David, I could listen to both examples. I understand how much Bruckner influenced you, despite a more modern harmony! It's music that can flow contiously between powerful and meditative, with vast areas of light and shadow. Orchestral colour is really a fundamental ingreadient of your music!

I like NotePerformer for how immediately it allows one to make a clear image of the music. Its artificial intelligence has really great musical taste, and can render any style in a very musical way. I have however a couple reservations on it for my personal use: first of all, the more dense the orchestral texture become, the least realistic it is. Great for small ensembles, however.

The second reservation is that it lacks extended techniques. I hope sooner or later an expansion pack will arrive, with more techniques. If one doen't need them, no problem. If there is considerable use of them, NP can't translate the score.

Making a rather realistic rendition of a score with sample libraries is a lot of work, sadly. I guess that more expert musicians can work faster than me, and achieve great results in a limited time. I think it can be done, and this heavy work can be – admittedly – also very fun!

Paolo

@William said:

One little thing I noticed was you can make at least some of those accented notes shorter.  Often that is a way to accent a note, because the attack is more exposed. […]

Anyway - now you have to do the whole symphony!  Have fun  - I'll see you in a year.    

William, excellent hints, as usual! I'll revise it to increase contrast.

While I may not render the full symphony, I would like to at least make the full Scherzo. It is a concentrate of Bruckner!

Paolo

@PaoloT said:

I like NotePerformer for how immediately it allows one to make a clear image of the music. Its artificial intelligence has really great musical taste, and can render any style in a very musical way. I have however a couple reservations on it for my personal use: first of all, the more dense the orchestral texture become, the least realistic it is. Great for small ensembles, however.

Interesting what you say here about NP, Paolo. My take is that for dense orchestral texture, it usually provides an admirable clarity but on the other hand makes any "holes" in the score clearer and can lose something of the atmosphere or warmth of sound. With my 12th symphony as a whole, VSL creates the atmosphere of the whole a bit better.

Bruckner is clearly present in all of my symphonies even where the initial inspration may have been quite different. The trilogy 10-12 is rather more "post-romantic" with composers like Silvestrov or Weinberg being models but yet Bruckner so often dominates in scherzi or slow movements. Hope you do manage to get the whole of the Bruckner 7 scherzo done. What is the source for your score? If there are scores availalble in Sibelius or Dorico format, I might one day be tempted to try my hand ppaurely as a "conductor" rather than a composer/conductor.

William's suggestion is also interesting. I wonder indeed whether Dorico, which naturally shortens many notes other than legato as default, would automatically create more drive with VSL SE than the same score in Sibelius? Perhaps a little experiment is in order!

@Another User said:

I wonder indeed whether Dorico, which naturally shortens many notes other than legato as default, would automatically create more drive with VSL SE than the same score in Sibelius?

I wonder if notes are shortened, in Dorico, only for NP. I would myself prefer if for ordinary libraries it preserved the performance information shown in the Play mode. This would really make Dorico a replacement for a DAW.

Paolo