I've posted here before about my travels to Russia and other places and the opportunities i've had to listen to many live orchestras, ensembles and recordings. I've also posted my fair share of comments about the live sound for strings, and there have been many useful discussions amongst us, injected with humour, about getting the sample of a great live player, and translating that into ensemble nirvana.
I've been thinking............ [I]
I tried an experiment in Logic that i'd like to share for discussion.
I recorded 8 bars of a solo violin. (I have a very old set of samples a friend recorded for me years ago. Nice fellow, great player)
Then i 'mirrored' that same line in 10 tracks. (I renamed the sample ten times, and used ten samples)
Several tracks were 'detuned' a couple of cents either way of the true pitch.
Playback.
The resulting sound, after sorting out some phasing issues, was a lot fuller than before, and importantly, didn't have that total perfection that 'thins' so often in an ensemble sample.
So then i went through each track, and in a run i'd recorded, I shifted the note placement a fraction either way of 'true note center', to try and emulate the live section of an ensemble all playing notes in a slightly different way. I then 'blurred' the end of notes a fraction to emulate the section finishing at slightly different times.
The result was a improvement in my perception of 'live' quality of sound, and in reality, i did what live players would do anyway. Even with my small and crude setup, i started to hear more of a human element in the result.
We've discussed here many times the worth of striving for a 'live' sound, and as a fact, modern software is still well behind the quality of modrn day samples. So my little experiment was a manual version of something i'd like to see as an option in logic, cubase, or others.
Load a line, copy it ten or so times, then twiddle a virtual knob, and that set of lines is made 'live' with adjustment something similar to my manual experiment.
I've wondering if some of you with VSL are willing to try this, and post your impressions.
I'm aware of how many tracks one would need for an entire orchestration, but i figure we're really talking about strings, as the other sections are fairly well live as it stands.
And i don't think of this as a replacement for ensemble samples, but with 5 or 6 additional lines treated this way, as well as an ensemble sample, i'm wondering if the result would be even closer to live, so to speak.
Regards to you all,
Alex.
I've been thinking............ [I]
I tried an experiment in Logic that i'd like to share for discussion.
I recorded 8 bars of a solo violin. (I have a very old set of samples a friend recorded for me years ago. Nice fellow, great player)
Then i 'mirrored' that same line in 10 tracks. (I renamed the sample ten times, and used ten samples)
Several tracks were 'detuned' a couple of cents either way of the true pitch.
Playback.
The resulting sound, after sorting out some phasing issues, was a lot fuller than before, and importantly, didn't have that total perfection that 'thins' so often in an ensemble sample.
So then i went through each track, and in a run i'd recorded, I shifted the note placement a fraction either way of 'true note center', to try and emulate the live section of an ensemble all playing notes in a slightly different way. I then 'blurred' the end of notes a fraction to emulate the section finishing at slightly different times.
The result was a improvement in my perception of 'live' quality of sound, and in reality, i did what live players would do anyway. Even with my small and crude setup, i started to hear more of a human element in the result.
We've discussed here many times the worth of striving for a 'live' sound, and as a fact, modern software is still well behind the quality of modrn day samples. So my little experiment was a manual version of something i'd like to see as an option in logic, cubase, or others.
Load a line, copy it ten or so times, then twiddle a virtual knob, and that set of lines is made 'live' with adjustment something similar to my manual experiment.
I've wondering if some of you with VSL are willing to try this, and post your impressions.
I'm aware of how many tracks one would need for an entire orchestration, but i figure we're really talking about strings, as the other sections are fairly well live as it stands.
And i don't think of this as a replacement for ensemble samples, but with 5 or 6 additional lines treated this way, as well as an ensemble sample, i'm wondering if the result would be even closer to live, so to speak.
Regards to you all,
Alex.
