Then, I added the Adagio. Here, the storm is approaching, but still not there. And the solo violin can sing melancholically, while the violins remind a sound of flies in the summer heat.

Lot of work on the attacks and the vibrato recorded in each dynamic layer.

Paolo


Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (in MP3)

Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (in AIFF)

Paolo your performance sounds great, extremely espressivo and beautifully done!  But on the audio there is something wrong in the EQ, it sounds like an old transistor radio!  What is going on there?  Something happened because it is not just MIR - did you use some extreme EQ?  It sounds like all frequencies are gone in certain areas of the spectrum.

Paolo I don't know but maybe try MIR with no other effect and compare them.    

Well, I've updated both movements, after further rethinking some passages and following the hints from those fellows that were so kind to point me towards the rustier things. I hope this made things flowing better!

Paolo

Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (in AIFF)
Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (in MP3)

William, thank you again for lending me an ear!

I moved Violins II a bit more to the centre (and more in front of the main mics), and slightly increased the volume in MIR. They are still not at the same level of Violins I when these latter play together with the solo violin, due to the notorius sample-library paradox of sections being greatly incresed in size when adding a soloist or a first desk. However, I feel that a bit of difference in volume may be desired, to accentuate the effect of echo that Vivaldi may have demanded to create spatial depth (the storm sounds here, and the echo return there).

As for the odd sound of the accompanying figure in the Adagio, what I tried to do was to make Vivaldi's indication ("mosche e mosconi", that is "flies and bluebottles") sound as realistic as possible. I wanted a buzzing, insect-like sound, to increase the sense of discomfort of the summer heath. I tried to replace it with a more ordinario position, and it should sound like this:

Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (ordinario) (in MP3)

Otherwise, with my choices and your corrections in the other points, this could be the result:

Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (in AIFF)
Vivaldi, L'Estate, II Adagio (in MP3)

Vivaldi, L'Estate, III Presto (in AIFF)
Vivaldi, L'Estate, III Presto (in MP3)
 

Paolo

Originally Posted by: Paul McGraw

What a delight! This proves yet again that VSL is the only library that can really effectively handle the classical and baroque era music. Your solo violin part is simply fabulous. Perfection!

Paul, thank you very much for listening (and for your kind words)!

Doing this piece helped me very much in understanding how this tool called VSL works. After finding my way, I think I can agree that it’s a stunning match, when coming to various styles and epochs of the classical music.

The main goal of virtual libraries being giving the most accurate idea of how a piece could sound when handled to real performers, I think I could discover some tricks on how to go near to it – thanks to the kind forum members who helped me in refining my humble means.

The next step, with the solo violin in the Adagio, is to use time stretch to dynamically vary the trills' speed. I’ve already adjusted my presets to fit those variations in different cells of the matrix!

Paolo

Dear Beat, thank you very much for listening and for your detailed analysis!

I'm looking at my file, and oddly I see that I never used staccato for accents. I alternated (depending on the intensity required and the context) harsh repetition, marcato, sfz/sffz. Why I didn't use staccato or spiccato I don't know, but it's probably because I was looking for more extreme dynamics. To smoothen things a bit I had to lower velocity in some of the accented notes.

Note lenght adjustment has been one of the most time consuming operations I did. Probably, I can say I manually edited each single note. Argh. But, judging from your impressions, it is not yet a completed work.

I'll be back at this piece later, when my ears will have dried enough from working on it. One of the things I will have to do is to replace the complicated assembling of prerecorded trills with performed trills in the Adagio, to make speed variations more natural.

In the meantime, it will be an opportunity to return to your precious tutorials, probably the first references I've ever studied when first learning VSL (and for which I want to thank you)!

Best,
Paolo