The mockup really needs a more shaping of CC1, and could probably also use some vibrato crossfading.This sort of piece with a very regular, repetitive structure leans on the shaping in the performance a lot more than the typical piece does. The mix itself sounds fine, although it’s fairly easy to mix the chamber strings since they are all recorded in the same space with the same equipment.
I wish I had some more time to do some of this - what I’ve seen is that Dorico is really quite a bit more flexible in getting me at least “close” to a good end product with a minimum of fuss.
I did a string piece awhile back with BBCSO, and it came of rather nicely with a minimum of tweaking after the fact:
Basically, I did this:
- I found a short Public Domain organ piece by Otto Malling that I thought would translate well to strings, and did the work to arrange it.
- Went in and tweaked the velocities on some of the staccato notes
- played a bit with the tempo curve in Play mode
- Exported to stems, did some final volume tweaking in the DAW, added some reverb (Altiverb)
- Some light compression and EQ in Sound Forge
So, there was very little work after the fact in the DAW, and really only with the exported Stems, not MIDI…
I will say that there were a LOT of hairpins…
Yes, I heard yours before on vi-control. Very well done on the mockup. When I first heard it, at first I thought the composition was by John Barry because it sounds a lot like one of his James Bond scores.
Thank you very much for your excellent feedback!
Glad you liked it!
I tried another piece with more instruments: Roger-Ducasse2.wav - Google Drive
Some EQ, reverb added with Altiverb, a little judicious compression… I suspect if I exported the midi and massaged it in the DAW, it would sound much better (the only edits I did in Dorico were to lower the velocity on the timpani shorts at the end)
If you’re curious about the score and want to follow, it’s here on IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Petite_suite_(Roger-Ducasse%2C_Jean)
It sounds good, but you might consider dialing back a tiny bit on the reverb. I find that big cavernous sound doesn’t really suit this material. I used to use a lot more reverb than I have lately - I’ve been trying to get my sound a bit drier while still having the sense of the hall. My export of Dan’s piece through my template is probably a bit too dry on the other hand.
Hahaha
I’m frequently accused of loving reverb too much… guilty as charged, I’m an organist, and we do love our soaking wet cathedral reverbs.
I still recall an organist at the Washington (DC) Cathedral referring to the building as an $11,000,000 (or some such) reverb machine.
I find that using lots of reverb allows you to better cover up flaws in a mockup. For instance, adding enough reverb lessens the impact of not tapering off the final note of a phrase when an instrument exits. Because I didn’t add any shaping to my export of Dan’s piece, there are frequently spots where you find some sustained note that suddenly cuts off in a rather strange way, like the player played at constant volume until the end of the note and abruptly stopped. I am most impressed by mockups where the person who created it used minimal reverb and instead you can hear that they spent the extra time perfecting the details of the shaping, rather than relying on the reverb to fix it for them.
I get that… but just to be clear, I don’t use it to “cover up flaws in my mockup”, I use it because I like a wet acoustic… it’s an organist thing. 
Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that. I can tell you add a lot of shaping etc. It was more directed to others who might be reading the thread. I know when I started off making mockups (about 15 or 16 years ago) I would have situations where a note cuts off and the sound dies off rapidly and I would think “that sounds strange” and I would add reverb to fix it, not realizing that performers would taper the end of the phrase a bit to avoid that sudden cut-off rather than relying on the acoustic.
You don’t need a huge building to get a long reverb, if you design it right. King’s College Chapel Cambridge is only about 300 ft long x 40 wide x 80 high, with a measured reverb time of around 12 seconds (!!). Westminster Abbey and St Pauls Cathedral in London only manage about 9 seconds each.
The secret sauce is the largest fan-vaulted stone roof in the world (and it has held that record for about 500 years since it was first built). When I was an undergrad there were a few guided tours available by “invitation only”. The highlight was walking the full 300 ft length of the building on a wooden walkway on TOP of the internal roof (and below the external roof that was about 15 feet higher in the center) where you could see all the details of the stone construction. Looking through a few small holes in the structure, the non-structural stone work was only about half an inch thick. That made a pretty good “sounding board”.
Wikipedia has a pretty good set of pictures (but only from ground level looking up).
Hello Dan,
Here is an example of what I can do without a DAW.
http://ericspichiger.no-ip.org:5080/sharing/IJ1yapZki
I simply used a score in Sibelius to drive VSL sound libraires.
In my opinion, to achieve realistic playback directly from the score, you need to be able to insert any MIDI controllers for every single note of your partition.
As far as I know, Dorico cannot do that yet…
Eric
That’s crazy. Very good sounding indeed.
Thanks everyone for the helpful input.
I think I’m going to stick with NotePerformer in Dorico, and do my VST mock-ups in a DAW until CC playback is further developed.
That has been my conclusion too.
In Dorico, you can open the mixer, and use the already inserted Compressor to boost the level. Choose the Reset preset and set the Ratio to 1:1, so that the compressor will not touch your original sound. Then use the Makup Gain knob to increase the level. Adding the Dry Mix should give you even more loudness.
Paolo
Isn’t this what you do in the Play mode?
Paolo
Yes, I think that’s the best approach for now
The construction of King’s does more than add reverb. I sang an audition there after singing the same at St. John’s College (wooden ceiling), and in King’s the first time I sang an “ee” vowel, I thought I was going to shatter every stained glass window in the building. 