@Nick Batzdorf said:

...Tuba isn't as agile as bassoon, in other words. [:)]

Not only is the tuba as agile if not more agile than the bassoon, it has a wider range of notes, a wider dynamic range, is more versatile across musical styles, sounds nicer, looks nicer, feels nicer and quite frankly smells nicer to.

Nuff said!

DaveTubaKIng

@Another User said:

No problem, Rob.
Two words: "Symphonic Cube"

Stop the hurting! When! [:D]

@Another User said:

No problem, Rob.
Two words: "Symphonic Cube"

Stop the hurting! When! [:D]


Herb -

You got to give us more details than that!! I have this money burning a whole in my pocket for Synful. I'll wait if you can give me a good reason to do so (details about SC???). If there was ever a time to release info that would be now. I will try out Synful for 15 days and see what all the fuss is about. The violin expressiveness and more important ease and speed of use are probably worth the price alone. But we shall see.

rob

DaveTK, is that really true that tuba is as agile as a faggotte?

If so, my sincere apologies all those drunken guys dressed up in lederhosen with funny hats playing oom-pah...

[6]

@Nick Batzdorf said:

DaveTK, is that really true that tuba is as agile as a faggotte?

If so, my sincere apologies all those drunken guys dressed up in lederhosen with funny hats playing oom-pah...

[6]

Yes - a tuba is as agile as the trumpet or horn - the playing technique is exactly the same - it's just a question of how fast you can press those valves either piston or rotary and coordinate it with tongueing technique - tuba players can double and triple tongue like other brass - a good tuba player can play any of the Arban studies and variations including the famous Carnival of Venice as well as any good trumpet player.

Anything Winton Marsallis can do Roger Bobo can do.

It's not a question of limited ability on the part of tubas it's a question of limited imagination on the part of comopsers/arrangers.

It's difficult to think of any orchestral example of a tuba part expoiting this potential. the best I can think of are some of Havergal Brian's symphonies. But delve into the brass band repertorie and you will find endless contest scores where the four tubas perform feets of extraordinary technical brilliance.

DTK

I always figured it took a long time for the air to get through all that plumbing.

But I stand corrected.

Nick,

It does, (marginally), but as Dave says, a great Tuba player can coordinate the delay between tonguing, valving, and meshing with the other instruments without problem.

Also, it's not the air that comes out the bell so much as the sound. And sound travels at around 600MPH at one atmospheric pressure. So the moment you make a sound on one end of the Tuba (lips buzzing/flapping), it is audible fairly instantly at the other end. However, the resonance and vibration may take some time to build up, as it does in any instrument.

Evan Evans

Thank you sir. I now know more than I knew about tuba this morning. [:)]

@Another User said:

For me, the main difference between a (good) sample and (even the best) sythesized sound is easy to define: The sample will always have this certain "built in" musicality --- an artistic consciousness that the player(s) and the producer condensed from the myriad of possibilities into this very recording. You would have to know the Do's and Dont's of _each_ instrument as thoroughly as the highly specialized players from the sampling-sessions to achieve a similar result from a synthesized source. It may look enticing, but in the end you're spoilt for choice.

/Dietz (with his private opinion)

You know, the penny dropped during a conversation I had with Sharmy this afternoon about his recent Synful demo and another one he did using samples. I commented that the sampled violin had a certain life the other one didn't have (other factors aside).

Then I remembered what Dietz said in the quote above, and it dawned on me that this is what he's talking about. It's the same thing I liked about the Spectrasonics Bass Legends library ten years ago - they're alive.

Okay, I get it.

Thanks for bringing that up again, Nick. I read a good thought today on the NS-forum:

"Do you want to be the player or the conductor?"

... most of the time both, I would say, but in case of an virtual _orchestra_, my preference would distinctively tend to "conductor".

/Dietz

"Do you want to be the player or the conductor?"

hey, that was me! (scroll down a bit, 3rd from the bottom)

To me, VSL is the best library out there. It's strings, brass, and woodwinds are unbeatable. But in the discussion of solo instruments, this argument that samples somehow contain the "artistry of the performer" are silly. When I listen to most VSL solo violin demos, it's this contrived Frankenstein performance that is completely unmusical. And mind you, VSL's solo violin is the best out there. Try EWQL's violin. much worse! Even Garritan's new "violin" is awful. But even with VSL, the phrasing is very much like a honking accordion. It's literally like someone took a real violin performance audio file, chopped up all the individual notes, and then rearranged them into a new melody. But wait - that's what sampling is! When I hear VSL solo violin, It's like I've turned schizophrenic and all these random passages come out of nowhere, disconnected, and artificial with the same ones triggered over and over. Where's the artistry of that?? It's like saying a beautiful woman is just as beautiful chopped up into hunks and resown together in the wrong order.

I don't know why woodwinds and brass solo instruments don't suffer the same problem. Probably because of the bowing which is impossible to duplicate. Solo stringed instruments simply don't lend themselves to traditional sample techniques.

And for the record, Synful, which I find to be the most amazing jaw-droppingly good plugin ever, does contain samples for the "artistry" addicts out there. It simply slops them all together in a way that is musically viable. I want the algorithm to create the phrasing for me cuz pure samples will never get you there.

Anyway, thx for letting me rant. I don't want to piss anyone off here, cuz I'll need your help once I purchase my VSL set up! [:P] Btw, I'm a violinist, played in symphony orchestras in school, and have Opus1 on my must-have wishlist.

This statement -

"this argument that samples somehow contain the "artistry of the performer" are silly."

- besides being ungrammatical is absolute, unadulterated bullshit.

These samples contain NOTHING BUT the artistry of the players!!!

This kind of crap drives me crazy! What the hell do you think these sounds contain? Synthetic waveforms? Dull monotones? Are you kidding? You don't want to piss someone off? You just did bigtime. This is an utterly stupid statement. And don't try to impress anyone with the fact you are a violin player. I am a professional horn player and am blown away by the pure musicality of the horn samples. These samples contain NOTHING BUT the artistry of the players!!! To call the violin solo demos "frankenstein" is a stupid insult that demands an immediate retraction and apology. And to say anything Dietz posts is "silly" - is lame in the extreme. If you've paid any attention to this Forum you would know damn well Dietz doesn't do "silly."

Sorry sir! Don't want to piss you off! Have a nice day! (If only there was an "insipid bullshit" emoticon here.

BTW To all my admirers here: I didn't commit suicide yet! ("Damn it!" thought Evan, lunging for his Prozac and the number of his own suicide prevention counselor.)

@Another User said:

And for the record, Synful, which I find to be the most amazing jaw-droppingly good plugin ever, does contain samples for the "artistry" addicts out there.

It started with samples, but they're incorporated into his additive synthesis engine. That was one of my questions of him: are you at the mercy of the original samples? And the answer was yes.

Now, I'm certainly not a sampling purist. What I hear is very musical, but there's something flat about it. In other words, the order in which I arrived at my previous post - even though it happened within a second [:)] - was 1. ears 2. aha.

I think Synful has a lot of potential - as one more tool in our arsenal.

quote:

I think Synful has a lot of potential - as one more tool in our arsenal.

Obviouly Synful is a musical quite intresting plugin. For me it appears really like a breakthrough of synthezising technology. And I hope it may help to establish the potential of aditive synthesys in electronic music.

But as a provider of acoustic instrument sounds I'de rather preferred for it the name "Chamberensemble" instead of "orchestra" because, meanwhile it has undeniable strength in the behaviour of the Soloinstruments I have'nt heard any real "synful" orchestral Ensemblesounds in their userdemos.

It's true that an easy handling of that brilliant solophrasing would be very attractive for a VSL Performance Tool 3 too. Maybe the soundanalysys and morphing via additive Synthesis can contribute here to make important musical aspects easyer and more intuitive to use.

But even if Synful is not that pricy to prevent using it beside the VSL, I don't feel quite comfortable with the Idea of mixing the actual existing Synful and VSL Solosamples, for me only the latter still have this decisive moment warmth of the tone which makes a sound not just beeing brilliant but musicaly speaking.

fahl5

Dear William - easy, please, easy! [:)]

Thanks for raising your voice, but I'm sure that "Metrobot" wasn't about to insult anybody. At least I didn't feel offended (and I have no problem if someone would _really_ call me "silly" - my sarcasm should be well-known on these pages by now [+o(] ). Metrobot's comment was controversial, maybe, but most certainly interesting and very welcome.

All the best,

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

@William said:

To call the violin solo demos "frankenstein" is a stupid insult that demands an immediate retraction and apology.

William, much as I respect you as a composer and musician, why do you always get your knickers in a twist about the solo violin sound?

Now I agree that calling it a "frankenstein" is rather harsh, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It may be that others can hear things that you can't, or maybe they are listening for different things. I still would never use it as solo instrument... [:)]

DG

Luckily, quite a few of our customers don't share your opinion! [H]

/Dietz

Sorry, I don't mean to alienate Metrobot - that came out harsher than I meant to write. (I guess because I hadn't posted anything in a while since I was considering whether to use razor blades, barbiturates or carbon monoxide. Which do you favor Evan?)

However I would go so far to say that Metrobot is correct on one thing - it is very difficult to get a sample solo violin to sound natural, perhaps more difficult than SOME (not all) of the other instruments, and the reason is that the violin naturally makes so many instantaneous tiny changes in the entire basis of the tone. For example, to a large extent, a really great clarinet player will strive to obtain a beautifully clear, constant, even tone much of the time. Also a horn. I know that for sure on horn, because most of the time I cannot do it. [:O]ops: Whereas (and I am only generalizing so violinists please don't start frothing rabidly) a violinist usually strives to do the opposite - to shade the dynamics, the vibrato, the bowing on a moment by moment basis exactly relative to the phrasing of the music.

This is incredibly hard to do with samples. I only tried it a little on my Andante for Violin and Piano on the user demos. I don't know how musically valid that performance is. But the ultimate approach to using the solo violin and other solo strings is potentially very expressive in an actual solo performance, due to all the dynamic and performance legato/detache/spiccato samples. If one really did it right one could actually program all the bowings and every single nuance of dynamics without compromise. This might take weeks or months to fully use in a performance the expressive potential of these samples on even a simple piece.

@Dietz said:

Luckily, quite a few of our customers don't share your opinion! [H]

/Dietz

As is their perogative..

DG

@William said:

For example, to a large extent, a really great clarinet player will strive to obtain a beautifully clear, constant, even tone much of the time. Also a horn. I know that for sure on horn, because most of the time I cannot do it. [:O]ops: Whereas (and I am only generalizing so violinists please don't start frothing rabidly) a violinist usually strives to do the opposite - to shade the dynamics, the vibrato, the bowing on a moment by moment basis exactly relative to the phrasing of the music.

I think that you've hit the nail on the head here; this is what playing a string instrument is all about. Sure, one should be able to achieve a constant sound, but that is not where the greatest characteristics of the instrument lie. The answer? I don't know, but if I figure it out I'll be sure to patent it and make a fortune... [:D]

DG