@Another User said:

Now, I'll give you that there should be at least one person beta testing who has decent live chops, but I don't think its a pre-requisite to being one.

Yeah - and it should be someone with no history or affiliations and all the political crap that goes with sample developers spread out all over the forums. [[;)]]

For an extra $6000 I would have thought that was reasonable.

Paul, our best "tester" regarding live performance is our chief developer Christian Teuscher himself. He is one of our best and well known live keyboard artist here in Austria.
One of the main aspects in developing the Vienna Instruments, was his wish to perform live with VSL as advanced as possible.

By the way, there are a lot users which are working succesfully with the repetition content. Ok, more sequenzer related and propably not at live gigs.

best
Herb

PaulR--
First I never said I have no skills at the keyboard. I can play Beethoven’s entire Sonata Pathetique from memory and at a level good enough to entertain the family and three cats.

But because I have very specific ideas about how I would like a part to be played, I prefer most often to program the nuances. It's quicker for me, and I have more control. In order to achieve the same results, I would have to practice the parts I am entering before I sequenced them. And besides many orchestral instrument parts are just not very idiomatic on the keyboard. Also I imagine there are a number of composers out there who's primary instrument is not the keyboard and they may find my methods to be of some interest to them.

There was a famous piano teacher who had very little patience for discussing piano technique. When asked how to best approach a certain difficult passage he replied, "Play it with your nose for all I care as long as it sounds!" Unlike this teacher I am happy to discuss my methods, but I agree that "how it sounds" is in the end the most important consideration. I think all of us will have different methods to achieve that "sound."

I'm not sure how Beat approached his demos, but Craig I know has chops to spare and will talk I'm sure about his experience as soon as his demo is posted.


Best regards,
Jay

@PaulR said:

Confused now.

What's the point of of beta testers that have no keyboard skills?

Don't understand and getting more than a little irritated now.

I have limited Keyboard skills (I am a guitarist first), but do play almost everything in. the convience in sequencing with this VI is unprecedented. I can honestly say this has been the best sampling sequencing experience I have had. One track, everything available. One can use the intelligent tools to get off and running, but there are always a plethora of other options quickly available. One of the problems I encountered was allowing the intelligent tools to dictate my choices. what I mean by that is if you let it choose for you, you get a really good result, but you may accept it without checking out other options.

another way of looking at the VI is by really thinking of it as an instrument. Like any instrument you need to know where things are, but once you do, working becomes much easier. Also the VI is of course custom so you can create each VI to suit your needs. The difference in using this as opposed to using GS or Kontakt is actually not comparable as the sequencing experience between them really is not relevent. this is a whole new animal.

also if anyone would like to see my midi file, i can make it available.

its often been a concern of mine that keyboard players would not be best placed to interpret individual instrumental lines and that piano technique will throw up many limitations in achieving a convincing solo instrumental line. I understand that thats the way the industry has been todate, everything developed by and for keyboard players. But that's not necessarily the best way. I hope that the VI's will make life a lot simpler for notation driven music.

Jay how did you input the individual notes?

(I haven't listened to the demo yet)

@herb said:

Paul, our best "tester" regarding live performance is our chief developer Christian Teuscher himself. He is one of our best and well known live keyboard artist here in Austria.
One of the main aspects in developing the Vienna Instruments, was his wish to perform live with VSL as advanced as possible.

By the way, there are a lot users which are working successfully with the repetition content. Ok, more sequencer related and probably not at live gigs.

best
Herb

Herb - great respect to you as always. I'm not trying to get one over on you or anyone here. Therefore I will ignore Jay's post for the nonsense that it is.

What I would like to see is this - because, let's be honest here - $6000 plus bucks is a fair investment, ON TOP of any previous ones. I think that's fair.

Christian Teuscher is AFFILIATED to VSL.

For this kind of dough, you should maybe think of getting hold of a keyboard player who has NEVER seen or heard of VSL and ask him or her to test this thing. It would be from absolute scratch. Any feedback from that would be more relevant than from anywhere else imo. And ask the same new tester to use the old style Repetition and see how that comes out.

All the beta testers here know what they're doing. I may as well go to a Ferrari garage and ask to listen to a recording of the car's engine.

Paul, it is apparant you need a test drive.[;)]

Warning, once you try it, you may have trouble driving something else....also no speed limitations.

@DaveTubaKing said:

its often been a concern of mine that keyboard players would not be best placed to interpret individual instrumental lines and that piano technique will throw up many limitations in achieving a convincing solo instrumental line. I understand that thats the way the industry has been todate, everything developed by and for keyboard players. But that's not necessarily the best way. I hope that the VI's will make life a lot simpler for notation driven music.

Jay how did you input the individual notes?

(I haven't listened to the demo yet)

Look - I've already said I don't want a debate about whether it's fair or not that keyboards are the universal midi controller. And as for pianists technique viz a vis solo instrumental lines - that's friggin brilliant coming from a tuba player.

...

I think we just have to accept that PaulR is having a tantrum and let him get on with it [*-)]

@herb said:

Paul, our best "tester" regarding live performance is our chief developer Christian Teuscher himself. One of the main aspects in developing the Vienna Instruments, was his wish to perform live with VSL as advanced as possible.

Could we listen to a short full orchestra demo played in real time? A work as simple as The Rite of Spring played live would be perfect to demonstrate...

[[;)]]

@PaulR said:

Therefore I will ignore Jay's post for the nonsense that it is.

Paul-- please send me PM explaining why you are so apparently upset with my postings.

If others feel my statements are "nonsense" please tell me, and I will make this my last post on the subject.

--Jay

Look. for Christ Sake! I don't need to PM you or anybody else on this Jay. IT IS NOT PERSONAL! The fact that you can play Bach's D minor fugue by blowing farts at a keyboard from 20 paces is neither here nor there.

You don't get it. Previously on Twin Peaks.

Users were told that when they bought into the original VSL that things like repetition etc were tested and on and on. Regardless of what anyone says, a great deal of what's required in terms of orchestral writing is repeated notes - i.e. repetition. Either most users are dumb - or repetition, and there is gigs and gigs of it - is unusable in it's present form - particularly time-wise.

Now call it naive or just wanting to see a fair deal for thousands of users. Why the hell should they have to pay all over again to be able to use these gigs of repetition? $6000 plus doesn't mean that much to me although I am beginning to draw the line in terms of principle here.

So far, the way I see it - the basic premise of this VI tool is repetition. There are other cool features about it on paper of course - but mainly it's about repetition and people have ALREADY bought into that. They're not getting a fair deal and I am now convinced of that.

@DaveTubaKing said:

I think we just have to accept that PaulR is having a tantrum and let him get on with it [*-)]

FO!

I, too, would be interested in a review by someone new to the product which represents my situation. This would perhaps have a number of positive results:
1. a written user manual with tutorials repleat with midi files, enviornment setups, practical examples. And additional video tutorials. FinalCutPro's offering comes to mind.
2. a product that perhaps would have various access, use levels, ie. VSL for beginners, intermediate and advanced users.
3. a product that has broader appeal for a variety of users: those who write from score, keyboard players, programmers, experimenters.
4. a more open source approach. No one instance (even VSL) can do everything and the assistance of the users out there have made my ProEdition available in a real way to me through the articulation tool created by Kai and the Forum discussions.

We are all blind to our own errors and shortcomings or simply to unrevealed potential. The many eyes and ears and talents of the independent (relatively new) user might go a good way to assist in this worthy project.

taatsiaq

"So far, the way I see it - the basic premise of this VI tool is repetition. There are other cool features about it on paper of course - but mainly it's about repetition and people have ALREADY bought into that. They're not getting a fair deal and I am now convinced of that."

I can assure you that this is just one area the VI deals with. There are many more cool functions. As mentioned before, you may need a test drive.

@PaulR said:

The fact that you can play Bach's D minor fugue by blowing farts at a keyboard from 20 paces is neither here nor there.

Just to be clear, it's only 7 paces.

Best,
Jay

@Craig Sharmat said:

"So far, the way I see it - the basic premise of this VI tool is repetition. There are other cool features about it on paper of course - but mainly it's about repetition and people have ALREADY bought into that. They're not getting a fair deal and I am now convinced of that."

I can assure you that this is just one area the VI deals with. There are many more cool functions. As mentioned before, you may need a test drive.

I already said that. That is not the point here Craig. You are both either being obtuse or deliberately missing the point. You are both affiliated.

I just want to add that we invested twice the amount of time in reediting the repetitions than we did for the original editing. So our costs in develeoping the repetition samples for the VIs where more or less equal than the original production costs of the First/Pro/Horizon repetition stuff.

To place perfect matching release samples to each repetition part without reducing the original length of each repetition note is not easy, and it's impossible to this work with a kind of patch processing or something similiar. All in all 3 editors worked more than 18 months on the repetition reediting.

best
Herb

I think Paul's point has been missed on this.

As a former concert piano and orchestral W/W player, I've relied on what skills i have left (after a bad vehicle accident) to input speedily, and maximise the use of time. The knowledge of form, theory, orchestration, etc is still there, but plonkiing in three notes, then changing articulations, then doing another two notes then changing etc. is less like music for me and more like data input, a job i don't relish, as the boredom would drive me nuts. I do this now with samples i have, and setting up a score with multiple tracks for the same instrument is a real chore, albit for income's sake, a neccessary one.
I'm quite excited about the potential of the VI, but for me objectively, it's the repetition and multi articulation input on the fly that represents the most important part of the new library.

In reality, i'd like to set up the patch and articulations, adjust the speed, and press record.
How much inputting i can do in one run is important to me. If, as the VI tutorial seems to imply, i can do this, then i'm thoroughly interested.
If i can only input 50% of my work, it's still a step forward, but if i were a large sample library owner, i would naturally ask if the step forward was worth it. (I think the step is worth it, but i don't have a large sample library to make a comparison with travelling, as i am, to study).
I've also read much about the challenges presented using the performance tool. Given that technology is still a step ahead of the rest, it would still present to me a long and detailed program of inputting pieces at a time. This would be ok in work that wasn't on a time limit, but for work that has a schedule of completion, the VI's potential gives more monetary value if the inputting is almost all automated. e.g. 4 weeks to finish a normal project, 2 weeks to finish a VI project, Do two jobs in the same time, double the income, you get the picture.

I think Paul's question is entirely reasonable, and, as he's already said, it's not a shot at Herb or the team, but a request for a more detailed and objective report on the efficiency, level of automation, and potential increase in ease of use, of the new VI format.

As for what seems an assumption that keyboard players are restricted in understanding or emulating the particular techniques that other instruments use,
I have spent a lifetime either playing (piano and W/W) or working hard to gain an understanding from my fellow orchestral players as to exactly how their particular instrument works, how it's played, etc., and i'm absolutely sure i'm not the only one. Please let's not assume a keyboard player is just a keyboard player, and has little or no practical knowledge outside of that particular instrument, or method of computer input.

Regards,

Alex.

Herb and VSL,

Just wanted to say, I listened to a couple demos of the VI solo violin and they are............. damn good. It would take weeks to program the articulations for those with the current system to make them sound as good as those demos.

You're next beta demo should be the string section VI-14. Im interested to hear those in a real world application.

-Ben