Sample Modeling / French Horn & Tuba v3

[Hannes_F]

Perhaps watch again. If not anything perhaps notice the skin color.

[tack]

Several times I felt a strong urge to inhale sharply while watching him.

[Ashermusic]

Perhaps watch again. If not anything else watch the skin color.

Well, first of all I could happily watch it 100 times because it is so gorgeous, so thank you for sharing it. I still however don't see anything beyond that very focused almost pinched look that double reed players often have because controlling those two little reeds together is so damned hard, but to me he is not making it look as hard as it is.

I guess I am just clueless., sorry. I really am trying to see it through your eyes.

[Hannes_F]

Here is the version without any effects. Just as Guy ordered I spent five minutes to adjust the internal Stage settings and thats it all. There is only a limiter at the end of the chain, but it doesn't do anything (its more or less a safety procedure in this case
You can see the instrument settings as well as the midi data. I also stopped one time at the end to show how "performend" vibrato can look and sound on the lead trumpet.

Please don't share this video anywhere else!!! Its not listed on youtube and only meant for this thread here!

One more thing to appreciate here is the handling of tempo including micro-timing. First, the whole track uses a pulse but allows to breathe by inserting quarters of a longer length at the end of phrases. This is a very clever and musical way to handle the general timing.
(BTW this is not "imperfect" but actually perfect - but in musical terms, and not in machine-terms.)

Nothing is more annoying like the need of going on with a click while the music is actually not ready. It feels like sitting down on a chair that is too high - you would expect it at one certain defined point but right before the correct time you already sit and feel weird. Very common nowadays.

Micro-timing: Especially with the visual aid of the midi signals we can see how the lead voice often anticipates the note entrance just a bit. This, too, is not a "human imperfection" how it is often credited to real players, instead it is a sort of perfection of a higher order. The entrance of notes in a good ensemble is graded in a hierarchical order. This is very subtle, and a general idea would be: melody and counter-melody come first, then bass, then fill voices (but nothing is set in stone here). Just a little bit of it helps the listener to identify the internal balance of the voices. Pianists use that too.

DAW using composers have widely run through a process of idiotisation when it comes to questions of timing. Usual misconcepts are that quantisation would have anything to do with perfection, and that any deviation from that would be "random", with the result that the "human" factor would be "random". That is plainly wrong. This video is worth a good study in order to learn a lot in that regard.

[tack]

Although I think I could script my way around this, by having an insert before Kontakt (or by using a Kontakt multiscript) to inject a note-off event during a transition to a zero CC, and a note-on event on the transition from zero. Sounds like it should work, and not too difficult.

I hacked up a Kontakt multiscript. It's definitely usable this way. It's missing some of the finesse I'm used to with SM, mainly because there is some CC curve smoothing happening on volume increases, and so it resists sudden volume changes much more than I would expect. I couldn't find a way to tune that.

Still, this is a big performance improvement over just riding the modwheel. Thanks Sascha.

I'm not sure if anyone but me cares, but if so, let me know and I'll share the KSP.

[Lawrence]

+1 to what Kayle said.Terrific and helpful examples. Thanks for the work.

[Lawrence]

Actually, I have a question. I know how panning and distance work in a traditional orchestral setting. How do they typically work in a brass ensemble-is there a standard?

[mr anxiety]

Sascha, I also want to thank you for your contribution to this thread. I know how time consuming these things are so i appreciate this very much. Performance is such an important aspect to the midi orchestra and I feel fortunate that I have enough skills as a keyboardist to do the data entry in a musical way.

Mr A

[Mike Greene]

Yes, this is great stuff, Sascha! Thank you!

[Tanuj Tiku]

Sounds fantastic Sascha! Beautiful! Thank you for sharing it. SM is absolutely the best at doing this kind of music. I have heard so many examples.

The performance aspect of it usually trumps over the sound. But, in the right hands, it always sounds great anyway. I doubt, many samples out there will be able to do that as convincingly.

Jay, I can understand where you are coming from with regards to time. It is the primary reason I recently decided to leave SM out of a project I was working on because I knew how little time I had. That being said, it wasn't because they are difficult to work with, I am just not as good with them just yet. Had I spent more time previously, I would learn to use them effectively.

I have all the brass instruments from SM and I can tell you that if you can just EQ them correctly, find a good reverb setting - thats it! Off you go! I don't even have a breath controller and I rarely need to use anything other than CC1 and CC11 (remapped for dynamics and expression).

You can literally just play in the parts. 90% of the time you do not need to do anything else.

[Ashermusic]

Sounds fantastic Sascha!
Jay, I can understand where you are coming from with regards to time. It is the primary reason I recently decided to leave SM out of a project I was working on because I knew how little time I had. That being said, it wasn't because they are difficult to work with, I am just not as good with them just yet. Had I spent more time previously, I would learn to use them effectively.

I have all the brass instruments from SM and I can tell you that if you can just EQ them correctly, find a good reverb setting - thats it! Off you go! I don't even have a breath controller and I rarely need to use anything other than CC1 and CC11 (remapped for dynamics and expression).

You can literally just play in the parts. 90% of the time you do not need to do anything else.

Interesting, you are the first person to say that to me, at least that I remember. I think I need to get together with one of my friends who has them and have them show me how they do it. As I say, to my great discredit, I cannot seem to make friends with a wind controller

It's like oatmeal: I like the idea of being someone who likes oatmeal, but I cannot seem to make myself do it.

[The Saxer]

Thanks to Sascha for the great insight!

[Lawrence]

I have not been comfortable with a wind controller either, but I find an expression pedal very helpful for realtime performance.

[Hannes_F]

I can only agree on what you wrote. I did in fact care about those subtle timing things, when playing. This is most difficult, because in this situation I am alone and not sitting there with other people to play. So I often think about, which voice to record first and then how to go on. Sometimes its the melody, that goes first, to set the dynamics and tempo and the whole expression of the phrase. But sometimes I also start with the Bass - in this case Tube or low Horn.

A tip on the hat from one multi-track recordist to another one :-)

These are things that are often overlooked but in such work we need not only to play but to do conductor's work too. The first thing I do before I do anything else is reading the score over and over in order to come to musical conclusions of such kind.

Again, very well done on multiple levels. And in order to fall down to the material plane :-) this thread really inspires me to buy an EWI controller.

[The Saxer]

The WX7 can be tricky to calibrate... takes some time. The plus is the non oscillating plastic reed that detects lip pressure and translates to pitch bend data. When playing there's a natural randomness in pitch of +/- 3 to +/- 5 and it's easy to play pitch vibrato (if you are used to from real woodwinds). The pitch fluctuation makes nice unisono lines possible.

[Robert Cote]

If you want to hear my view on this: Forget about all that crap with keyswitches, CC1, drawing curves and modifying parameters when it comes to Samplemodeling. Get yourself a breath controller or a wind controller like an EWI.

Sascha, are there any particular wind controllers you would recommend? I don't play a wind instrument, but would be willing to learn at least one of the fingering layouts in order to play brass, woodwind, or string performances in this way instead of using a keyboard controller. I'm also only really concerned with using a wind controller for sequencing on a DAW, exactly as you have done here - not for performing live (and no need for built-in sounds).

Very lovely work on this piece! I've admired your OT demos for quite a while now!