I think that we're getting confused here. There is no doubt that my music sounds better when recorded by players than when using samples. There are various reasons for this:
1) I wrote it for players, not samples.
2) I'm not the world's best programmer and engineer.
3) An orchestra full of individuals, with their own views on musicality, is very hard to match with samples, where one brain is "directing" every note.
However, in the past there were many times when my demos sounded better than the final result simply because the players were not up to the job.
Now here is where the confusion starts. There are times when composers write specifically for samples, and in these cases I have yet to hear a live version sound better than the sample performance. This is especially true when mixing rhythmic electronic instruments with orchestral instruments. On my current project, without the best players in the country, it would have been impossible. Having said that there are still as many as 200 edits per track....!
The time that "real" players shine is usually where the music is very simple. There are many times that I've heard film cues that are musically ignorant and badly written where the strength of performance actually makes it sound like proper music....! This is very hard to pull off with samples. However when it comes to blood and guts racket, samples can actually be an improvement.
The last point is "does it sound real"? I would say "does it matter"? If you are recreating a standard from the Classical repertoire, then it probably does matter, but for original composition the only criteria is "does it sound good?".
DG
1) I wrote it for players, not samples.
2) I'm not the world's best programmer and engineer.
3) An orchestra full of individuals, with their own views on musicality, is very hard to match with samples, where one brain is "directing" every note.
However, in the past there were many times when my demos sounded better than the final result simply because the players were not up to the job.
Now here is where the confusion starts. There are times when composers write specifically for samples, and in these cases I have yet to hear a live version sound better than the sample performance. This is especially true when mixing rhythmic electronic instruments with orchestral instruments. On my current project, without the best players in the country, it would have been impossible. Having said that there are still as many as 200 edits per track....!
The time that "real" players shine is usually where the music is very simple. There are many times that I've heard film cues that are musically ignorant and badly written where the strength of performance actually makes it sound like proper music....! This is very hard to pull off with samples. However when it comes to blood and guts racket, samples can actually be an improvement.
The last point is "does it sound real"? I would say "does it matter"? If you are recreating a standard from the Classical repertoire, then it probably does matter, but for original composition the only criteria is "does it sound good?".
DG