But the issue is with false advertisement here…Of course, once one buys the library they can double with real instruments to their heart’s content.
But that’s not what the promotional soundbites/videos suggest… They paint a picture of an amazing product, and one buys the thing, it sounds from terrible to (in the best case scenario) very acceptable.
I remember , for instance, opening Hollywood Strings thinking “what the hell is going on here??” . So many inconsistencies, didn’t know where to start.
And yes indeed, many people are writing music inspired by film scores, some as a hobby, others hoping that they will get noticed.
Sadly, the reality is harsh (aside the joke about music with the current strikes).
Many production companies that make micro/small budget films, use music from libraries, paying a small fee to buy said music.
Yes there are many films being made, but most film producers try to get away with either by using pre-existing music, or by hiring a novice either for free (to build up credits) or for very little, to next to nothing money.
I really wish the reality was different. I really wish that every film production would have respect and understanding as to how important film music is to a film, but the exact opposite actually takes place in the industry.
Couple that with producers getting a sniff that now pretty much anyone can write music for films if they wanted to with the tools that exist, either digital orchestration tools, pre-played, pre-produced , one finger stabbers “composers” and so on and so forth, so , said film producers know that the talent is seemingly endless.
So, if a composer is slightly expensive, there are thousands behind said composer waiting for the opportunity to work for free or for next to nothing…
Trying to get work for film scoring is akin to being in the Wild West.
to me that’s actually being too negative. Although it’s certainly true that all libraries have their weak points, I’m finding (as have several who have listened to my mock-ups) that for instance the NPPE Cinematic Studio does very nicely with a lot of music and relatively few corrections are required. The much-praised BBC SO Core plug-in does retain a bit of the phrasing vagaries, though the situation is much better than “out of the box” Expression Maps and most importantly is great for a warm beefy romantic sound when that’s what you’re after.
I certainly can’t agree that NotePerformer native is the least bad option. In some situations (the demo of the Dvorak 9 extract for instance) with fast, rhythmically tight music it can be thrilling and unbeatable but there are few works which won’t at some point show up the shallowness of the samples – esp. the strings. And surely if Arne himself thought that NP native was the least bad option, he wouldn’t have bothered with the huge step of developing NPPE. I for one an very glad – despite a few issues still to be wrinkled out - that he did so.
as the NP template defaults to LA Studio, I’d guess that’s already running. It’s true that I always found NP native required a considerable reverb boost. Which one to use from the dozens of most popular options ( I tried at least a dozen including Pro-R before coming to my own final choice) is an interesting discussion though perhaps not one for this thread.
Can NP and NPPE engines draw samples from two different drives while its working? Well, mostly can NPPE draw from two different drives. Noteperformer by itself doesn’t require much space.
Like for instance I want to put all the string samples all on one ssd.
I don’t use the NotePerformer reverb at all, I find it very muddy, even with it at only, say, 25 or 30. It just doesn’t sound natural.
So I turn it zero and use REVerberance, usually the LA Scoring Stage perset. Very important to turn the mix down to 50%, not 100% as in your screenshot, else you get ONLY the reverb and not the initial signal.
if you activate Stage/Space templates, this is the default which is loaded. However, you’re right that D5 differs from D4 that it’s not automatically loaded. I must admit that, as I don’t normally use NP without an NPPE engine, I haven’t experimented much with the reverb settings. Certainly, as you say, the inbuilt NP reverb is now quite strong at 50%. However if you set this to 0 in the NP mixer, it seems to also disable the reverb set on the reverb lane in Dorico which doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps there’s something I’m not getting here?
The dorico reverb needs to be on the master (output) channel.
NotePerformer explicitly disables Spaces (which playback templates can do) because the default setup conflicts with the NP Reverb. If it’s on for you it’s because you manually edited the definition to turn it on.
putting a reverb on the Master output channel has a totally different - much stronger and more diffuse – effect than putting on the reverb channel and doesn’t work at all effectively with any reverb I’ve tried. Normally I use Altiverb on the reverb channel which gives good results, including with NPPE. Putting it on individual instrument channels tends to also give too strong an effect.
I know that the NP template disables Spaces and it needs to be manually activated in the Expression Map. I’ve made no changes to the default NP template but was merely assuming here for the sake of argument that it had been activated. But my original statement perhaps suggested that the default is to load it which was not my intention and is, as you say, incorrect. Actually the native NP reverb is so strong as to pretty well mask out anything added on the reverb channel. In NPPE, I usually set the reverb to bypass.
putting a reverb on the Master output channel has a totally different - much stronger and more diffuse – effect than putting on the reverb channel and doesn’t work at all effectively with any reverb
That’s why I specified it is very important to set the mix to 50% and not 100%. Trust me - it works and sounds great. I’ve been doing my noteperformer reverb this way for YEARS
