Sorry, I got distracted by another argument and ended up mindlessly deleting posts like Godzilla stomping on miniatures. But there are some interesting observations in this thread.
"I prefer to work WITH the samples, and my ideas will revolve around what is available and sound most pleasing to me in a particular library... I prefer to work WITH the samples, and my ideas will revolve around what is available and sound most pleasing to me in a particular library." - Guy Bacos
That is a good approach especially for the demos obviously, but also for generating ideas when one doesn't yet have something already composed. It is almost like a kind of play which results in new ideas. I think I have done that a little but not much, and mainly have used VSL for realizing prior compositions. This includes a number of pieces that had actually been played by live ensembles but not very well. When they were realized using VSL it was amazing to hear the music actually came together. In this sense I have had exactly the opposite experience of people here who come on talking about how great a live ensemble is and how samples can never match that quality. I have found the VSL performances could not be matched by the live orchestras ! That is mind-boggling when you think about the state of MIDI ten years ago with horrible machine gunnning single-sampled spread across a keyboard, analog synths being abused to create a faked orchestra, etc. (Interesting how the analog synthesizer has had a renaissance and now Moog is back, Korg has several including a new Arp Odyssey, many others - now that it no longer has to be used to fake other instrument sounds its own sound can be used for its own sake.)
In the post by Guy he mentioned the Variations on Lie Ciocarlie for piano and orchestra, and I finally listened to that. That is an amazing complex piece of music, virtuosic, really brilliantly written! I love how it is in a recognizably Romantic style - somewhat Rachmaninoffian especially with the scary pianistic ability required) but also modern. Btw Guy, can you play that live?