Beethoven and Borodin string quartets - masterful arrangements by Jay Bacal

[herb]

I think Jay Bacal raised once again the bar for samplebased stringquartets:

Ludwig van Beethoven

String quartet op 59/3 - Finale

http://vsl.co.at/Player2.aspx?Lang=1&DemoID=5208 

Alexander Borodin

String quartet in D - Notturno

http://vsl.co.at/Player2.aspx?Lang=1&DemoID=5209 

thanks a lot Jay!

[musos]

 Bravo Maestro Bacal!!!  (loud applause)

The Borodin is exceptional - take a bow....4 times (for each player in the quartet).

Thanks as always for your generosity in providing the tutorial data - VERY helpful and instructive.

Regards - Colin 

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hello Jay

Fantastic! perfect! I'm speechless...  

Some days before you payed compliments on my piccolo-demo [:$]

I'm just going to listen to your demos a third time... 

Thanks, Jay, thanks... 

Beat 

[julian]

Wow! Just one question Jay, how long to realise the Beethoven....? thanks julian

[jbm]

The Borodin sounded pretty sample-ish, to me, but the Beethoven absolutely blew me away! Pretty mind-boggling how convincing it is... scary. Is that a perf-detache through all that fast stuff?

J.

[herb]

Jay offers as usual the midifile and the VI Instrument Presets for dwonload.

So it's easy for everybody, who has licensed the solostrings, to check it out.

best

Herb

[Guy Bacos]

Very accurate programming Jay! I love the balance. I personally would of liked to hear a stronger vibrato on certain notes now and then but that's being nitty picky.

[mplaster]

 Good Lord, how on earth does he do that? Freakin' amazing. Bravo, indeed

::humbly walking away from this thread with my tail between my legs:: 

[Guy Bacos]

Jay, I have a question for you. In the light of a these demos do you think we are close to challenging live recordings with ones own personal interpretation using samples? And was this your own interpretation or was it inspired from a recording? And how much of it was yours or inspired?

[christof]

Whats this???

What are you doing to us" real "musicians Jay??? 

I used to play the Beethoven several times, I know this piece quite well. 

It is hard to believe that your demo is VSL handcrafted.

This is exceptional work.

Please don't do that again;-)

This great work also shows the incredible good quality of the VSL products, I mean this is let's say 80 % realistic.

As Cellist I pray that they never reach the 100 % mark.

Otherwise I sell my Cello and buy a studio. 

[PaulR]

Hahaha! I fooled my violin teacher with the Beethoven. Ahhh - that's great and made my day. 'Course - I told the old boy it was real and couldn't remember the recording to save any embarrassment. Do you do 'VSL realizations' for presents Jay? You can do some cues for me if you like. :)))

[JBacal]

Thanks musos, Beat, julian, jbm, Guy, mplaster, Christof and Paul for listening and posting your reactions.

julian-- I think the Beethoven took me roughly 7 long days.

jbm-- I agree that the Beethoven is more successful than the Borodin although I am quite fond of several passages including the last 1:30 of the piece.  I think this is because there are fewer places to hide in the Borodin due to its exposed lyrical nature. Also the Beethoven was written by...well...Beethoven. The guy knew what he was doing. For the Beethoven, I used almost all of the faster performance articulations including detache, spiccato, marcato, and harsh. I also used the performance repetition articulations extensively.

Guy--I think that if the sample performer has something very unusual to "say" about a piece then it might might challenge a real recording. With more traditional interpretations (like my own) I think that a real recording of live players is still several levels above a sampled approach.

To varying degrees my performances are inspired by real recordings. I usually listen to as many performances of a piece as I can find. Then I study my 1 or 2 favorites in GREAT detail --tempo, phrasing, position of slides, vibrato, etc. I then make changes to accommodate the realities of samples. Finally I make changes to appease my own personal interpretation. Interestingly my favorite real recording of the Beethoven was played MUCH faster (over 170 bpm throughout) than samples could handle, so I was forced was to make the Beethoven more my own interpretation.

Christof-- As one of the VSL cellists you have only yourself to blame for VSL being so good. [:D]

Paul-- First, I think it's cool that you have a violin teacher-- when did you start studying?  Second, I want to know the reaction of your teacher when you told him the piece was created with VSL.  Did he smash your violin over the top of your computer. [:O]

Thanks again all.

Best,

Jay

[Ben Johnson]

 Thanks for sharing the files, Jay. I think this is the most convincing VSL performance yet.

I only wish I had the extended edition so I could hear more than a few sporadic notes here and there... 

[jbm]

@JBacal said:

jbm-- I agree that the Beethoven is more successful than the Borodin although I am quite fond of several passages including the last 1:30 of the piece.  I think this is because there are fewer places to hide in the Borodin due to its exposed lyrical nature. Also the Beethoven was written by...well...Beethoven. The guy knew what he was doing. For the Beethoven, I used almost all of the faster performance articulations including detache, spiccato, marcato, and harsh. I also used the performance repetition articulations extensively.

Yes, the lyricism is very tough to deal with, I agree. But I'm curious how many performance instruments you used in the Borodin? I'm pretty convinced that these should be used wherever possible, as they just contain so much more sonic information - all of those little things that you don't notice on a "one-shot" playback. For example, if I audition the different articulations, for short notes, and so on, I will generally 'prefer' the short note samples (for example) to their performance rep equivalents. However, when it comes time to hear these in the actual setting, I think the performance ones win every time, even if they don't sound as 'good' in isolation. Am I making sense? So, I guess I'm curious whether the percentage of performance articulations used in the Borodin was as high as in the Beethoven.

Of course, you also mention the first impression that popped into my head: "well, it's Beethoven!" 😉

J.

[Patrick Wilson]

Both sublime. Thanks.

[julian]

@JBacal said:

Thanks musos, Beat, julian, jbm, Guy, mplaster, Christof and Paul for listening and posting your reactions.

julian-- I think the Beethoven took me roughly 7 long days.

 

 

Best,

Jay

Thanks for the info Jay. This does rather raise a catch 22 situation. Your rendition of the Beethoven is of such a high standard, along with the VSL library used to create it that it would be perfectly usable in a large number of professional situations. However, and here's the rub, if you value your time and skills realistically, 7 long days would surely equate to the session fees for a suitably skilled string quartet and the recording equipment (studio fee) required to create a real performance.

...Which is a good thing and a bad thing - good in that it still protects the ability of real musicians to earn a livelyhood and bad in that despite the  great advances in the VI software it takes someone of Jay's skill to extract the absolute best and then at a time penalty that probably makes  it uneconomical at the professional level.

Still congratulations Jay, receiving the plaudits from fellow users is at least recognition of your skill and time spent!

regards

Julian 

[Guy Bacos]

Although Jay will respond himself, I'll add one defense to that "little bug". I have the impression that if Jay would of done this a year ago it would of taken him 2-4 weeks, now it's 7 long days, and with more practice in this specific craft it will keep diminishing, once you know how to phrase some passages they tend to eventually show up again the same way and you start to have the option of using the same presets, you also know your lib more than ever, so everything goes faster. If I assume wrong Jay, I'll be quiet!

[JBacal]

Hi Julian-- I am slow and obsessive! A more sane person could probably get comparable results with VSL in about 3-4 days. Guy could probably do it in a single afternoon! There is no doubt that a busy professional musician could get faster and perhaps better results by hiring 4 top-notch string players and a state-of-the-art recording facility. But this assumes you have the cash to hand over to all these people and that the string players already know the piece very well or are willing to learn and rehearse it for free. Fortunately (or is that unfortunately?), I am neither busy nor professional so I actually enjoyed the time spent working on these. [:D]

Best, Jay

[PaulR]

@julian said:

This does rather raise a catch 22 situation. However, and here's the rub, if you value your time and skills realistically, 7 long days would surely equate to the session fees for a suitably skilled string quartet and the recording equipment (studio fee) required to create a real performance.

 

...Which is a good thing and a bad thing - good in that it still protects the ability of real musicians to earn a livelyhood and bad in that despite the  great advances in the VI software it takes someone of Jay's skill to extract the absolute best and then at a time penalty that probably makes  it uneconomical at the professional level.

That's well observed Julian. You could start a whole debate on this subject alone based on this one rendition of the Beethoven.-------7 days to do the Beethoven may seem long - I would think it took Beethoven a little longer to write it ---- but if you were doing renditions in the modern world for say, film or tv score writers that were not so good at making their own renditions with sample libraries---this Beethoven is a pretty good calling card. Most music written for film or tv I would suggest, is not quite as good as the Beethoven quartet writing, therefore may take a lesser time to do with samples ( although I realize there is no set in stone formula for time versus a musical piece). ---------Another interesting point - where are you going to get a string quartet (at the drop of a hat) that are going to play like that? There are many great quartets to be sure - but finding them and booking them and then paying for that kind of quality is another issue.----You can take this further - getting a full orchestra to play. There's still the issue of the sound though - if the sound gets to the point whereby 'musicians' ( I use that word loosely) cannot tell the difference - then it becomes a very different world.

[William]

The Borodin shows how doing the simplest performance is the hardest.  I tried doing a childishly simple-to-play (in MIDI) performance of a violin solo, and it was impossible.  That is probably because of the infinity of things that players do when playing something very slow and espressivo.  This performance however is better than any other I have heard using samples on an espressivo string piece. 

The Beethoven shows that so far, fast and rhythmic pieces are more playable by samples.  It is so good it is amazing in its perfection.  I don't think this can be done better with samples no matter how much more advanced they get because it sounds perfect.  Both pieces show the extreme musicality of Jay's playing. He does far more with expressive,  musical  performance than most performers either digital or acoustic.