@paulhenrysmith said:

Some of us (perhaps you among them?) may decide that it's a waste of time to practice your VSL and you'd be better off composing. While others of us (like me) may decide that getting the best orchestral performance possible is the goal (and NOT composing at all).

I let my computer to generate music (midi files) from pictures and trying myself to
learn to use software instruments to play those pieces...

LG
metacomposer
www.synestesia.com

I thought of the following: In a great painting the painter knew his techniques how to accomplish it. If he didn't it wasn't a great painting. Now on the digital side people who wouldn't make a great picture in oil can still produce amazing graphics in 3D, but they have to know the techniques how to accomplish that, too. A great painter would perhaps have to go a long route to get a decent 3D picture out of Adobe Photoshop. Perhaps because the choice of tools also matters.

PolarBear

Concerning music your analogy goes astray. Painting is not performing art. Music is. Good performance can even make a bad composition a little bit more enjoyable. Bad performance can destroy a marvellous score on the other hand.
LG

That analogy is not astray at all, it is perfect.

In fact, the closest analog to sample performances is oil painting. It is an absolutely perfect metaphor. Each note, performed separately, is like a single dab of paint on a pallete.

This is not merely performance art. It is a creative collage art as well. That is another analog which fits samples - collage. The artist assembles elements which he himself did not create, yet which taken together create a new work.

Anyway, I agree with the ideas on this thread about studying a great masterpiece with an ambitious sample performance of it and congratulate the author of the thread for his work. In fact, it is probably the best way ever invented to study a score - far more intensive than merely copying a score, as Beethoven himself was known to do. In the case of sample performance, one has to copy the score but also do a complete conducting job on it. It fact, a meta-conducting job, if I may be so bold. To do a sufficiently detailed and expressive sample performance requires far more musical skill than a conductor has to have.

Just ask any orchestral player about that... [[;)]]

William, I agree completely with you. I found that putting mock-ups together to try and emulate the recordings of masters such as Von Karajan and Abbado (my particular favourite conductors) gives a surprisingly profound insight into how people at the top of the conducting profession go about their business.

In order to get closer to the great masters of the last century I have revised this Beethoven excerpt to embody the ideal sound of the 1930s.

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/beethoven_5_c1930.mp3

It's all VSL, except for the dust.

- Paul

Okay, folks, let me know what you think of this complete performance of the first movement of Beethoven Symphony No. 5:

http://fauxharmonic.com/music/PHS_beethoven_5_a.mp3

- Paul Smith
The Fauxharmonic Orchestra
http://www.fauxharmonic.com

These guys are playing like a bunch of sissies! They need REVERB! Without it you're not doing all that time you spent progamming justice.

Of course, the orchestras were smaller in those days (and also the tuning was lower). But even when I saw Franz Brüggen conducting Beethoven with a historically correct 18th century orchestra, it was a MUCH bigger sound than you're getting.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

These guys are playing like a bunch of sissies! They need REVERB! Without it you're not doing all that time you spent progamming justice.

Of course, the orchestras were smaller in those days (and also the tuning was lower). But even when I saw Franz Brüggen conducting Beethoven with a historically correct 18th century orchestra, it was a MUCH bigger sound than you're getting.

Just trying to get away from Beethoven as ponderous, overly serious dinosaur. Maybe some more reverb would help ... but I don't want it to end up all drunken and muddy. I was surprised how much of the earthy jocularity of this movement is simply hidden with a heavier hand. (I had more reverb in initially.)

BTW, if the historically correct orchestra you saw had worn what they were supposed to have worn in those days ... you might have been less inclined to call those VSL musicians sissies!

Anyway, maybe I went too far in the dry direction. I'll try another mix.

- P

Drunken muddy reverb is horrible, but you can still give it some impact without getting to that state.

Ponderous and overly serious is horrible too, of course, but the Fifth is victory - not bubbly stuff. (At least victory is the standard story. I've never stopped to question whether that's really true.)

By the way, you've done a very nice job - I certainly don't mean to put down your work.

Nick, I certainly didn't take your comments as a put-down.

I just finished a new mix with more (but not too much) reverb. MUCH nicer. (I get so used to working with the dry orchestra to get things to lign up nicely, and to match articulations across sections, etc., that I forget about the importance of reverb.)

My server is down now, so I've posted this newly revised file here:

http://homepage.mac.com/paulhenrysmith/beethoven_5_a.mp3

Better?

- Paul