Overture (Gigastudio 3 demo)

[gugliel]

Made a recording with gigastudio 3 -- the first of three sections of an orchestral overture. Uses VSL solo strings as 'principals' with GOS and AO string sections, plus ww and brass.

On a soundclick page www.soundclick.com/bands/7/guglielmomusic.htm
called "name this song" (working title!)

Guglielmo

[JBacal]

Guglielmo,

Interesting composition. But I highly recommend you use more reverb. For my taste, the sound is too dry and "in your face."

Best,
Jay

[gugliel]

Thanks, JBacal, I'll try that. Still trying to decide where best to apply reverb in the setup -- using 'gigapulse' in gs3 puts reverb very early (per track) causing problems when I try to mix the many audio tracks together.

[JBacal]

I apply reverb as the very last step after mixing all the parts.

--Jay

[William]

I tried but was not able to download this.

[gugliel]

Thanks for trying, William, it should be on soundclick, but their site sometimes is unavailable and sometimes has ads that are aggressive enough to drive people away. Try again, if you have time -- .

-- and it's updated now, Jay, with reverb added -- too much??

[mathis]

That´s really one of the really weird listening experiences I recently had. All this mix of totally different quality samples. Upfront the VSL solo strings and some layers later really cheap sounds from a GM module or alike. That´s really weird... (and furthermore your sounds are not all in tune, really loveley!)
Really, I love it! It´s totally strange music!

However, if you intended to have a simulation of a real orchestra then you won´t come anywhere near without a better library. If you´re short of money, take Karritan personal orchestra. I use it quite a lot for composing and it´s very useful and much better than what you have. And it´s at a sensible price point.

Musically it´s difficult to say, with that strange experience. I heard it twice and still don´t really get what you might have intended as a final result. It´s supposed to be some kind of Neo-baroque, right? The fugata passage with the violin speaks to me most. Then there comes that basson passage with the great out of tune samples (I really love it! Please keep that [[;)]] ) The ending is, sorry, disgusting.

I hope you find some money to buy better samples. Then post it again with a more balanced mix, work on the phrasings and dynamics and we see again, I suggest.
Keep on working!

[gugliel]

Since I don't know you well yet, I'll trust you are friendly, mathis! And respond to your post (while working to improve the mix, since much of what you say is true, just a little painful to think you mock my efforts).

The ww and brass are from a kurzweil 2600, which can sound much better than these do -- I have been focused on the strings and just let the other instruments fall where they may for now. Improvement soon with these.

As to tuning, there are a few mistakes because of the drastic re-ordering I've had to do to fit one line that changes articulation into several co-operating lines for gigastudio 3, but much of the 'out-of-tuneness' is my microtonal music, intentionally tuned for consonance, dissonance, and/or expression. Given the tonic Bb, a G major triad (as where the woodwinds are mostly alone) will be either somewhat sharp or somewhat flat in my tuning, depending on how you get there. It is on the sixth scale degree of the tonic, a mutable note either about 8 cents sharp or 16 cents flat -- where the bassoon, oboe, and clarinet play, it's sharp. When an Ab comes along, it then is even sharper, about 18 cents.

So, like Pablo Casals, I don't mind if people say it's out of tune, as long as they come to believe it's beautiful. (But not, I hope, strange, povertystricken, and disgusting, please!)

The ending is not an ending, just a stopping point of a chord, the next section starts over that with new material. The first part is "The Brooding God", the one that comes next "The Happy Gods", the third, "The Compassionate God". The overall title I'm still searching for.

Thanks for listening!

Gugliel

[mathis]

Guglielmo,

sorry, I didn´t want to step on your toes. Seriously, I didn´t intent to mock at your efforts. In my surrounding here in The Hague "weird" is a positive and nice word. "Strange" is even stronger.
Well, about the end, sorry about that harsh word. But I didn´t experience that as a stop, like you say, I hear that as a far too quick, unmotivated Dominant-Tonic. Bamm-bamm. That´s it. If you want to have the effect of stopping, then please don´t make babamm. That´s the most banal you can do and throws your previous efforts into garbage.

These aspects of natural tuning are indeed interesting. But I heartly advise you to care for more obvious things first. Otherwise one simply doesn´t hear that as intended but as wrong (and, err, not beautiful).

If you consider the work as not finished then maybe you should clearly announce for what we/I should listen for. Otherwise I/we take it as is as a complete thing, which is pretty usual I think.

Again, please don´t be pissed off. No personal affront intended.
Post a better version soon!
Laters,
- Mathis



P.S.: I really had to laugh out loud reading my misspelling "Karritan". What an absurd mixture of "Garritan" and "Karajan"...

[evan evans]

yes, the new sample library everybody is raving about:

The Herbert Von Garritan Strings

LOL

Evan Evans

[PaulR]

@gugliel said:

Since I don't know you well yet, I'll trust you are friendly, mathis! And respond to your post (while working to improve the mix, since much of what you say is true, just a little painful to think you mock my efforts).

Gugliel

I can assure you, he is not mocking your efforts. Mathis would not do that.

[evan evans]

Maybe I am an ignoramus but I don't understand what the heck you guys are talking about! What does it mean to "mock someone's efforts"? I thought mocking meant to ridicule by way of copying or reflecting? What the heck does that have to do with anything anyone has said?

Evan Evans

[strawinsky]

What the heck does that have to do with anything anyone has said? Na Na.

That's mocking.You're right.

[fredproggh]

This was really a cool off the wall piece. And actually, the dryness and- pleeeze, don't take this the wrong way- ethereal cheesyness of some of the sounds put me in the mind of a Mellotron, which I happen to think is just an awesome sound. I think this, and definitly the choral pieces you've done are really enjoyable.

[mathis]

@fredproggh said:

And actually, the dryness and- pleeeze, don't take this the wrong way- ethereal cheesyness of some of the sounds put me in the mind of a Mellotron, which I happen to think is just an awesome sound.

This is exactly what I meant.

[gugliel]

Ok, well ethereal cheesyness is better. I'll post a new mix soon with better versions of some of the sounds -- mixing with different reverbs from different places had a bigger effect than wanted -- and I did find a number of tuning mistakes.

Just to be sure we're talking about the same sounds -- you know you can not use 'lo-fi' on the soundclick site, right? It delivers a parody of the music in mono. Must use 'hi-fi' or download.

[gugliel]

--- a few hours later -- like an onion going through the layers of tuning --

The vsl solo strings, 'cellos, are generally sharp, and they are not quite in equal temperament. That is probably why they sound so good on first acquaintance, they stand out because of the sharpness and they sound well-tuned in familiar keys because of the not-quite-equal temperament.

Generalizing (too soon, I know): the sharps are especially sharp, the flats are flat-to-equal, and the naturals are a tiny bit sharp. The Bb especially changes pitch from dynamic layer to dynamic layer, and within some/many of the sustains rises in pitch from too flat to sharp. The ff dynamic is almost always several cents higher than the mf dynamic in 4-level patches. The pp dynamic is also sharper generally than mp or mf.

Now I have pages of notes about the pitch characteristics of the patches and the dynamic levels in each. There is a separate thread, somewhere, about documentation. Now, I think THIS would be a good thing for the sample library developers to offer, since they probably have had to evaluate all these issues. Offer a 'technical reference' with details about every sample of every patch. I'd pay extra for that!

Still haven't finished remixing because of getting into tuning examinations ... more to come.

[mvanbebber]

Gugliel-
I appreciate what you are trying to do with just (pure) intonation here, but I think you are niglecting 'horizontal' or melodic tuning for one, and the other problem is that some of your vertical tunings are off too. For example, when the baroque 'basso continuo' section comes in, and just before it, the oboe plays some very strange sevenths in some of the runs. They sound to me like somewhere between flat seven and natural seven. And even if that were perfectly vertically in tune, I think it would sound better for example to temper up the seventh (leading tone) of a melody -even in a V chord, where that note is the 3rd, and should vertically be tempered down - in order to make it sound connected to the next chord I or tonic. I especially think this kind of tuning sounds wierd in fast scalar runs, because there is no horizontal tuning, just pure vertical relationships, which is not how the music is supposed to be heard, in my opinion. What's strange is that just a couple (2 or 3) of these slightly mis-tuned notes make the whole piece sound very strange. It shows you how powerfull tuning systems are.
-mvanbebber

[gugliel]

mvanbebber, thanks for the comment and extra listen. Since mathis' post above, I've been delving into the tunings ever more carefully, and there is much to touch up. One problem is that NONE of the three packages I'm using is precise in tuning. The GOS is closest to pure equal temperament (but with a number of off notes), the VSL medium, and the AO farthest out. Both VSL and AO seem to be kind of a C-major Werkmeister (sounds good with few sharps and flats, but look out if you go far around the circle of fifths). I'll be updating in a day or so with more ....

[gugliel]

New version posted, same link:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/7/guglielmomusic.htm

working title, "Name this song!", part 1 of 3-part Overture for conventional orchestra (2222 2221 1tmp strings)

The tuning is getting ever better, and the balances have been improved; this is yet another entirely new mix. The strings are still VSL solo strings + GOS + Advanced ORchestra string sections. Each set of strings required a great deal of individual tuning. Still don't know if combining them is worth all the trouble, though as with anything repetitive, it gets faster with practice. The woodwinds and brass are from a Kurzweil 2600. The Kurzweil samples, while sometimes not realistic, are PERFECTLY in tune (except for my re-tuning of things).

The small amount of eq and reverb used was done with Samplitude.

Anybody new to this, or re-visitors willing to share their ears again, much appreciated. mvanbebber, I still don't quite believe in melodic tuning, though I know most classical performing musicians DO, making anything that seems like it might be a 'leading tone' of some temporary scale very sharp.

[edit] And I wanted to comment on influences: there is NO attempt at anything like 'neo-baroque' or 'neo-classical', though it is clearly tonally organized. The specific influences, actually, are: Schoenberg, Chamber Symphony; Prokofief, part of the Duenna, an opera; Schwantner, a band piece called "And the mountains rising nowhere ..."; and Britten, a choral piece whose name I forget. All these are 'resonances', not quotes or re-use of musical material (except for the Schoenberg, the stacked fourths, with my re-interpretation in terms of tuning questions and the pythagorean comma!).