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  • Integration with Scoring Software

    J
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    Been thinking about VSL for a while since I first heard it last year. One question, how easy is it to integrate with scoring software like Finale or Sibelius. I'm currently a Sibelius user and having to score the piece and then 'sequence' the piece would be a drag. [8-)] Is creating a performance an inevitable part of this system? I'm fine with tweaking, just trying to get a grasp of how the work flow might go.

    I'm starting to 'get' the smart sampler idea, but has anyone any experience synching EXS24 mk II or GigaSampler (I know that's possible) with Sibelius? I assume some simple MIDI commands would switch modes to 'repetition' or what not...

    Also, I was just trying to download the docs as someone suggested to another composer, but I can't seem to find the URL that allows for non-owners to download.

    TIA,

    jeff harrington
    music
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    Hello Jeff,

    integration into scoring programms will be our next big step.
    More infos hopefully after Frankfurt Musikmesse.

    In principle it should not be a problem to trigger gigastudio with a notation programm.

    Our manuals and software tools are only downloadable for our registered user. It's simply a basic "copy protection" for us.

    Thanks for your understanding
    Herb
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    Thanks for getting back to me so quickly Paul, I understand completely about the need to limit downloads to registered users. I've ordered the demo, assuming that will give me some idea about what is involved with mastering VSL.

    Are there any other resouces available here or elsewhere about working with VSL?

    My understanding (naive as it is) is that currently people are using sequencers like Logic to drive these performances and not scoring software? So they're step sequencing these amazing demos and then tweaking? Or are they typically keyboard enterring the notes?

    Finding it all rather hard to imagine...

    [:)]
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    @jeff harrington said:

    Been thinking about VSL for a while since I first heard it last year. One question, how easy is it to integrate with scoring software like Finale or Sibelius. I'm currently a Sibelius user and having to score the piece and then 'sequence' the piece would be a drag.
    TIA,

    jeff harrington
    music


    Hi Jeff,

    Have you considered reversing that production order? As in, sequencing the piece in a performance sequencer to get a good-sounding and expressive performance, then make a new copy of that sequence, quantize the living snot out of it, clean out the keyswitches and other non-score data, and import the resulting "clean" MIDI file(s) into Sibelius to create the written score?

    Still a bit of double work, but perhaps less.
  • J
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    I've thought about that, but my background isn't commercial (film, ads) music scoring, but serious concert music. For that reason I find it hard to imagine 'creating a piece' with a sequencer. Although, I guess I did start out that way, when synths with sequencers first came out back in the 80's I did write a few pieces by performing directly into the keyboard.

    Just seems an incredibly keyboard-indulgent way to compose. If you know what I mean. My chops are OK, but I don't want keyboard mannerisms to get in the way...

    Thanks for the feedback, btw... I've got a number of symphonies I've been hoping to realize in East Europe with cheap orchestras and this library really puts those fairly under-rehearsed performances to shame. But it puts the onus on realization on me. Like a lot of serious composers, my biggest problem is getting conductors to listen to my MIDI-realizations. This obviates that problem!

    I think it's possible those conductors might find measuring up to a VSL realization possibly daunting.

    [:D]
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    Jeff,

    This .pdf prepared by Don R. Buckley may get you started in answering questions on how to use Sib with Giga and therefore the VSL.

    http://home.tallships.ca/island/interface.pdf

    Don posted this URL as a message on the Sibelius technical help chat page in the thread named "THE SIBELIUS-GIGASTUDIO INTERFACE" in October.

    I have also emailed him once or twice and he was very friendly in answering questions I had about this wonderful primer on using Sib with Giga. Finding this document gave me more confidence in deciding to get a symphonic library.

    I am currently spending the day downloading my newly arrived VSL DVD's to my hard drive. Goodness, this is taking some time. What a lot of data! Meanwhile I'm reading up more on how to use it!

    But like you, I conceive of music with notation software. Sequencers are hard for me to understand quickly in the fashion I am used to. A point of the article, in my summation, is that Sibelius was made feature rich for these kinds of things.

    Due to the Sibelius "Playback Dictionary" feature, you can create your own custom tehnique words (Cntrl-t), which translate into midi messages, or in our case, program cahnges above individual notes on the staff, etc.

    I had previously bought another library and started to create my own Dictionary for terms like "legato number 2", etc. That instruction changes the program assignment, etc. Thankfully too, you can use the House Import/Export feature to load your Dictionary to other scores. I just started to make a "VSL String Ensemble Dictionary" that maps to my GigaStudio VSL strings performance set of those loaded instruments, etc.

    I imagine I'll have a number of Dictionaries and performance sets working together for the particular ensemble I'm writing for, etc.

    I haven't quite yet figured out how to use the VSL "Performance Set" samples nor the Performance Tool, but I'll learn as soon as I do more with Sibelius, I hope.

    --

    Although I got my music degree in '94, I only started composing more seriously recently after an almost 8 year break of anything musical.

    Meanwhile, I started a software programming career that has allowed me to afford such nice tools like Sibelius, Giga, and now the VSL... but that 8 year break forced me to start over, on my own, in music studies at some level. I'm saying this frankly because, I feel I may not have all that much experience in living with Giga and Sibelius, and perhaps also yet creating very complicated music, etc. etc. in a manner of more advanced composers.

    Buckley's article, however, has an url of the Hebrides Overture that was "rendered" in this manner.

    --

    Sibelius software for me was the ice breaker back into music because of how easy it is to use.

    Suffice to say, I've only had a very brief stint now in trying out this Sibelius to Giga method, but it seems to work. Realistically, I create two scores: a true score for printing and viewing, and another one, I name like "Serenade-GIGA-VSL.sib" which has in it, all the technique words used for proper program assignment, etc. Real musicians wouldn't appreciate the customized score. (I imagine you can, if you're anal enough in using the "hide" function in Sibelius, to meld both scores into one.)

    Lastly, Sibelius's playback ability and following my score, is much better for me, than exporting MIDI to a sequencer that wouldn't follow repeat signs, or 1,2 endings, etc. or whatever notational device you can imagine like that.

    -Hunter
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    Jeff,

    At the heart of this discussion is a dilemma that really has no practical solution at present. Anyone composing in a notation program must realize its strengths and weaknesses for MIDI applications. Working in a notation program has the strength of being familiar and comfortable, where ingrained writing habits needn't be modified greatly from good old paper and pencil. The finished product can be ready for publishing, printing, and presentation to musicians for live performance. Also, MIDI playback of the parts can be set up to give you some feedback on the sound of your work as you proceed. The direct notation data can also be "massaged" to give a more musical result than the straight quantized data of the notation, if you like. As I said, it can give *more* musical results but rarely results to equal playing the parts one at a time into a sequencer. That's the strength of sequencing - much more believable results can be achieved if the primary concern is the success of the final mix. Playing the parts into a sequencer has little to do with being "keyboard indulgent" and everything to do with expression. Actually, each part should be played in from the perspective of the instrument being simulated. You would not play a solo violin part with the same approach as a solo flute part (and neither would be played with keyboard technique in mind). This, of course, requires you to be intimately familiar with the idiosyncrasies of each of the instruments to be simulated. Just as in an ensemble of real musicians, playing each of the parts in separately adds small "human" inaccuracies and interpretive tendencies for timing, note length, etc. that can make for a much more expressive and convincing result - it's easier to bring a mix "alive." Editing additional detail (attacks, volume shaping, breathing spaces, etc.) into these basic performance tracks can add even greater nuance and believability. But these characteristics rarely translate into good notational results. Usually they translate into awful notational results.

    It all comes down to this: If the music is intended primarily for live performance use the notation program and don't be overly concerned with the MIDI mix results. But (now comes the dilemma): If you want to work in notation and also have the best possible mix, one way or another you're stuck with considerably more work. You can take the printed notation and re-record every part into a sequencer to get the killer mix or you can take the great sequenced mix and edit the data to be excellent notation. There is really no way around this at the present time. You just need to make the choice that is best for you.

    Tom
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    I do agree with the post of Tom Hopkins: This is actually for me now the biggest problem in getting really realistic sampler performances. Sample libraries as VSL, Garritan, Dan Dean, Nick Phoenix have reached a very high standard and are perfect tools to achieve natural sounding results. But, depending on the music you want to produce, and on the standard of hearing demands, the input of the music is still a very big problem. Some music produced mostly for film, TV, games and demos are especially conceived for the use of a sampler, so they will sound fine. Other composers, such as myself, just write a normal score, thinking for a normal orchestra and, mostly because of no opportunity to have it played, do produce it with a sampler. So, how to proceed? Using myself Finale for over 10 years and Sibelius now for 4 years, I do agree with Tom Hopkins, a realistic sounding result can not be achieved with a notation program. Believe me, I really would like it to be, because I am an old fashion trained classical composer. Here only 3 simple reasons, among many others:

    1. Sibelius will give a metronomic translation of what you do write in. Even if you program all the subtle tempo changes and note length with the program, it is ,IMO, not possible to achieve the result of a player or a conductor.
    2. Sibelius will do dynamic changes with volume (CC7) controls, which is very inadequate for a musical dynamic. It is possible to change this to a certain extent, but it is not very convenient and need much programming work, writing in control messages more or less for every single note.
    3. I personally I do like to record each instrument, or if not possible because there are to many at least each instrumental group, on a single audio track, so I can regulate distances, pan, reverb etc, on audio files. A notation program has absolutely no audio routing capabilities

    I did read and print the “The Gigastudio-Sibelius Interface” from http://home.tallships.ca/island/interface.pdf. It is a remarkable work, but, at least until some listening can convince me of the contrary, I do not believe that it can give good results in practice.

    On the other hand, I am a poor keyboard player and I am absolutely not capable of playing my own scores, even one instrument at a time, in to my sequencer. Also I think that without the help of a metronome tick, there is probably nobody who will be able to do it. But if you do use a metronome tick, it will again not sound natural. Metronomes are good for practicing scales, but not for making music.

    So the truth is: I do have to compromise! I have a wind controller, which I do use sometime. Something’s are written in and than edited ( much!). Others I do play in with the keyboard– without a metronome tick – and than I use the reclock function in Logic to put it in the right sequencing positions. What a pain [:(]

    If someone has a better solution, please let me know, I will be grateful for the rest of my life!


    Iwan roth
    http://www.iwanroth-sax.com
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    Ivan, Tom and Brown, thanks for your responses. I'm also skeptical of the metronome, and frankly, I hear it in these sequenced works. And now, after this discussion, I can see that using the sequencer as a third step (compose, score, render) would probably be the best process for me.

    I assume that one could pick a salient part, and perform that, as if conducting, without a metronome (after practicing it thoroughly) and then you could play against that part into the sequencer?

    music
    new music portal
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    I think at the heart of this discussion (as it already has been mentioned)lies the archetypical prons and cons of virtual orchestration:

    -On one side perfect notation and strict musical language, but with cold-like-the-North-pole performances
    -On the other hand a more programming-oriented solution, less musician-oriented but with added expresiveness and some extent of real-time playing.

    I don´t think it´s possible to separate these two paths. Any try to automatize the expresiveness part will result in less control or simply a failure IMHO.

    Currently I´m more on the line(which a lot of people here will surely dislike) of coming from the notation app, and edit everything by hand,not even using the MIDI keyboard. I understand that, had I own the VSL performance tools (which I don´t) it would sound like some sort of heresy, but I absolutely have to agree with the mentioned keyboard manierisms comment. And the worst part is that the better you play the keyboard, the harder is not to play everything in a piano-way.
    I find this "microediting after notation" method gives me the ultimate control, though it really asks of a special way of thinking if any "human touch" is to be added.

    That´s my personal point of view, of course. Different people, different experiences. And above all, I consider myself a real novice in this field, so please don´t take my opinion as real know-hows.
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    @jeff harrington said:

    Ivan, Tom and Brown, thanks for your responses. I'm also skeptical of the metronome, and frankly, I hear it in these sequenced works. And now, after this discussion, I can see that using the sequencer as a third step (compose, score, render) would probably be the best process for me.

    I assume that one could pick a salient part, and perform that, as if conducting, without a metronome (after practicing it thoroughly) and then you could play against that part into the sequencer?

    music
    new music portal


    I don't know that one must play 100% wild to get a good part. Most sequencers have excellent tempo mapping features, which allow one to use a click track without being particularly metronomic.

    If one can conceive the piece in his "mind's ear," then he can certainly hear the differences in his sequence and in this internalized ideal, and simply "rehearse" the parts (via playing and editing) until the performance exists as it was imagined. I'd include the "conducting" aspect of tempo mapping in that as well. Matter of fact, my personal methodology is to get a basic (static) tempo map and play in enough parts for a sketch. Then I spend some good time with the tempo map, taking those static tempos and "conducting" some life into them. After that's accomplished, I finish my tracking and move to mixdown. I think it's very important to make a separation between playing parts and achieving a mix, since they're two very different exercises.

    Tom's comment is dead on about programming from a keyboard. It's not such a restriction at all. Given decent chops, it's more about being able to really conceive a given instrument's personality. However, I do know keyboardists and pianists (good ones) that are skilled yet don't seem to be able to do this--their parts do come out sounding very undesirably pianistic. However, as I said, I think this is a lot more about being able to conceive a very abstract set of instrumental idiosyncracies, and being able to further abstract keyboard performance techniques that cause these behaviors to be realized in the finished part. Perhaps it's because I've been churning out MIDI-based commercial music for years and years, but I find it very easy to "play" parts that are musically authentic and stylistically plausible right from the keyboard. I also use a wind controller, percussion controllers, and other input tools which give a more complete physical connection to a given sound class.

    Good luck. I think your assessment is correct, that you'd want to notate, then sequence.
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    What are people up to these days in terms of integrating Finale with VSL? I can now use Finale to drive the VSL samples in Logic, though recording the MIDI into Logic is stumping me at the moment.

    Michael Matthews
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    Hello Herb:

    Back in 2003 you posted this:

    "integration into scoring programms will be our next big step.
    More infos hopefully after Frankfurt Musikmesse."

    How are things going with this project?

    Thanks,

    Michael Matthews
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    We are working on it, but we can't give any informations or announcements at the moment.

    best
    Herb
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    Make it happen Herb!

    We need a notation sequencer ... a new kind of software for doing sequencing from notes. Or Sibeius or FInale with plugin capability.

    [;)]

    Evan Evans
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    Hey All,

    I've been working on something for the last 8 months, or so, which will arrange sample lists based on analysis of midi files. The idea is to export your Finale/Sibelius score (pretty much as fast as hitting "play"), then my program works with the midi file "in the background". It loads the midi file, analyses it, selects samples, builds a sample playback list, then plays the samples back by "spying" on a given midi channel. The last step should be explained -- instead of making it a stand-alone sequencer, with its own clock, I decided to let it be "triggered" by the midi events coming from your notation program. What's a little unusual is that it's only reading the note events as "bangs" or triggers (not pitches, etc) and with each trigger, stepping through the sample list. The nice thing about this is that it's really completely "slaved" to the notation program. The sample buffering is done round-robin, so it's pretty easy on memory -- I'm buffering samples 7 at a time, with samples loading 3 events ahead of the "playback head". Obviously, this is not a real-time sampler -- you can't play the instruments from the keyboard -- but it will allow for routing midi elsewhere, so you can still use it in conjuction with gigastudio. Also, because giga deals with instruments with long decays (piano, harp, percussion, etc) perfectly well, it is only concentrating on monophonic instruments, where sample selection from dozens of articulations is a bigger issue.

    I hit some major snags in the last couple of months, so it's been a little delayed, but I'm back on track with it now. I hope to have a working version in the next couple of months, at which time I will definitely post an announcement. The program will be share/donate-ware, with a _strong_ recommendation to donate, since this is taking a great deal of effort to develop. Also, since I'm a lone MaxMSP developer, I will not really be able to afford an official beta-phase, so the first release will be more like a beta than a Master.

    And don't worry, Herb... Your program will obviously dwarf my efforts, but I think my little solution will be quite useful for some of us!

    James.
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    Hi James:

    I am very excited by your description of what you are doing. I look forward to news from you.

    Michael
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    @herb said:

    We are working on it, but we can't give any informations or announcements at the moment.

    best
    Herb


    Thanks for the update, Herb. I know the difficulties (impossibilities) of predicting software develpment. If possible could you at least hint as to whether you 'might possibly' have something in:

    A. six months
    B. one year
    C. two years
    D. longer

    Once again, thanks for all your work. We notating composers (or at least this one) are waiting with baited breath.

    Michael
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    I use Finale and VSL + Gigastudio (plus other librairies), and I have been happy with the results that I have received.

    Recently, I have been playing with a MIDI file imported into Finale. I played the music with Kontakt and Gigastudio. The best results were with Gigastudio. It played everything just fine and there were no problems, no odd pauses, strange cut-offs or anything like. I was playing a piece for piano and harp.

    I should point out that the instruments for Kontakt are 24-bit samples. The harp has two velocities and the piano has four.
    (Bardstown Bosendorfer piano, and DS harp)

    The harp and piano are 16 bit and have four velocities in Gigastudio (Bardstown Bosendorfer piano, and VSL harp).

    As for Finale's playback, it has been getting better over time. Let's hope that the folks at VSL will have something that works with Finale. I really like the program, and hate to change to something else. THe performance tool works great with it. I don't have any problems with the sound. I like the solo and chamber strings the best. I think they give better results to my ears.