I've often used VSL in pretty innovative ways which is also the thrill of working with VI, being creative within the tools you have,  so the complexity and process here is different, the piece is constantly in experimental stages, not just with new ideas but how they would work with the articulations available.......Guy Bacos.

Hey Guy,

It is completely understandable that you have to adopt those principles given your job for VSL - I would have the same view and approach for sure, as you have to show off what the samples can do. However, I was wondering just out of curiosity what your approach is to composing for real players. Do you seperate out the limitations of VI's from your thought process and then write in a more technically unlimited way for instruments, i.e.  in a completely idiomatic way that utilises their capabilities to whatever extent you wish?

I ask out of curiosity because I feel that most media music for example that uses orchestral samples has become  cliched mainly because of said limitations and composers either settle for the constraints and work within them, or will refuse to be bounded by them and create scores that a real orchestra can play because they will write techniques that are not convincing in a mock-up, but are nevertheless part of standard playing and scoring techniques. (BTW, when I say media music, I am referring mainly to soundtrack scoring!).

In my serious work, I do sometimes have to battle the influence of VI's capabilities and I suppose my points above are more relevant and even possibly damaging to a composer who wants to write concert music, because limitations in mock-ups can be at their most damaging when hampering unfettered imagination (on the assumption that a composer will write using a DAW). From what I hear in film scoring these days generally speaking, the reliance on the mock-up sounding good, aided and abetted by the limitation in techniques from VI's has homogenised and diluted the emotional impact of scoring to mere self referential parodies and cliche.

Still, this is not to say that VSL is part of a problem here, because their ethos is in my view, the correct one and I wish all their major competitors would follow their lead in thinking musically first. I hope they continue their excellent work through the Synchron era.

William, apologies for wandering off the OP a bit........

@Guy Bacos said:

William, your works are very much appreciated and that's all that counts. Complexity should NOT be a criteria for great music. I have little esteem for some composers with highly complex approaches. 

Complexity is at least since Guy de Machauts Missa de notre dame in the 14th century a significant part of our musical tradition. Since that time It has presumably never been any musical epoque without overwhelming examples of large and complex compositions. I even do not see that much great composers at all who would have convinced anyone with consequently refusing to compose in a complex way. Even the Beatles have done several pretty complex things.

As far imho nothing but the spontaeous and individual taste can and might judge what kind of music deserves our favour, I would not rule out any possible dimension of music at all. Beethoven himself wrote beside his very large scaled and complex Missa solemnis a short very simple song "sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn" which is of course also great music. But this does not mean, that the tremendous complexity of most of Beethovens late Works "should NOT be a criteria for great music". IMHO it defenitly is! And it is not more and not less than any other way music may appeal to  any faculty of our hearts and minds. At least I do have high esteem for Composers who follow the path of our musical tradition and are inspired by the challenges the great and very often at the same time pretty complex Masterworks in History provide. It is not all what it is about in music, but it also does not deserve any disregard at all.

However I tend to esteem productivity at least as an indication for an at least pretty livly musical mind, since most of tthe great composers demonstrate often an amazing productivity no matter how complex the music was they composed.

The problem here is you are defining "complexity" in a very traditional way and how you see it. Over many centuries music gradually got more complex in a pretty consistant way, and even then, if complexity is the criteria, then Bach is the greatest composers of all time, end of story, however we know that is very debatable. For Bernstein, it is Beethoven the greatest composer of all time. But I don't want to elaborate on this, however, one thing does bother me, is the necessity and insistance to make a point of this. I use to think this way, but I've changed over the years, it is possible that Gerswhin is more complex than the Beatles, however, the fact that the musical language of pop, jazz, blues, rock, is entirely unrelated to traditional music, in other words, you cannot make fair comparasons. In jazz, for example Bill Evans has different types of genius traits that are really unmeasuable. You mentioned the Beatles, they are a result of a lot of musical genres, including rock n roll and blues which was the language of their time, and their amazing abilities to come up with a unique sound and chord changes quite unique to rock n roll,  and I refuse to measure the complexity of genres that I cannot personally have a full understanding of or play myself as with the same ease as classical music, and for me to evaluate superficially and make comparisons is quite pretentious. Many of the musical qualities are passed on by ear. I don't know what is your background other than classical composers, but there is another world out there. 

The point is, maybe it is more complex, maybe it isn't, maybe it's the same, I don't know and frankly don't care. When I'm in my car these days I'm listening to Beach Boys, I'm in awe in front of what they did, some other days I'll enjoy Bach, and both equally, just in different ways.

It's fine if you want to give your opinion about this, however, people who tend to want to make a point and insist on the complexity aspect with compaisons between Beethoven and X with their traditional criteria, need to get off their high horse. 

@mh-7635 said:

 

I've often used VSL in pretty innovative ways which is also the thrill of working with VI, being creative within the tools you have,  so the complexity and process here is different, the piece is constantly in experimental stages, not just with new ideas but how they would work with the articulations available.......Guy Bacos.

Hey Guy,

It is completely understandable that you have to adopt those principles given your job for VSL - I would have the same view and approach for sure, as you have to show off what the samples can do. However, I was wondering just out of curiosity what your approach is to composing for real players. Do you seperate out the limitations of VI's from your thought process and then write in a more technically unlimited way for instruments, i.e.  in a completely idiomatic way that utilises their capabilities to whatever extent you wish?

This is a fantastic question for Guy, especially because he writes for both live musicians and virtual orchestra. I am also curious to know how different the creative process is for the two. When you write for VSL as opposed to a real orchestra do you have the limitations of the samples in mind? or is it just the same but you later adapt your interpret your composition to fit within the capabilities of VSL?

I also think this question is very relevant to this thread and will help us be better composers in the era of virtual instruments.

Anand

@mh-7635 said:

 

I've often used VSL in pretty innovative ways which is also the thrill of working with VI, being creative within the tools you have,  so the complexity and process here is different, the piece is constantly in experimental stages, not just with new ideas but how they would work with the articulations available.......Guy Bacos.

Hey Guy,

It is completely understandable that you have to adopt those principles given your job for VSL - I would have the same view and approach for sure, as you have to show off what the samples can do. However, I was wondering just out of curiosity what your approach is to composing for real players. Do you seperate out the limitations of VI's from your thought process and then write in a more technically unlimited way for instruments, i.e.  in a completely idiomatic way that utilises their capabilities to whatever extent you wish?

This is a fantastic question for Guy, especially because he writes for both live musicians and virtual orchestra. I am also curious to know how different the creative process is for the two. When you write for VSL as opposed to a real orchestra do you have the limitations of the samples in mind? or is it just the same but you later adapt your interpret your composition to fit within the capabilities of VSL?

I also think this question is very relevant to this thread and will help us learn how to use this software better.

Anand

Sure. Currently a little tied up with a few things, but will reply to this in the next days.

@fahl5 said:

Haven't you read Dietz posting who asked all to stay focused. I still fear wordings like that do not help anyone here and does not show any respect for what Dietz expressivly demanded. So take a deep breath and calm yourself reminding that we are just discussing our obviously very different expiriences of the most efficiant way to use VSL.

Dietz said in this thread following fahl5's post:

"I want to ask _everybody_ to stay calm and polite during this discussion."

I hope you don't think he was excluding you fahl5? 

He has had absolutly no reason to include me, while the passage I cited in Williams posting is obviously more than enough reason for Dietz to call for a mote focused and non personmal aggressive way to comunicate. As I always kept  and will go on to keep.

I just love it! Thanks for the good laugh!

@Another User said:

You have utterly poisoned this Forum and are in fact a sociopath who cares nothing about anyone except yourself.  

A moderator who is not able or willing to keep such pure personal aggressions out of his forum deserves severe requests to care for his own duties. I still hope it would be not necessary to solve this imho blatant breach of existing laws more formal.

@Guy Bacos said:

The problem here is you are defining "complexity" in a very traditional way and how you see it. Over many centuries music gradually got more complex in a pretty consistant way, and even then, if complexity is the criteria, then Bach is the greatest composers of all time, end of story, however we know that is very debatable. For Bernstein, it is Beethoven the greatest composer of all time. But I don't want to elaborate on this, however, one thing does bother me, is the necessity and insistance to make a point of this. I use to think this way, but I've changed over the years, it is possible that Gerswhin is more complex than the Beatles, however, the fact that the musical language of pop, jazz, blues, rock, is entirely unrelated to traditional music, in other words, you cannot make fair comparasons. In jazz, for example Bill Evans has different types of genius traits that are really unmeasuable. You mentioned the Beatles, they are a result of a lot of musical genres, including rock n roll and blues which was the language of their time, and their amazing abilities to come up with a unique sound and chord changes quite unique to rock n roll,  and I refuse to measure the complexity of genres that I cannot personally have a full understanding of or play myself as with the same ease as classical music, and for me to evaluate superficially and make comparisons is quite pretentious. Many of the musical qualities are passed on by ear. I don't know what is your background other than classical composers, but there is another world out there.

The point is, maybe it is more complex, maybe it isn't, maybe it's the same, I don't know and frankly don't care. When I'm in my car these days I'm listening to Beach Boys, I'm in awe in front of what they did, some other days I'll enjoy Bach, and both equally, just in different ways.

It's fine if you want to give your opinion about this, however, people who tend to want to make a point and insist on the complexity aspect with compaisons between Beethoven and X with their traditional criteria, need to get off their high horse. 

Sorry I feear you argue against something inexsitent. I am not defining complexity, nor did I insist on anything nor am i riding on anything. Just to mention that many great composers in nearly all kind of musical genres have develloped in all times overwhelming examples of musical complexity and there for there is no reason to rule out complexity as one possible qualities of music seem to be in fact not that far away from your statement.

The more inapprorpiate sounds it to me if you end up your argumentation with personal allusions like "people who ....iniists" ( "who exactly insists here on exactly what????) or "need to get off their high horse" who exactly is here on what ever kind of "high horse" ??? So please read next time a bit more carefully before becomming personal. Stay calm and focussed on the real subject. Oh my musical background is as colourful as the century is in which I grew up.  😃

It is not that difficlt to know, if you would have take the minute or two to see what I have done in the last years. (there is enough online) So it is kind of funny being reminded at "another world out there." by someone who has already difficulties to read the postings exactly in front his eyes and do not know nearly anything about the one who he actually is talking to.

So I do agree and will likewise remind you that there is obviously "another world out there." which you might understand with a bit more interest and curiosity much more, than with argueing based of missing understanding and prejudice.

@Acclarion said:

I, for one, William, appreciate your willingness to say things many others think, but are too politically correct, to suggest themselves. Unfortunately, very few are ever willing to rock the boat, but I would suggest the best way to deal with individuals such as this, is to simply ignore him untill he realizes nobody will indulge or entertain his inflammatory/needle poking comments, and quietly fades in to the distance. You will not get the last word in with him, and I'm pretty sure many people are quietly agreeing with your assessment of him, but I wanted to publically acknowledge that I understand how frustrated you are.

Dave

...Or as Winston Churchill used to say, "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks." 🐶🐶🐶

But getting back to the matter at hand...

Here's how my workflow has changed thanks to the innovation of VSL, I used to complicate everything by insisting that every MIDI note be a different articulation because I was obsessed with trying to create the most natural (realistic) sounding performance I could.  On the contrary, this technique actually made the performances sound unnatural because of the stark differences in timbre, color, etc.  And trying to correct all of that was so tedious and time consuming.

But thanks to the miracle of VI Pro you can acheive very subtle differences from note to note to make the performance flow more naturally.  Brilliant!!!👍 

Great finally some who prefers speaking focused !

I must confess I did not have had the Ideal to change for each note the articulation. Sinc I do work in the most cases with existing scores, I just follow what a certain passage often is already demanded to do in the score,

 And ... since I work with Cubase Expressionmaps (which I still like as an tremendous help in the work with orchestral articulations) I am (at least in the way I use expressionmaps)  forced to assign to each single note a seperate articulation information. Since this would be very tedious if I would decide it for each single note completly new, I decided to use the/a "legato" as kind as default-articulation, selecting all midievents of the score and assigning all of them the "legato" and start after that with defining which note, or passage should differ from that either in the articulationtype (what are the essential kind of playingtechnics one can find written in the score) or a certain alternative form of the same articlation type. But as Guy Bacos stated somewhere, this is obviously a strongly for the interpretation of existing scores adapted way to use VSL. In my eyes it offers the most instant flexibility, but I confess I do not know how this will fit to a more experimental approach tu use or combine patches.

@Another User said:

You have utterly poisoned this Forum and are in fact a sociopath who cares nothing about anyone except yourself.  

A moderator who is not able or willing to keep such pure personal aggressions out of his forum deserves severe requests to care for his own duties. I still hope it would be not necessary to solve this imho blatant breach of existing laws more formal.

You are hilarious fahl5! 

A request (addressed to 'you know who you are')

I would rather engage a talented composer like Guy Bacos on music and technical aspects. Otherwise we are wasting both his and everyone's time. I (for one) have much to learn from people like him. The OP started with William describing how he uses VSL, and we heard several more interesting approaches. Rest of it is just a distraction. 

It would be good to keep the focus on music please? Otherwise there is a danger of this thread leading to personal fights and being shutdown as well (similar to the other mosnter thread which also had a lot of posts worth saving.).  

Best

Anand

To extend my post....(sorry William I am deviating from your OP a bit here)

I was listening to Guy's demos. Its simply impossible for me to believe these were made with a virtual library and not real performers. Even in occasions when a string might border on becoming synthy ot tinny, he hides it masterfully with added expression. Listening to the 'Springtime caper' right now and amazed at the realism, but also the quality and humor of this composition.

And there are like 100 demos like this by him on the VSL site! And not to mention pieces like this ...

Guy, I am not flattering here as I have nothing to gain from it, but simply awed and inspired by your works. Its truly an honor to be able to even communicate with you. I wonder if have you even thought of writing symphonies or tone poems. At the very least please enter Hollywood make better music than what we hear now.

Best

Anand

My approach with VSL differs depending on the type of piece I'm composing.  I'll outline the main approaches to each below:

For classical compositions intended for human performance, I compose the music in Finale (I stick with the Garritan sounds in Finale), add articulation/dyanmics/tempi, markings as needed, prior to exporting the midi files to Cubase.  I import the file in to to my Cubase template which is organized by orchestral section, followed by tracks for synths, and audio (live instruments/vocals, etc.)  At this point, I'll decide whether or not to actually perform the individual instrumental tracks using the piano, or just add articulations to the midi tracks.  If I perform one or more parts, I'll first duplicate the track and retain the midi file, then play in the part using simply a sustain keyswitch for the whole thing.  This way, depending on the complexity of the part, I can use a combination of the midi notes from Finale and my live playing (often, the slower, more lyrical sections beneft from my live performance).  

Once the parts are in, I play each part back at a slower tempo, and record the keyswitches in. I have set up the lowest octave of the keyboard to accommodate keyswitches from C1-B1, with similar articulations and variations occupying parts of each matrix.  I have ensured (as per Beat Kaufmann's suggestion) that the articulations assigned to various keys is as close as possible throughout the range of orchestral instruments (save for the occasions where certain instruments don't have a specific articulation, at which point, I've got alternate ones assigned to those keys).  This system has worked well for me, but I only have the standard libraries, and have often wondered how I'll adapt things with the additional articulations if I ever am fortunate enough to acquire the full libraries.

I should also mention, my wife, Becky, has created many combination articulations (such as crossfading a szforzando with the legato patch) for more control beyond what the standard articulations offer.  

Now, if I'm composing in the daw, such as my recent posting about my cinematic orchestral album, I'll compose everything using a single sustain keyswitch (but still have my template open with all available articulations).  I find that as a performer, I can often create a fairly convincing performance with simply that one keyswitch, as it seems to "read my mind" and react to the various velocities of a live performance better than the imported midi notes would, if they were played back using only a sustain keyswitch.  I know this is silly, because at the end of the day, note on/note off/velocity are all simply a numeric reference in midi, and it doesn't have the ability to make my live playing any more musical than midi data, but it "seems" like my pieces are more alive when I play them in myself (of course, there are numerous other things like tempo, note length, etc. that a live performance add to the mix).

But I digress... after the piece has been composed via the one sustain patch, I'll play the track back and record my keyswitches (again playing the track back at a slow enough tempo to record my keyswitches in one take).  After that's all done, I'll refine and change articulations as needed.  All of this, of course, neglects to mention the task of creating the tempo track, and a myriad of other things that go in to realizing a performance.

Hopefully, this all makes sense.  I'm typing this quickly as my baby is getting ready to feed, so I apologize if there's anything in here that's incoherent.

Dave

"I was listening to Guy's demos. Its simply impossible for me to believe these were made with a virtual library and not real performers. Even in occasions when a string might border on becoming synthy ot tinny, he hides it masterfully with added expression. Listening to the 'Springtime caper' right now and amazed at the realism, but also the quality and humor of this composition.

And there are like 100 demos like this by him on the VSL site! And not to mention pieces like this ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNms9kCB0M

Guy, I am not flattering here as I have nothing to gain from it, but simply awed and inspired by your works. Its truly an honor to be able to even communicate with you. I wonder if have you even thought of writing symphonies or tone poems. At the very least please enter Hollywood make better music than what we hear now." - agitato

That puts it exactly how I feel - I have been amazed over and over by Guy's music which takes the routine job of doing demos and turns it into an art. There are pieces among those demos that are true genius. And all of them are brilliantly done. Also the high level orchestral performances he is getting are so hard to obtain these days - it shows that other musicians are realizing how fine his music is. I agree on how people here should realize they are lucky to be conversing directly with such a talent.

Need to focus on the positive anyway!  

Hi Dave,

It is really very interesting to read how others work with VSL and you described it very detailed. This is a great and constructive contribution to the discussion thank your first of all.

@Acclarion said:

This system has worked well for me, but I only have the standard libraries, and have often wondered how I'll adapt things with the additional articulations if I ever am fortunate enough to acquire the full libraries.

This point was exactly what made me completly redesign my usage of VSL, when before I started my hitherto largest project. In fact I am lucky to have collected over the last 12 yers the whole Superpackage, providing  an impressive large variety of different patches for nearly each single orchestral instrument.

If you just take the soloviolin, if I remember well I have loaded more than hundred different patches, it mighrt be less for other instruments but with all sectionsizes we might accumulate for instance for all VSL-Violin-Samples presumably nearly more than 1000 patches.

I understand everyone who say let me just begin with exactly the patch I need and than add only those which seem to be necessary to. This might be defenitly a wway to keep things manageable, but as you consider with good reasons, it is always in danger to exceed the amount of complexity, which stay managable even if you make use of everything which might be for musical reaasons necessary.

As I indicated, this was the Reason why I tried to split the programming of articulationchange in multiple decisions. Since You can not simply use 100 Keyswitches to controle all available Patches for the Soloviolin. And in VI and its Matrices this is not necessary (I confess I am lucky not to use any Keyswitches in my Keyeditor anymore since Cubase has the Expression-map feature to do that) So my three decision inside one Instrumenttype are

1) Which fundamental articulationtyype (legato, Sustain, Short, ect.) programmed via Expressionmap that choses a certain Matrix in my Instrumentpreset for a certain Articulationtype

2) which sectionsize (f.i. Solo, Dim-Strings 2,4,6,8, Chmaberstrings, Orchestral Strings, Appasionata) Y-Axis of a Matrix controled by one CC

3) which variant of a certain Articulationtype which is available in a certain Sectionsize (f.i. legato: mV, nV, Marcato, SulG, etc.) controled by another CC

I am very hopeful about the organization of Synchronstrings to be developped exactly in that direction when I read: "Play short notes, long notes with various attacks, legatos, scalable vibrato intensities and note repetitions with a minimal need to switch articulations, and by moving just one or two preconfigured controllers."

I expect that this will make things easier for us all (provided our Hardware will come along with the demands of Synchronstrings, since Patches like that would have to load not only much more variants to be controleable by CC, but since they are recorded in the Synchron-Stage multiple Microphone-Setup, each singe samplewould be loaded up to 8 times to keep all microphonepositions ready to be mixed.

@agitato said:

Totally agree, William. Sorry one more link with Guys work....variations on Ode to Joy. This is simply amazing. [url=

@agitato said:

Totally agree, William.

Sorry one more link with Guys work....variations on Ode to Joy. This is simply amazing.

Well, are you sure you are kidding? Sorry I find this is very insulting.