SCREW THE LSO.

Long ago I decided that performers and conductors would not not be permitted to SHIT on my compositions any more. The entire idea of using samples is an attempt at getting away from the stupidity and wretchedness of live performance and all the compromises it entails.

You can dream all you want, of having the "wonderful" LSO give you the ultimate compliment of lowering themselves to play your music, but I spit on your dreams. I do not view sampling as a part-time substitute for being screwed over by a conductor or music director or groups of stuck-up classical performers. It is an art of purity and no-compromise (to the few individuals - not you - who view it that way) that is far higher than the LSO or any lousy stinking orchestra/conductor/music director that lives to put down composers and their work.

Uh...OK..William...just don't spin your head completely around or begin levitating and everything should be fine...

TH

@William said:

SCREW THE LSO.

Long ago I decided that performers and conductors would not not be permitted to SHIT on my compositions any more. The entire idea of using samples is an attempt at getting away from the stupidity and wretchedness of live performance and all the compromises it entails.

You can dream all you want, of having the "wonderful" LSO give you the ultimate compliment of lowering themselves to play your music, but I spit on your dreams. I do not view sampling as a part-time substitute for being screwed over by a conductor or music director or groups of stuck-up classical performers. It is an art of purity and no-compromise (to the few individuals - not you - who view it that way) that is far higher than the LSO or any lousy stinking orchestra/conductor/music director that lives to put down composers and their work.

Hey William, no offense here, but don't blame our dreams for your unfortunate experiences. We all have horror stories. And try not to let the politics and corruption of the real world turn you so far off that you'll prejudge a conductor and an orchestra who would otherwise be big fans of yours. That is, unless you've given up entirely on live performances of your works for the sake of art itself rather than for the lousy ways the music industry is run.

I am a conductor-- and have worked with the LSO among many others. My career has thrived on being what Eric Leinsdorf called "the composer's advocate" by standing up for worthy composers who's works would otherwise not stand a chance in what is clearly overall a narrow-minded, short-sighted industry.

I concur with the cruelty of the business, but even as a conductor who had no interest in anything but live performances I am well acquainted with composers being treated badly. Hence I've turned to VSL and my optimism returned as a medium for getting my own works heard in advance of being booked.

Many conductors fail to realize that composers are their most cherished resource. Orchestral players can be snobbish, conductors can be stuck in their own ego-driven worlds, but I've proven that I know my audiences well-- and when the audiences respond favorably to a new work, EVERYBODY shuts up and pays attention because that translates into new listeners and new ticket sales.

As a conductor, I realize that I am in very bad company-- there are a lot of "sphincters" out there, and the past 25 years of my career have been mostly a process of proving myself to be as much unlike the others as possible.

God bless composers who live and thrive on the edge of creativity. This is sorely underrated in orchestra world where preserving the older relics seems to be the extent of their interest; and if today's orchestras (especially in the US) don't wake up to this fact, we'll see more and more and more of them folding.

Whatever it takes to keep yourself creative, do it. Your works WILL find the respect they deserve and the right conductor who will fight for you and do the right thing, if that window of hope remains open-- just a little...

(Sorry to go OT...)

Thanks for the thoughtful response to my rather obnoxious post.

I know this goes against the philosophy a bit, but recording a violin section in a smaller dry space will never sound the same as with some natural ambience, however good the reverb. EWQL is over teh top to the other extreme but Sonic Implants have it about right. So....


A lyrical legato p/mf and f half way between your normal perf legato and portamento is what's required.

Recorded in a more ambient space using a decca tree

Very fast runs up and down

Stacatissimo p, mf and f

Sounds like a great idea

And what VSL products do you have? I only ask, because if you haven't tried them you don't really know what you're talking about [8-)]

DG

Thanks for your input, flashman. Let me just comment this part of your message:

@Another User said:

[...] If we would record our samples with lots of reverb like old-school sampling libraries, we would run into major problems with the realisation of all our advanced Performance-concepts, like true legato, repetitions, free placement on a virtual stage and so on. The reverb inherent to the recordings would be extremely damaging in all these cases. Our release-samples are not meant to be a cheap reverb, they are part of the instrument's own sound. - For Reverbation, we are working on a dedicated solution with multi-sampled orchestral venues.

Apart from that, I kindly invite you to visit our Silent Stage, and you will see that this orchestra stage is far from "dry" (... would be hard to achieve in a room about 7 metres high, BTW). Due to our concept, we had this studio designed to be free of _reverb_, but with lots of controlled ambience.
[...]

So - if you look at the pictures on our main site, you will see that the Silent Stage _has_ to be "full of natural ambience", as you put it.

-> http://vsl.co.at/en-us/65/72/19.vsl
-> http://vsl.co.at/en-us/65/72/20.vsl# (... there's a Quicktime VR for a detailed look)

HTH,

I think VSL are absolutely right in their approach. You cannot remove reverb once it's there but you can always add it to your own taste and with modern convolution plug-ins this can be very effective.

The only usable alternative to a dryish sound would be to record in an ambient hall with a large acoustic and make phase related 4 channel samples where the reverb vs dry mix was controllable. Apart from the complexity and cost and computer resources to run this would be much more prone to error in use by less experienced users.

When a complete orchestra plays together there is no denying that remote pick up of, say, things like the horns on the violin mics add to the realism of the recording but this sort of "reverb" could never be achieved with samples and what VSL currently does with its ambient approach is definately the best for samples.

Julian

@julian said:

[...] The only usable alternative to a dryish sound would be to record in an ambient hall with a large acoustic and make phase related 4 channel samples where the reverb vs dry mix was controllable. Apart from the complexity and cost and computer resources to run this would be much more prone to error in use by less experienced users. [...]

The main drawback would be that you again would have a fixed stage-position of the player or ensemble. You can't simply "pan" the reflections without losing the most important acoustic cues (and thus: realism) for the position of their original source. It gets worse as soon as we want to take multiple individual sources from different positions into account.

A fixed position like this may be what you want in _some_ situations, but most certainly not in all cases.

@julian said:

[...] The only usable alternative to a dryish sound would be to record in an ambient hall with a large acoustic and make phase related 4 channel samples where the reverb vs dry mix was controllable. Apart from the complexity and cost and computer resources to run this would be much more prone to error in use by less experienced users. [...]

The main drawback would be that you again would have a fixed stage-position of the player or ensemble. You can't simply "pan" the reflections without losing the most important acoustic cues (and thus: realism) for the position of their original source. It gets worse as soon as we want to take multiple individual sources from different positions into account.

A fixed position like this may be what you want in _some_ situations, but most certainly not in all cases.


Yea baby - bring on MIR!!!!!!!



Rob

[:D] We work on it, believe me.

I also appreciate VSL's approach. Not everything in the library is used for large orchestra. Works using smaller ensembles benefit from having greater control over the reverb later rather than dealing with it embedded in the samples themselves. Wind ensembles, string quartets, smaller brass ensembles, etc., even different types of compositional styles gain much from not having the exact same long reverb tails on every project. I *echo*, so to speak, Dietz's comment about fixed positions and restrictived panning.... what if I want the second violins on the right or the French horns left of center? It's much easier to do decently in "post".

Having VSL's Silent Stage ambience saves a lot of initial pre-delay programming. Secondary pre-delays are easier to apply with VSL's ambience already in place.

Some audio engineers who receive sampled orchestral projects often have their own ideas about how it ought to be mixed and what type of reverb might be added. Whether I might agree or disagree is apart from the notion that I might be paid to deliver a specific product that meets their specs. That requires maximum flexibility. Ironically, I even had one engineer reject a flute solo done in VSL because he didn't even want the "natural" ambience. I thought it sounded great, but I wasn't being paid to argue with the production team.

Altiverb 5 is my mainstay reverb, at least until MIR is ready. I love Altiverb and really haven't used anything else for VSL, but it will be nice to have MIR as an option or even a replacement.

On this specifically, concerning flashman's suggestion of adding more hall to make it a little like Silicon Implants, I totally disagree. The VSL approach is perfection sonically, and simply needs to be added to (though they are overburdened already, I know) with more articulations to satisfy all the slavering-composers demand for MORE, MORE, MORE.

Of course VSL should not complain too much about this demand. Some businesses get LESS, LESS, LESS as a response to what they do... [[;)]]

So true, William. It is quite a compliment to VSL in disguise.

I know we were discussing "epic" or "expressive" violins, but just today I was wandering around deep in VSL thought and it hit me--- "I miss the low B extension on the contrabass!!"

Here we are in the middle of a generous offer for violins and I confess to be guilty of the "more-more-more" disease!

Just can't get enough of a good thing!! [:P]

I don't know if the recording is done or not, but are some score suggestions for what I would consider "epic" strings sound. Herb - you should have most of these scores.

John Williams - ET Adventures on Earth: Across the moon sequence

Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek Next Generation theme - bridge

John Williams - Across the Stars

Jerry Goldsmith - Basic Instinct

Faure - Pavane

Ravel - Mother Goose - Le jardin feerique

I don't know if you got my e-mail about this, but besides a .3 and a .5, I feel the collection needs overall a .7 and possibly a .9. I love the .5s, but I frequently find myself wishing they were a little longer. For example, a .7 would cover the pitch lengths quite nicely in Mozart's A Little Night Music..

I would also ask that you consider "epic trills" which Miklos Rozsa used quite effectively in movies like El Cid, Plymouth Adventure, King of Kings and others.

Hi Alexander - unless they take more than the three days originaly set for these recordings we wont be seeing that many articualtions I think.

I just hope they do sustains at 3 dynamics.

@Peter Alexander said:

I don't know if you got my e-mail about this, but besides a .3 and a .5, I feel the collection needs overall a .7 and possibly a .9. I love the .5s, but I frequently find myself wishing they were a little longer. For example, a .7 would cover the pitch lengths quite nicely in Mozart's A Little Night Music..

I am also frustrated with the note lengths under 1 second. However, it might well be that the new VI will deal with this. To my mind there are basically 3 parts to a sample; the attack, the middle and the release. It may well be that VI (either now or in the future) will be able to crossfade these segments from different samples. I have a feeling that the release sample is already automatic, but don't know about the attack.
FWIW there are so many times that I can't find a useful articulation for what I want, that I don't think that loads of extra recording would help (unless VI gets to read my mind, or work with a large latency, a bit like Synful). After hearing about all the heavy duty editing that has been going on for the last couple of years, I am hoping that the new VI will be much more flexible regarding these shorter note lengths.

DG

i think many user don't like to buy the sound they have just for using the instrument.
This product is good for a new user but for us, we pay 2 time for the same sound.
Why not be possible to buy sound by sound.

Expl leg v1= X euro
alti stacc= x euro ETC...

And for exemple , the very simple music i would like to play musically with string is the albinoni adadgio.(giazotto)

If a string vsl product can give the emotion, i will be ok to buy it [:D]

@thierry.ecuvillon said:

i think many user don't like to buy the sound they have just for using the instrument.
This product is good for a new user but for us, we pay 2 time for the same sound.

So people keep saying, but it's just not true. If you read the specs it states that there is "new" material in the standard version.......

DG

DG

@thierry.ecuvillon said:

And for exemple , the very simple music i would like to play musically with string is the albinoni adadgio.

Which isn't even by Albinoni [:D]