Thank you very much everyone! It’s been a very interesting learning experience regarding trombones. I think i wil also book a discussion session with one of my trombone playing friends.
5 Likes
Hmm, I just double-checked this on my end and confirm it looks the same as that. Just tried more subtle gliss ranges of a third. It still sounds rather… synthetic. I can’t even really seem to hide how it sounds in a dense mix - it always pops out as something very strange, like a random digital artifact of sorts. I have always assumed this has to do with the sample library not supporting it (and/or also NPPE not supporting it as an available technique on their respective NPPE pages). Am I missing something here?
No, you’re not missing anything, Sample libraries have extremely limited, if any support for glisses. The shear amount of possible combinations is staggering.
The only library I’m aware of with acceptable gliss playback is the built in noteperformer trombone, which is synthesized rather than sampled.
In general glissandi are simply created artificially via pitch bend and are not sampled, though there are a few examples of sampled gliss in libraries. I’m basically with @TylerE here.
To be honest, NotePerformer with its modelling often does a better job than completely unmodified pitch bend applied to other libraries which can sound too artificial to even consider. And I’ve used an octave pitch bend for the NPPE trombone in a symphony even though no human can play it as written - obviously if this symphony were ever to be performed live then then the musicians in question would use the best workaround for the desired effect according to their abilities.
The other neat trick Noteperformer has is that all “reasonable” combinations of techniques work too, for instance you can have glisses with a mute in…and flutter tonguing - and all that with dynamics too, which is the other neat trick Noteperformer has. Most sample libraries only have a good number of dynamic levels in the legato articulations, the others have reduced dynamics, or even just a single sample set with the dynamics coming only from playing the one sample louder or quieter.
2 Likes
The Sample Modeling Instruments, the Swamm Instruments and VHorns are built that way, the trombones can do realistic glissandi without or with any kind of mute, and flutter tongue can also be applied during the glissando.
I have used them only within a DAW, though, so I do not know if an expression map can be (or yet has been) created that makes those features available in Dorico.
I haven’t tried those, but with regard to programming an expression map to play a glissando from an existing library, it depends on how the library treats it – but in any case Dorico doesn’t allow us to access the glissando ornamentation within expression maps, so I’ve previously had to create a completely separate playing technique for that, which I then hide the text, and I add the gliss ornament but supress its actual playback so it’s really just there for view. This seems to be the case in particular where the library maps pre-determined glissandos to the keyboard, in other words you play a key and it plays the full gliss sample.
My preference has been the ones which create gliss from a “performance” patch, usually accessible via legato – in which case I still have to do it manually as described above, where I fake a gliss ornamentation and then adjust legato under the hood so it’s not actually visible as a slur.
In cases such as these, it would be nice if we could access ‘gliss.’ from within expression maps to essentially remap and override its default behavior, treating it like legato basically where it connects two notes and then a capable library’s performance patch creates a slide accordingly.
Well…I’m a trombone player/composer/arranger.
A ‘real-life’ trombone gliss will have as many variables as there are live trombone players!
Plus, there are different composer/conductor preferences.
Such as:
- is the gliss to ‘accelerate’ as it is played to add a sense of excitement?
- is the gliss to be a perfectly linear slide up or down to the next note?
- is it to be played with any dynamic changes?
- is the trombone a large-bore symphonic trombone? a small bore ‘commercial/jazz’ trombone?; because they have different sound qualities to consider
- etc. etc.
I’ve created a ‘gliss’ up with NotePerformer in a demo mockup, with no expectation of it sounding totally ‘life-like’…just an indication of what should happen in the score. (a conductor or real trombonist will know what to expect)
Talk to a real trombone player as to what would be possible. Or there are some orchestration books out there or online resources to help you choose what’s physically possible in a real-life situation.
You’re probably better off trying to record a real trombone player to get what you really want!
3 Likes
indeed this is worth pointing out. NP can get results with its programming that don’t actually exist in the sample libraries themselves and even just from a notation point of view, NP covers many combinations which would require a huge amount of combinations in a manually created map. The downside with NP is obviously that with one common map for the NPPE libraries, more specialised artics can tend to be ignored.
Thank you everyone! I had a very informative chat with a pro trombone player yesterday. Since the piece that i am composing is for live performance, i wanted to write what is playable/possible. It was mostly for the composing side of things that i was interested to “hear” the work prior to performing. Guess I’ll just have to use my imagination.
3 Likes