We'll also need some samples of obnoxious teenagers saying things like, "this music is boring!" and "mom, how long do we have to be here?" since I seem to always sit in front of those kinds of people whenever I go to the Bowl.

-BW

hehe that reminds me of the story of one of the first performances of 4'33"

apparently at one of the colleges in the US (indiana maybe) the practice rooms are right above the concert hall. Now, they're well insulated and durring a normal performance you can't hear anything but THAT day there happened to be a piano student preparing for his jury. When they got around to doing 4'33" the audience was treated to 8 bars of piano mu sic followed shortly by loud screams and explitives over and over. [:D]

A few years ago i played in small orchestra for a charity christmas event in aid of Legacy in Australia.
During a particularly sweet violin solo arranged for the event, a young, very attractive lady wearing nothing but a very small christmassy thong, jumped onstage and 'waved' her assets in front of the violin player. Like a true professional he kept going, never missing a note and with no sign of 'anxiety'. The young lady tried her hardest to put him off, but he refused to stray from the musical path, and finished the solo to a rousing cheer of congratulations from the audience, as much for his 'determination' as the quality of his playing.

When asked afterwards how he kept his composure under such a 'challenging situation', he smiled and replied," She could have been stark naked and covered in jam, it would have made no difference. She was a woman, and I bat for the other team!'

Regards,

Alex!

this is all very amusing!

But doesn't this kind of underscore the point that of all the things that make sample librarys seem unrealistic, is sympathetic resonance of nearby instruments really that high on the list? I can imagine such resonance would make things sound different, but hardly more realistic. Does a woodwind quintet sound less realistic because it's missing the cello section through which to resonate? You could ask the same of any chamber group. Of course not!!

I would submit that until you fix the more glaring shortcomings of orchestral libraries - tedious articulation selection process, bad mixing by user, bad orchestration by user, bad composition by user - futzing about group resonance is a wasted effort.

Give me predictive articulation selection, automated mixing based on what's going on in the score, and a good ear, and that'd make a real difference! [:D]

Metro, I read your post carefully and offer the following....

Is sympathetic resonance really that high on the list?
In my opinion, yes. It's part of the mechanics of sound that create that 'live' sound.
Does a W/W quintet lose something because there's no strings to resonante through?
Yes. And i've played in many. W/W players the world over will tell you how difficult it is to creat a full and complete sound without the presence of other instruments. In a chamber of some sort be it large or small, the W/W RELY on the resonance from surrounding objects to enhance the sound. It's even worse playing outside, with little or nothing to aid the sound picture, and the lack of resonance makes playing and trying to give the audience a complete sound, hard work.
If you've played in a chamber group, you would understand string players in particular have to do more work trying to 'fill' the sound so it sounds complete. This is difficult to describe, but it's as if there is a instinctive acceptance that resonance is an important part of the complete sound, and players do their best to fill that resonant space dependent on dynamics and good balance of sound.
As you have described, bad mixing, bad orchestration, bad composition, all by USER.

So why do sampled libraries get the blame for these?

Tedious articulation process. You probably won't like this, but the fact that we have a library CAPABLE of seperate articulations is for me at least a wonderful step forward. When computer music was in its infancy, there were no articulations and the sounds were, compared to today, hopelessly synthetic. (I speak as one who writes orchestral music)

Much of the sampled technology we have today is young, maybe the last five years. There were attempts before then to provide a 'reality of sound', but in today's marketplace the standard has gone through the roof. And who knows what will happen in the future?

Predictive articulation selection.
I have a problem with this, at least in part. If yiu want to write in a particular style on a regular basis, then your suggestion has merit. If you wish to follow the same articulative pattern each time then ok.
But what if you don't? And if you wish to produce a unique sound of your own, you'll still have to build another 'automated articulation template' which may be beneficial in the long run, but as current music trands change and grow, may become redundant very quickly.

In one sense you are right though. The articulation input process in any library is a challenge to musicians and developers alike. And again, i refer to the days when we didn't have such a wonderful selection, and we had to work very hard, for long hours to reproduce the same articulated sounds you take for granted now. Imagine having to build your own each time, because there was little or no choice 10 and twenty years ago.

Automated Mixing process dependant on the style of the score?

Hmm...
Interesting concept. Only problem is, you would be bound to the same 'mixing style' as everyone else, and if an audience were to face a choice between your 'cloned' mix of a composition, and one that's maybe a little bright, or not neccesarily 'right', they may well choose imperfection over repetition!
I like the fact that things never turn out the same way twice, and i also appreciate the skill it take to mix well. I've met many a fine sound engineer in my earlier days, and discussions between them about the merit of brighter brass, or more sonorous strings was as passionate and loud as our discussions about articulation, or compositional worth!

Each one had his or her own 'style', unique, sometimes flawed, but individual just the same.

As for a good ear, sadly, no one can help you with this. Study and a lot of listening may help, but a good ear, the same as an instinct for composition, and a gift for orchestration are abilities not only reliant on study and learning, but your own natural ability or lack of it.

My regards to you,

Alex.

My goodness, Alex, what a thorough reply! Thanks for reading my post so carefully. Some of the stuff I wrote was meant in jest, at least partly. I've only played in a few orchestral or chamber settings, and we never worried about the resonance of our surroundings. (the "liveness' or reverb traits of the room, of course are a very different story) I'm not a professional performer, however, so i'll take your word for it. Maybe the preferred recording location for small ensembles should be inside furniture stores!! [:)]

The point of referencing all the things that USERs don't do well is this: resonance modelling won't fix any of those user problems. When you listen to user demos, the range of quality is stunningly huge. Some are amazingly unrealistic, others are very realistic. The demos that are exceedingly realistic, to me anyway, don't scream out "except for the lack of resonance modelling." They sound great period. So I'm not blaming orchestral libraries at all, rather pointing out that user error is the biggest factor in fake sounding orchestrations.

And Alex, I LOVE the fact that we have so many articulations! Back in 1988 I spent so much energy trying to make my new Korg M1 sound like an orchestra. The tools we have now are simply jaw-dropping in comparison. But with 129GB of VSL sample data comes new problems. I believe the future is going to be software-assisted articulation selection. It won't make your music any better, but it will make the lines you write sound natural with less effort. Of course, underneath it all, you'll always have the ability to go in and edit individual articulations. Having software help won't make it sound any more canned than a violinist who's spent years studying "proper technique" sounds canned. But we'll see - the proof will be in the hearing!

My automated mixing suggestion was mostly a joke. That probably wouldn't provide much more of a solution than a Finalizer, as mixing/mastering really is an art that can't be automated. MIR promises to be some sort of front end for a mixing environment, so who knows what might become a lot easier in the future.

And yes, my comment about my ear was also a joke!! I'm not really asking for VSL to fix my judgement in composition! The underlying point is, however, that a good ear can make almost any set of tools sound great. Just listening to Jay Bacal's example of the chamber strings was amazing. (the thread where the new user is complaining about the chamber strings) It sounded so good, and of course, it was done without any of my fantasy software help. VSL is simply stunning.

Anyway, Alex, thanks for an entertaining discussion...

Yes, it's true. An entertaining discussion.
And i admit to a large sense of humour when i wrote the reply!

My regards,

Alex.

part of the "user" side of things can be fixed on the sample/technological side. Right now there is quite a learning curve to go from classicaly trained composer to digital composer/engineer. Making the tools we use easier to use, more intuitive will greatly help in the creaton of realistic orchestral performances.

@cmpsr2000 said:

[...] Making the tools we use easier to use, more intuitive while greatly help in the creaton of realistic orchestral performances.

This is our main goal. We work on it, full force.

Best,

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

which is why almost all my money right now is going towards my "save for pro edition" fund ^^

...I'm curious... Will it ever be possible that the sampled instruments come 'fully loaded' in 1 file per instrument, no tweaking necessary...? That one can write a full score in a notation program without having to worry about keyswitches and multiple staves for one instrument ?

...I'm sure that when such a thing will be developped, you guys (VSL) will be best of the best of the best!

It's just a dream, I guess... Sometimes I feel more like a technician than a composer (altough I'm not a fulltime composer [[;)]] )...

@cmpsr2000 said:

part of the "user" side of things can be fixed on the sample/technological side. Right now there is quite a learning curve to go from classicaly trained composer to digital composer/engineer. Making the tools we use easier to use, more intuitive will greatly help in the creaton of realistic orchestral performances.

This is exactly my point. Right on. And as we see from Dietz's comment, things should be interesting. My hope and expectation is if we invest now in VSL, new software aided performance tools down the road will still use the core sample library, thereby protecting our investment.

p.s. this is not meant to minimize the amazing advance the existing performance tool represents!

p.p.s. just got a new job and hope to shell out for some Opus VSL stuff soon!

grats on the new job!

Another way to achieve resonsnance would be to duplicated your recording after you've finish it taking the exact parts and placing them onto other instruments in the orchestra, filtering everything with a lp filter and then placing a resonant reverb onto that track and having it sit way back in the background, then pass the resonant track through the same reverb you used for the main track.

Miklos
www.miklospower.com

mpower,
You've got a good point, and in a way, my fellow musos and i used to do this, well, sort of, kind of, in a similar way, er......?

We would record a group of instruments onto reel to reel. (For the very young amongst us, it's a very large cassette deck, well, sort of!)
Then we would record on a second reel to reel, playing the first R/R and live at the same time. It would create the effect of more instruments playing without hiring a small orchestra.
Now, to be fair, the sound wasn't very good, and natural resonance was entirely dependent on the size of the tiled bathroom we were recording in!
Then we bought an 8 track recorder, but that's another story.

Just a memory of time before VSL!

Regards,

Alex.

Uh - Alex, what's that, a "cassette deck"? [:D]

/Dietz

Dietz,

It's a very small reel to reel lying on it's back!

[:D]

Regards,

Alex!

But then - how do the Bits and Bytes manage to not fall down ...? [+o(]

Arrrrggghhh - enough silly jokes ... I'm still happy after all those years that I don't have to edit tapes with scissors any more.

/Dietz

Splicing tape, now there's an activity to reduce even the strongest of us to quivering wrecks.
Particularly when you've chopped and taped half a note too short!

Aahh, those were the days....
and it's a good thing they're gone!

Regards,

Alex.