I think that clearly one of the advantages of the new VI is greatly increased automation and custom articulation switching. The videos begin to showcase this (for those who haven't watched them yet). For those who enjoy working live, these features will be well appreciated. Exactly how much time this will save them compared with the "old" method I can't quantify, but I would guess it would be considerable. Especially for the composing part of the process, this new method/technology will be extremely time efficient. I do believe that for some final, "as-real-as-possible" end products that additional time-consuming tweaking may be necessary. It really depends on the needs and sonic goals of the individual.

I think it would be illuminating if someone could post a demo of a live real-time performance. Perhaps one of Beat's or Craig's demos is already doing this. I'm not sure exactly how they created their demos.

Those who work "live" will find much to make their their inputting of musical material easier.

This is just less of a concern to me personally because of my skills and the way I am accustomed to working. Therefore, I wanted to draw some attention to one of the other major advantages of the new VI-- namely the vastly increased palette of expressive sounds!


Dave King of all things Tuba-- For my Massenet demo, I inputted the notes on the keyboard but then tweaked everything (velocity, cc11, tempo, etc.) in my Sonar 5 sequencer. I set up all the articulations I wanted in the VI. Then I went through my sequence and added the keyswitches to change to the desired articulations. Having access to a very large number of articulations on one track made experimenting with different possibilities very painless.

I'm happy to answer any questions about my experience beta-testing the solo violin (that's all I've seen and heard at this point). I will try my best to be honest and objective. But of course, I am just one person with one way of working. Others will have different needs, experiences and methods of working. Hopefully the other testers will share their feelings here as well. But the bottom line is that in just a few more weeks there will be perhaps hundreds of new users who I am sure will have no trouble expressing their own points of view.


Proud and honored to be "affiliated" and hopefully still of some use,
Jay

@PaulR said:

[...]
You tell me to shut up again Mr Kiel - I'll come and find you - and then ask you to tell me to shut up again. Capice?
[...]

PaulR, stop threaten other forum members. Thank you.

Timkiel, there's no need to tell others to "shut up". Let's keep the discussion friendly.

First, thanks to Dietz for keeping the peace and everyone who has retained their dignity and temper throughout this thread.

Question to the creators of the files: Are these out-of-the-box "presets" for the solo violin, or are they specially configured for the demos? Obviously, when I get my hands on the Cube, I'd like to play the MIDI files and see them work for myself.

Well done guys - the demos sound excellent. Of course, a round of loud applause to VSL too....

Regards - Colin

My jazz one was made with a given preset.

Brilliant demos one and all.

Jay is so brave to post 4 minutes of unaccompanied solo violin and I thought it was really beautiful. I suspect the likes of Bruce Richardson would condemn it out of hand as being unnatural and unhuman but tosh to all of that. I'm a seasoned orchestral musician and ardent live music connosieur but Jays performance still moved me and was beautiful to listen to.

Just occasionally I thought the attack on some individual notes distracting and once or twice only the diminuendo on sustained notes lacked the change in timbre you would expect and sounded like the volume knob being turned down.

But as I say 4 minutes of solo violin - absolutely breathtaking - what wonderful tools (which I mean in the nicest possible way)

[deleted]

Colin-- My collection of articulations is a custom collection which can be saved as a matrix file (not sure this is the right term). As soon as the VI is released hopefully Herb will post a link to this matrix file (which I sent to him as well). By the way, creating a custom collection of articulations really only takes a few seconds. It is VERY simple to do-- just drag and drop.


Dave-- I tried to use as many "real" diminuendos as possible, but sometimes the beginning of the articulation was more important to me (a zigane slide or progressive vibrato) and so I used cc11 (volume) to create a diminuendo. This is only an issue with solo instruments. With ensemble instruments, I would have been able to take the beginning of one articulation and crossfade to a diminuendo without anyone noticing.

Best,
Jay

[deleted]

... gentlemen ... please!

@PaulR said:

[deleted]

Wow. Classy guy....

[deleted]

[deleted]

wow -
I posted at in the beginning of this thread yesterday.
Today I saw the link and that it was now 4 pages long .... I got hopefull that there would be a ton of info and midi files and stuff .....
Boy did this thread take a left turn...

Jay and herb - as a previous poster mentioned, posting an mp3 of a 4 minute SOLO violin lib is a very bold thing to do.
It is indeed excellent.

And thanks for posting the midi file.

The thing that seems hard for some of us to fully understand is just how improved the work flow is.

In the future their may be some simple information that you could include with each demo that would help us out.

1) always post the midi file.
2) timeline - how long did it take to play in and how much extra time to mix.
3) maybe a video of someone actually playing in a couple of the parts.
4) a one page letter from the demo creator taking us through the process - ala a brief project diary.

Also, maybe announcing a free downloadable complete database of all the custom VI matrix files that the demo composers used.
So day one we could download the demo's, download the midi file and download their custom patches.

Maybe even an additional user area for us to exchange custom matrix patches as it seems that these patches are the entire point of the VI.
This would help newbies out tremendously.

[deleted]

Those demos sound very good! Beat, Jay and Craig Sharmat always do excellent work.

My only question is on the bowings of the J Bacall - some of them sound impossible to take on one string. I obsess too much about this sort of thing though. Am I right on that DG? Or any other violinists out there? There seems to be a large amount of one-string portamenti, one after another, without a change of bow. It sounds good, but I worry about being "legato happy."
[:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D] [:D]

[deleted]

William-- I am without a doubt "legato happy"-- and more specifically "zigane" happy. I did listen very carefully to recorded performances and tried to emulate what I heard. It's likely that I went a bit overboard, but the vast majority of slides I used were in one form or another in the "real" recordings. But it's probable the real violinists technique was more sublte and varied than mine.

Joaz from Northern sounds posted a series of comments from his wife an accomplished violinist. I repost them here because I think they will be of interest to all.

@Joaz said:

Hi Jay
I ran it past my wife Azhaar, and these were her comments...
Good stuff
Progressive vibrato very good.
Great harmonics,She loved the bow noise.
Down Shifts,very lifelike.

A Tad Critical
Needs more variation of vibrato speed and intensity.

The upshifts all sound like one-finger shifts, whereas for big shifts, Violinist usually cross strings and change fingers.(I have no idea if that is possible with samples though)

A Little more bite on the downbows even in the mp-mf range.

She felt that the cresendo's were a little too fast as you do have to physically move the bow a long way to get a good crescendo.

Overall
She was impressed with the musicality of the whole performance. And liked the overall sound.

Unsurprisingly When it comes to Violin, she tends to be a harsher critic of sample performances, than live ones, and having been on the end of one of her critiques of some of my stuff, I can assure you, you got off lightly.

I would enjoy hearing the reactions of other violinists on this forum.

Best,
Jay

@JBacal said:

I would enjoy hearing the reactions of other violinists on this forum.
Best,
Jay

Trust me - you don't want to hear what the violinist sitting in this studio said, an hour ago.

I would be interested to hear any "thoughtful" opinion. The "lively" discussions sparked by some of my demos posted on various forums this week have toughened my hide considerably.

--Jay

gentlemen, since dietz' and my request taking back yourself haven't been succesfull you forced us to delete content with personal injuries (and posts citing them).

this went far beyond the limits we are willing to accept.

any further off-topic post except apologies (what would be appropriate IMO) in this thread will be deleted, any continuation in another thread will be stopped, any further violation of the netiquette will be followed by closing the respective thread or suspending the respective member from posting.

thank you for your attention, christian