Thanks everyone for the encouraging words!
Ben—
Don’t you hate it when the super talented people whip something brilliant out in an “afternoon.” Well if it makes you feel any better, it didn’t take me an afternoon, or even a few days. On and off, we’re talking probably several weeks, mostly in the wee hours after my wife and 5 year old son are fast asleep. However, a sizeable chunk of that time was setting up a new computer, wrestling with buggy software and digging deep into the vast library of VSL samples.
Evan—
You have golden ears! I’m afraid the “too close” piatti are the result of shear laziness. I assigned them to the same instance of Gigapulse as the timpani, which I kept unnaturally dry and up front because I wanted the rather polite Opus 1 timpani to have that extra presence! Any tips about the art of mixing ff timpani would be appreciated.
The final crescendo problem is the result of two things—
1) Opus 1 has a limited number of natural crescendo samples (I think you need the Cube for these)
2) Shear laziness again. I used modwheel crossfade patches and just drew a straight line for the modulation. I know, I know, not the best way to get a natural sounding crescendo, but I was weak by the end! Have pity on me! I do have a question though. Is it better to ramp up faster at the beginning or end of a crescendo like this? In other words, what is the shape of the ideal curve?
Will I fix these things? Probably, because I’m an obsessive personality, but not right away for 2 reasons—
1) I can’t live with your unemployment on my conscience.
2) Stravinsky and I aren’t on speaking terms right now, and we both feel we should spend some time apart, maybe see other composers for a while.
BUT in month or so, I’m betting we’ll get back together again and armed with the new Epic Horns, I’ll put the finishing touches on this piece (and maybe even add a few Stokowski octave horn rips for William—oh and that big breath before the last note too).
Magates-- The unglamorous answer to your question about the brass is “trial and error.” I recommend you play in your horn parts and then try all the logical articulations (and combinations of articulations) available to you. See what works and what doesn’t. That said here are a few guidelines.
1) Don’t quantize the parts too much.
2) Use different patches for lines that play the same notes.
3) Try using the ensemble patches even when building up chords. It’s not realistic, but sometimes it just sounds better. (Thanks to William for this tip)
4) Don’t mix the woodwinds too loud. At first I kept mixing the woodwinds too loud (heck, I’d spent a few days programming their every wonderful nuance!), but this only succeeded in making the whole orchestra sound like one monster organ!
5) Use lots of expression and volume controllers to breath life into your phrases.
6) Employ every other trick that I’m forgetting right now or have yet to learn.
The answer to your question about programming dynamics is this.
1) Use the modwheel crossfade patches. It should come as no surprise that these are my personal favorite patches. I don’t perform the modwheel live but rather draw the modulation curves in with my mouse in Sonar after I’ve recorded all the parts. It’s tedious. But I’m just not a good enough keyboard player to get the results I want playing it live.
2) If you want to make something louder, chances are you really should make something else softer instead. I always fall into the trap of pushing everything up, up, up and before I know it, I’m blowing out my levels.
Continued next post...
