Hi Dave,

My choice was purely based on the fact that I always prefer live performances. But that said, your virtual version is ways better (I thought I had stated that). My judgement is inspired by the fact that we, composers, are not ivory tower artists locked up being complacent and isolated from the real language that music is/should be. By its nature it appeals to people in an audience, preferably not sitting in front of a PC in an obscure room, but in any sort of auditorium to experience the power of music. This might sound silly, but it is my conviction. Not that I'm sitting here crying over the fact that our music is hardly being performed live, but the ultimate ambition is to hear a good performance and approval of that audience? Am I wrong?

So, rest assure, your VSL performance is by far the better one, and that is entirely your merit and the lesser execution is not representative for the rich musical content of the piece either.

Kindly,
Jos

Thanks, Jos and Anand for your additonal comments.

I think we'd all be in agreement that generally speaking, a live performance is preferred to a midi rendition.  As to the sharing of music and the communal experience of such, again, sitting in our studios listening to a "perfect" midi rendition doesn't fulfil our desire to actually share/interact/experience a performance with others.  In this case, though, what was shocking was the willingness to still prefer the live version vs. the midi one, in spite of all the stated technical and interpretive considerations.  Now, I realize that you are both simply focussing on a preference for certain conditions which exist only in a live performance (the instrument's tone, the sharing of music with others, the collaboration among musicians, etc.)  

Anyway, I for one, have mixed feelings about the whole experience.  I was thrilled at their interest in performing the piece.  That said, sitting in the audience that evening made me wish the piece wasn't performed.  That audience did not get to hear what I would have liked to present to them, and regardless of whether or not they would have enjoyed it, I felt almost like it did more damage to the perception of me as a composer than it would have to the image they had of the musicians on stage.  

Oh, and Anand, while I can agree that the particular performance did not adequately serve as "professional", the musicians are in fact, quite accomplished.  First chair violin and principal cellist of a major U.S. city orchestra.  Unfortunately, we all know the real factors that limit optimal performances, such as lack of adequate rehearsal time, among numerous other things.  I still am grateful for their willingness to program my music (they also have another piece they'd like to do next year) but I'm also grateful to be able to share my concerns here amongst supporters of virtual instruments; often those engaged in only live music making aren't sympathetic to our work.

All the best,

Dave

Dave

I have followed your story and thoughts on this thread with great interest. A similar experience two years ago is pushing me into the world of virtual composing/orchestrating, and the realization that this kind of stuff can even happen to skilled professionals makes that decision all the easier.

After years of thinking about it, I had sat down with Finale and composed a whimsical tune for concert band. The Musical Director/Conductor of a good-quality adult band that I am a part of listened to the primitive mock up I had made with Finale's Halion orchestra samples. He loved the tune and promptly scheduled it for the upcoming season. I was elated! I knew the band could cut the chart, we play in a nice venue, and usually draw a crowd of 200 or so. I printed up a set of parts and eagerly awaited the first rehearsal. That's when reality set in...

One of the charms and, at the same time, limitations of this band is the fact that we have a limited number of rehearsals before the show. There are usually several signicant concert band pieces on the program, so my little bit o' fluff probably didn't warrant too much of the performers' precious practice time. Suffice it to say that the initial read-through was pretty disconcerting. I realized that my years performing with the US Air Force Academy Band had left me rather severely spoiled, as far as expectations go. In particular, I had included an exposed 4-bar trumpet section that would not have frightened my Air Force colleagues back in "the day," but possitively hung my current guys out to dry. It got better in the remaining two rehearsals but by gig time, it was still pretty shaky. Also, we didn't get our hands on the right equipment to make an absolutely critical bass part heard. Despite this, the tune was warmly received and many of the musicians told me they had enjoyed it. It will probably never be published so that could well be the only time I will ever hear it performed live. The weaknesses of the performance are somehow even more striking to me when listening to the recording, so I usually send a copy of my cheesey mock-up when I'm showing it to my musician friends.

Which brings me to my dream of getting a good VSL set up. WIth patience and work, I'm pretty sure I could make this (and any other thing I have running around in my head) sound the way I imagined it. The ultimate joy would be to hear something I had written performed by a top band or orchestra, but that is very unlikely to happen. For a musician like me, virtual compostion may well be the only way to even approximate that experience.

I have had the same experience with concert band music.  The problem is actually very similar to orchestra - a huge number of people are involved so that makes it vastly more difficult to get a good performance than with chamber music or solo.  As soon as all those people are involved, money is, and practicality. 

Though I did have a good college band play two difficult pieces of mine pretty well - a concert march and a symphonic suite -  with a fair amount of rehearsal.  I was also playing in that band though.  There was a recording made of both, but the VSL recordings I did decades later is much better..  I would never want to  release the live recording as a serious presentation of the music.   But I do have the VSL version of the concert march right now and am going to put it out in some form.    

I love the symphonic band and it is an interesting problem to present that huge complex ensemble with VSL.  You want to have at least 12 clarinets. I ended up with ten Bflat by doubling the ensemble clarinets and the solo 1 and 2. Also using the eflat soprano, bass clarinet and alto clarinet.  It doesn't yet have the incredible richness that a live symphonic band has but a lot of that is subtle (often not so subtle!) detuning and timing.  I am experimenting more with that and think a lot can be done to increase of the size of the ensemble.  

By the way I just got the score and full set of parts of The Sinfonians by Clifton Williams, my all-time favorite piece for band -  to study the printing of condensed score and parts. It is close to a nightmare to do the "proper" notation and printing of a piece for full band!  

Hi tchampe,

Thank you for sharing your story.  I think most composers have been plagued by underwhelming performances of their works.  As a performer myself, I know that I've been underprepared to present works in concert and have done my share of "faking it" when up against time constraints.

As William pointed out, especially as the size of the ensemble increases, economic factors greatly influence the ability to devote the time necessary to polishing a work, especially by lesser known composers whose name recognition does nothing to "draw a house".  

For me, while I'm thrilled with my ability to create convincing recordings of my music through VSL, I'm also eager to experience live performances of my works, mainly because they do no good sitting on my hard drive in obscurity.  For instance, just a month ago, the university wind ensemble played a concert overture that had been written in 2009.  I finally got to hear it played live AND convincgly.  Speaking with the musical director and members of the ensemble, I learned just how much pleasure they had spending the past 4 months with the piece. Then, after the performance, hearing from parents of some of the students also tell me how that piece motivated them to practice more at home than they have all year (and one parent saying that after finally hearing the piece with the whole ensemble, they could forgive their son for the endless annoying passages he played on his saxophone by himself at home) :)

Composers spend so much time working in isolation, that for me, moments like the above example, give us reason to feel like our work has meaning.  Music is, after all, communicating ideas in a fluid, beautiful, emotive language.  If noone receives it, what's the point of its existence?

Anyway, in spite of the less than ideal performance, I'm glad the string ensemble played my piece.  I'm looking forward also to another piece being performed by members of the Calgary Phil. this summer, and will continue to strive for live performances, even though I'm thoroughly satisfied working with my VSL libraries.

Dave

Hi Dave,

It seems we fully agree on this. The ears of the audience are the ultimate goal.

Jos

Dave and William,

Thanks for your thoughts. Finding a way to create concert music has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, but I could never talk myself into pulling a full-on Charles Ives by cranking out elaborate scores and stashing them in the attic, never expecting to hear them performed...just didn't have the energy for that! That's why I have followed the development of these sampled orchestral libraries so closely. Each new development has made me think, "My God, how could they get this any closer to real!"...and somehow, they manage to. The current level is absolutely good enough for me to want to jump in, if I had the time and the money. One advantage I would have as an amateur enthusiast is that I would have no constraints on the content or the time required to sculpt it into shape. I could actually find out if I like the stuff that has been rattling around in my head all these years.

That being said, the shot I had to hear a tune of mine prepared, played, and enjoyed by actual living musicians and an audience kind of overwhelmed me. I sent my tune to a band music publisher who liked it and put it through to his advisory commitee...who rejected it for valid reasons, primarily the tessitura of my dreaded 4-bar trumpet figure. His customers are school bands, many of which (even quite good ones) have hard and fast limits on brass ranges. The director of an amateur group in Ohio heard the rough recording on YouTube and inquired about it. I sent him the score and a set of parts but I see the group has a new conductor so that went nowhere. The bottom line is that I really want another shot at it. There are other publishers, some of whom have concert-band-built-around-a-jazz-band stuff in their catalogs. I still have some connections with college, military, and serious adult band folks, although those are becoming more distant. I think I need to put on my big-boy pants and keep trying.

Best wishes to you guys in all of your musical endeavors. I really enjoy your stuff, both from the technical mastery you're achieving with the virtual orchestration and just the quality of the music itself. I'd especially like to hear what you have written for wind band, virtual or live. Peace.

Tom Champe

PS: Dave, sorry about your Leafs. They have really come a long way and gave the Bruins absolutely all they could handle. William, I think our band is playing the Sinfonians this year. Great chart. My personal faves (for two very different reasons), Lincolnshire Posey and Russian Christmas Music. TC

Tom I also have several pieces for concert band I want to publish but have decided that today, with both orchestral and symphonic band music, it is almost pointless to get an established [ublisher unless they come begging to you.  There is almost no promotion and then the publisher if anything sells takes about 90%.  Plus it is now practical to notate and print.  So I decided rather than desperately try to win the approval of a company that doesn't really care that much, I would self-publish including not only the SMP press type downloadable, but also  high quality paper printed saddle-stitched scores and parts.  

I wonder what your ideas are on that.   I did notice several successful self-publishing composers recently online and they were saying much the same thing... 

I've definitely given this some consideration. In fact, I started to sign up on SMP but got sidetracked. It would require some self-promotion but if you had a really hot VSL realization of the chart it would help; just find ways to get it in front of people who might want to play it with their groups.

Yes that is the trick getting things seen by the right people. I have been putting some things on SMP all with VSL demos, but one has to promote it.

Anyway I have had the same experience that Dave discussed with live performances vs. sampled and had the same reaction, feeling that the ideas in the music were just not there to the extent that it influenced my judgement of the music. When I heard on several occasions the same music that had been played live played with VSL it was amazing to hear all the ideas that were actually there, contrary to what the live performance made me think.

William,

I've been enjoying your pieces on SMP. In particular, the art song settings of those 19th century poems. Just exquisite! I think my favorite is Prospice. The way the music compliments the text...I was ever a fighter, so one fight more, the best and the last!...wow. Interesting that you sell the charts as vocal with piano accompaniment but the samples have big, beautifully rendered orchestral back ups. Listening to them gave me a kind of revelation and focus about Dave's original question on this thread. These tracks don't sound like a top soloist and orchestra in a nice concert hall recorded with a fine stereo mic about 15 rows back, center. Actually, they sound much better.

Yes, you read that correctly. The fact is, a recording is a recording and a live performance is a live performance. Our expectations are different, listening as we do to the fruits of over a century of technical advancements in the recording arts. We are used to full, rich chords in the brass that don't overwhelm delicate arpeggios in the harp. And vocalists who aren't forced to go with a weirdly affected style of singing to get over it all. At the Met, it's astonishing that a single singer can stand in the middle of that giant stage and hit the back of the house while completely blowing away a huge post-Romantic orchestra. But on a recording, that style of singing is really an acquired taste. Bing Crosby realized that he didn't need to blast like Al Jolson, he could sing musically into a microphone over the biggest arrangement. If you had been obsessed with making this recording "real", your vocalist would have had to crank up the horsepower to get over the lush orchestration, the brass and percussion would be staring at the conductor's scowls with every entrance, and the final effect would not have been as sonically beautiful or musical as what you and your singer achieved here.

Which brings us back to Dave's trio. The live version was actually very good. But as a recording, I don't think it stood a chance against Dave's carefully crafted virtual version. The trio's performance was aimed at the audience sitting in the room that night; the recording was just an archive. The intonation issues, loss of clarity on some figures...all that flashed by in an instant in the live setting, and I'm sure the crowd, unfamiliar with the piece, was left with a very positive experience. But Dave's virtual recording was created to be a permanent work of art, able to stand up to repeated, critical listening. As a recording, it is the superior musical creation.

I hope someday again to hear living musicians perform something I have written for an appreciative audience. But I understand that I will be far more likely to perfectly re-create the vision I have in my head with the tools of virtual orchestration. I look forward to that day and will closely follow your work and the developments at VSL until then.

Tom thanks very much!  What you said about a conductor trying to control the balance was exactly what happened at a live performance of Earth and Paradise - it was almost impossible to balance one singer against the orchestra even though it was a chamber orchestra. Whenever the music was marked forte or fortissimo the orchestra had to play "as if" they were fortissimo but not really.   

Sorry Dave to divert from your thread!  On this trio,  I think you express it exactly right concerning the recording vs. live.    

Hi Tom,

I read your post above to my wife, Becky, and watched as she nodded in complete agreement with everything you said.  Your observations of William's music are spot on, as he has shown that a committment to mastering the great resources, such as VSL's virtual samples, can enable a composer to realize their vision with minimal compromise.  As he stated to me recently, it really is about embracing the best of live and virtual performances, and not limiting oneself to either or.

To offer one final point on the live vs. virtual debate:  I was surfing through my weekly grocery flyer, and the company has a line of produce marketed under the name "naturally imperfect" in response to those wishing to consume produce free from pesticides, but not from blemishes.  I felt this is a perfect example of comparing virtual samples to live human expression.  The blemishes/bruises/abnormal shape of the produce might signify nature's beautiful creation, and might be preferrable to the "perfect looking apple", especially if the price to pay for said apple is pesticides used in the preservation of that apple.  However, if your produce's blemishes start overtaking the fruit, to the point where every bite contains mushy, bruised flesh, or to where the apple barely even resembles the look of one, some people might be put off by that fruit and return to the perfect looking (sprayed) apples.

Essentially, I would prefer a live performance if it was a convincing, polished, well rehearsed execution of the piece, true to my vision, or an alternate interpretation that is equally valid and/or better than my own.  If the execution is tainted with so many imperfections as to make it virtually indistinguishable from the actual piece, I'd rather have the midi rendition.  I also feel that, if as a listener, you're only focussed on one or more elements of the performance that are most significant to you (such as your desire to hear the rich, timbral characteristics of the instrument, overtones and all) you might always prefer a live instrument, because you're isolating only that one factor.  To me though, a beautiful red car gleaming in the sunlight is worthless if there's no engine under the hood, or the seats are painfully uncomfortable, or there's no adequate storage space, etc.  The beauty lies in the whole, not just one aspect of the car (or the produce, or the midi mockup).  Ok, I've beaten metaphors to death, so I'll stop now :)

Cheers!

Dave

Dave,

You wrote:

"I read your post above to my wife, Becky, and watched as she nodded in complete agreement with everything you said."

Becky is obviously a woman of superior intelligence and highly refined musical sensibilities and understanding. You are a lucky man.

Also:

"Ok, I've beaten metaphors to death, so I'll stop now :)"

Actually, I kinda dug that. I never thought of musical performance in terms of its similarity to misshapen produce---although I'll admit to having been in a few performances where I expected some to come flying at me at any moment!

My apologies for running your clearly focused thread down a tangential rabbit hole (how's that for mixing metaphors!), but I'd like to ask your opinion of something that I have wondered about for years:

When I was a kid putting together my collection of essential orchestral LPs, one of my first purchases was The Planets, a fairly new (at that time) recording by the LA Phil with Zubin Mehta, IIRC. SInce then, I have heard many renditions of this chestnut, but none quite like that LP. I realize now that they must have employed some of the production methods of Hollywood sound tracks, for which, again to the best of my recollection, they were roundly criticised. All I know is that every version I've heard since has left me a little flat. That agitated 16th-note thing in the violins and woodwinds while the brass and percussion are on a sustained note crescendoing to fff near the end of Mars...on this record you could by-God hear it; on every other version it's blurred in the first few bars and inaudible in the rest. That spot in Uranus where the whole orchestra honks out the 4-note theme in unison and then the low stuff comes thundering in...on my record there was abso-freaking-lutely NO DOUBT that a pipe organ had joined the party! Turn it up to 11 (as I was wont to do) and you could feel it in your guts. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.* Well, time went on and I learned the error of my ways. That over-the-top sweetening was gauche and inappropriate. The best orchestral recording is the most accurate one. The composer's original intention...etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. But I can't get over my immature thinking that my old record was the way The Planets was supposed to sound. I mean, what did the Chorale Symphony sound like to Beethoven? Do you think he heard hand horns (the axe of his day) playing every note out of the overtone series stopped or half-stopped? Or did he hear Epic Horns? Did he hear the spindly piano of his day playing the Emperor Concerto or did it sound in his head like a 9-foot Steinway? (Or something even more powerful?) What do you, as a composer, think?

Tom

*Disclaimer: Although this story is true to the best of my recollection, it may well be that every detail I have included is utter balderdash. This was a long time ago. It does, however, illustrate what I'm asking, whether it is a product of my addled brain or based in some way on reality. TC

That is interesting and sounds very familiar.  I had two favorite recordings of the Planets - Bernard Herrmann's very different conducting on a London FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recording) LP and William Steinberg's Boston Symphony recording.  I liked Herrmann's because being the great composer he was, he brought out every nuance of orchestrational detail even though his tempi were very slow.  Steingberg's because he had an uber-macho Mars.

btw listen to my demo of Mars here - I tried to bring out that shuddering string figure at the end.  

But anyway what you are talking about reminds me of my own reactions to particular recordings -  Rite of Spring by Zubin Mehta and the LA.  It was incredibly powerful and "muscular" if that term can be used.  Another definitive recording Mehta did was of Bruckner's 9th with the Vienna Phil-  that is so great I can't describe it - it is like something supernatural happened and the music went beyond this earth.  I heard that on that particular recording which was one he did in his younger days he was absolutely brutal to the orchestra.  But they accomplished something tremendous.   It is funny how one remembers certain recordings like that - another, by Stokowski, also on London Records, of the Firebird, in which all the players just seem to meld into one entity of ferocious power.  It is an amazing recording and and had an effect on me like what you are talking about - nothing else really does the music... 

I think there are interpretations of some of these classics that just strike you the right way, and it's different for different people. For me, almost anything I ever heard Leonard Bernstein conduct sounds better than any other take on it I've heard (but especially Firebird, the Rite, and Till Eulenspiegel). Ein Heldeleben...Benard Haitink. Ives' 4th...Michael Tilson Thomas. There's an old Reiner/Chicago take on Scheherazade that seems impossible (mostly thanks to Bud Herseth). Sometimes, it's not anyone's particular interpretation, it's the tune itself...I simply cannot listen to The Art of the Fugue; I am not worthy. By the time it gets to Contrapunctus XV, I am completely overwhelmed and have to run.

Interestingly, my Mehta Planets is musically not my favorite. That honor goes to an old Adrian Boult and one of the London orchestras. But it was the almost cinematic sound of the Mehta that made my hair stand on end. Does that mean I want to hear Heldenleben recorded, mixed, and mastered like a Star Wars soundtrack? Probably not, although it might be cool for Ives. What it means is that, when I get my VSL kit together, I think I'll make my choices based on what sounds good to me. It will be my music so that's OK. I can't see much point in redoing classical masterworks (the exception, of course, being their use as demo tracks for VSL) where the taste of such an approach would be questionable. Most of these standards have a plethora of available recordings anyway. No, the whole point for me of getting into virtual composition is to make myself happy and share that with a few others. I look forward to it.

BTW, I checked out your Mars. I can now unequivocally say that I have heard two versions where that string/woodwind freakout at the end comes through loud and clear. Bravo! I'll un-highjack Dave's thread now that I've run it off the rails. I wish both of you guys all the best.

Tom