Ditto; I just hope William's/Tarkovski's pearls are hereby cast before fertile mammalian ground, as opposed to the proverbial biblical one... And that you know, depends entirely on the grade of the recipients' sensibilities.

@William said:

"If you try to please audiiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money; and instead of training the audience by giving them inspiring works of art, you are merely training the artist to ensure his own income.  For their part, the audience will continue, their contentment unalloyed, to feel they are right - seldom a well-founded conviction. The failure to develop the audience's capacity to criticize our own judgement is tantamount to treating them with total indifference." 

It's a complicated issue this one, with multiple truths overlaid. Yes, great artists should have the courage of their convictions and lead the audience. But then a pretentious pseud could use this argument to make himself feel better about being unpopular when the real reason is that he's not that good. Pandering to critics isn't necessarily any more wholesome than pandering to the public, if the motivation is a kind of vanity.

A third interest party in this triangle of pandering is the artist himself. So, there are at least three people an artist might want to please. (1) The public, (2), critics/elites/experts or (3) himself.

It might be the case that the very best music appeals to all 3.

But let me make two further points here.

First, when I do my Epic Trailer music, I'm not pandering to the public. I'm  marketing a product for a small market. As one of the early albums on my label, I made the decision to aim for the centre of the market first - safe bets, music which is the mainstream and therefore predictable.  In future albums I will push the boundaries with more unexpected and demanding albums, but even then I'm not 'educating my audience', I'm just testing ideas and trying to find a unique position within a market.  SO, I think this debate is a bit like confusing one thing with another. A good commercial product may or may not stand up to artistic scrutiny, and a good artistic product may or may not stand up to commercial scrutiny, but they are two different things, done for different reasons, and their success is measured by different standards.

Second, I would like to say that this is drifting off topic. 😊  It's interesting, but maybe the debate should move to the Music Cafe?

Finally, I'll attempt to bring this back on topic, somewhat.  Perhaps the fault line being revealed here represents the division between two different markets for sample libraries.  Perhaps while Hollywood Strings is selling squarely to the TV, film and game composer, VSL is divided between media composers and those from a classical background.

And so, perhaps in the same way that some commercial music will sound weak to a classical person, some aspects of VSL will sound weak to a media composer.

But the underlying problem is the 'incommensurability' of language across paradigms, as Thomas Kuhn would say. We are judging the libraries by different standards.

@Guy Bacos said:

My only point is that it's not the kind of music to make a comparison with VSL strings.

Working composers need to decide what libraries to buy.  If they are writing "epic" music and that is what's paying the bills, it's good to have that comparison.  If vienna isn't good at a particular style, it's good to have examples that illustrate that.

@dagmarpiano said:

But then a pretentious pseud could use this argument to make himself feel better about being unpopular when the real reason is that he's not that good.

that is true - it is done all the time and especially nowadays at Universities, where someone can write sheer musical nonsense and, as long as it is atonal,  be proclaimed a genius by people afraid of appearing stupid.   Not that all atonality is nonsense - just 95% of it. 

However I still don't like this idea of totally caving in to commercialism and then doing your serious work on the side.  The two need to be integrated which I know is not easy.  Maybe the greatest example of integrating artistry with money-making is Hitchcock.  But he was a unique case in that he naturally thrived in the genre of thrillers and therefore simply had to do a good one commercially and it would have artistic quality.  For example the one I am always harping on - Vertigo.  He was actually indulging his own psychological obsessions with that, yet it is one of the great artistic films of all time.   Another example is Picasso - he became quite wealthy and was the opposite of the "starving artist" but is considered the greatest painter of the 20th century (though not my favorite - to me the greatest 20th century painter is de Chirico who was a schizoid proto-surrealist).

For me this (off-topic) disclaimer of  "yeah, I know it's cliched, it's right for what it is though for the target audience and I have my serious side too, I pay the bills with this you know etc." is utter crap, and the attitude of someone that should never have dared become a professional composer - even if they find people today that are willing to pay for his output!! (just like an assassin should really change careers even if his services are in some demand)

This current Zimmer-style SHYT that most every clone is excreting, then wrapping it up nicely in the best possible production library or real orchestra while it's still hot and steamy, straight from the Anemato/Cinescamples algorithms, is good enough reason for the skies to open and drown us all again - the Lord can only take so much lobotomy. It could happen you know... Desist while there's still time...

Let me remind you that there is a way to pay the bills without inflicting pain on everyone's ears and turning our stomachs: WIlliams, Morricone, Goldsmith, Barry, Horner, Shore, Grusin, Elfman, Silvestri, Young, Newman, Kamen, etc. - I'm specifically naming people that have had their own musical personalities to a great degree, and who still, or until recently, compose/d 'functional' music, appropriate to the action and requirements of the films they were underscoring, music very much alive, instead of the obligatory laboratory aural poison that forms the deluge of film-music today for the most part.

What? The public's going to walk out on William's or Horner's, opening titles because there's no chugga-chugga-chugga? Please.... Appropriate to the genre.... As if these composers named above never touched on all genres while managing not to make us puke all over our pop-corn.... Just admit to giftlessness and stop writing, will you people? The least you can do is desist from "rationalizing" it for us. 

It's both hilarious and lamentable that people who develop and/or buy products specifically designed for musical cripples, offer opinions regarding the quest for instrumental realism, when there is nothing that is real in their music.

@Errikos said:

...straight from the Anemato/Cinescamples algorithms...

You seem to single out CS quite a bit, but you really give the impression that you have no idea what is actually in their libraries.

Please, everybody - don't let this thread end in a flame-war. It seems as everything on-topic is said already, anyway.

@Errikos said:

...straight from the Anemato/Cinescamples algorithms...

You seem to single out CS quite a bit, but you really give the impression that you have no idea what is actually in their libraries.

I don't know how I give that impression, but just in case... I actually know what there is in their libraries from their own videos. One finger plays a whole orchestra chord, right? Another finger(!) in Hollywoodwinds plays the woodwind parts of The Raiders rhythm, or the Flying Theme's rhythm, no? Properly instrumentated, voiced, and spaced for the cripple's uses, whatever those may be...

I believe that the VSL is the best, because it is the most flexible for the most uses. If you're out for only one library, I believe that should be it. It will do the most convincing Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, and Williams at the same time. Which library is as versatile on its own? But if you don't do music (if you do Hans for example), maybe there are other libraries specifically designed for that kind of vomit.

@Dietz: I've said all I had to say, thanks.

@Errikos said:

 hot and steamy, straight from the Anemato/Cinescamples algorithms,

If by Anemato you mean Animato, a library that I produced (which had 3 x 9/10 reviews in major magazines), then I'm genuinely touched and flattered to be part of your fiery polemic.

😊

@Errikos said:

I don't know how I give that impression, but just in case... I actually know what there is in their libraries from their own videos. One finger plays a whole orchestra chord, right? Another finger(!) in Hollywoodwinds plays the woodwind parts of The Raiders rhythm, or the Flying Theme's rhythm, no? Properly instrumentated, voiced, and spaced for the cripple's uses, whatever those may be...

Those sorts of things are a tiny fraction of what they offer (and the one part I don't use), the vast majority of their libraries are individual samples for composing original melodies just like VSL (and I'd say they'd be just fine for all those composers you listed, in a some cases probably better than anything VSL offers).  And VSL offers things like canned runs and trills, right?

I just think it's tacky to use a site like this for wholesale bashing of other companies, and I'm disappointed that VSL often seems to tolerate it.

It looks like Mike is repressing his love for VSL, don't fight it anymore. [:P]

@Errikos said:

I don't know how I give that impression, but just in case... I actually know what there is in their libraries from their own videos. One finger plays a whole orchestra chord, right? Another finger(!) in Hollywoodwinds plays the woodwind parts of The Raiders rhythm, or the Flying Theme's rhythm, no? Properly instrumentated, voiced, and spaced for the cripple's uses, whatever those may be...

Those sorts of things are a tiny fraction of what they offer (and the one part I don't use), the vast majority of their libraries are individual samples for composing original melodies just like VSL (and I'd say they'd be just fine for all those composers you listed, in a some cases probably better than anything VSL offers).  And VSL offers things like canned runs and trills, right?

I just think it's tacky to use a site like this for wholesale bashing of other companies, and I'm disappointed that VSL often seems to tolerate it.

Well "those sort of things" are what infuriate me, and not whatever else they do. If a pharmaceutical company produces the best range of pain-killers, vaccines, etc. but also produces a line of carcinogenic drug that it pushes with the rest of its product-line, I am against that company. if the rest of the library is what the VSL will be ten years from now I don't care, and I did not refer to that aspect of the company did I? You're seriously comparing the completely generic major scale runs or trills that VSL offers with E.T. and The Raiders of Cinescamples?!

As far as what's tacky, each to his own of course, but I find your disappointment regarding VSL's tolerance for others' company-bashing posts puzzling, when I am sure you have observed their equal tolerance of people's praise for rival products on this forum, as well as their tolerance of themselves getting bashed by their own customers. 

I appreciate Dan's maintenance of good humour, it is certainly your company I was referring to, and even if your heart was in the right place (i.e. giving competent people a box of quick tools), I'm greatly concerned as to what the future will bring, for these 'noises' and 'shrieks' that you mention (but also 'ostinati' etc.), I don't want them to grow into something even more substantial. Because, let's face it, most of your buyers couldn't notate those 'noises' and 'shrieks' if their lives depended upon it. I am (just in case anyone's missed it) against fraud in general, and when a charlatan presents a demo/score to a director, where less than half the notes have been composed by that charlatan, it makes me crazy... 

Everybody: If you can notate it / MIDI it, do it. If you can't, IT'S NOT YOUR MUSIC.

@Dietz: Now I've said all I had to say. [;)]

@mike connelly said:

[...]

I just think it's tacky to use a site like this for wholesale bashing of other companies, and I'm disappointed that VSL often seems to tolerate it.

Mike, don't be unfair. We tolerate a lot of praise for other companies' products here (even "competing" ones), and we will tolerate some "bashing", too (even when it is against our own work). Apart from that, I've asked for moderation just a few postings before.

The only reason why I didn't close this thread up to now is the simple fact that we try to avoid any unnecessary restrictions in our forum (...again: even if the basic tenor of a topic is against our own products).

PS ... oh, Errikos was faster. 8-)

Well I think it's been a lively debate anyway. I've shifted my position from when I began, in the face of such a strong defence of VSL I've appreciated that although extra velocity layers, more round robins and many portamento layers at different speeds and dynamics would be a nice improvement to see from VSL's strings, at the same time VSL do so many more detailed things than others that the library is also superior in many ways. 

And... I've also had a nice warming from Errikos's mighty flame, for which I am truly thankful.

An epic chugga chugga Amen to that!

dagmarpiano,

thanks for being so cordial and friendly in your replies.  That is an unusual experience.

It is not a question of competition or what product sounds better... All I can say is that the VSL DVD-Libraries were recorded many years ago, but everything sounds still up-to-date. I am also using East West SO Platinum, Symphobia and also Cinesample Libraries. If I got a customs order for a quick production with low budget, I am using low budget and time-saving libraries like Cinesamples, Symphobia or EastWest, but when I score for our theatres, high budget orders or for Films, then I automatically compete with a real orchestra, so then I have to use VSL to reach the best result close to real orch-players. OK, you never replace a Real Orchestra, but in my case I am mixing VSL with real players; believe me this is the best situation for such or similar productions. Especially the possibilities of the VI Pro are amazing comparing with human players and I don't want to miss it. Yes, it needs a lot of time to configure every track and sequence exactly, but the result is still amazing. I am very sure that VSL will create a similar string product like DIMENSION BRASS, but we talk about 10 or 14 Violin players, I think that would be a hard task. I tested East West Hollywood Strings and they still have the same bad up- and down-bow as in Platinum before. OK, you can say in the final mix no one is listening to an exact played down-bow or a clean marcato, but the string quality itself is the point. Newer Disney Films will be partly produced with East-West products, yeah and so it sounds, it is a question of a budget and contracts; in my opinion and my recording experience with human players VSL is closer than every other product I am using and I have tested!

Finally again, it is a question of what you want to do. I don't like such discussions. It's a bit beside the real point.

@William said:

dagmarpiano,

thanks for being so cordial and friendly in your replies.  That is an unusual experience.

Thanks William. I did get initially ruffled by Errikos mocking my "great" composers. I even woke up in the night really annoyed, the night after reading that, thinking of a thousand angry replies. But in the morning I just realised I was being protective towards them because we have a good team and the composers have put in a huge amount of time and care while having to display a lot of faith in my direction (I couldn't pay much at all, just a promise of royalties later on, which thankfully is working out well for them).  By "great" I know it sounds like Great Composer as in Bach and Beethoven but I was being colloquial. I meant, they are composers and they're great people and I personally think they are very talented at what they do, having rejected many tracks by otherwise good writers who happen to not understand the genre very well.

So anyway, apart from that moment, I can see that it's all good natured underneath the fiery rhetoric, and I think it's right to be passionate and heartfelt about your values, especially if you're a composer and music is your heart and soul.

This is becoming an interesting, and relatively long forum thread, and yet... VSL has not blinked once to indicate that New VSL Strings are in the works, or will be released in the near future.  

Hopefully they are seriously listening to our requests, and are developing a New Strings Library to complement the current line-up of Strings they currently offer, or maybe it's already something they have been working on, and is very close to be announced.   

Should I be optimistic ?

Strongly agree with most of the remarks made here. In terms of shaping the fine points of string playing,  VSL strings are still unsurpassed in my experience. However, combining them with other libraries seems to be the way to bring about truly high-end realism and compensate for sporadic "thin" sound (f.e. I am just in the process of getting some pretty spectacular results with the VSL-HSO-MIR combination...). With all combinations of this sort the following rule seems to apply: you have to use the VSL strings as the main bulk, and "melt" the other library to this main bulk. The other way around tends to produce inferior results.