@winknotes_282 - I wish I'd had it when I was wrestling with my E-mu Emulator's two seconds of mono sampling time! Getting back to the original poster's predicament, the extra time taken to hammer the samples into submission (as you aptly put it) does make a big difference in achieving realistic results, but it may also be an inspiration-killer. I felt the OP would have more fun if he just ploughed ahead with samples that were in the right ballpark, rather than beating himself up trying to incorporate every tiny orchestral detail into his template before playing a note in anger.
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@Dstorfer said:
I'm seriously ready to quit. 20 years ago I used to make a ton of music on a hardward sequencer with a 24 character LCD screen. And I was great at it. Now I have all this power of Cubase and Vienna, and I just can't get any creative flow. I can use Cubase in general pop music recording, but orchestral just seems different. It's making me nuts.
Here's some of why -- I have to try to setup my keyboard or the VSL presets because it's got 61 keys and all the Vienna presets are made for 88-key keyswitches. Then map MIDI CC to expression, cross-fade, etc.... How to do this for all different instruments, then set up 30 track templates in Cubase with all instruments laid out, etc.... Does everyone go through this torture? How do you get anything done?
All I wanted to do was write some neat orchestral music like I used to do in college, and I'm just running into 42 yr old frustration with analysis paralysis. What's worse -- I'm actually a computer programmer (senior, significantly respected at work) and I just can't get this stuff to flow like I did with much simpler tools. I must be missing something simple? I feel like I just need to see the light.
Does anyone have starting point suggestions? What's your creative flow? Do you have a video of how you get started and how you lay down tracks, do you work with a click track when doing orchestral or just work freely, etc... Stuff like that.
I have Cubase 7 and Vienna Special Edition 1 (basic orchestra and a few solo). Just got a Nektar Panorama P6 keyboard with the new Cubase integration. (I also have an Alesis QS8 weighted 88, but I didn't think it had the right stuff to work with Cubase like the new controllers do, and weighted was hard for me to play faster parts, but maybe I should have gotten the P1 and kept my keys.)
"Creative flow"? "...But orchestral just SEEMS different"!!!???
Please! Do anything BUT write "neat" orchestral music - above everything else, NEVER post it publicly or share it with ANYBODY. Shhhh!.... Isn't absolute silence so much more preferable? Stick to computer programming (If you're so good at it).
However, and if you promise to keep the C.H.U.D. product to yourself, there are powerful softwares and libraries out there (VapidComposer, Cine Ork, Project Sham, etc.) for those cross-over hopefuls like yourself. Give those a try, but
There is no crossing over, for there is no bridge! And everything that sorta sounds like in the middle comes from the immense and bottomless trough that separates the artists from the fartists; the composers from conposers.
Still, if you're dead set on creating some neat orchestral stuff, please, in the immortal Michael Jackson's admonishment, keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet,keep-it-in-the-closet.....................
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Gosh Errikos, thanks for that brilliant insight and helpful advice. I'm sure everyone on this forum is all the better for having you as a member.
I notice you don't seem to have any posts where you've posted your brilliant compositions so the world can hear how incredibly great you are. But then again, I assume that your music was just performed at the Disney Music Hall by the LA Philharmonic, or perhaps your scores have accompanied some of the greatest films of the last decade. We'll all be sure to listen for your next egomaniacal opus.
I guess we can't all be awesome like you - never needing to ask for help on anything.
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@Dstorfer said:
Gosh Errikos, thanks for that brilliant insight and helpful advice. I'm sure everyone on this forum is all the better for having you as a member.
I notice you don't seem to have any posts where you've posted your brilliant compositions so the world can hear how incredibly great you are.
I guess we can't all be awesome like you - never needing to ask for help on anything.
Is that what you inferred from my post?
a) No problem. My insight is always brilliant, and my advice habitually helpful.
b) Well, you'd have to ask them. Run a census.
c) That's right. Nobody's burdened by the noise I make, are they? If your orchestral music is going to just "seem different" from pop music, or be "neat", you should also be respectful of others' sensibilities.
d) Nothing wrong about asking for help - I've done it plenty of times. Question is, what are you asking help for! And that was the point of my post.
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Everyone else understood exactly what I was asking help for. 20 years ago, the tools I had allowed, and perhaps helped, me to be productive and creative. They were roughly similar: a sequencer, keyboard, and a synth. Today the tools are more complex, and I'm trying to find the right route to utilize them so that they don't get in the way of creativity - having to jump between screens, back and forth from keyboard to screen.
You decided to insult me and my music, which you know nothing about. The reason I would use these tools is because other than when I was in college, I haven't had access to a large, live ensemble to perform my works. Back then I also wrote pieces for a live flute ensemble, string quartet, solo instruments & piano, and several arrangements for full jazz ensemble -- all of which I wrote out, by hand, on paper and were performed.
"artists..fartists" -- Really, dick? So you are the authority on exactly what makes an artist? So nice that you've deemed yourself a high-artist, but determined with no knowledge of anything about me, that I cannot be one.
You certainly did not need to indict me or the type of music I create, as if the music you create is superior to any other type of music - and how the hell do you know what I mean by "neat"? What if neat means Bartok-like, what if it means Celine Dion-like, what if it means dubstep? What made you think that the music I intend to create would contain loops or pre-recorded snippets that I can just piece together because I don't know anything about writing? And never once did I mention that I'd be posting it anywhere - and if I did, and you didn't want to hear it, then don't listen.
And furthermore - if someone does create music that uses Project Sam, sounds like a Celine Dion song, or loops or whatever else they wanted to use, and they enjoyed doing it, and it made them feel good, who are you to tell them they are inferior, could not be an artist, and should just quit? You're clearly a big jerk. If you have nothing nice to say, then shut the hell up.
Not everyone does this to create perfectly structured esoteric symphonies, following every little rule so they can have high-art discussions about it. Some people just want to have fun because music is a nice outlet.
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Whatever music you try to compose/write, you should know something about history of music, because there is only one history of music on this earth from which also today music grown {classic, R&B, techno, you name it...}. Just my toughts...
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@Errikos said:
Please! Do anything BUT write "neat" orchestral music - above everything else, NEVER post it publicly or share it with ANYBODY. Shhhh!.... Isn't absolute silence so much more preferable? Stick to computer programming (If you're so good at it).
Haahhaaaaa! Erik you really have become my new role model. But lets not forget also that at his day job, this guy is a 'highly respected' computer programmer!!!
Buddy do you know Rupert Hadyn?
Do what DG says. Simple as that.
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@Errikos said:
How are you Paul? I spent most of last week in the UK; I should have looked you up. Next time... Listen, I have no idea who Rupert Hadyn is, or what DG says. You got me curious...
Alright based on all things considered thank you Erik. Rupert Haydn? Think pantomime horse.
Whereabouts in England were you Erik? Don't forget I'm a long way from London down in Budleigh Salterton. A long way a wayyyyyyyy........
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Back to the OP ... a struggle that many of us have dealt with!
Work process is not only different for each of us but is likely not uniform across all of our projects. Some of my pieces begin as an improvised piano skeleton that I MIDI record and then flesh out with other instruments/sections in Cubase and full VSL library (or Sibelius as an intermediary) ... other pieces are worked out as full orchestration in Sibelius with help from playback (either default sounds or SE samples) before MIDI export and harnessing the full VSL libraries ... still other pieces take shape from the very first improvised note with full VSL libraries in Cubase (and now MIR).
Sometimes you will surprise yourself (in a favorable way) by radically changing your workflow as an experiment. For example, when I started writing in Sibelius after many years of improvise-and-MIDI-record, it broke me free of many a rut I had previously gravitated towards.
In general, I agree strongly with getting the essential musical structure/arrangement worked out in any way you are able while the ideas are flowing, without pausing to perfect a sound/instrument/articulation. If you can "hear," beyond your immediate sketch, a more complex articulation or more refined timbre, etc. during this phase or upon reviewing your piece during later sessions you can work it out later. Yes, those "later" sessions can be incredibly tedious but it is a different creative mindset, at least for me.
As for a click track ... I would be interested to hear how many folks stick to bars-and-beats and work through the tempo track to achieve a more natural "flowing" result, and how many just play (MIDI record) into the sequencer and ignore how the bar lines end up. I prefer the result I get from the latter, but it's a devil getting that into notation (and sounding as good as your improvised version, that is) later ...
It goes without saying that your most important tool is between your ears. Cubase, VSL and any other software or implements you apply are simply a way to translate the music in your head into sound waves that you can share, and they are far more complex than most of us will need for our particular niche. From that complexity, though, we ALL can get great musical results despite our individual, idiosyncratic techniques and creative differences.
Cheers,
Craig
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Some of the most satisfying playback renderings I've created were first done in Finale then from printed parts I played them into a sequencer along with the imperfections of timing that would go with that.
However invariably there are things that I cannot play or issues of timing with sustained passages, etc. not to mention controller data which I was never proficient at manipulating while playing the notes.
so what about these situations to elaborate on your question Craig.
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Ah, there is quite a bit of detail I have left out ... ;-) ... my MIDI recording is so replete with timing and dynamics imperfections (ha-ha) that I end up tweaking a lot of notes afterwards. So what I am playing in is a rough approximation, not a finished "take" in many situations. I almost never quantize, but I do frequently nudge notes. Performer I am not, and with a non-music day job and other evening obligations my skill in that realm progresseth not. It's all I can do to find an occasional evening to compose these days!
The more technically difficult passages I have much more success tackling by note-drawing in Cubase or notating in Sibelius, preferably upon enough of a played-in framework to avoid a stiff, quantized sounding outcome.
I seldom use left hand controllers while playing, but draw in CC data later. I often use velocity for the rough draft phase of keyboard improvisation and play-in, and change to other CC channels (exp, vel XF) for expressive control in the subsequent editing process.
I compose largely by ear rather than "intellect" -- always have -- but when I started composing in notation software (Sibelius) for the first time the visual bridge to structure and theory led to some much better compositions than I would have arrived at by my original improvise-overdub-and-MIDI-edit technique. That was, perhaps, what I was trying to explain when I commented about the benefits of trying a new workflow.
Confession - I feel guilty about using the sequencer as a simple MIDI recorder, and ignoring the correlation of sequencer bars and beats with how the passage would actually be notated, when I build a piece through improvisation. Perhaps I shouldn't, because it is highly unlikely that anybody will want a score of my music on short notice ... which gives me some freedom that others may not have in their own music production "environment."
Craig
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Thank you Craig. I appreciate the explanation. I've always started with pencil and paper or nowdays virtual pencil and paper. If I really want to render something a little more convincing than what comes out of Finale I may export from Finale and import to Reaper where I can tweak some of the keyswitches and controller data. As I mentioned I've also played in the parts from the printed page trying to pretend to be the flautist, clarnietist, etc.
Nothing's perfect to be sure.
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I stopped using a keyboard years ago cos it slowed me down. I just use a pen tablet and enjoy actually writing in the notes .. midi or score. Keyswitches are also a breeze cos it's all right there in the matrix editor.
The only way to a good steady workflow is really to spend time setting up the Vienna Instruments player your way. Load the samples you know you want to use. If you're not having fun actually writing the parts then it's going to be pulling teeth the whole way through.
Not saying you should ditch your keyboard, I know many composers can't work without one. Myself I work very quickly just with the matrix editor .. dealing with writing notes .. velocity xfade and expression control. Wouldn't have it any other way.
Most important thing is to pay attention to the sound you're working with .. not what it is. Workflow is only as fast as the obstacles you've put in front of you. Seriously I would look at getting a bigger keyboard if that will help. But bare in mind .. you don't actually need one at all. And you might even find .. as I did .. that 'writing' rather than 'playing' unlocks you so you can do bigger and better things.
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I joke with people, when they ask what instrument I play, that I can sort of play the piano/keyboard, but that I really play the mouse. I often use the keyboard to mess about (ahem, improvise) and get themes/textures/rhythms started but I end up doing a lot of "mouse painting" clicks and drags especially for harmonies and for filling out orchestration. All CC data I draw in. I thought I was just so manually unskilled that I had to work the "slow" way. How reassuring to hear that someone as accomplished as you, Hetoreyn, is a "note-drawer" as well!
You've hit the nail on the head (no pun intended) with your comment that it should be fun to write the parts and if it isn't, you probably need to change something about your workflow.
Cheers,
Craig
