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  • Idea how VI Software might make the powerful VSL available inside the limited "Dimension&q...

    The "Problem": 

    VSL has become over the years (at least on my HDD) a very powerful and versatile Samplelibrary with lots of useful different kinds of samplesets. If you give every Patch you need his own entry in an Expression maps, - at least for the strings - your Expression Map will become much longer than any normal Screen would display.

    One big reason is the fact, that one find lots of variants of certain type of articulations. The Expression map seem to be not intended to represent all those possible Patches but is good to represent the Variety of articulations you can find or write in the score of a composition.(Thats makes it relevant for the comunication with notation software)

    I have already tried myself to create Matrices and presets for at least a kind of universial Expression map. And yes VI Pro allows already very much in this direction, presumably more than any other Sampleplayer do today.

    That means that VI Pro and the Idea of the Sample-Matrix is allready an ingenius answer to this problem that you have for all articulation still enough differents variatns as it it possible to combine the different patches to represent the different charakters of two articulation "dimensions" (and with A/B, VelocityXfade and SlotXFade and the combination of multiple matrices one gains further partial "dimensions").

    I will call it here "dimensions" of articulation since this is how I would like to have it:

    If I use VSL I have for instance to decide:

    1. ) What Instrument shall play (I decide this in the certrain Sequencertrack)
    2. ) The kind of Articulation written in the Score (Legato, Staccato, Tremolo etc. This is what a Expressionmap can do and can apply to nearly any kind of instrument. If there is a unified working Form for all instruments one can even copy midievents between different instrumentsgroups if they share musical motives f.i.)
    3. ) How much instruments shall play (For Strings this might be Solo-, Dimension-, Chamber, Orchestra, Appassionata or even third party libraries one might like to combine. One have to answer this question likewise for Winds to)
    4. ) should it be muted or not (this is available for the most Stringsamples and Articulations and even some Brasssamples to)
    5. ) Is there Vibrato or a certain kind of Vibrato
    6. ...) There are often more individual "Dimensions" a kind of Articulation can offer (different intensities or characters of legato, Portamento, durations and directions of  dynamics, Attacs, note durations etc.

    The millions of Samples the VSL produces seem to me just the result of different combinations of those "Dimensions" of tonal character. If it would be just the question, how to navigate through this more and more endless Variety of patches you will sooner or later end up with navigation systems like Native Instruments KORE has introduced, selecting patches by the combination of attributes. This is nice for navigation.

    But the way the VI-Player already indicates might go far beyond just navigation if you would be able to open up more than two/three dimensions of your matrices with some aditional options as it is now. In mathematical Terms: Dont stick on the two or three-Dimensions of the cartesian coordinate system. Better think about becomming universal n-dimensional and make thoses Dimensions what the user is working with  - no longer the single patch, as it seem to be already no problem with the velocity layers, or Slots. 

    I would like to have "the same" possibilities in each "Dimension" not only patchchanging in the matrix and different matrices, not only XFade in the slots and Velocity layers. If such Dimensions of sound combine variations of articulations, it would make musical sense not only to change them fast, but also often to XFade through, as the "real" Violinist for instance also must not load another patch to change the duration of his cresc, or the intensity of his vibrato. He could "Xfade" in many directions seemlessly.

    That mean I would like to have the possible variations of Sound stacked together to either scroll or also fade through comparable samples controlling just the different kinds of written articulations with expression maps, but change the certrain character of a Staccato, or legato or whatever with his own Midi CC-Data (I think 128 CC's should be enough even to control the Millions of Samples VSL is still going to produce in the comming years ;-) ).

    But done this consequently by the developer might reduce the work for the user, who would no longer hassle around with lots of different libraries and their more and more endless Variety of patches, but will just control the "Dimensions" of Variations available of a certain kind of articulation. As you sell different Libraries today, you might than sell available dimensions of Articulation of libraries making the samplesets as versatile as a user would like to pay for.

    Of course this is "Zukunftsmusik", but as Goethe put it "Dich im Unendlichen zu finden, Musst unterscheiden und dann verbinden;"(Atmosphäre aus Gedichte Gott und die Welt), but using VSL already for years, I am definitly interested in the Future of VSL And even if I know that it would be presumably quite impudent to just demand something impossible other should do and I could of course imagine that your developpers obviously do have a quite inspired technical fantasy, I still belive, that creative technicians sometimes might be inspired or at least a bit supported in their work with a little impudents like that ;-).

    So I hope you would not resent this impudents here

    best

    fahl5


  • I tried what was done in the video example of a slider between vibrato and no vibrato. To me it sounded like a slider going between two samples and not a real musician. I won't use that. Not sure of what other uses for the slider would be but would like to hear suggestions. Using it to control attack also sounded artificial to me. Realistic vibrato  and attack with full user control maybe is an area that is best left to real musicians I guess or for physical modeling. 


  • You would have to have a coherent design along with the samples I would think.

    Kirk Hunter has a product that is supposed to do that, but I don't have it and haven't really looked at it.
    I don't think 'full user control' is 'best left to real musicians', I have found that sample libraries have continued to advance over the ten years or so I've been in it and the time has come for it as per vibrato. For me, in my own music, I am trying to dodge same rate of vibrato by strategies, sleight-of-hand as it were.


  • I am not just looking for Vibrato or Volume envelops. I think that VSL users general know that any variant in sound would be the more convincing the more it is based on real samples.

    VSL has done incredible much incredible good things.

    The progress of the available Hardware allows to have much more patches loaded than ever.

    .......To much for the poor range you reasonable could handle with expression maps.

    My point was:

    It definitly needs more efficient concepts to handle with the extreme large variety of different patches/variants a super package user has on his harddisk.

    VI already does a great job to make much articulations available.

    But it would be great not just to allow much patches to be available, but organise them more intelligent, more easy and musical reasonable to avoid long searches for the right sample.

    My Idea was: to give every dimension of the sound its own CC to chose the right patch of all availables.

    This might make things for us aswell musical more powerful as more intuitive.

    VI also does already a great job to X-Fade different samples.

    If you choose the different qualities of an articulation in combining CC-Settings How great would it be, if this would be combined with the possibility to x-fade/blend between samples

    In short my Point is:

    1) please develop more efficient organisationstructures for the wonderful endless variety VSL already provides,

    2)  please develop (if ever possible) more possibilities to musical reasonably blend between different variant-samples. 

    best

    fahl5