely satisfactory setting. On the other hand, if you allocate CC11 to Velocity Crossfade, the dynamic range is far less --indeed I would boost it to around 115 for a string quartet (but not all the way to the top). I assume that this house style assumes control through VelX, otherwise the dictionary will have to be slightly customised which is exactly what I've been doing for years to reign in the extremes but now think it's perhaps the wrong approach. The Expression slider should then have a fixed volume around the 90+ mark becuase even though Sibelius dynamic markings no longer control it, it still acts as a volume control. As you say, you can allocate a channel to Expression to allow direct control through a Sibelius command but this shouldn't often be necessary.

In addition to using the VelX for CC11, you then have to decide whether to activate Velocity X fade which is completely different but confusingly (well it certainly confused me for ages) has effectively the same abbreviation. This, as previously pointed out, changes the nature of the sound quite considerably and is best suited to more volatile writing --either fast and a bit wild or vibrato-rich and "romantic" for slow passages. It simply asks to be tried out and you can put a ~C28 (or whatever channel you allocate), 127 or 0 in the score to change between them as desired.

David

@MarkSealey said:

David,

Thanks!

I tried the addition of legato; but it didn't seem to me to make a lot of difference.

I suspect that this is because any single setting has to be changed/activated alongside all the others and the various combinations thereof.

This leads me to suggest that the most useful way to build a document or guide - rather than describe the effects of the many settings, sliders and articulation marks individually - would be to show how they operate in tandem.

Especially since some must be cancelling one another out?

And - presumably - because various parts of the range of others will have different effects depending on which others are accentuated/diminished etc.

One approach would be to describe which settings to change first and which should follow.

And in which order.

Not quite clear what you did here, Mark. "Legato" simply means drawing a slur in Sibelius which calls up the specific "legato" patch and is generally independent of other settings and normally you wouldn't want to combine it with anything.  The change is sound is generally obvious so I don't get why you don't seem to be hearing it. In some case you may indeed wish to mix articulations such as tenuto with accent but there are only certain situations where they make musical sense and can be easily tested out. Andi's guide gives a few pointers here.

You need to be careful not to confuse the articulation markings in Sibelius with the more global settings in Vienna Ensemble. As mentioned the Velocity XFade can change the overall nature of the sound and I tried to give an indication for further exploration as to how. Most other settings which have been discussed relate to overall volume and dynamic range, not to the actual sound itself.

Actual editing the sound at individual cell level is something else again but I'm not going down that road --things are already complicated enough as they are!

David,

My apologies if I have confused/conflated two things.

Yes, I added 'Legato' as a Technique (Cmnd+T) and saw that the cell in VEP6 switched to 'Leg', as I expected.

Thanks for pointing out that such an articulation as Legato should act independently of others.

When I allude to the complexity of settings, I'm referring to the relationship between (changing/resetting/ignoring/fine-tuning/discounting) Matrices, cells, sliders, Patches for any one VI.

And which to try changing first; and then which others and in which order. There must litrerally be hundreds of thousands of potential combinations.

There are many parameters - so comprehensive and rich are the controls provided - that simply changing something to see what happens without really understanding the relationships between them all is a long and potentially futile process.

Like you, I think, my main (only?) goal is to emulate string (in this case) sound as accurately and convincingly as possible. But I remain confused by the multiplicity of options.

Yet just as determined to make the most of this :-)

sounds like you're quite ambitious, Mark! There must indeed be hundreds of thousands of combinations and frankly, I know that I'll never master all the intricacies (and just imagine if I had the full solo strings and Vienna Ensemble Pro as well). And if we switch to Dorico at some stage then there'll be more to learn again!

I feel that even the work put in just since the weekend has made a lot of things clearer which really I ought to have looked at in more depth years ago.

David,

Actually, it's the exact opposite of ambition:-)

I want to know which settings and - more importantly - which combinations to rule in and which to rule out.

It's the multiplicity of 'competing' settings/combinations that's so confusing.

A linear guide which cuts through them all and makes it clear how to use (each of) them so that they're not working against one another is what I'm hoping for.

Well, things have moved on quite a bit in last few days. I finally caved in when I realised I could get the MIRx Mozartsaal free if I bought the solo strings vol1. And I added the VI Pro as well as it's on offer to give me a few new advantages, in particular the humanise function. 

Is there a difference? Yes, certainly. The far greater number of samples make for a smoother and more involving performance. The default sustain patch works differently in different contexts but is mercifully free of the worst excesses of the SE. Although there are many extra articualtions, Sibelius doesn't have the ability to control all the more esoteric ones directly -- nevertheless some are used as witnessed by the differences between playing the music with only the Standard preset as opposed to the Extended and viewing the patches chosen. I've no idea how the programming works but it's often totally different from the SE.  Identical Sibelius Technique commands provide completely different results in many cases (legato varies less as it normally uses the same patch).  So if you're thinking of taking a string quartet written in SE and then listen to it with the Vienna Strings soundset and the full package, you will be in for quite a few surprises.  Solo strings 1 doesn't simply add new options to SE but works in quite different ways. A couple of largely lyrical quartets (played into Cubase) I've recently scored  will be left but from now on, it's the new toy all the way and I expect to revisit several older works to reprogramme.

So, II have finally answered my own thread. If others are in the same position as regards solo (and presumably other) strings then I can happily recommend the upgrade even if you can anticipate some teething troubles and surprises along way if you're working from Sibelius. And get the Mozartsaal reverb as well unless you've got something really decent already -- it blows the socks off anything I used previously.

David

David,

Encouraging to hear of your progress. Good :-)

Since my setup (and, I imgine, that of many others reading this) is similar to yours in almost all respects, would it be too much trouble for you to (re)post your latest thoughts on which settings work best (for the most realistic) sounds? Custom patches? Humanize? V/XFade etc?

If you'd prefer to correspond offline, by all means PM me and we can work some kind of settings list/FAQ/'cheat sheet' up together.

Hope that's not to omuch of an imposition; I'm very keen to improve my sound too :-)

Thanks!

Thank you very much for reporting your progress and observations. Congratulations on your achievements so far.

I have concluded that while I prefer to work within notation, that only a true DAW like Cubase is going to allow me to achieve my goals. So I have been working to learn Cubase, and I am making progress.

Also, I VERY highly recommend the tutorials and information on Beat Kaufmann webiste to anyone who needs a firmer grasp on how to use VSL samples.

Beat Kaufmann Website

Thank you Herr Maestro Kaufmann!

Paul T. McGraw

thanks Paul and Mark for your latest contributions. I would agree with you Paul that for a detailed understanding on how samples actually work and work in a mix, then Beat is your man. I really cannot hope to compete. I read his conclusion as basically being that one should consider programming just about every note but most of us don't have time for that and I get the feeling that there is more intelligence built in to the more recent Vienna Instrument versions -- some of his hints and tips seem to be rather old.

Having said that, it must be remembered that he is generally talking in terms of Cubase and that Sibelius does not necessarily have the same programming options or at least not without considerable difficulty. This is particularly the case with the full solo strings package as if you look at the cells actually being used in real time, they don't always correspond to what you might expect, especially with such commands as portato, detache and short in my limited experience so far. Andi is the guy who is most likely to be able to guide folk through the Sibelius soundsets and templates. I'm hoping that down the line, Dorico may be able to offer integrate some of the advantages of Cubase and give us a usable one stop solution. But that's for later.

With these caveats, it might still be worth giving my view about how to approach this whole issue. These are a few of the main things people might want to think about. I am assuming again here that we are wanting to get the best results in notation software even if this might not be the best way to get good results and that my focus is on string sounds, and particularly solo strings.

Let's assume you start with the Sibelius presets in Vienna Instruments. This is essential with the full Solo Strings but as VI's own matrices in the Special Edition are the same as  Sibelius presets as far as I can see, it matters less. If you try this you will notice the following a) the CC11 expression controller is set to Velocity Crossfade and b) the Velocity Xfade (vel XF) is active. Using Velocity Crossfade ( VelX) for CC11 means that you have automatically two volume controls, (quite apart from the master Vol CC7) as the Expression slider is also active even if not programmed. To get sufficient volume for the quieter passages this needs to be set fairly high -- around 90 is advised (the template puts 100). However the dynamic range is simply inadequate this way and I advise around 115 for this slider, not 63. Velocity Xfade as previously discussed changed the nature of the sound to a greater or lesser degree depending on context and it's not always musically appropriate. Fortunately you can toggle off/on with CC28 as appropriate. If you switch off the Vel XF then there is no response to hairpins on a single note (and the behaviour of them can be generally a bit flakey anyway)

There is an alternative. This is simply to assign CC11 to Expression and leave Velocity XF unused. This way you have only one volume control and results are more predictable -- hairpins work smoothly as well. You can still use Vel XF  this way. To work this way, all you really need to do is adjust the dictionary entries for dynamics from the the House Style defaults as the dymanics range is too high in this case. Boost the lower and reduce the higher dynamics to taste. Of course the DynR slider in VI can also be used but I have not found a setting that works optimally. This how I worked for years until quite recently. Why change to the way the good folks at Vienna recommend? Simply there seems to be more vitality in the sound - it's too flat otherwise in faster and more lively passages.

That's the general starting point. For selecting actual patches, the SE is more straightforward as it tends to for the most part stick with what ever commands or articulations you've written into Sibelius.  I find the default sustain patch to be quite often unpleasantly shrill or robotic and would advise legato in slower music where possible and switching between spiccato, detache, short and maybe portato for faster. Rep has a mind of its own but it can work in the Special Edition for non-repetitive passages as well-- just try it. The full Solo Strings has a good deal more variety and naturalness in the sound, especially if you use the Pro version of VI with its humanise function. Patch selection can fly around even if you've not written anything into the score which is why I'll offer no suggestions other than try to get Beat's support if you really can't work out what's going on. I'll probably get stumped myself sooner or later somewhere. I haven't yet experimented with combing patches -- again Beat has a few suggestions in this area.

Finally, it goes without saying that you want a decent acoustic. If you don't already have one (or even if you do) try MIRx Mozartsaal which meets my needs admirably for chamber music.

David

David - thanks so very much for that. It's extremely helpful!

I'm going to start from scratch with this latest post of yours and the Beat pages/ideas - and try and come up with something approaching best practice.

I do still have one question, though: in your experience (or Andi's if you're around to help here, please) does the order in which you apply these settings matter? That's always puzzled me… could it be that the results from changing certain effects vary according to which others are currently in force. Hence my quest for a kind of wizzard:

• 'set this before this' etc
• 'don't change i unless you've activated ii' etc
• 'get parameter x exactly as you want it before trying to set parameter y' - because y behaves markedly differently according to whether x is 1 - 63 or 64 - 128 etc
• parameter a has no effect unless parameter b is over 50% AND such and such a patch is loaded and active

etc

I too like the idea of the defaults being the best obtainable. Like you, David - by chance - I too am most interested in solo strings. Perhaps they're the most sexposed and need to be best tuned.

I'm not going to stop experiementing. I just want to rule out as many 'dead end' experiments as i can.

Once more, your ideas very much appreciated :-)