"Is there a good jazz library?"

There are more options available. I can continue to play around with them and see if I can offer some different versions. Still learning how to best utilize the expression map.

Curious thing, I have to have a separate instance of Kontakt for each of the instruments. I can’t just point the altos to the same Kontakt instance, even if turning on IRV - they don’t seem to play well. Not a big deal, but surprising. Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

Also, I thought there was a way to extend the note in the Midi Editor and not have it effect the notation? On some of the falls the eight notes are too short to trigger the correct patch, so you just end up with a short note, where if you held it out for a bit, it would trigger the fall - this is mostly in the trumpets.

FWIW, I’m using an older library, Chris Hein Horns, which runs in Kontakt.
The samples are played by the WDR Bigband, the most famous and best radio Bigband in Germany.
The UI is rather complex, but has tons of articulations and variations.
The price is reasonable, I think.
Here is a sample I made ages ago, which is just a loop from EZKeys split up into different voices and sent to a Sax section, no manual tweaking involved, except for the shake in the end.


I do not have an expression map for this, the sample was made in Cubase…

Cheers,
Benji

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That might be an error. Email Douglas to check.

When I got it back in 2020, the Logic EXS version had all the content of the original release, including instrument “Menus”, which are definitely single hits. The screen grab shows the menus for timbales and cymbals in Kontakt 6.

I opened the EXS version in Kontakt 5 (version 6 dropped EXS support) and saved as .nki, which work fine in Kontakt 6.

I imagine this would be usable in Dorico, but I haven’t tried.

Thanks for the kind words about OLMT!

Yes, Richard’s playing is iconic, and he was a very sweet guy. My first charanga experience was playing in his ensemble class at the ¡Afrocubanismo! workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1996, shortly before I moved to the Bay Area. He invited me to accompany his flute class, which was quite an honor. (He’d been playing piano; this freed him up to play the flute, and it was cool to watch him teach charanga flute licks.) A few years later, OLMT brought him to the Bay Area for a concert.

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Here is the entire chart realized in Project Sam Swing More. Nothing has changed in the saxes from before, I didn’t have time to adjust those maps. A bit of panning and leveling in the mixer again, but otherwise, right out of the box

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The samples sound great for sure. I mean, that big band is crazy amazing. But how well do the samples handle legato? That seems to be the problem. Everything detached is ok, and here, they’re great! But the second the saxes smooth out it sounds like a reed organ or accordion.

So I finally got around to making some improvements to the VSL expression maps included with the SYNCHRON-ized SE bundle. I got stuck on the accented fp (see this thread) so for some of them I removed accents and some others removed the fp until I can figure that out. Nothing was added though and no MIDI editing was done. Reverb and panning in VEP, everything else is just with the Dorico expression maps. I haven’t been able to work out jazz articulations yet, but can draw in pitch bends which I did not do for these samples.

Full band (no drums)

Saxes

Brass

Since a lot of people have this library, I’ll post the maps once I get some of these issues resolved.

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Because of time restraints or else?
I’m asking because it took me quite a while to understand how Dorico’s jazz articulations are implemented… :wink:

B.

Mostly else I think, LOL! For VSL SE, there aren’t any built in. I can draw a pitch bend, but don’t know if there’s a way to automate that in any way as it has to deal with both pitch and time. I did post a thread over on VSL’s site but if you know how to do this I’d welcome any advice! If VSL came out with a jazz library containing jazz articulations and brass mute changes I’d buy it instantly!

For SWAM, I think they just have to be drawn in. They have to be triggered while the note is playing and D4 only has on and off events. Again, if you know how to do this please let me know!

For Samplemodeling Brass, I’m sort of confused I guess. It looks like the note-on and note-off switches should be fairly simple to program but they just aren’t working. This one could definitely be user error.

I have them working with VHorns and OT Duplex Saxes IIRC.

Switch to this mode (can’t remember what it’s called and the pop-up descriptions don’t work) and then you should be able to adjust the length:

You can also just type in the playback end offset (in ticks I think) too as they are doing the exact same thing:

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This a known bug and should be solved next update, see here: Still scared to save in 4.0.30 - Playback breaking bug - #5 by dspreadbury

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I read the manual again for the CHH Pro 2.0 package again yesterday, and I must say, I’ve only scratched the surface of what this can do…
I’m in no way affiliated with the brand, but I think this might fit your requirements pretty nicely:

It’s a little over the top maybe, but the config page here is for a single keyswitch… :astonished:
And there are a ton of articulations to work with, each trigger type configurable in Direction/Attribute style, without even using Dorico’s built-in functionality.

I’m not sure if they have trial versions, but you could ask them.

Cheers,
Benji

Would you mind taking the Dorico file I posted earlier in the thread, loading the library, and exporting audio? It would be useful to compare what it sounds like straight out of notation software without drums or chordal instruments covering up the horns. Thanks if you’re able to do that!

Does he list somewhere exactly who from WDR played the samples? I couldn’t find any info on his site. Just curious, as I have a couple friends in the band.

I play a lot of instruments, piano, organs trumpet, flute, sax, trombone, guitars. I think the heart of the OP’s questions is about sample based tech. It’s good for some instruments but not for others. Try getting a Muddy Water’s wailing harmonica out of samples for example.
Piano is a percussion instrument you hit the key, it hits a string. Beyond this event there is the tone of the piano, the lid, the velocity, pedals and string resonance - all of which can be reliably replicated by VSTs. After a note is struck, that’s pretty much it for thje performer, nothing can be done to change the sound.
Wind and Strings are entirely different. A reeded note can be crafted AFTER it is struck. Players leanr embrouchure over many years and signature sounds are crafted by such things as tongue and mouth movements (inc vibrato), attack of the note and fade. Different instruments have different lmitations, a trombone can slide from one note to (most) others, a sax cannot do this. A violin/viola/cello can sustain a note and alter it’s sound too. In fact there are over 50 different types of “articulations” that they can produce, some using weird bowing/plucking/ back of the bow. Even simple techniques such as staccato change from phrase to phrase - often instinctively. Room also plays a huge part in the sound. A violin in a field sounds terrible. Musicians instinctively adjust to this as they play.
The simple philosophy of sample technology often fails to capture all of these nuances and tehy are really mission critical to getting a good sound. Think of the difference in sound between a military man playing The Trumpet Voluntary and Chet Baker or Miles Davis, or even the first trumpet of a Classical orchestra or Glenn Miller The range of tone is enormous.
If one were to ta;lk guitars a similar picture could be created, the gap will be even greater.
Personally, I have a lot of libraries, and all winds and strings don’t satisfy me, for either sound or useability

Z

So, I was curious to know how well Dorico handled jazz, so I gave it a go with the file above and I have to say I’m very happy.
Saxes: Combination of WARPIV and VSL

Brass: Just SM

All together: VSL Bass and Straight Ahead Drums

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Is that straight out of Dorico? How did you get the falls and doits to play? Those were drawn in? Or through the expression map? If expression map, can you share how you did it?

No, I don’t use Expression Maps because I find them unreliable and way too time consuming to make. I normally just add an ossia below and quickly type in the KS there. When I’m done I can just hide it, I have a shortcut for both (K & CTRL+K). After I’m done I quickly draw in the expression with the pen tool (it’s better if the instruments don’t match, you get far more realistic results) since dynamics are contextual and not db. You can also do this for drums i.e. write a normal part, add an ossia below with regular clef and just input how the drums should sound. Then you just hide it and the score looks normal, but plays everything.

I attach your score back if you want to have a look:
BigBandForForum.dorico (3.8 MB)

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I was under the impression that an ossia does not play in Dorico. Am I misinformed, or are you using the term loosely for adding an additional staff rather than what Dorico defines as an ossia?

Yeah, they are very time consuming. The funny thing about them though is I feel like I can justify some of the time, because they can be used on any project in the future. They also give a better playback experience while writing, which is when I actually need it for proofreading, hearing how things develop in time, etc. Usually after I’m done writing, which is when I would do the manual edits for playback, is then when I don’t care about the playback anymore. Most of the time I don’t need to send out a sophisticated mockup, and even when I do I know 95% of the musicians aren’t going to listen to it anyway. (I’m guilty of this myself. I had a recording session last week where the leader sent out the music ahead of time. I looked at the parts for about 30 seconds and thought, “ok, I got this.”)

My workflow and end product may be different that what others require, but I guess ideally I’m trying to find the best possible results for use while writing without creating separate files for notation and playback. Obviously there are trade-offs and limitations with this approach.

Thanks for posting your file! I actually purchased Straight Ahead Drums a couple of months ago when they had a 50% off sale. As there was no documentation that I could find, I just haven’t had time to explore them yet. It’s certainly helpful to see your file though. So these “notes” in your playback staff are just triggering specific samples, right?

It was also really informative to see how your file opened up a VEP instance! Obviously I don’t have much of it installed, but it was really interesting to see how you have this set up. I guess I had been using separate instances for each library, so one for SWAM saxes, one for Samplemodeling Brass, etc. This of course means each instance returns a signal to Dorico. You have them all in once instance, where each section is routed to a bus to control the volume for that section (I think), and then only one signal goes back to Dorico, right? I think I like your way of doing this better so you just remove Dorico from any mixing altogether. It looks like you are using VirtualSoundStage too. I wasn’t aware of this plug-in. I have MIR 24, VirtualSoundStage does sort of the same thing as MIR right?

Nope, I literally mean an ossia and at least until 3.5, they played back. They’re useful because they don’t require extra setup and you can easily hide them.

Well, for me that is not the case. I started writing way before computers came around and it was incredibly time-consuming. Parts alone took months to make. So now that I live in the future I’m happy to spend a few hours massaging my music into something that’s actually pleasant to listen to. It’s my experience people are way, way more likely to listen to your demo if it’s “musical” than if it’s a horrible, mechanical MIDI rendition. Most musicians are allergic to them! I also rarely bother with playback for a commission, but I do for archival purposes or when the client wants to hear “how it’s going”. And it’s also a beautiful way to spend time, come on! Why would anyone not enjoy playing around with your own music, trying to get it performed beautifully? It’s certainly less stressful than rehearsals! Sample libraries never ask for a break, they always show up on time, they stay as long as you ask them, they never complain and most importantly, they always play exactly what you ask them for, unlike their analogue counterparts!

Yes, the ossia staff is for the playback. There you can trigger the loop and hits using separate voices. It also comes with a couple of feels, but not enough for my taste. However, I often use a MIDI pack that I can just drop in and quickly edit it on the staff to play the right drums. That way I don’t have to bother with complex drum mappings either! :grin: Then you hide it and the score looks normal, but plays back!

The VE Pro setting comes from the days of Sibelius, but Dorico suffers from the same issues. Basically if you don’t use Expression Maps Dorico runs much, much faster. But if you also decouple VE Pro, then Dorico only has to concern itself with the score and runs much smoother. My PC is pretty old, but it has no problems running a Big Band with 30 odd instruments and Dorico flies!

And yes, I do all my mixing in VE Pro. VirtualSoundStage is the poor man’s MIR. It’s use for panning and 3d placement, then you need to add a reverb tail. I use the fabulous LiquidSonic SeventhHeaven Standard.

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LOL! Eh, I guess Dorico playback is never going to approach actual humans, so I sorta feel like why bother after the fact. For me, more realistic playback is useful for writing, not so useful after I’m done. For example, this week I’m working on a commission for Eddie Palmieri’s little big band that they will record in June. No library is ever going to come close to the vibe that band gets, so I doubt I’ll ever listen to the Dorico version again once I send the parts off.

I have been using one drum staff for notation, and a separate hidden drum staff for playback. The playback staff uses percussion maps and percussion notation. Your workflow of using MIDI for this seems like it will sound much more natural, so I’m definitely going to try this your way.

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