A question on a pragmatic thought....

[laughingbear]

Dear VSL Users ;o}

While I am reading and reading and reading in the forum pages since a few days , my eyes slowly start looking squareshaped, I download all those truly wonderfull Demos from the amazingly talented and professional people here, nearly have all the Demos in my VSL Folder now, and I am burning them onto a CD for my personal pleasure. I think you all are amazing talents, equipped with skills I only can dream of!

I try to imagine how VSL could work with my way of composing, and I wonder whether this is possible.... I envision to have VSL loaded in Giga, Kontakt, whatsoever.... now I sit down at my masterkeyboard and start playing chords and lines that I envision to be the string parts....

....lets say I would play chords starting from pp over mf to sf, played staccato like with the left and would like them to be Celli, at the same time the right plays kinda legato movements that I wish violas to be assigned to.... Now, I suppose that left hand/right hand arrangement is just a quesiton of keyboard splits in the program of choice....

What I wonder is this, can the style I play, be reflected in the performance? Excuse my basic question on better understanding the way it works. Your pateience is much appreciated in deed!

What I mean is, can aspects like velocity and aftertouch, sustain etc. trigger the different expressions possible? I envision this to be of huge advantage for a basic layout, performed life so to speak. I am aware however that a finetuning and lot of Midi event work probably has to follow to give the piece the final realistic touch, let aside ambience.

Hope I could explain what I mean.... - nitt immer so janz einfach als koelsche Jung -ops, not always easy for me in englisch, coming from Cologne originally - ;o}

Thanks in advance and congrats to this brilliant Forum!
Best wishes
~^..^~
Bear

[William]

This is a very good topic, and I would say that some of what you mention is possible, with keyswitching. Though on Gigasampler the complex, layered instruments are severely limited due to the size of each instrument.

What you write reminds me of what I had programmed on Miraslav Vitous with the Emulator - everything could be done for each instrument on one track, and real-time control allowed instant switching between staccato, sostenuto, detache, etc. But that is because that particular library had one tenth the amount of data that the VSL does.

What I have ended up doing with VSL is an admittedly laborious approach, but uses the power of the massively extended sample set, and that is to put each instrument on a separate dedicated track that has none of the instant playability of everything like what you're talking about, but all of the possible articulations, variations, etc., through programming. So it is not intuitive like a traditional acoustic instrument, but is complete in its expression.

Though I noticed recently on this forum that the people who use EXS version are creating expanded instruments that can do for example all the legato insturments simultaneously. That would be great (and is currently impossible on PC.) And to be able to switch simply by expressive keyboard technique between the varous sampled instruments would be fantastic, rather than laborious programming which is what I've done. Part of my problem has been that I am doing a symphony that is very long and uses almost everything the VSL can do, not a smaller work that can content itself with a couple instruments here and there. This creates the most time-consuming and non-intuitive problems imaginable.

But I agree with what you are talking about. It would be extremely desirable to have a mega-sampler, with mega-instruments, that could allow the musician to concentrate on perfecting a new kind of keyboard technique that would allow instantaneous orchestral expression. In a way, that is the ideal of sampling.

[laughingbear]

Dear William,

yeah, it seems I was able to bring my point across! I was trained as a Concert Pianist many many moons ago ;o} and I use my Roland XV88 extensivly for various expressions, plan to may be upgrade to a Gem Promega3 or Kawai 9500, both allow even a more subtle control. I am a huge fan of realtime control, and somewhat spoiled by using my KARMA Workstation and it's generated effects technology, a truly unique insutrument in that respect.

Again, appologies if some of my ideas sound ridiculous to some of you, I am pretty new to sampling in generell, no ideas about Giga, and a little experience with Kontakt so far.

I just thought, to me there are two major ways of composing, blank sheets and massive headaches with plenty of Burgundy, or a piano (masterkeyboard) with the odd whiskey here and there. ;o}

Then I was thinking, ok, how is that with Sibelius for example, I can write plenty of expression and aritculation with this composing tool, but will the VSL/Performance tool combination recognize this, or doesn this need a further step and midi editing effort to fine tune? In that sheet-context, I was further thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have something like a grafic-tablet with a laser pen, on which I could compose in a software like Sibelius in realtime? Don't know whether such solution exists already! To use a mouse and keyboard shortcuts is a bit odd in my view. But if I had a grafic tablet that provides the musical language as input basics, wouldn't that be a stunnign combination with something powerful as VSL.....

The other thing is the Piano approach, how much realtime input can I provide with playing skillsets and how could they translate in a way that I could for example freely assign what a certain velocity triggers etc. I imagine if this would be trained for a while and customized to ones individual composing needs, this would be a valuabe and powerful tool. Then again, may be it is already possible with sophisticated engines and samples like Kontakt/VSL.

I just dont know how people here use VSL to achieve a somewhat comfortable input with "expression data" by playing a keyboard.

Mhhhh. Sort of expression templates triggered by assignable midi CC may be?.... now where is that Kontakt manual again..... ;o}

Best wishes
~^..^~
Bear

[Nigel Watson]

Ein Bisschen OT (Off-Topic)....

[*-)]: aber wie landet ein Koelsche Jung in Irland denn?

Kann nicht nur das Bier sein [:)]! - auch nicht das Klima - vielleicht die Liebe?

Alaaf! [:D]

Nigel

PS die Liebe hat mich erst nach Deutschland geschlagen, mittlerweile komme ich hier auch sonst ganz gut zurecht [[;)]]

PS for you fellow British & other Colonial chaps, just enquiring how Laughing Bear came to "cross the water"

[laughingbear]

....having crossed the water coming from the states....by taking a deep breath of course..... ;o}

And yes, I miss the cultivated and slimline "Koelsch-Stangen". the way beer is served in Cologne, I never got used to drink beer out of buckets [:D]

What do you use Nigel, Giga, Kontact, Logic's Sampler, may I ask?

~^..^~
Bear

[William]

laughing bear
Your post is not ridiculous at all - I agree completely with what you are suggesting, and think that this is where sampling should go - toward making the performance of the music a matter of pure composition - with a tablet or keyboard or pencil and paper, whatever - instead of a massive amount of technical computer work. As long as it remains that, it will be the province of software/hardware engineers or musicians who submit huge amounts of valuable composing time to becoming pseudo-engineers in order to record their music.

The thing I like about the VSL is that it is more than any other sample library emphasizing the music instead of the mechanics, like from the start having a real musician and composer in charge of everything. That I truly believe makes an enormous difference compared especially to the EWQLSO, which is dominated by recording mechanics.

[Nick Batzdorf]

Fortunately or unfortunately, a big part of being a musician today is knowing the technical side. That's unlikely to change anytime soon, and nobody escapes it.

I personally enjoy it, but I am glad that I finished college (Berklee College of Music) in 1981, just before the big digital wave hit. That allowed me to concentrate on music and pick up the other stuff later.

Finally, I agree (and have said before) that the samples are mature but the performance interface is in its childhood. Some keyswitching and "programming" is inevitable, but I think there are more intuitive ways of switching articulations in real time.

[evan evans]

For graphics tablet, there is the Wacom Cintiq both as 15 inch and 18 inch. It's an active LCD with pressure senstive stylus pen. You draw directly on the screen!

You could run Sibelius under that and somehow link the outputs to some softsynths with VSL sounds in the background.

Evan Evans

[laughingbear]

Hi Evan-
This looks very interesting http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/audio.cfm">http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/audio.cfm in deed, thanks much for the Info! I try to find out how the Sibelius usabilty is, this could be it. Even this little tool ...."With an active area of 6" x 8" the CintiqPartner provides absolute positioning and pen-point cursor control across multiple monitors..." http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/cintiq_partner.cfm could be very interesting to look at. I use my Matrox Parhelia to drive 3 monitors running Cubase SX.

Hi Nick-
yep, I am the same, I enjoy that technology, although I admit, it is "disctractive". ;o} When I studied Music, Computer were somewhat reserved for the likes as Stockhausen, and Bill Gates only had wet dreams about world domination. <Grin> I have great hope and little doubts that the early manifestation of the Performance tool will see further breakthrough developments. You speak of more intuitive ways of switching articluations.

Now, I think the Folks at VSL need that kinda Feedback in detail to be able to collect the ideas and Input from the Userbase to further develop their technology.

Hi William-
Yep, I also have the deepest respect for Herb and his immense team, considering the scope and idea behind it, most impressive! In my ears, the very first time it is possiblke to create an entire orchestra based on samples so realisticly that even the slickest Pros will have a hard time to figure that this is NOT played! I remember my astonishment when I got the Symphony of Voices, still an outstanding piece of work by Eric Pershig, however, if the SOV is the size and scope of my Frontgarden, which is really small btw., VSl is the size and scope of the entire Chicago Airport as far as I am concerened. ;o}

Best wishes
~^..^~
Bear