Yeah, I’m not so worried about the logic editor, but the scaling features are quite useful.
“Most instruments don’t use velocity” isn’t 100% accurate. With almost any library I’ve worked with, the long articulations use CC1 for dynamic, but the shorts use velocity only and ignore CC1. So, suddenly when you start using staccato or pizzicato in strings, the library will ignore CC1 and look at velocity only. It is in those cases where it becomes really handy to be able to create a crescendo with velocity only while preserving the accent structure.
I agree with this point in general though I’m not sure that the crescendo using a simple line is always “really weird” and don’t find it generally so in this particular piece-- there are many different ways of playing them depending on the style of music.
That is based on my personal experience adding CC shaping in a DAW with a mouse. I have never gotten a crescendo or diminuendo to sound natural with a straight line, it always sounds artificial. When I switch it to a parabola, even just a slight one so that it doesn’t move so consistently in the same way, it sounds much better.
VSL doesn’t use velocity anywhere for short articulations in any library that I’m aware of. BBC on the other hand does expect use of velocity for short articulations which are generally in the minority. Perhaps I should have said “most instruments don’t use velocity for the bulk of their articulations” which you would perhaps find more acceptable Of course I’m not referring to keyboard or percussion instruments here which are more commonly (though far from invariably) velocity based.
Hi, at this moment I’m working with Synchron Strings Pro. They have made presets with velocity for the dynamics of the short notes and cc1 for the dynamics for the long notes.
I know a lot of people who would be uninterested in their string libraries if they didn’t have a preset like that. A lot of people have been stuck on that Hans Zimmer spiccato string ostinato sound for a while, and with things like that, you really need to preserve the accent structure for the pattern. It’s too hard to do that with CC1 changes.
So here is a little experiment I did with Copland’s Fanfare and my template in Dorico. I chose Copland’s fanfare for this experiment because it minimizes the number of libraries involved so that it is easier to mix, and it is fairly short. Also, I use Sample Modeling brass, which really requires that you play in the shaping so it doesn’t sound strange, much like the Infinite Brass that Dan uses. For this experiment I decided to start with the notated score and do everything with the mouse, as that is a workflow that many might adopt rather than playing them in.
Haven’t seen the Synchron Strings Pro. Are you saying these are the default presets or an additional option? If the former, then perhaps indeed the new Synchron libraries are starting to move in that direction. Certainly, they seem to be paying more attention to the competition than before in the area of film in particular (more use of combos and effects, introduction of popular patches like flautando) and don’t want to get left behind.
Observation 1: as usual, NP does a strangely good job. I look forward to version 4 if it ever comes.
Observation 2: your shaping makes all the difference in the world! It went from completely fake (painfully so in the beginning when the brass first entered) to moments that could completely fool me as the real deal. Incredible. Where it breaks apart is more toward the end when the lower brass comes in and they are playing in octaves. Still, very impressive.
Yes - it helps to emphasize the importance of putting the time in on the shaping, and how much time it really takes. I could have possibly done even more finessing the end but it was already a lot of time spent on an experiment. There was an advantage in this case for the brass that the strings would not have - because there are three trumpets, 4 horns etc, and they are often in unison, I was able to give the individual instruments slightly different linear dynamic curves. So Horn 2 may start a bit quieter than horn 1 but peak slightly louder, and peak in a different place than horn 1 (1/4 or 1/2 a beat off). The result is that you don’t get a perfectly flat diminuendo or crescendo overall because the combined sound of the unison has a more complex fluctuating dynamic, closer to a parabola, caused by the interplay of the flat ramps. With the strings, if you have an exposed cello line, you couldn’t really use this trick unless you were using two different divisi cello sections in unison, and there you would need to either use some kind of slider or other controller to record the CC automation, or use the pencil tool and decrease the rhythmic grid resolution, at least until Dorico has some parabola tools.
I’m a bit surprised, since they have given the choice of using either CC or Velocity to control dynamics probably since the beginning. You can either decide to which type of data a patch/articulation reacts right in the saved preset, or you can switch from Velocity to CC on the flight, by sending a dedicated CC.
All the Synchron libraries I’ve seen offer both a Velocity and a CC controlled version of the presets. You can still switch to the one or the other way at will.
As for flautandos, they are already in the early Orchestral and Solo Strings, and there have been dedicated sul tasto libraries for the strings collections they released during the years. Apart for exoteric articulations, they have always offered a very complete set of techniques in use in the early 20th Century. With Clarinet 2, they even offered a complete set of multiphonics!
Of course VSL have always given the choice of which controller to use for what and it gets pretty confusing when you take for instance special VI presets for notation software like Sibelius into account which can make quite different choices as defaults. In the end, it’s what works best which is the key and, esp. in Synchron, my clear impression from forums is that CC is mostly preferred though (and it certainly seems to work better with Dorico) there is quite a lot of contradictory info. I was only trying to summarise how it seems VSL want you to set their libraries for best results which can be generally seen in the defaults. In practice, you can do what you want!
As for flautando, it does indeed seem it was there from the beginning with the standard orchestral strings which I’d forgotten, but not in solo strings. It was the more general point about VSL seemingly moving more in the direction of other libraries which are more film/commercial orientated that I originally tried to make.
From what I have seen, using CC for short articulations (in strings etc) is generally only preferred by people who use notation software to drive their virtual instruments. Many more instead use DAW’s to drive their VI’s and they often play them in, and in that scenario, velocity is preferable to shape the shorts. That is why you see that the majority of virtual instruments use velocity and ignore CC1 for the short articulations, and a small minority default to CC1 - usually those libraries (like VSL) that are more often used in tandem with notation software.
probably a fair summary – which leads us back to the old argument (this being, after all, a notation software forum) about what we should be using for our mockups.
Limiting yourself to the libraries that use CC1 for shorts would be a bad idea. Dorico provides enough control over CC’s and velocity due to play mode that it is possible to make almost any library work.
My advice would always be to use libraries that you like the sound of. Library choice is often a very personal thing. Especially if your finished product is often the virtual instrument performance, part of your “sound” will be the group of libraries that you have chosen to combine.
The only place I might deviate from that is that it is awkward to work with “a2” and “a4” patches (etc) in Dorico. For things like winds and brass, it might be sensible to limit yourself to libraries that have individual instruments (ex. Sample Modeling or Infinite Brass for brass) rather than the unison samples. You could get libraries with unison samples to work, but it means you have to use hidden playing techniques on one staff to trigger the a2 or a4 patch and disable playback of the notes on the second staff.
It is one of the presets. For every group is a XF preset and a XF sus preset. And in the XF sus presets the dynamics of the short notes are triggered by velocity by default.
You somehow misquoted me in this post and your last one as saying “VSL doesn’t use velocity anywhere for short articulations in any library that I’m aware of.” - that was actually dko22.
Could you please be specific as we may be talking completely at cross purposes. I simply meant that, taking Synchron-ized Solo Strings for instance, in the PERFORM tab of the player, all instruments for all articulations map by default to CC11 Expression and CC2 VelXF which are the two controllers you will mainly use to change dynamics in Dorico through the Expression Maps. The only presets are “violin basic” and “violin full” plus user modified (and the same for the other instruments, obviously).
I’m finding Dorico’s default output really, really good actually, with just a bit of tweaking gives a great starting point (using the BBCSO with Dorico supplied template). Unlike a DAW Dorico manages default setup CC’s for you, namely 1 and 11 (resets sent at the beginning of playback), along with doing other global resets. The fact that it has a default velocity works great too, unlike DAW record MIDI in which has issues since it records your velocity (playing on a keyboard is different than any other instrument, so the velocity has dubious meaning).
One thing I’ve found with this library is to reduce the default velocity, or be aware that with some instruments you can get loud blats (like the french horn) because it crosses some threshold. Just drop the velocity to some other value and it’ll be fine. Keeping consistent note length works well, just make sure to shorten the played duration during phrasing to give breaths for your wind players (I wonder if breath marks would do the same, are there breath marks in Dorico, and are they honored in playback?) Otherwise, predictably the strings need the most work. WIP
I would rate my production skills as intermediate at best, but I recently completed a version of Also Sprach Zarathustra using VSL BBO libraries (cliche, I know but it’s still an awesome piece!) by exporting individual parts from Dorico as .wav audio files and then using Cubase to mix the audio files. The mixing was just much easier in Cubase and the final result clearer (e.g. less phasing on some parts). If you do this, disable the compression and reverb that Dorico inserts by default on the master output channel. For me, I found that separating the performance (as rendered in Dorico) from the final mixing was just a smoother workflow.
I agree by and large with your post and that the strings need the most work. Slightly puzzled by your suggestion of reducing the default velocity as that only affects patches which use velocity which in the standard maps anyway, means only the short patches. For the others, avoiding the “blats” is easiest done by reducing the CC1 dynamic with a compensatory boost to CC11 volume, I’ve found, esp. as you say with the horns. However the worst blats are perhaps indeed caused by the short articulations which can otherwise stick out like a sore thumb and maybe you’re referring more specifically to this? Personally, I’d prefer to adjust these note by note, where necessary as velocity response varies quite significantly from instrument to instrument, particularly between different instrument families.
Of course I’m not referring to keyboard or percussion instruments here which are more commonly (though far from invariably) velocity based.