I was finally able to test Sibelius 7 and I have to agree with the above poster about the ribbon, I think it is an improvement. Specially in the house, my family members have experience with MS Office and this helped them work in Sibelius, including the youngsters. I think that was a smart move by Avid, making Sibelius close to MS Office, they linked its learning curve to the learning curve of an ubiquitous software. I'm also having a good time with the new publishing options, I believe a lot of work I had to do in InDesign I will be able to do in Sibelius itself.

But, I'm really frustrated with the lack of improvement in the Playback Configurations. It's still the same, I think it has been this way since Sibelius 5 (or 4?). I can't make myself sit down and go through all the hassle of building soundsets, setting up the percussion, etc. At least here at VSL, we have soundsets provided, but for other libraries it is a mess. I think I'm going back to just sending MIDI data with text.

Oh, and finally true MusicXML support!

@Tralen said:

But, I'm really frustrated with the lack of improvement in the Playback Configurations. It's still the same, I think it has been this way since Sibelius 5 (or 4?). I can't make myself sit down and go through all the hassle of building soundsets, setting up the percussion, etc. At least here at VSL, we have soundsets provided, but for other libraries it is a mess.

Agreed! - I really want improvement there. I have no idea how but I want an easier way. I don't use VSL's presets at all. I build my own instruments out of the patches from the ground up, my organization, custom patches with time switching and patch combinations, etc.  For someone like me, a sibelius setup with VSL is horrendous and I want a better way.

It also runs much slower on my machine. Granted, I have an AMD machine and although I like AMD for certain reasons, I am quickly learning that most software is built with Intel in mind. When I switch I'll enjoy Sibelius but right now it runs so slow I can't even really use it. If somehow Sibelius and VSL software could communicate and route patches automatically to Sibelius that would be amazing... but I know I'm wishing for a bit much there.

-Sean

I just saw the VSL notation bit...

Although I would LOVE it for the sake that everything would work seemlessly with VSL, I would also think that they could even design things to be more time saving and more 'real playback with less work' than with external software. Other companies are obviously general and not VSL tailored.

I'm pretty sure that will never happen, but man I'd be all over it. If it worked right I'd drop cubase and sibelius instantly, for most composing anyway. I think the only real goal I've had since 'the beginning' was to have notation with playback that's a realistic representation of an orchestra, no fine tuning required. The problem is, VSL's the only good sounding library out there but fine-tuning is certainly needed. I don't blame VSL for why, it's obvious for how software currently works.

In the 'real world' you write it on paper and hand it to a cello player, no 'fine tuning' required for a good sound. Fine tuning for a preference or style? Yes. For decent quality playback? No. VSL is well more than decent, but without finetuning it's digital sounding, not human. I want notation and human results. The problem to me seems to be that the notation is one company and sounds are another. Thus why I think a VSL notation program could solve this, I just don't see it ever happening. Both sides are getting better alone and at communicated with each other, it seems anyway, but none of that matters to me. Easy notation with quality human results I think is what most people want. Until that happens, I'll just have to deal with all the work and less composing time. :(

-Sean

@iscorefilm said:

The problem to me seems to be that the notation is one company and sounds are another. Thus why I think a VSL notation program could solve this, I just don't see it ever happening. Both sides are getting better alone and at communicated with each other, it seems anyway, but none of that matters to me. Easy notation with quality human results I think is what most people want. Until that happens, I'll just have to deal with all the work and less composing time. 😞

I believe the real problem is over-generalization. I remember some other poster spoke about this topic (Errikos?), and I have to agree. The DAWs out there all try to cater for music production as a whole, regardless of genre, and it seems this became true for all notiation software as well. What we need is a orchestral oriented composition software, designed for work with the available libraries. I believed Notion attempted precisely that, even more when they released the SLE versions for several libraries (VSL SE, EWQL, GPO, Miroslav), but for some reason, there's a ominous feeling of abandonment there, the developers decided to produce iPad software instead (!!!).

I think VSL could be the good samaritan here and produce a midi-imput/notation software precisely for working with VSL, and maybe add a PRO version for us to work with other libraries as well (like VE and VE PRO). Honestly, it could be really simple, we could always do the fine-tuning in other software, but just something to allow us to compose in an full VSL environment without having to waste days (maybe a week) just getting everything to work.

@Tralen said:

The DAWs out there all try to cater for music production as a whole, regardless of genre, and it seems this became true for all notation software as well. What we need is a orchestral oriented composition software, designed for work with the available libraries.

I agree. I think Sibelius is a great piece of software, and more composer friendly than Finale and in general. It's just not friendly with other sample companies and the higher level of sound and fine-tuning involved.

Notion attempted. I got a free SLE when it came out but I hardly use it because I feel it's still not where I want it to be and I don't want to be stuck with presets. I want to build a flexible instrument and have it play for me, using notation. I technically can, but the amount of work in setting it all up is something I avoid... very tedious.

-Sean

@iscorefilm said:

I want to build a flexible instrument and have it play for me, using notation.

I think you perfectly defined all my frustrations with that single statement.

@Tralen said:

I think you perfectly defined all my frustrations with that single statement.

That's part of why I wonder if the only way is through a VSL notation software...

Unless Sibelius improves I imagine the only way is if VSL somehow made something to allow a conversion of our presets to sibelius presets. I realize I can do this myself but the problem is that I create a new template from time to time.... and it would take so long to build the sibelius info each time I set things up again. I always find new ways to build a better setup and because Sibelius is horribly unfriendly in setting up 3rd party libraries... there's just no hope there.

If I had to define what I want most in digital music in two things, they would be:

Divisi, as much as possible. I'd want 12 F Horns and a 34 Violin I section that were both 100% divisible if I could... but I'm dreaming...lol

A way to compose with Notation (I prefer Sibelius), with as good of playback results as Cubase can get. BUT with far faster and easier ways to fine-tune for that natural sound. (Things like humanize)

Ultimately I want to spend most time composing, with only a little time 'programming' the performance. I can get this with other libraries, but only in sacrificing the great quality of VSL... which I just can't do 😊

-Sean

About presets, I'm still trying Notion prules (I'm on the demo), and have found that I can set a rule system for ALL instruments, which means, in comparison with Sibelius soundsets, that as long as I make my matrices in VI consistently, they all work instantly. If I remember correctly, when creating a new soundset in Sibelius, you have to create rules for each instrument individually, is that correct?

I wonder if there's a way of accomplishing the same thing, setting a general soundset for all my instruments and adding exceptions if needed. I noticed that on VSL soundsets, the instruments are declared as part of a switch-category, which contains the instructions for the articulations, thus, If one uses an undeclared instrument, it would be unaffected by the articulations. So I would need to know all instruments I would need beforehand. Is it possible to make Sibelius apply the instructions to ALL instruments, regardless?

@Tralen said:

I wonder if there's a way of accomplishing the same thing, setting a general soundset for all my instruments and adding exceptions if needed. I noticed that on VSL soundsets, the instruments are declared as part of a switch-category, which contains the instructions for the articulations, thus, If one uses an undeclared instrument, it would be unaffected by the articulations. So I would need to know all instruments I would need beforehand. Is it possible to make Sibelius apply the instructions to ALL instruments, regardless?

I have no idea, but you've got my attention. Hopefully someone else could answer. I'll certainly look into it when I have time.

My custom presets are all as consistant as possible so I'm definately interested!

-Sean

What would be a fantastic feature of such a software would be a function that creates matrices while the piece increases, so you start with only one basic articulation per instrument (probably a sustain with a mediium or hard attack, so that you can play around on the keyboard), and the first time you add for instance a staccato symbol in the music, a new cell in the VI will be created, along with the corresponding control change settings to trigger it. When you later decide to remove this articulation, you can let check the software for unused patches, delete them and shift the other ones.

THAT would be a real Time saver!!!

That was my concept. Patches and articulations would be loaded and triggered according to musical typography; if VI Player "saw" a violin line with a slur, that included some repetitions, beginning on mezzo-piano and going all the way up to fortissimo at [8]= 120 for example, it would load the appropriate patch(es) for the articulation(s) and the expression(s), choosing the right repetitions for the tempo and automatically X-fade the dynamics. Of course not all users would agree with the default interpretation and - like with Sibelius/Finale - would adjust the values to their liking, however that kind of integration would save me tremendous time, even in the compositional stages (sketching, etc.).

P.S.: Where the text reads 'BLOCKED EXPRESSION' I have written 'e-x-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n-(s)' without the dashes, it won't allow me to write the word by itself without turning it in caps and adding 'BLOCKED'. I have no idea what browser bug that is...

@MassMover said:

the first time you add for instance a staccato symbol in the music, a new cell in the VI will be created, along with the corresponding control change settings to trigger it.

At least in my experience with VI Pro, the entire purpose of even having the matrices is to customize things to work for you. I started using VSL with VI Pro so I don't know VI very well... maybe such a feature would work for VI. The problem is, that if you want to load things on an 'as-needed' basis, I would imagine you'd want a Solid State Drive, with the feature coming in VI Pro 2.0 - That may be harder to implement in VI, who knows...

I don't think it would work to have VI load patches and create cells based on what Sibelius is doing. If instead the cells were already loaded and VI simply switched cells, I think that would work. The idea of VI seeing a slur from Sibelius and switching to the appropriate patch would seem hard to properly implement unless there is a way to send all of that information from sibelius to VI, slurs and all. If it couldn't be done then I could only imagine a VSL notation program to accomplish this.

-Sean

I am talking about the imaginary VSL Notation Software.

The cells being loaded already is basically what we have with the sound sets for the SE; and a huge sound set for all libraries  exists; if you ask andi in the notation forum he might send it to you.

Problem with all articulations pre-loaded simply simply is performance. Thatswhy the idea of loading them just on demand: it’s exactly what you describe as "customizing", but the programm does the customization for you.

So 'VSL Notation software" inteprets the notation and either picks the best patch OR makes a time-stretched patch that crossfades to a tremelo (as I would have made on my own) all automatically?

Don't get me wrong... I would LOVE such a programming masterpeice... but I doubt that will happen about 10 times more than I doubt the VSL notation software happening. I simply think the programming-man power and cpu load would be great enough that I don't see it happening any time soon. That's seems more like a 'years down the road' thing to come. Maybe I'm wrong.

-Sean

I don't know. We should remember that VSL developed softwares that are unusual for a sample library. Vienna Ensemble, Vienna Suite, I believe those were developed because VSL felt the available alternatives were actually interfering with the quality of their samples. So they designed their own software and now they are able to tell us: "see, this is how VSL is *supposed* to sound".

The same concept can be applied to a notation software: "the available notation software is not good enough for our samples, lets build our own". Of course, I'm dreaming aloud here, but if there were a bigger uproar of the user base, I'm sure they wouldn't pass the chance of making a dent in that market. I always felt that the piano roll is the biggest gap between the traditional musician and the midi-trained musician, by stablishing an integrated notation platform VSL could very well capture a large part of the userbase of the competition.

@Another User said:

I always felt that the piano roll is the biggest gap between the traditional musician and the midi-trained musician

Yes, yes, and yes! I think much more naturally in notation. I prefer it.

-Sean

And there's also the Notion SLE experiment (which I own), that plays along with any changes on the fly, using about 2-4Gb of RAM only. So a VSL notation package would better that, and loading times (after the initial one) should be non-existent to minimal on a big system, since we mostly make one alteration on one instrument/staff at a time. There are notational reasons and some bugs that didn't endear me to Notion, but I think a VSL Studio Package (Pro) which would take one from inspiration all the way to post-mastering would be phenomenal. 

As with the other post I had created on this topic, there is no contribution at all from the 'brass'. Come on guys, you can at least tell us not to waste our "breaths" on this one...

@Errikos said:

there is no contribution at all from the 'brass'. Come on guys, you can at least tell us not to waste our "breaths" on this one...

Yeah! ...what he said! lol

It would be nice to know that VSL was working on something like this... but whether they would even consider it is something I don't picture them making vocal at all. I imagine they wouldn't want to create an expectation unless they know for sure that it will happen.

I also think that most VSL users are not using notation. I think we've already covered the 'why' there... but because of this, if VSL has any real sense of being able to gauge this... I think it wouldn't be in this forum section. VSL would have to see how all users react to the idea of such a program. I believe that most people would love it!

-Sean

I'm not sure; I think most people using Symphobia and Cinescamples might not be using notation, but I think there are a lot of film-composers and orchestrators who have used VSL products long before those products came about, and who still do. I believe that all these people still use notation proper at least at some stage of production - there's no reason for them not to, so I think the majority of their customers would qualify for such a package. However, this would be a leap for VSL, as they would have to either hire new blood, or pay Sibelius/Finale/NoteAbilityPro/Lilypond etc. for a collaboration on a VSL specific notation platform on the side, whatever.

@Errikos said:

However, this would be a leap for VSL, as they would have to either hire new blood, or pay Sibelius/Finale/NoteAbilityPro/Lilypond etc. for a collaboration on a VSL specific notation platform on the side, whatever.

I don't see this as big leap. VSL products are already tailored to respond to midi, to handle most of the available audio hardware and software, and most of all, to interact with each other. Like you said before, the hard work is already done. They have the reverb, the host, the mixer AND the samples. Making a simple midi-notation platform shouldn't be that difficult, unless they intend to handle the other aspect of notation: printing and publishing. This is where I agree a big leap would be necessary, as the technology involved is completely alien to audio.

But, if the midi-notation scope is kept, and the software only handles composing and performing, I believe the hard work was already done. Of course we users would need to bring the composition to sibelius or finale for printing, or maybe to a DAW for fine-tuning a mock up.