You both are very helpful teachers.......

All of your gracious advice is heeded.


I have taken 3 Libraries....

VI
True Strike
Miroslav
Some Others....



And in my autoload...placed Keyswitches for all of them on same keys.....So if I hit F-1 the entire orchestra Crescensdos at 2seconds....or if I hit c1 the entire orchestra does SFFZ.....(including Timpanis ;-.........editing the other libraries to match the VI 2sec,4,6,8 sec took forever...but boy is it fun to play now)


The results are amazing...as now I can enable many midi tracks at the same time and "Hear" the various colors attainable with doublings in Unison or Octaves....


That's what has brought me to balancing the Winds with the Brass..........I've focused much of my work in the past on Horns+Strings and very little on Forte winds........so hence my balancing questions.....I've learned much lately especially with regards to bassoons. They add an incredible "solid" feel when used to double just about anything....What the contrabasson doubled 1 octave below does to Bones is amazing.......

Martin you are so right.......years ago I would have Eq'd the Bones with more low-end...instead of layering the contra-basson beneath......

thanx,

SvK

Martin, no reason to be concerned about how to offend me, that's not possible.

[:)]

Today, and specially today including all the new tools and technology available, for a composers, or engineers, the learning curve is very steep. There are so many details involved we gradually learned over the decades. A brilliant youngster must have the talent to learn plus, the talent where to look for the right information. If you are a one man show it is even steeper. My advice to young enterpreneurs is, to build strategic partnerships, for example composer & mixer. As a producer I have seen too often that very talented people did not reach the possible goal they could, because they thought "I can do all the different work involved myself", most of this folks disapperaed and I never saw them again, my guess is that they read still some manuals.

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@Angelo Clematide said:

____________________________________________________________________


I'm somewhere within this levels when mixing wide range material:

http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~physe1b/OHP/12a/vis13a8.gif">

Where a fff tutti would reach 105 dB SPL and a pppp would go below the ppp. Don't tell anyone.

Picture link:
http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~physe1b/OHP/12a/vis13a8.gif

.

I wonder what Beethoven would of said in front of all these numbers and equations?

LvB with a SPL meter in his hand would have said:

"Also meine Herren, hier beim beim Agagio, bei Takt 17, gehen wir unter 40, und beim letzzten Takt des Finale müssen wir über 100 erreichen in weniger als einer Sekunde, sonst überholt uns eine Kutsche auf der Autobahn"

LvB also spoke english, back then english was still a north german accent:

"Okay gentlemen, here in the adagio, at measure 17, we go below 40, and at the very last bar of the finale we have to reach 100 in less then a second, otherwise Haydn's horse-box will fetch over from the other side of the Autobahn"

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@Angelo Clematide said:

LvB with a SPL meter in his hand would have said:

"Also meine Herren, hier beim beim Agagio, bei Takt 17, gehen wir unter 40, und beim letzzten Takt des Finale müssen wir über 100 erreichen in weniger als einer Sekunde, sonst überholt uns eine Kutsche auf der Autobahn"

LvB also spoke english, back then english was still a north german accent:

"Okay gentlemen, here in the adagio, at measure 17, we go below 40, and at the very last bar of the finale we have to reach 100 in less then a second, otherwise Haydn's horse-box will fetch over from the other side of the Autobahn"

.

His written letters would suggest that he would have changed his mind the next week... [[;)]]

@Angelo Clematide said:

LvB with a SPL meter in his hand would have said:

"Also meine Herren, hier beim beim Agagio, bei Takt 17, gehen wir unter 40, und beim letzzten Takt des Finale müssen wir über 100 erreichen in weniger als einer Sekunde, sonst überholt uns eine Kutsche auf der Autobahn"

LvB also spoke english, back then english was still a north german accent:

"Okay gentlemen, here in the adagio, at measure 17, we go below 40, and at the very last bar of the finale we have to reach 100 in less then a second, otherwise Haydn's horse-box will fetch over from the other side of the Autobahn"

.

His written letters would suggest that he would have changed his mind the next week... [[;)]]

HUH??? VAT???

LAUTER, BITTE!!!

ICH HÖRE SIE NICHT!!!
[:P]

@Cutler said:

His written letters would suggest that he would have changed his mind the next week... [[;)]]

I don't know how stable Ludwig was mentally, I never meet him. From far he makes rather a choleric impression. And even if I would have meet him in a crossing time zone, it is not permittet to communicate knowledge from the future to folks living in the past, (Star Trek rule #27b), and I'm afraid of going to 1799 physicallly, they would burn me on the stake after the first performance, or at least quartering, the classical sonata form punishment. And don't forget all the fun Ludwig never had with all those hot aristocratic goupies back then.

So so, you read other peoples mail, or did you buy facsimiles in the museum shop at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. If you where a pen pal of Ludwig, I excuse myself in advance.

[:)]

Audio letter:
http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=5092&template=dokseite_digitales_archiv_en&_eid=5057&_ug=Symphonies&_werkid=21&_dokid=b118&_opus=op.%2021&_mid=Works%20by%20Ludwig%20van%20Beethoven&_seite=1

from here:
http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php//portal_en

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@Angelo Clematide said:

Indicating fff for a clarinet is not practise, respectively a nonsense.

Brass can be indicated fff, and the maximum indication for wooddwinds is ff. So if you want to have brass and woodwind in equal loudness, then the brass has to cut back one dynamic level to ff, or even less, but that would be relative dynamics.
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Hi Angelo,
what you say, is ok as far as you just look at the reached dynamic (even much more with the piccolo flute, clarinets belong to the instruments with the largest dynamic scale; BUT there is another aspect that one should not forget when writting dynamics:

if you write e.g. fff instead of f for a piccolo, the dynamic wont change that much, maybe about 3 dB; but the articulation and so the sound will often change more or less drastically; it's even a fact that musicians are used to change their intonation (not drastically but with values up to 15 cent) to reach more subjective loudness.
You can often hear such things in situations, where e.g. a solo violin is playing "against" a big orchestra.

What i dont want to doubt is the fact, that this "tricks" don't really influence the way someone should score. it makes no sense to overrule the physical findings, which are generally discussed in orchestration, specially if you are using a broad orchestration.
But it is absolutely ok to write e.g. ffff for _all_ instruments in a tutti.
In those cases it is a known challenge for a conductor to get the right balance.
I know that lots of discussions have taken place in history about this problem, and therefore - also because of my own experiences - i think its ok to write "felt" dynamics.
When i tried to write "physically right" dynamics, the players generally were more confused and did not understand the intention.
(for example when you write f for a piccolo instead of mp, which would be the "emotional" value, knowing the sound the player will provide anyhow a f, he will in fact try to play in a harsher way as he would with a "felt" dynamic.


Anyhow, i dont see my statement in contrast to yours, but in addition to it.
Sometimes, it may even help to write more attributes that can help the player to find the right sound.
That all doesn't change the fact that you wont hear clarinets in the midrange - even when writing fffff - if the brass section is playing loud. [[;)]]


Best:
HTF

Happy Tree Friend,

- The values I posted are more technical, expressed in dB SPL, Pa and w/m2, and are measured at a normal microphone recording position. The usable loudness range won't change much for the total orchestra, no matter how much f's there are written, the orchestra won't come over 105 dB SPL in a closed room, one could say the table posted is absolute. In other words, it has no direct relation to how you write the dynamic indications in the score. The total dynamic range of a big orchestra performing a fff (or more f's) indicated tutti and the drop to ppp (or more p's) of a single violin has a natural given loudness range which has it's limit by our hearing capabilities. It happens quite often in a sound stage that the loudness reaches 105 dB SPL in the room at microphone position, especially when recording movie soundtracks, but this loudness range is rather not the case in a symphonic situation.

- However, and that is what you are refering to, the grammatics of musical indications are always relative to each other. A good example are the terrace dynamics of baroque music, and to give you a very extreme example, and again expressed in a technical value, was a sudden change from pppppp to ffffff where the difference from pppppp to ffffff was 72 dBFS in the recording. The composer just indicated this to make clear that he want it performed with so extreme dynamics. The background noise in the 9 minute long pppppp of the not playing musician was nearly as loud as the solo violin. I must add that this recording is difficult to listen to, even in the best listening conditions, it also provoked a scandal and SONY refused to pay the production for a long time, but released the recording later.

.

@Angelo Clematide said:

...

- However, and that is what you are refering to, the grammatics of musical indications are always relative to each other. A good example are the terrace dynamics of baroque music, and to give you a very extreme example, and again expressed in a technical value, was a sudden change from pppppp to ffffff where the difference from pppppp to ffffff was 72 dBFS in the recording. The composer just indicated this to make clear that he want it performed with so extreme dynamics. The background noise in the 9 minute long pppppp of the not playing musician was nearly as loud as the solo violin. I must add that this recording is difficult to listen to, even in the best listening conditions, it also provoked a scandal and SONY refused to pay the production for a long time, but released the recording later.

.

I suppose the salient question is: did you find the recording musically satisfying? Your comment seems to infer that you didn't. I suspect that even in modern composers not many actually want such extremes that actually mask or destroy the underlying musical ideas (if it is music that they intend!)

@Cutler said:

I suppose the salient question is: did you find the recording musically satisfying? Your comment seems to infer that you didn't. I suspect that even in modern composers not many actually want such extremes that actually mask or destroy the underlying musical ideas (if it is music that they intend!)

As a producer you have to accept what the music is, but in the mentioned case the dynamics where overdone, the compact disk is basically not listenable for a consumer, it also endangers the stereo system for serious damage. As for the contemporary composers, yes, it is certainly the goal of most to entertain people in the best possible way, and the times where the audience throws rotten apples and cries "that's no music, this is noise" is more or less over.

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