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  • VSL SE Woodwinds - Bb Clarinet Legato

    Hello, I recently bought the Special Edition Vol 1 Woodwinds and having trouble getting a smooth legato (for a relatively fast passage) from the Bb Clarinet.   I've tried using the perf legato (pLeg) and perf legato sustain (pLes), but my 16th note run sounds choppy.   I'm just using the default settings that load with the Bb Clarinet Matrix, and am using the basic Vienna Instruments player. 

    I'm attaching an example mp3 of the pLeg.  This is with default settings.

    Are there settings I need to adjust?  I was hoping the "out of the box" pLeg would be smoother.

    The other woodwinds (flute, oboe, bassoon) in the library sound much smoother.


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    Hi eboats,

    I just listened to your mp3 file. And perhaps unfortunately for you my reaction was: what is wrong with this example? Indeed you hear fingertapping between some notes, and one note is not responding so well, but in my ears that's just a very good imitation of a real clarineth (but I think  you know better clarineth players 😊). When somebody should have told to me, that mp3 file was a recording of a "real" player I should have believed that. I don't know what velocity this is. You can of course try the other samples (I think, but I'm not sure, that you used the soft sample; form 1 till 88 is the soft sample, from 89 untill 127 it's the loud one).

    A tweak can be the use of a staccato note in another slot (so you use then 2 samples together for one note) in the pleg cell. That slots you find at the top, right from the midst in Vienna Instruments. When you place that staccato patch in 2a, you can adapt the loudness with the volume knob underneath. I've not tested this, so I don't know the result of it in this case.

    But I recognize your reaction. In the beginning I had the same reaction with some samples.  I had to learn the imperfection of all kind of tones of instruments. Nowadays I love that imperfections often (not always!!), because I try to make my music with samples as much as possible like real players. 


  • in my experience with Vienna, nothing is perfect out of the box, but skip to the "ADVICE" part if you don't care why. 

    this is actually kind of good though because libraries which are great out of the box are usually very limited. Vienna is one of those libraries that takes a lot of "futzing" around with, but the end result of messing around with it will be far more realistic than many other libraries that are this malleable. 

    first of all, one thing that you need to temper your expectations is just the fact that the SE library is entry level for Vienna. it's going to sound a little choppy. this IS by design, and is prehaps the only thing I hate about VSL, although I get why they do it. you are going to spend a lot of money getting yourself outfitted with the "real" instruments they make, the ones that do sound the best out of the box. 

     

    ADVICE:
    first of all, you might try messing with the release of the patch. this can be found by looking under the perform tab in the bottom right of the Vienna Instrument tab and looking for the sliders that say "Start" "Atk" "Rel". It should be set at 63 by default. Try messing with that.

    the other thing is, when you are drawing in your midi notes, draw the ends of the notes a little long. 


  • Thanks all for the info.  I"ll try a few tweaks and see if it makes a difference.