Hi Christian,


Thanks for your kind words.

I just finished the fully orchestrated version of Massenet's Meditation. Hopefully Herb will be able to post it next week. When he does I will make the matrices that I used available.

Revisting the solo for the orchestrated version, I realized that once again William and Beat were right about too many slides on one bow. Real violinists were indeed sliding where I had used slides but in many cases they were sliding AND changing bow direction at the same time. There are 4 patches currently that offer slides of one sort or another (sul, porta, zigane and glissando). They are all VERY useful but they are all with one bow direction. I would love to have one more...a slide with a bow change-- a combination performance detache-zigane. Maybe Herb will put that on his ever growing list of samples to be recorded. [:)]

Bottom line, in the new version I removed some of the slides. Still a compromise, but perhaps a bit more tasteful.

Best,
Jay

Alright, thanks [:)]

The rest done with the VI or Pro Ed?

Hi Christian,

I've only gotten to play around with the new VI solo violin. I'm as eager as you to get my hands on the rest of the new goodies! [:)] Hopefully soon.

Best,
Jay

I doubt your AS eager [:D] But close maybe... I'm dying to try out the solo violin. I most likely wont be using VI all that much for real work until I have all 5 collections, and can set it up right. But that gives me time to learn its functions, and decide what matrices to create.

ARG! I hope Bestservice send them this monday - that would mean wednesday here in little Denmark [:)]

@JBacal said:

Revisting the solo for the orchestrated version, I realized that once again William and Beat were right about too many slides on one bow. Real violinists were indeed sliding where I had used slides but in many cases they were sliding AND changing bow direction at the same time. There are 4 patches currently that offer slides of one sort or another (sul, porta, zigane and glissando). They are all VERY useful but they are all with one bow direction. I would love to have one more...a slide with a bow change-- a combination performance detache-zigane. Maybe Herb will put that on his ever growing list of samples to be recorded. [:)]

Bottom line, in the new version I removed some of the slides. Still a compromise, but perhaps a bit more tasteful.

Best,
Jay

Jay, Violin portamento is a very complicated subject, and while you are correct that slides are sometimes performed with a change of bow, there are two added complications:

1) More often than not, the slide doesn't actually connect the two notes, it often just slides from the start note up (or down) a little, or from a little under the top note (known as the French overslide or the Russian underslide).

2) This brings me to the second point. In the case of the French overslide, the position change is done at the end of the preceding note, thereby being included in the same bow. The Russian underslide is done at the start of the succeeding note, thereby being included in the next bow (and played slightly early so that the top note arrives on the beat).

Therefore with the current samples you have to know three things in order to do portamento with a change of bow:

1) French or Russian
2) What interval the actual slide is
3) What strings the two notes are to be played on.

Each of these points has a direct bearing on the other ones. All of this is possible to fake, but even with VI I still think that it will probably need 2 tracks to do successfully.

DG

DG-- The one I hear most often is a little scoop up to pitch at the start of the bow change. It seems to put a little extra emotion-- "a cry"-- into the note. Is this the Russian?

Do you think you can "fake" the Russian or French with the existing articulations? If so, could you post a quick example. Perhaps it can be done with subtle pitch bends. But pitch bends almost never sound right to me.

Thanks for the additional info. Looks like Herb has a lot more recording to do than I originally thought. [:D]

Best,
Jay

There should be options to get a bowchange before a slide:
the repetition notes included into the zigane and portamento patches. Performing a very short repetition before sliding up/down, should give you the right impression of a "bowchanged portamento".

best
Herb

@JBacal said:

DG-- The one I hear most often is a little scoop up to pitch at the start of the bow change. It seems to put a little extra emotion-- "a cry"-- into the note. Is this the Russian?

Do you think you can "fake" the Russian or French with the existing articulations? If so, could you post a quick example. Perhaps it can be done with subtle pitch bends. But pitch bends almost never sound right to me.

Thanks for the additional info. Looks like Herb has a lot more recording to do than I originally thought. [:D]

Best,
Jay

Yes, the little scoop is the Russian. You can fake either, but you have to be careful with the French, as it only exists because of string technique. There is no equivalent in singing, which is often a reason not to do something [:D]

I'll try to post a little demo of both sorts of portamento tomorrow if I get a chance.

I look forward to hearing the new samples if the SC ever arrives [8-)]

DG

@herb said:

Performing a very short repetition before sliding up/down, should give you the right impression of a "bowchanged portamento".

Thanks, Herb. I'll have to try that.

Best,
Jay

Christian-- here is the midi file for the Massenet Meditation (fully orchestrated version). Also in the zip file you will find the bank and preset files for the VSL VI solo violin.

www.Members.aol.com/jbacal/Meditation.zip

Best,
Jay

The point concerning portamento is that it is as variable as taste, but at the same time conditioned by what is possible. It is often impossible to do a full slide, so players will "fake" such a thing if the conductor or score demands it, with a partial slide to the next fingering change. However, the danger with samples (as far as realistic presentation goes which is not very far with me as I don't really care) is that the sampled portamento is recorded in isolation, and allows far more sliding than would be possible in a normal musical context.

This brings up something that I think is of crucial importance, but always ignored. The "purity" of sampled sounds. A line played live is extremely impure - not as everyone immediately is thinking in mere intonation - but also in dynamic level, style, portamento, legato, staccato, etc. etc. etc. Any number of expressive elements. There is variation at all times in any live orchestral performance. But with samples, everything is "pure" - especially with extremely detailed and perfectly recorded samples like VSL. For example, go to ff espressivo violins. Every single note is exactly that. But if you listen to any live played line of music, only a few will be that way, even though the score says "ff espress." And this applies to ALL ASPECTS of expression. So anyway, the point I was thinking about is how crucial it is to totally mess up the "purity" of ANY aspect of MIDI you are using in order to get a natural sounding performance. And this is something everyone resists, because of natural or trained musicianship.

Hi Jay - I tried your zip file, but dont know where to put what. Also there are two of teh same fxp. bank... was one supposed to be a matrix file?

@JBacal said:

... the fully orchestrated version of Massenet's Meditation. Hopefully Herb will be able to post it next week.

[*-)]:

[:)]

coming soon, coming soon,
there will be a lot of new demos,

by the way Jays full orchestra version of Massenet's Mediation is really terrific!

best
Herb

@herb said:

coming soon, coming soon

Thank you Herb, this is a good new! I can wait a day or two, yet.

[:D]

In Italy we have been tolerating worster things for far longer time...

[6]

@Christian Marcussen said:

Hi Jay - I tried your zip file, but dont know where to put what. Also there are two of teh same fxp. bank... was one supposed to be a matrix file?

Chirstian-- one is a fxp (preset) and one is a fxb (bank) file. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between these two types. You probably don't need both. Trying loading just the preset (fxp) file.

Best,
Jay

I've got the Solo Strings VI loaded up and I can't wait to try out this zip file. Do we save these files to any particular directory?

I think it will be very important to include these files for the presets with every midi file because I loaded just the midi file and it was useless. It was interesting though, the Universal matrix started playing it and it didn't sound half bad at first. I get the feeling that in the end this VI is going to save me a lot of time and it will sound better because I won't have to short cut things as much as I used to.

I don't think any particular directory is necessary. Just load the fxp (preset) file into the VI. It should then automantically load all the articulations I used into the VI. You should then be able to play the VSL VI solo violin track from the midi file. The other midi tracks only work with the Pro Edition articulations.

Best,
Jay

Thanks,
Just did it, it seems easier than it should be.
I loaded the preset and bingo, I'm in business, and...WOW! t's awesome. Now I can really get a good look at what you're doing. And by the way, at great risk to myself, I admit, I also orchestrate the midi in non-realtime in Sonar 5 Producer. It's nice to see the methods used by others to achieve similar things that one wants to do.
Anyway, I can't thank you enough for posting that preset file.