Always a please to listen to excellent demos!

William-- very impressive and sophisticated writing for a person of any age-- but 17 years old?! [[:|]] that's the stuff of a prodigy! Very realistic realization too!

Guy-- the last note of the contrabass clarinet cracked me up. [:D] How did you get the expressive swells for the instruments? Did you use the cres/dim patches or did you use the velocity x-fade? Or volume and filtering?

Martin-- are you an organist? Did you play these live?

Best,
Jay

Wonderful Jay, Guy, Martin and William. Each show different aspects of said libraries. Wonderful realization of these pieces. Guy - I really appreciate your putting together a demo with only said instruments. There are not many libraries out there that will do well under this sort of microscope /scrutiny.

Guy - how did you achieve your dynamics - cres/decres patches or with velxfade through a breath or foot controller?


Many thanks again to all.


rob

The dynamics produced on my little demo was done with a combination of, cresc, pfp, (various length) and some notes with velocity fader and a slight use of vol.

@Rob Elliott said:

There are not many libraries out there that will do well under this sort of microscope /scrutiny.
rob

I see why now, it was more challenging than I thought, but this is a great exercise for anyone to do.

William,

Great work, I love the pace! You wrote it when you were 17, but is that how you orchestrated it then or is the orchestration from a more experienced William?

I'll listen to the rest later....

Guy, thanks a lot for your compliment! I really liked your piece also - very effective solo line, which perfectly brings out the character of each of these fantastic woodwinds. I am so excited to hear these! The bass flute - my God, that is the most spine-tingling sound in music. I have always wanted to use it, but never could until now! On the Apotheosis it is the same orchestration that I dug out of a dusty box of papers. But I simplified the trumpet and glockenspiel/bell parts to make them easier to play.

thanks Rob and Jay also for your comments. I love that piece Jay - what a charming woodwind composition, wonderful to listen to, and you played it very expressively.

The organ pieces sound great Martin! I have to confess the Vienna pipe organ may be (next to the bass flute of course) my favorite of all VSL instruments. It is an awe inspiring sound captured in every detail, and made available not only to play, but also to study the stops and registers to learn more about how a great pipe organ is used. The use of stops is one of the things that a master organist studies endlessly, and very difficult to learn, and so this is fantastic to be able to use all of them freely. I played pipe organ in church, but we had a very small one, and it is awesome to be able to hear this fantastic instrument in detail like this.

William, I am 17 now, and you have given me something to work for. Your piece is incredible. Thanks for putting it out there for the rest of us.

Thanks Colin!

I found Guy's demo very helpful, sonically luxurious and musically inspiring. What reverb is that on the solo instruments Guy?

Conquer,

I used SD Schubert Hall, 17.5 M, I like the sound of it, but often as soon as I say that I'm off to a different one.

Apotheosis - very good sound. Well done.

The bass flute sound - could be of a great deal of interest.

thanks for the kind words. great pieces everyone!

hi jay - i trained on the instrument but i'm not really an organist anymore. these pieces were worked up for performance many years ago so it was intuitive to just play in the manual parts. i don't keep my pedal controller hooked up anymore so those lines had to be played separately (which made things more difficult if anything).

hi william - indeed the konzerthaus organ is extraordinary and as you say, registration is an important part of the art. the bach was obviously straight forward but duruflé, like many french composers, called for specific stops as a part of the score. in the end, every stop in the library was used and enclosed divisions had to be simulated for the choir and swell dynamics. because every stop was done individually the working file took the same form as a very large orchestral piece; just over a hundred tracks with couplers.

Thanks Guy. 'SD Schubert Hall, 17.5 M' - is that a Sound Designer preset? Can't find it in my Logic IR list.

@Conquer said:

Thanks Guy. 'SD Schubert Hall, 17.5 M' - is that a Sound Designer preset? Can't find it in my Logic IR list.

Sorry, got confuse for a sec here, it's ALTIVERB not SD.

great set of demos [:D]

Very good work by everyone and what a treat to hear such a sophistated work by a serious minded 17 year old. I'm anxious to see William's instrument list. Some of that low brass stuff was just killin'.

thanks Dave and Dave

The low brass was normal, 3 trombones and tuba. But one thing I have started doing since hearing about DVZ is maintaining strict player numbers. this piece had a lot of unisons going to chords, so I used for the 4 parts tuba, bass trombone, solo trombone, and trombone ensemble, treating each one as if it was only one instrument. So if they came together on a unison, you still heard the 6 players total, and if they each played a separate note, you still heard 6 players. The same with horns, which had only two parts, with a lot of unison, but I used epic - 8 - horns and when they split went to orchestral 4 on separate tracks since they were all legato.