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with the conceit and lack of modesty you can't progress with music. The remarks of Mr. Anand is correct: the strings have a fake sound and away from the real strings. To understand this you need to listen to the music being played by a real orchestra. I listen to this every day.
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Thank you for this rather fair and relevant comments. Maybe I feel like sometimes having reached a point closer to the goal than the 50% you concede. Iâm saying âsometimesâ cause the evening-filling* 25 songs unevitably represent different levels of realism and skills when using my VSL libraries and software, because they show different steps of a learning process. So listening to the one minute excerpts in that youtube video is a bit like studying a treeâs annual rings: although not consequently following the chronology of Mahler composing the songs, the story begins with the âLieder eines fahrenden Gesellenâ.
I dare to say that at least at great deal of my Wunderhorn songs (featuring strings as âDes Antonius von Padua Fischpredigtâ or not as âTrost im UnglĂŒckâ) might deserve a lighter sentence.
Confessing that itâs about sth. like learning by doing might sound like an unprofessional point of view, but the most professional decision would have been to keep my hands off the whole project, cause there was no commercial supply nor demand back in 2016 and there isnât today. I apparently still am what I was one year ago: the only one to ever make such Mahler âkaraokeâ as far as itâs orchestral. My instrument as professional is the piano, but adoring the orchestral songs of Mahler I used to devote to them as a bathroom singer becoming more and more sad for there was nothing like all the âMusic Minus Oneâ piano concertos I enjoy playing along with the orchestra even at home. So please note: I would not even have worked on one single Mahler lied if anyone else had already done the job.
And at first I did not confide in my patience to tweak the orchestral versions but would make do with the piano ones. But then I felt that itâs decidedly Mahlerâs genius and expressiveness as orchestrator which made me love the recordings Iâm familiar with for decades.
Since the time when I started I discovered a handful of piano accompaniments of different artistic levels spread over the internet, but even the complete songs as well done piano accompaniments would not have stopped me once being in the suction of the VSL world I had approached to after years trying to get along with hardware sample players or the Garritan stuff as part of âFinaleâ (notation software).
Now, as the whole project has taken shape, I know that it was wrong to push along the decision of buying the big string collections in addition to my âspecial editionâ libraries.
But, again: I do not deny that my results tell the story of a learning process.
To my experience one of the challenges dealing with the âspecial editionâ strings is the slow attack of the legato patches which often forced me to choose the rather unexpressive all-purpose âsusâ patches, especially when I needed looped samples for long notes. Maybe I should have achieved more subtle moments devoting to the editing features of the software (such as âenvelope time stretchingâ or âhumanizeâ) but maybe I thought that the âsynthieâ like sound is due to the reduced possibilities of the lower price segment. For the same reason I often preferred renouncing Mahlerâs portamenti rather than using the miaowing ones offered in my patch repertoire. Good to know that you like some woodwind moments: I often felt in trouble with the slow attacks of several clarinet patches too.
But keep in mind: Writing this self criticism I think of âWenn mein Schatz Hochzeit machtâ which is unforunately the very first song in the very first cycle and the very first...
I dare to pretend that some âWunderhornâ lieder benefit from having made some progressdealing with the challenges of making do with the special edition.
Spontaneously I should say âWo die schönen Trompeten blasenâ is one of the first songs I did and maybe reveals similar problems as the slower âwayfarerâ songs, but listening to all of my 12 Wunderhorn lieder, as a whole I feel much less like agreeing to what you say as if focusing on the Gesellen- or the Kindertotenlieder.
My Mahler is not yet ready. I did all of the 25 orchestral songs, but want to add the vocal symphony movements announced in my thread. The âUrlichtâ has taken shape, and it is the first one carefully approaching to my new possibilities having purchased the big âsolo string 1â collection recently.
Iâm still on my way (probably have reached less than 50%) discovering my new possibilities using the increased choice of string vibratos, portamentos â shortly: of all the things Iâd better had bought at the beginning instead of waiting until this June when VSL made them cheaper for one month.
Please keep in mind. As thereâs practically no supply nor demand I pay for my passion instead of being paid. As I said: It is âVerlorâne MĂŒhâ â a lost labour, but a love labour as well.
*Sorry for this germanism. Iâm afraid my english is full them.
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I will sign back in because I have to say congratulations to Uli - it is a huge impressive project and sounds very good! I hope you can get to use a full extended string library - any one of them alone would allow you a much easier time with the articulation selection and you would not have to work so hard trying to make things expressive.
As I stated previously, the VSL strings sound great out of the box, and when handled by someone with your musical taste and expertise, they will create a spectacular performance. It already sounds excellent in many sections.
This looks like something you could market to singers who want more than a piano to rehearse to. A rather specialized market but I can see it being valuable that way. Also of course, you could also do your own special rendtion with these accompaniments if you got a singer to record - that would be fantastic to do the entire cycles.
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I do agree Ulis project, is an amazing endeavour. There are many great parts in his rendering. But there ARE issues, and I am glad Uli did not take my post personally. There are parts that are very good, but parts that do need work. Acknowledging this is a step forward for Uli and all of us.
To say that VSL sounds good out of the box is misleading. Let me clarify. By this I DO NOT mean that the individual samples are not good....they are the best out there as I just said, from my experience. But what I meant when I said they are not good out of the box is that one needs to give intricately detailed articulations and dynamics to make them sound good. (NOTE: I DO NOT mean that one needs to change the frequency content of these samples...not at all !!!) This is much like a real orchestra with excellent musicians. Imagine for a moment that the performers are not human but mechanically receive instructions. They have to be specified exactly what to do with dynamics and articulation or otherwise they wont sound good. Even if they were humans, would anyone ever walk into, say the berlin philharmonic, and expect them to sound good 'out of the box'? Now add to that in the virtual instrument world, we ARE the composers, orchestrators, conductors, sound engineers all rolled into one. You expect this to be easy? If we want the virtual orchestra to eventually sound like a recording from the Berlin phil., thats not the right attitude.
Obviously there are amazing demos on this site that prove what is possible with VSL. An example is Guy Bacos who is my fav here. He is a master 'conductor' of VSL in a sense since he knows how to make this orchestra sound amazingly real, with so much expression.
Cheers
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Thanks, you brought me luck:
As I must have forgotten to stop free access to one full length Youtube video of just my Kindertotenlieder, I was surprised this morning finding the first of them used as accompaniment by a highly respectable singer (I find) named Gustavo Monastra:
He's asking me to sell him my orchestral Revelge playback too.
The only shock: He's already published 2 Youtube videos using my long forgotten piano version of Revelge (I had enregistered last year long before I decided to do the orchestral ones). One of them in the low voice key (c minor) in which I had published it, the other one technicallly upshifted by him to d minor causing a terrific distortion making it sound scratchy like a phone call. So my first reaction after saying thanks was my urgent demand to remove it and replace it by a better sounding d minor version done by myself without paying for it.
So my Mahler project won't make me a Dagobert Duck, but maybe I am wrong thinking that there's absolutely no market at all....
Uli
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Hi William,
(Having in mind how different you often reacted on my own projects) I am glad and happy to hear you talking so positive and encouraging about this project, which - when I remeber well - was initially (for instance concerning the realisation with VSL-Samples instead of the pianoversion) inspired by me.(see: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1381677711862081&id=100000595954910) đ
Hi Uli,
great that you finished your ambitious Project. I wish you that all encouraging and critical responses will help you to develop your VSL-Setup, Skills and Projectideas more and more.
I am at least happy about every brother in mind who is working hard (like I am trying to do) to bring our serious music tradition on the technical level available in the 21th century. This is a very exciting task and very very much interesting work left to be done.
Hold on and inspire us in future more and more with couragous projects like this.
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Hi, St....
pleased to meet you "out here" and thankful for your encouraging words. I'd like to phone you again one of these days, weeks, months. And I will post sth. detailed here, but have to take my time.
Thank you all
Uli
Did I mention that after the complete Mahler songs I've published my first of his song-like symphony movements? Here we are:
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Hi Uli,
Great music, great project, congratulations!
Could it be better? Of course. Some of the phrasing is a bit stiff. But still a very big accomplishment, and you can always return to your midi performances and make improvements when you have the time and inclination. The mix and spatialization sound great.
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Thank you Paul,
I totally agree. "Stiff" phrases is one of the reasons why I recently bought two of the bigger string bundles, but my Mahler playbacks do not yet benefit from them. They're all done with the special edition, which to my opinion is not to blame. But one of my problems when coping with the SE is the slow attack of some string (and clarinet) legato patches and the fact that the target notes are not looped. So they often had to be replaced by rather unexpressive "sus" patches both for passages needing a clear timing and for very extended notes lasting several bars. So some cantilenas loose their singing character and sound like just âunmusicallyâ added notes. This is a detailed reply to what you write although I can only guess, that you mean the same thing as I do. So there's another self-criticism I have to offer: With Mahler, it sometimes was not easy to find the different gradations of pianissimo in songs, which also have sudden loud eruptions. It is like cutting the legs of a table without a cane. There is always remaining one leg too long. So you correct and correct and at the end there's almost nothing left but the tabletop. By the way: Iâve done the first steps of translating my German-speaking website into English and French.
The Mahler page is the one I began with. So if you like you can visit it, for example to get free access to a video offering much more extended excerpts than the one you know: https://www.uli-schauerte.de/mahler-minus-you-english/
So longUli
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Hi there,
when I first presented my MAHLER MINUS YOU project here some months ago, I had already created the orchestral accompaniments of every Mahler song as far as orchestrated by the ccomposer and part of a lied cycle resp. collection. I had already added "Urlicht", but was not sure when or if I would add "Wir genieĂen die himmlischen Freuden" (4th symphony) or "O Mensch, gib acht !" from the 3rd one. Doing this kind of work is a deep joy for me, otherweise I'd never do it. On the other hand, I always felt sort of horrifired when asked if I think of doing the "Lied von der Erde" too. I sometimes do love Mahler more than any other composer (including myself not only sometimes) but an hour is an hour and a month is a month and a year is a year...
I'm now posting this message to let you know that I was not able to overcome the temptation:Several weeks ago I first worked on the "Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde". There's an excerpt to listen to on:
Thereafter I even finished "Der Abschied", which is by far Mahler's longest single "song", counting 572 bars and a playing time of 31 minutes. If you want to get an impression please listen to a 9-10 minutes excerpt on Youtube aswell:
I would be interested in what you think about my recent results. Of course I would also be interested to know what to do in order to get a better following and to find people willing to buy my playbacks. There's one very fine tenor who's highly enthusiastic and making his recordings with help of my wav files. Besides him it's mostly people making me learn about exotic instruments I had never heard about before: A tĂĄrogatĂł (!) player uses my Kindertotenlieder, and my Urlicht is used by a theremin (!) player. Maybe you're smiling when reading this. Just like I did. But I have to admit that I slightly tend to give priority to singers.
Thanks for reading (and maybe listening)
Uli
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Maybe this might inspire you. My friend Reinholf Behringer is since years very enthousiastic especially with programming Mahler with virtual Instruments. Beside many other Mahler Movements he has also already done Urlicht and Farewell, may be this is interesting for you:
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You're right: We all rely on inspiration.
My project was inspired by several people (Mahler, but not only), VSL skilled collegues (you, dito) but also by amazing facts which could easily mislead me to behave as a Donald Trump like gorilla if I lost control. But even staying well-mannered I cannot help them being facts:
As far as I can see I'm the first one to create sample based orchestral accompaniments of any Mahler song. And not regarding âUrlichtâ rendered by your friend I still am the only one apparently, not just when considering that I've accomplished all of them meanwhile.
The 4th movements of the 4th and the 3rd symphony are not yet done and the âLied von der Erdeâ has only reached 40 of its 60 minutes, but these items usually are not regarded as part of the lieder cycles.
To cut a long story short:
I'm depending on being inspired and I'm thankful for any source of inspiration, but speaking of Mahler accompaniments I begin to feel like being justified to see myself as also giving inspiration rather than only needing it. Or is this what I've just called Trump like ?
Hope it isn't.
Yours sincerely
PS:
Of course it was a matter of inspiration and perspiration to visit your friend's site. But I could stop sweating learning, that he uses âFarewellâ naming the 9th symphony and not âAbschiedâ from (âDas Lied von der Erdeâ).
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Uli, the Absheid sounds really great, fantastic performance! The musical performance is simply excellent and the instruments sound completely natural.
(one technical problem - I heard a repeated noise on the right channel like a compression artifact or something similar. Not sure if it is on youtube itself)
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Dear William,
reading that you appreciate my results means a lot to me. Thank you for a beneficial experience. Thanks also for mentioning the technical noise. In spite of my tinnitus I sometimes notice some sort of crackling noise myself and I guess (hope) you're right thinking of a youtube resp. compression problem. So as a "Trost im UngĂŒck" (solace in sorrow) I experienced that at least my original wav files exported from my DAW (Samplitude) seem to be clean. Fortunately. So, when an audio file is ordered I usually send it via workupload.com and apparently there's no noise or worsening of the sound quality to fear. May I ask you a favour ? I would like to know if the noise is gone in the Abschied excerpt you know, but now as my original wav file without beeing spoilt by neither a video editing software nor by Youtube. It should be possible to download it after a click on http://workupload.com/file/ajGV8E2 It would be very helpful for me to know if there's no more crackling or at least a difference. See you soon ? Thank you. William !
Uli
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