I apoligize to the forum (and Dietz).  I should have walked away from such taunting.

Everyone else understood exactly what I was asking help for.   20 years ago, the tools I had allowed, and perhaps helped, me to be productive and creative. They were roughly similar: a sequencer, keyboard, and a synth.  Today the tools are more complex, and I'm trying to find the right route to utilize them so that they don't get in the way of creativity - having to jump between screens, back and forth from keyboard to screen. 

You decided to insult me and my music, which you know nothing about. The reason I would use these tools is because other than when I was in college, I haven't had access to a large, live ensemble to perform my works.  Back then I also wrote pieces for a live flute ensemble, string quartet, solo instruments & piano, and several arrangements for full jazz ensemble -- all of which I wrote out, by hand, on paper and were performed.

"artists..fartists" -- Really, dick?  So you are the authority on exactly what makes an artist? So nice that you've deemed yourself a high-artist, but determined with no knowledge of anything about me, that I cannot be one.

You certainly did not need to indict me or the type of music I create, as if the music you create is superior to any other type of music - and how the hell do you know what I mean by "neat"?  What if neat means Bartok-like, what if it means Celine Dion-like, what if it means dubstep?  What made you think that the music I intend to create would contain loops or pre-recorded snippets that I can just piece together because I don't know anything about writing?  And never once did I mention that I'd be posting it anywhere - and if I did, and you didn't want to hear it, then don't listen.

And furthermore - if someone does create music that uses Project Sam, sounds like a Celine Dion song, or loops or whatever else they wanted to use, and they enjoyed doing it, and it made them feel good, who are you to tell them they are inferior, could not be an artist, and should just quit?   You're clearly a big jerk. If you have nothing nice to say, then shut the hell up.

Not everyone does this to create perfectly structured esoteric symphonies, following every little rule so they can have high-art discussions about it. Some people just want to have fun because music is a nice outlet.

Gosh Errikos, thanks for that brilliant insight and helpful advice.  I'm sure everyone on this forum is all the better for having you as a member.

I notice you don't seem to have any posts where you've posted your brilliant compositions so the world can hear how incredibly great you are.  But then again, I assume that your music was just performed at the Disney Music Hall by the LA Philharmonic, or perhaps your scores have accompanied some of the greatest films of the last decade. We'll all be sure to listen for your next egomaniacal opus.

I guess we can't all be awesome like you - never needing to ask for help on anything.

Oh hell yeah!  I would love to play this game just to have your music rev me up!

The dubstep thing was slick too. Awesome work. 

Thank you all for the input. I think Conquer probably has a similar work style so I will try his first suggestion first. Limiting the patches may bring me closer to what it was like with my old synths.

@DG - I have programmed a few pages of Mozart's clarinet concerto. That was easy, especially with the expression maps. For me, it's during the initial creative process that I'm frustrated with the tools, but here's why a lot of these suggestions might be challenging for me unless I reboot my whole brain:

For one thing, I've never "written music" down, per se, I've always played, composed, recorded, sequenced, etc.. all at once. I do know music theory quite well as a jazz pianist and 3 yrs as a music major, and can write notation, but I don't really hear ideas in my head and can't get them down like that. For me, it was always easy to mess around on the keyboard until I found a few motifs that I liked, then develop them through improv and happy accidents. I'd start with a framework of the piece in the sequencer, then keep playing and recording different instrument tracks - just letting stuff fall out of my fingers in a rough draft. Then I'd go back, harvest the good stuff, and reproduce the good accidents in a cleaner way -- rinse, repeat. Something about Cubase (and Cakewalk) stops that process and I don't know why.

I certainly admire those who can just compose with notation or paper or just on piano, but I don't think I can do that. I'm fairly jealous of those who can, including my dad with perfect pitch.  

@Kanon - I don't think my intention was to fully render the piece as I wrote it, it was more that VSL presented me with these tools that I thought I had to use this way. I think Conquer's suggestion to use 1 articulation per track is good. In the old days if I needed some pizz, I would just do it on another track, which is probably exactly how I still should be doing it, at least for the initial writing. Or maybe I'll just use simpler sounds in Halion and forget about all these keyswitches.

I'm seriously ready to quit.  20 years ago I used to make a ton of music on a hardward sequencer with a 24 character LCD screen. And I was great at it.  Now I have all this power of Cubase and Vienna, and I just can't get any creative flow. I can use Cubase in general pop music recording, but orchestral just seems different.  It's making me nuts. 

Here's some of why -- I have to try to setup my keyboard or the VSL presets because it's got 61 keys and all the Vienna presets are made for 88-key keyswitches.  Then map MIDI CC to expression, cross-fade, etc....  How to do this for all different instruments, then set up 30 track templates in Cubase with all instruments laid out, etc....   Does everyone go through this torture? How do you get anything done?

All I wanted to do was write some neat orchestral music like I used to do in college, and I'm just running into 42 yr old frustration with analysis paralysis.  What's worse -- I'm actually a computer programmer (senior, significantly respected at work) and I just can't get this stuff to flow like I did with much simpler tools.   I must be missing something simple? I feel like I just need to see the light.

Does anyone have starting point suggestions?  What's your creative flow?  Do you have a video of how you get started and how you lay down tracks, do you work with a click track when doing orchestral or just work freely, etc...  Stuff like that.

I have Cubase 7 and Vienna Special Edition 1 (basic orchestra and a few solo).  Just got a Nektar Panorama P6 keyboard with the new Cubase integration.  (I also have an Alesis QS8 weighted 88, but I didn't think it had the right stuff to work with Cubase like the new controllers do, and weighted was hard for me to play faster parts, but maybe I should have gotten the P1 and kept my keys.)

This may excite you for a possibility.  A guy is using the Leap Motion to control filters on a VST effect:

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys6Imj_hmEc

I just received a developer unit from Leap Motion and started playing around. There are several MIDI library APIs available so doing programming for these should be fairly simple to start making some test apps. 

I'm thinking I could make an app that you'd leave open in the background that perhaps would send MIDI through a MIDI server app like rptMIDI (I have a tablet app that works with that).    You could pick a MIDI CC#, a range, maybe one controller for X and one for Y axis.   Or maybe a different controller # for each hand as shown in the video?  Or both!

I started with Special Edition Vol 1.  It gave me a good taste of VSL without a huge price tag.  Sweetwater has good prices for this stuff.  Also - once you've purchased just one of these smaller items, you get reasonable upgrade pricing if you want to add on to it.

Also, also - once you have a license for Vienna, you can download a 30-day demo of MIR and the full Ensemble Pro. Please do yourself a favor and play with it before dropping another $500+.

I gotta say - MIR did NOT blow me away.  In fact I found it not remotely as impressive as I thought it would be.  They even tell you in the instructions for MIR that putting things visually in places you think they'd sound good in does not always work - they recommend playing around with locations in an unrealistic fashion to make things sound better.  To me - the whole idea of MIR would be that you'd lay out your orchestra just like you see one on stage and then it should just sound good. If I'm gonna be putting my violins on top of my trumpet players heads and turning them all backwards to face away from the stage, then put the flutes in the back left corner behind the timpani --  well, I'd just as soon run them through some Cubase reverb and call it a day.

MIR was no miraculous solution. I also could not tell the difference between most of the mics unless I did extreme things to the configurations.  It's kind of a BS selling point.

I finally decided on the Nektar Panorama P6.  http://www.nektartech.com/

I found that it was similar to the Axiom Pro series but has a color screen and as of March 2013 will have deep 2-way Cubase integration, not just a simple MIDI controller. The action is pretty good as far as non-weighted goes.  I was specifically looking for non-weighted for string stuff.  I still have my 88-key to my left when I want to lay down piano tracks.  They also have a 49 key unit (P4) and even a controller called the P1 without the keyboard  (all the sliders, knobs, and pads).

I would highly recommend this controller to anyone using Cubase.  Plus it is fully programmable as any other controller if you wanted to control Vienna - any button and slider can be mapped not only to MIDI controls but also to keyboard macros.  It was originally designed just for Reason, and they just announced the Cubase thing at NAMM a few weeks ago.   It was a lucky break that I stumbled on it just days before I bought an Axiom AIR.  I think I'll be much happier with this.

Here is a website specifically designed to advise artist-oriented businesses to get insurance:

http://www.studioprotector.org/OnlineGuide/Safeguarding/GettingtheRightInsuranceCoverage/BusinessInsurance.aspx

Music Pro Insurance was listed on this site:

https://www.musicproinsurance.com/

They specifically say "$5,000 in computer hardware and software, additional coverage can be added"

That MB actually has 3 6gb ports if you count the eSATA on the back panel. You can connect an external drive and get equal performance as if it was an internal drive connected to the MB ports.   If you are doing any digitial audio recording, like vocals or other instruments, you'd also want that drive to be separate if possible.  I would say that your libraries and DAW tracks would be best served by the faster ports more than the windows drive.  You'd be well served by using RAID for the windows drive. I also wouldn't bother using SSD for windows/program installs, instead get two cheaper 2 TB hard drives and run a RAID mirror so that if your drive goes, you don't have any downtime of setting up windows, customizing all your apps again, etc...  Your libraries are replacable data - you can always re-download, reinstall from DVD and/or back up that static data to the mirror.  You could also backup the DAW tracks to those larger mirrored drives, but keep the active tracks on the SSD. And/or backup all data to an external cloud service or some other device of your choice.

RAID is also useful if you can't afford multiple SSD drives and need lots of very large data to perform well while reading or writing.  You can setup various configurations that will perform better when reading, better when writing, or are fault-tolerant (prevent data loss).  The fault-tolerant ones tend to be better at reading until you get into a lot of drives.

You may be asking the wrong questions.  First, if you have homeowners insurance you should be able to get it added to that policy; if you rent, get renters insurance.   Otherwise, if you are using several thousand dollars worth of hardware and software for any kind of business purpose then you may want to consider some kind of self-employment or small business insurance.  When my dad was a gigging musician, he surely had a policy out on his B3, Rhodes, Moog, 2 Arps and all the amps and speakers and stuff.   See if framing it the right way makes a difference. Or you just get a larger blanket policy for like $20,000 to cover your general business needs, you may want even more in liability if you are doing business stuff to protect you in case a project goes bad and someone tries to come after you.  Like if you're a film composer and you screw up a contract and the producer blames you for losses because the film didn't release on time.  Even if there's no case, I wonder if business liability insurance would cover court costs?

 Oh that thing rules!!  I recall seeing something on gizmag a few months ago but I forgot to follow it to completion.  I wonder if they'll ship soon.

For that price, it's kinda worth a try - even if it doesn't work for VSL, I bet it'll be useful for all kinds of other computing tasks.  I'm a computer programmer so I'm always looking for shortcuts and macros and stuff.  It'd be interesting for me to gather some of my colleagues and see if we could come up with a cool musical product to develop on this platform - something more like that Smule company would make.    A much more expensive option is the Microsoft Kinect for Windows but I'm not even sure that MS has released it for general consumption or just for developers. 

I'm going to get on the purchase list now, so I'll report back as soon as I get one and play with it.

Does anyone have recommendations for synth action keyboards that they've configured well for VSL?  I'm a piano player and I have an 88-key hammer action but I just can't play delicate orchestral lines on it so I want something lighter for VSL.  I know the action itself is a personal choice I'll have to make, but I'd like to narrow the field slightly first. There are way too many choices!

I think 61 key is enough since I have the 88 for piano stuff. I've just gotten back into sequencing and recording and stuff from a long break. I think I'm going to choose Cubase 7  (I wanted to wait for the Windows Digital Performer but my Cubase demo is running out).   My last method of choice was in 1997 using the built-in sequencer on my Kurzweil K2000 LCD screen and a 4-track cassette with MIDI time-code on track 1.   I tried playing with Cakewalk like 8 years ago and I just couldn't move my creative process into that paradigm. I'd been using hardware sequencers with tiny 24-character screens since 1987 - I was a master at it.  I got frustrated and walked away and joined a community chorus for a few years.  Singing didn't require any frustration.

I know this is an older post, but for someone else's reference, hammer action is not my favorite for controlling orchestra stuff.  I've been playing jazz/pop piano/keyboards for 20 years and I love the 88-key weighted hammer for that, but not synth/orch.

just got Special Edition vol 1 a month ago and I have kinda bad hands (tendonitis kind of pain) and it's really difficult to do runs and stuff on my Alesis QS8. I'm about to get a non-hammer action keyboard to do sequencing, except for piano/electric piano sounds.  Granted the QS8 is an older keyboard but the extra resistance is not conducive to a light touch -- also the aftertouch is really hard to use, whereas synth keyboards have mushier aftertouch.

You can add a Vienna Ensemble Event Input VSTi to a new track.  That thing allows you to connect to additional MIDI ports on Vienna Ensemble.  It's not very clear in the manual but when I went back and read it for the 15th time I finally realized that's what you need to do.

If you have VST3 apparently you don't need to do that, but for DAWs that don't support that, the Event Input is the perfect solution.

It has no audio output - all the audio comes out of the first instance.