Great Paul, pm is on the way!

... at NSS because I can not pm here as it seems.

@PolarBear said:

There is orchestral sound and there is performing orchestra to me. We might agree that a good live orchestra in a concert hall performing is always superior to any recording, because the of technical limitations we still encounter with recording techniques, loudspeakers, different listening situations. But we should compare the comparable I think, too. There's always this catch with "fooling" someone... was he aware it could be samples? Even if not, would his opinion still hold true, if he had multiple chances to listen to it and really being able to absorb everything going on in there? Were the listening conditions adequate?

Would the opinion also hold true in an A/B comparison in the same listening situation? Probably some might disagree that this would be necessary... yet the sky is the limit for me: If we listen through a typical monitoring system we might not miss anything until we heard a superior one that has more low end or higher definition, anything else, you name it. The same way we might not miss anything in the mockup (and being fooled therefore) we would hear in a live recording. Isn't that a step backward then?

This reminds me of a similar situation with computer graphics (an another art form which I constantly compare to samples). A friend of mine recently bought a blu-ray and told me that many of the films now look entirely unrealistic as the better player just helps to show up the mistakes a lot clearer.

On Polarbears original statement Glenn Gould, who admittedly was rather eccentric, would probably not have agreed as he felt that recordings were SUPERIOR to live performances, because of all the distractions, noises, mistakes, etc. in live performance.  I tend to think that way in that I look of music as something that can be perfected and polished like a painting, not as a miraculous performance that somehow all came together perfectly.  Yeah, that is impressive when it happens, but i don't care that much as a great recording is something that is of lasting value.

The comparison to computer graphics is extremely interesting.  I have noticed the same thing even with SD DVDs on old movies - the grain and matte lines on special effects are often more visible on a good digital TV than in a theater.

Nice comment about DVDs here: But also HD media still has imperfections also that could be done better. 2K and 4K productions aren't the line's end either. We could add different handling or somehow lacking of spatial perception in here as well for all the media mentioned before. A conceptual imperfection.

William, I'm trying to imagine a "perfect" van Gogh painting. I can't. What would it look like? The imperfections do make it interesting. It's how he handled or stressed them. And then again - isn't the original thing which keeps the creative spirit the perfect thing and everything else a more or less perfect copy? I'm trying to imagine music with perfectly built instruments. They wouldn't have character. The same type of instrument would sound the same all over. Could we built a "perfect" ensemble sound out of those phasing beasts? Everything making me able to discern them would make one of them imperfect. Same goes for the player, though perfection here is usually a level of skill/gift. I agree that a studio recording or a rendition can be far more enjoyable than a live recording of the crowded auditorium. But I'd not be willing to set a rule as to where to draw the line between synthetic and authentic in terms of perfection here.

PolarBear

I agree with  vibrato that this is very interesting.   On what polarbear said I definitely do not mean I want things "perfect" as a result of polishing the "recorded" approach as opposed to live performance.  I love completely sloppy imperfections, and in fact think that everything digital tends to be far too perfect.  I just mean "perfect" in the sense of a creative artist or composer getting it perfect to his taste. And that is something that live performance - which is NOT the art but a reproduction of the art - is constantly screwing up, at least according to Glenn Gould and a few others.  I am obviously a belligerent defender of the Creator (i.e. the composer) as opposed to the Reproducer (i.e. the performer). And any suggestive similarity of the word Creator to any god or gods is purely coincidental. [H]

I do also love the sound of real performances and recently had the chance to attend Germany's KlassikRadio "Filmmusik in Concert" tour in Munich, and what they caputered onto CD from their Frankfurt session is just so much less. Though they made a really bad choice when using Yamaha onboard sound for Williams' celesta... Live performances of all kind could be breathtaking experiences, so could a good recording be in a suited listening environment. Yet with samples I did not have that great moments yet, aside from a few "wow, that can be done with samples already..." Maybe I'm too involved in things here and maybe an audio engineer will tell the same thing about different live recordings where he could think of a few ingenious gems and a lot of other so-so mumbling rumbling - it's still an ongoing evolution to come back to the topic again.

So to keep the van Gogh analogy - what is the "art" behind his paintings? It's different from music here - he had one try (maybe after a few drafts) - and that's it. And maybe then again not so different, in terms of samples being the draft for the original recording as widely common in film music these days. Which also puts things into another perspective for me - we have a tool that helps us to materialize our ideas, and it's getting better at that as well as house planning 3D software is. Yet the house is still built with solid bricks and wood, the real deal couldn't be projected on the ground only. The imagination may well be kept with projection, the real deal isn't.

All the best,

PolarBear 

 I agree. Yet all of this is only as good as the mind which manipulates the samples. The one area where I feel VSL has not excelled is in the dynamics of legato samples, which are being played at a rapid pace. All of these libraries suffer when you want to write a line which moves quickly and or angularly, through harmonies etc, this is where the midi sound becomes apparent. If a composer (not a film composer) is lookimg to create music which is dense and attempts to write many notes, it fails. Listen to all the mock ups, they generally have fewer notes, and or the lines which do not extend over the bar lines. When you listen to great composers they are not limited by this. I have not heard a digital performance where the music is thick with lines and harmony, they are usually snipets of this. Do you know of any digital composers who have mock ups, which really get into the shit. In 10 years this thought will have been answered.

@PolarBear said:

So to keep the van Gogh analogy - what is the "art" behind his paintings? It's different from music here - he had one try (maybe after a few drafts) - and that's it. And maybe then again not so different, in terms of samples being the draft for the original recording as widely common in film music these days. Which also puts things into another perspective for me - we have a tool that helps us to materialize our ideas, and it's getting better at that as well as house planning 3D software is. Yet the house is still built with solid bricks and wood, the real deal couldn't be projected on the ground only. The imagination may well be kept with projection, the real deal isn't.

@PolarBear said:

So to keep the van Gogh analogy - what is the "art" behind his paintings? It's different from music here - he had one try (maybe after a few drafts) - and that's it. And maybe then again not so different, in terms of samples being the draft for the original recording as widely common in film music these days. Which also puts things into another perspective for me - we have a tool that helps us to materialize our ideas, and it's getting better at that as well as house planning 3D software is. Yet the house is still built with solid bricks and wood, the real deal couldn't be projected on the ground only. The imagination may well be kept with projection, the real deal isn't.

Working with real people is way more interesting. The collective spirit can not be replaced with the ever same sounding samples

gus t silis -  no, that is not true, as it is very possible to do fast legato and fast transitions of various articulations.  Also, I just completed a piece that has a HUGE number of notes with VE. In fact, it had so many notes that the live orchestra that tried to play it previously completely failed. But I was able to realize it as originally imagined with VE.

I agree with Vibrato, though Polarbear - and keep in mind i am not trying to always contradict you,  it is just that you bring up some interesting points -  I disagree with the van Gogh analogy.  Because he was working with oil painting, which to my mind is the greatest medium of art that exists in regards to practical use (probably along with poetry).  Because once you have a basic setup that anybody can get - an easel, some paints, a pallette, a little linseed oil and turpentine, and a sunny room - you can do ANYTHING that has ever been done in the medium.  If you have the ability within your mind.  And van Gogh was able to obviously, and he could change whatever he did at will.  The composer has always been hampered compared to that freedom of expression - by orchestra directors, musicians, circumstances of various kinds - and has not had that freedom.  But if you can get the software and computers working o.k. samples can approach the ideal state of art, which is a painter happily working in his studio. 

 Please send me some of this piece you speak of.

@William said:

It is beyond what is going on now in the concert hall, what is going on in any live recordings.

Believing an orchestral composition made with samples is comparable with the real thing, is like being a Sheik with a harem of inflatable women.

gusttsilis -

I will have it ready within about a week.  thanks for the interest.  I must also mention though, Guy Bacos and Jay Bacal as well as some others for doing pieces that are extremely complex and densely scored. Guy's concerto style pieces are great, and Jay's performance of the Vaughn Williams Fantasia was an example that is about as dense and complex string writing as has ever been composed in tonal music.

Ultimately any analogy will fail, because it's just that, an analogy - while having a pattern in common things are still different. You of course may disagree, because I also somehow already expected that, in the hope for a lively conversation and discussion about this topic. Yet I try to stress these parts, where such an analogy would apply, and disregard those, where it won't. The painting artist may "sample" a piece from the sunny room where he's in, or have a look out the window and just paint what he is seeing there. Musicians are very limited in their possibilities to imitate nature. But both, composers and painters, could perform their art from materializing the things that cross their minds or how they feel it should be done. Also van Gogh followed common painting rules or formed up his own for a certain piece, so he wasn't completely free in his mind when painting, just like a composer who has to think of instrument ranges or possible playing techniques. With today's synthesis methods we could "build" a violin going down to A-2 - is that desirable? Isn't it more interesting to see, how a composer would solve the "problem" with the tools he got at hand, a score sheet, pen and paper (or virtually said: midi channels)? That's a different view of what van Gogh was doing with easel and paints, and the flower in the painting being virtual as well.

The way I see it, the difference is, that the tools for a simple or complex painting always have been affordable while the tools of composing were unaffordable for most, even talented and/or successful composers. Sample libraries do change that, guys like you and me are able to lay down fractions of their ideas. But we are limited - we can do what the tools allow us to do. If we want 3 horns, we could write that down on the staffs, the samples for this idea have yet to come. We can approximate by going along with 4 being similar in sound. However the idea was another thing. We adapt all the time to this set of unwritten rules, fooling ourselves constantly into thinking we would deal with the real deal. So I could also argue, that a huge number of notes in your composition also could be at least recorded with metronome in a few takes of certain sections and maybe even performed at once with enough rehearsals. Yet you unconsciously put up with what samples gave you, putting up sample after sample what was already there. If van Gogh could have produced a brighter, more colorful yellow or a darker black, perhaps those would have substituted things that seem "perfect" to us. Didn't you think once that a more harsh staccato would have fitted that passage better? The evolution has still many fields to approach to allow for painter's freedom.

All the best,
PolarBear

@lgrohn said:

"The painting artist may "sample" a piece from the sunny room where he's in, or have a look out the window and just paint what he is seeing there. " Artists don't do that way. They paint what they feel.