Good morning Steffen, thanks for your answers.

My "big orchestral stuff" is still some way off not least because I haven't saved up sufficient $£ for all of the cube yet. My first project will be a Havergal Brian symphony and then the mammoth "Jami" symphony by Sorabji for which I will need the VSL choir so several years yet!

My main interest is also creating the performance in Sibelius which as you may know can now host VSTs which is why I was so interested in how much of the performance you had created in finale.

You can also host Altiverb in Sibelius so the only limitation on creating a one take performance in Sibelius is the demands on the PC/CPU.

Are you a hobbyist or proffesional musician? and what's your next project? perhaps Gurrelieder?

Hi Dave,
Yes I have noticed, Sibelius can host VST. Since I am used to Finale I am to lazy to change, since I am also used to work with Cubase 4. On the other hand I expect Finale won't stay behind very long in that hosting question.

If i am hobbyist? I am no professional filmmusician, but professional educated Pianist and Pianoteacher (You'll find some Demos I played on the Synthogy-Ivory-Grand HP) and graduated musicologist. And its my personal intrest to explore the possibilities of digital music.

My next project?
Here some Ideas listed relating to their priority for me
1) The complete Liszt Pianostudies (I have done the complete Haydnsonatas for my pupils last year) currently I work on "mazeppa"
2) Schönbergs early D-Major Stringquartett from 1897 with VSL
3) I still have to do something with the Fablesound bigband, which i own but didn't worked with yet.

hope I answered well
best
Steffen

This is a style of music that challenges me. However, I love that people have so much passion for so many different types of music and that VSL can help us all realize the music that most speaks to each of us.

I also admire the tremendous effort and skill that went into your performances. Well done!

Best,
Jay

Thanks Jay for your kind words.

What I am intrested seems to me by far not that many types of music as I have already heard as wonderful examples of musical skill, variety and passion made by JBacal

At least I hope you'll may find some moments you like in Alban Bergs music too.
best
Steffen

Steffen:

Great to hear these realizations of Berg. I love the music and your "performance." Made me wonder what you'd do with the Lulu suite....

@stevesong said:

Steffen:
" Made me wonder what you'd do with the Lulu suite....

first of all : listening [[;)]]
Thanks for your appreciation steve.

Well, I am relatively new to the whole idea of sampling, so I hope you won't mind a few preliminary questions. I didn't realize that you could get a good performance out of the computer without playing it into the computer. You said that you exported the midi file from Finale into Cubase 4. Did you export each instrument's parts separately, and then add the reverb and such? Do you use keyswitches, or midi cc? I assume either one would have to be put in after it has been moved to Cubase. I just didn't realize that this kind of work-flow was possible.

Colin Thomson

Hi Steff,

Nice to finally see your Berg on the forum, and certainly well deserved, I had already told you through emails when you sent me a sneak peak of it, how impressed I was and still am. It's also refreshing to have some Berg on the forum, not many people would dare to attempt a mock-up by him. I appreciate especially the meticulous way you layered all the instruments, I haven't seen this score recently but I could imagine it must of demanded a lot of concentration.

Now I'll be brutally honest, despite the great qualities that are present, to me the atmosphere is dead, sorry to put it this way but I'm being honest. It sounds TOO perfect, TOO worked, TOO evenly balanced etc... to me it needs to loosen a bit but keeping it in a disciplinary way. Sometimes I feel all the instruments are all lined up.
All in all some human touch wouldn't hurt. Please take this with a grain of salt. [:D]

@Another User said:

Do you use keyswitches, or midi cc? I assume either one would have to be put in after it has been moved to Cubase.

Colin Thomson

Yes I work for the most time with keyswitches because I am more used to, meanwhile it depends how you programm your VI-Matrices, so you may do the same thing with CC's or via both which I did in some moments too.
Hope I answered well .

@ColinThomson said:

...I didn't realize that you could get a good performance out of the computer without playing it into the computer....

Colin Thomson

Colin, now that Sibelius (and presumably Finale not too far down the road) can host VSTs it is possible to create an entire orchestral performance in the notation programme including using Altiverb without a keyboard in sight (which is good for those of us who don't even own one).

All the Vienna Instrument functions can be controlled thru midi commands imbedded in the score and every aspect of "human performance" can also be notated in the score. I would even suggest it is possible to get a more subtle performance in a notation programme than playing everything in from a keyboard.

With top of the range dual and quad core PCs (I know nothing about macs) you could probably play a chamber orchestra size work live (how could you do that with a keyboard and only two hands?). With big orchestral scores you would have to record off line (as you can in Sibelius). But all on a single PC.

The future looks bright for creating performances with Sibelius and VSL.

@Guy said:

Hi Steff,

being honest. It sounds TOO perfect, TOO worked, TOO evenly balanced etc... to me it needs to loosen a bit but keeping it in a disciplinary way.
All in all some human touch wouldn't hurt. Please take this with a grain of salt. [:D]

Hi Guy,
Thanks for commenting my first serious VSL-stuff I've programmed.
From a grandmaster of VSL-Programming like you, I'll take this as the huge compliment,

I wish if ever you'll have the chance to comment any further piece I've programmed, I'll deseve it, that you'll critizise it the same way. [H]

(At least, I wish anyone would judge like this about the permanent disorder in my living room :wink[:)]
best Steffen

David,

So are you saying that in the future sequencers (like Cubase, or, in my case, Logic) will become irrelevant for mock-ups? If not, what will be their purpose? Thanks.

@ColinThomson said:

David,

So are you saying that in the future sequencers (like Cubase, or, in my case, Logic) will become irrelevant for mock-ups? If not, what will be their purpose? Thanks.

No of course not, it's horses for courses.

It seems to me the sample world and mock up scene has been dominated by the midi keyboard/sequencer and many composers who use samples don't use notation.

The advances in notation programmes and sample libraries means that traditional(?)/old fashioned composers who start from notating music and get into technology thru notation programmes are only now becoming able to create virtual performances with their notation programmes without having to go down the very technical route of the traditional DAW.

And I'm talking about virtual performances as compelling and sophisticated as those of our resident mock up wizards.

There seems to be something of a coming together of disciplines which is a good thing.

The Sibelius people repeatedly say that Sibelius is not a sequencer whilst in the same breath they continue to add more and more sequencer type features. As long as they keep moving in the dual direction of the best notation programme with increasingly sophisticated sequencer functions they can call it what they like.

I have also frequently heard sequencer folks complaining bitterly that the score notation functions of their favouruite sequencers are naff.

It seems that notation programmes are moving in the right direction where sequencers don't seem to be making any inroads into the notation side.

Once 64 bit OSs are audio stable and RAM access takes a quantum leap forward, which may well be only a few years away, I hope we will be able to create live virtual performances of the largest most complex scores.

Surely in that, the notation programme has the advantage because how can one person with a midi keyboard create such a live performance with 20, 40+ complex lines at once.

Interesting times.

@ColinThomson said:

David,

So are you saying that in the future sequencers (like Cubase, or, in my case, Logic) will become irrelevant for mock-ups? If not, what will be their purpose? Thanks.

Surely in that, the notation programme has the advantage because how can one person with a midi keyboard create such a live performance with 20, 40+ complex lines at once.

Interesting times.

not just "20, 30 or 40"

Präludium= 48 miditracks
Reigen = 53 miditracks
marsch = 74 miditracks

In my opinion its somwhat childish to think musical inspiration depends on the fact, that you have played all your miditracks "by hand" in your midikeyboard.
musical imagination is not a question of fingertips and plastic keys, but of muscal imagination.
the greatest composers (Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms etc. have composed major works travelling or hiking throu natur and just imaginating what they want to hear. They tried to comunicate with notation what they intended and we try to realize it with all our possibilitys. If ever music achieves to become human and understandable, its not because of inprezise or hot fingers, but because of the warmth of our musical imagination that speaks - nothing else (imho).

Therefore to me each tool that helps to realize as prezise as possible what musical imagination intends will help. for me its much easier to prezisely control the performance in sequencer and to organize scores in notationsoftware. Perhaps both kind of apps will merge sooner or later. but since there is already now no exportproblem - nothing is missing for me.
best steffen

Wow. So that would be (for March) 74 separate lines on the manuscript paper? Is that how it is notated, or is it different?

@ColinThomson said:

Wow. So that would be (for March) 74 separate lines on the manuscript paper? Is that how it is notated, or is it different?

The finalescore has just 61 lines and this is of course more than you'll find in the "optimized" pocketscore. because often 2,3 or 4 divided parts are notated together in the same line, but has to be seperated to make profit of the performance legato.

The Cubase Project has still some other extralines, because high strings and low strings do have their seperate Slave-PC's in my setup Since Appassionata chamberstrings and Solostrings are - due to the licening - not divided I had to dublicate those stringlines that uses samples from different slave-PCs.

best Steffen

Hello all, I haven't had time to listen to the three pieces yet but well done Steffen for the considerable effort you put into creating them. It's good to see the work of less well-known composers getting an airing here.

Just wanted to react to two comments:

Guy: "It sounds TOO perfect, TOO worked, TOO evenly balanced etc... to me it needs to loosen a bit but keeping it in a disciplinary way."

Dave: "I would even suggest it is possible to get a more subtle performance in a notation programme than playing everything in from a keyboard."

If you use a score to create sequences, every note will be quantised, i.e. perfectly in time. Conversely, if you play a line into a sequencer in real time, most of the notes will be slightly ahead or slightly late of the click (metronome beat). The difference in timing of individual notes can be as little as 10-20 milliseconds, but when listening to a phrase, the difference in FEEL between a quantised perfomance and a live one is enormous.

As we know, most sequenced pop music relies heavily on quantisation for its rhythm tracks, but usually live guitar or percussion (etc.) is added, which has the effect of 'spreading' the beat. if you quantise absolutely everything, your track will end up sounding like Kraftwerk (a German synth band whose music is designed to sound robotic and mechanical).

In my experience, orchestral music sounds terribly unrealistic if you quantise all the tracks. Real musicians just don't play that way, so if its realism you're after, you'll have to play in the lines to introduce some real human feel. Having said that, it's great that notation programs can scan scores, thus allowing us to quickly hear individual parts without the slog of playing them in by hand.

@Conquer said:

the difference in FEEL between a quantised perfomance and a live one is enormous.

I know this traditional argument very well and Kraftwerk who definitly are looking for a robotic sound just seem to be the perfect example. but it seems to me not that easy neither in classical music nor in popular or contemporary music.

If it really would be like this a large Part of nowadays contemporary pop music which relies on modern studiosoftware should sound stiff as Kraftwerk conciously intends to do. This is obviously not the case.

For classical music the importance of minor tempochanges or "rubato" or at least a kind of "microrubato" on the side of performance depends highly on the attitude of a certain composer to notation. Of course you can kill any chopinpiece, by playing it as midifile how your scanner has read it. Nearly the opposit is the case for the most impressionistic music of Debussy, Ravel etc, which you can often kill soon you dare to loosen the underlying metric and timeconcept.

For the most pieces and composer you just have to decide the strength of your metric relations depending on each certain composition and musical situation. In short you have to understand how a composition is thought and couldn't just leave the sequencer or your "human" playing imperfection all decisions how the music must be played.

Imho, not to have any clear Idea how and where those subtle changes are appropriate and nessesary doesnt grant you any thing neither feel nor musical sense. But if you have a detailed enough Idea how it should sound you are not restricted on a certain tool and its certain deficiences but can freely use what ever is available to make the music come to live.
best
Steffen

If I may interject, although I definitely agree with Conquer's comment my criticism was not aimed at the quantization factor in this case, I have no complaint about that.
Individually all the instruments seems great but because (I think) you focussed a lot on making each line perfect, too perfect, we lost something natural in the overall mix, it's very hard to explain and I'm sure I'm not doing a very good job at it, maybe later I could find better words... [:D]

>if you have a detailed enough idea how it should sound you are not restricted on a certain tool and its certain deficiences, but can freely use what ever is available to make the music come to live.

Good point Steffen, I agree with you - there are occasions when quantisation can be musically very apt, and a mixture of quantised and non-quantised material can sound great regardless of musical style.

One further point about quantisation: instruments 'speak' at different rates depending on their attack speed - strings often have quite slow attacks, while percussion samples generally have a fast attack. If the whole score is quantised, the slow attack instruments will sound later than the fast ones and the performance will sound rhythmically disunited. To overcome this we can 'slide' the strings back in time till they feel right with the percussion, but as you've implied, such procedures take time and require careful judgement.

P.S. >If it really would be like this a large part of nowadays contemporary pop music which relies on modern studiosoftware should sound stiff as Kraftwerk conciously intends to do. This is obviously not the case.

Modern pop feels good because live performances can easily be 'spun in' over sequenced rhythm tracks using Pro Tools etc., and instances of bad timing in the live playing (and singing) can be subtly corrected without losing the overall feel. But in the '80s a lot of pop music DID sound stiff to me because of over-reliance on drum machines and quantisation.

P.P.S. 'Soft' quantisation - moving notes closer to their exact metronomic positions rather than putting them 100% in time - is often a good compromise when working under pressure, I find.