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  • Boccherini : String Quintet op 41 n°1(with the turkish Finale) , violin and VSL Instruments

    The number of chamber music works written by Boccherini is impressive. Many of them have never been registered. As I love this composer, I started to record some of these unknown works and have made these recordings online since 2001 :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Boccherini (under «Media»)

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldN9Knkr0whkY5nU7ycs5Q.

    Until then I used my violin and a synthesizer.

    My last recording uses VSL instruments for the first time :

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMNgdQh2HDg

    .


  • Hi Jacques,

    Fantastic job! I just don't know if I could cirticize anything at all, I guess I'm so excited by the violin(s) that you've played so well that I've lost my ability for critical thinking. Really, it all sounded quite right to me. Your interpretation made sense to me, too (to the extent of my familiarity with Boccherini's music, which is not too much). The dynamics, the tempo, it was all very organic. I recorded violin in the past (with a musician from an honored orchestra), and I think I understand the amount of work you've done for this. The violin was just tiny bit out of tune a couple of times, but even those imperfections didn't bother me as everything is too perfect in the sampled world.

    Cheers,

    Crusoe.


  • Hi Crusoe,

    Many thanks for the wonderful compliments!

    As you write, this is a huge job, both for the recording of the violin (I have never worked my instrument so much than for these Boccherini recordings) as for the mixing itself. It is also thanks to the powerful aesthetic emotion that gives me this divine music that I am ready to spend dozens of hours for a single movement.

    Cheers

    Jacques


  • Jacques,

    Allow me to add my compliments to those of Crusoe for your work on this marvelous music. The playing, the interpretation, the recording, the beautiful final mix with the VSL instruments...all superb! It makes me think that this an area with huge potential for these virtual orchestral libraries that very few people have explored: creating parts to fill in the missing pieces of ensembles where the lead voice(s) are recorded live then skillfully blending them into a complete performance. It reminds me of the old Music Minus One records, but those were always accompaniment tracks to well-known solo pieces...sort of Klassical Karaoke. Your work is different; important voices in a small ensemble, sculpted to interact so fluidly with the recorded parts so as to be virtually indistinguishable from the "real" voices. The result is a very worthy performance of this elegant music. I'm sure old Boccherini is smiling to know that, 200 years later, his music has such a talented and enthusiastic advocate. Bravo!

    Tom


  • This sounds amazingly seamless - there is no audible difference between the live and sampled instruments.  Really good expressive performance - congratulations on a such a great job.  I am curious which VSL instruments were used and how you did the mix - the EQ and reverb of all the instruments sound exactly right.


  • I can only agree with everything said before. The music is beautiful and the performance is just marvelous.

    I am not sure if this is partly the youtube stream, but the mix and the reduction of certain frequency bands, makes it sound like an old recording and in my opinion significantly adds to the realism.

    Thanks for sharing!


  •  

    Thank you very much for your compliments and your very pertinent remarks. Honestly I did not expect such positive critics.

     


    @Tom:

    Oh yes the good old Music Minus One! I thought about it too! Theoretically we could even imagine with the possibilities of the Internet that a real violist and two real cellists would play their respective part to finally reach a real quintet.
    You're right, I'm an enthusiastic defender of Boccherini because I am deeply saddened to see how much this genius is underestimated!

    I would like to emphasize on this occasion that these recordings are intended only to make known many masterpieces that still sleep. Their musical value must be relativized for two reasons: the first is that Boccherini, himself cello virtuoso, emancipated his instrument out of his role of accompaniment. Thus, some sublime solos can not be rendered in all their fullness, in all their beauty with virtual cellos; the second reason is that timbre is a fundamental component of Boccherini's art. No composer, in my opinion, has considered the problem of timbre with as much obsession as he. His works are full of incredible instrumental textures, always new, that it is not possible to reproduce with the finesse and subtlety that would impose, using virtual instruments.




    @William:


    Yes and that's something that surprised me from my first recordings: we often have the impression that we are dealing with 5 real musicians whereas at the beginning I used a synthesizer which is obviously less realistic than a VSL instrument. We may be in the presence of a kind of psychoacoustic effect that we could compare with optical illusions: as the brain perceives real violins, it has the illusion that the other instruments are also real. ????


    I noted in detail the VSL instruments used at the beginning of the video (00:04).


    As for the mix, I do not use EQ, neither on the violin nor on the other instruments. It happens to me exceptionally when my violin sounds too acidic. All the parts (real violins and VSL instruments) are recorded without reverb and I only apply the reverb to the main output of the mixer, which means that the 5 instruments have the same reverb with the same amount. Only the panoramic is individual.


    My biggest problem - and that's what takes me the most time - is the volume balance between the 5 parts, which is essential in the field of chamber music. It is for this reason that I convert the MIDI tracks to audio and thus work the 5 audio tracks in Samplitude 11 which makes this work a lot easier because this software is object-oriented and allows to instantly adjust the volume of each object.

    @ Kai


    I understand perfectly what you mean but as indicated for William I do not correct the frequencies. By the way you can download the original waves, the links are in the description page of the youtube video.

     

     

    Cheers

    Jacques


  • last edited
    last edited

    @Another User said:

    Yes and that's something that surprised me from my first recordings: we often have the impression that we are dealing with 5 real musicians whereas at the beginning I used a synthesizer which is obviously less realistic than a VSL instrument. We may be in the presence of a kind of psychoacoustic effect that we could compare with optical illusions: as the brain perceives real violins, it has the illusion that the other instruments are also real. ????

    This is pretty much what I thought as well. At least this seems to be the case with the solo violin on top of everything else.

    Regards,

    Crusoe


  • Ahhhh .... I don't care that this is an old thread - what a great listen. Real energy and not afraid of sitting the listener on the 6th chair.

    You do the music proud.


  • PaulP Paul moved this topic from Orchestration & Composition on