Vienna Instruments Pro - is there a wanted-feature-list? Here are some suggestions

[TobiasWagner]

Hi everyone,

It's probably already late in the game now that things are announced, but I wanted to know whether there is a particular forum where we can discuss new features or workflow issues for feedback with the developing team.

I have a few suggestions, potentially for future updates of the software:

1) it would be great to be able to cross-fade between more than 2 articulations. Say, you wanted to build a violin sustain patch that can transform to either a tremolo (x-axis) or a ponticello sustain (y-axis). You'd need two controllers assigned to move either vertically or horizontically between at least 4 slots, but it would be a bit like being able to fade between matrix cells as opposed to switching between them, just at the cell-level. With the wealth of articulations available in the VSL it would open up so many textural possibilities.

2) Morphing-transitions for solo instruments (I keep bringing this up): the ability to move from one articulation or velocity level to the next without the doubling-effects of two instruments sounding instead of one. I know that this requires a lot of analysis, but with manufacturers such as Samplemodeling and the likes producing stunningly playable and realistic instruments the VSL has to stay current.

3) A refresh-button for the preset- and matrix lists. Sometimes one wants to use a newly created matrix or preset in several other MIDI channels as well. In VE Pro these lists are not updated, and it makes loading newly created matrices into several channel strips cumbersome.

Looking forward to the new VI Pro. The new features look great as is already.

Best,

Tobias

[Abel]

these are all great feature requests!

+1

[sirbellog]

 +1 as well for all those features !

and yes, I think as well that from now on VSL, to keep up with (or ahead of) the competition, should maybe focus less on just sampling, and more on what can make all their good existing samples sound even more "human".

Their gigantic samples collection is a like miilionaire's bank account in terms of quantity and quality, and as such will not take age soon.

But IMO this investment must not sleep, but "work", and this work might be to combine this already-here wealth with a bit of "virtual", to inject some sort of "modeling"....

For 1 or 2 years indeed, more and more developers seem to have been devoting a growing part of their time and energy into both in-depth scripting and new features, in order to make their libs either more performance friendly or to force their samples into a more natural, life-like behaviour.

This seems to be the way go.

I do hope that VI Pro is the sign of a first step into this direction/strategy.

We love our VSL libs and a really sad thing would be to see them growing old...

[jammusique]

We should have a new feature thread. The strength of some other libraries is the Kontakt thing. With so so many users, NI can afford to really spend development money there.

Yes we really need more real time control of all these great sounding VSL samples. I'd like to be able to go from sustain to slow vib, to fast of vib with a fader (controler). Maybe crossfading from sus to vib, and then with the time stretch tool making the vib faster. The same should go for vib intensity

Maybe the new sampler will do this, but we need to be able be able to vary the speed of the cresc/decresc with a controler in real time. Since VSL has several dynamics speeds recorded in the big libraries, this might be possible.

[TobiasWagner]

Hey there,

Thanks for chiming in. The direction a lot of library designers are taking is a kind of articifial intelligence through scripting. Kontakt's scripting engine delivers a good foundation for that. It's less about being able to manually switch between hundreds of articulations, but more about interpreting the performer's gestures, with certain articulations and nuances made available through keyswitches, in particular latch-keyswitches for note-endings. It's the performer's approach versus the programmer's. The technical requirement that this takes is timbral coherence between those articulations, something that I run into prolems with when I put together diverse patches in a VI instance.

There is no other player software that gives you the flexibility VI does. But at some point it becomes overkill. It's great to have 128 matrices available with 128 cells each. Do I need it? No. What I would need is a more musical way in which the instruments programmed so that differences between patches are smoother. How would you like for instance to be able to assign a slider to evenly control the length of a short note: from a long detaché to a staccatissimo. Why not being able to have one matrix mod-wheel controlled velocity, and the other one set to velocity (i.e. a Vln leg and a pizz patch). Some of it would have to be done on a software level (I think a lot of instrument developers use artificial vibrato for instance.)

The Garritan Violin was an instrument that did exactly that. Although its sample pool did not sound good, the concept was great. I was able to perform my lines, and they came out much more musical. I have emulated its functionality by putting together quite a few matrices, but it's the timbral differences in the patches that become evident when they switch.

Just putting these thoughts out there...

Best,

Tobias

[jammusique]

Don't different articulations give different timbers?

[Raymonde]

@jammusique said:

Don't different articulations give different timbers?

In my experience that is always exactly the point whether we are talking the human voice (which has the greatest ability of all insturments  to work around this issue but most violinists would argue that one I think) or even a mallet instrument like the marimba. However, we are in the world of Midi controllers on the one side of the equation and patches with layered velocity levels on the other.  I have found that with a bit of experimentation with the Performance controllers there is already quite a lot of variation, some of which walks right into the territory mentioned in other posts on this thread. Back to the Midi controller side of things, energetic punching of the keys (my controller is still holding up after over ten years) will yield up quite a lot of fantastic variety. Try listening to the Pizzicato strings some time in their absolute dry version and punch out some notes on the midi keyboard. this works great on the bass and cello pizzicato where one can even hear a tiny bit of vibrato on each note if the initial velocity is at the max.