My concern is, resources are still an issue for me. I write and compose using a single PC, an Intel core i7 8700k with 64 GB of ram. A full orchestral piece consisting of about 60 tracks in which I use every instrument that is loaded, will eat every bit of that ram up in a heartbeat. I cannot upgrade my RAM any more than that, 64 is my motherboard limit, so my next option would be to start freezing tracks or converting tracks to audio, which would severely hamper my creativity (waiting minutes to unfreeze and reload a track is a creativity killer).

Factor in MIR Pro and perhaps a light compression / delay VST (I use the FX builtin to Ensemble 7 as the FX are quite good), and the video editing software I use (Magix Vegas Studio) which I like to have open with the music writing process so that I can write music and time / render it correctly in time with the video and things start to go quite nuts on resource usage. While I know there are options for reducing resource usage, and I certainly could do what I do without having everything loaded all at once, It would slow down the final bit of the process for me, when I am fine tuning the work I do.

It is also worth noting, probably 70% of what I work with is already what I would consider a light library (Special Edition libraries - 1,1+,2,2+,3,4,5,6,&7). I shudder to think how bad it would be if I were using the complete libraries. I mean, in all honestly, with exception to the solo instruments, luckily, I dont see a big enough value in the complete libraries (for me) to use them or I would have to consider replacing my motherboard and doubling my ram, a prospect that would run me about $1000.

As much as I absolutely love Orchestral Tools libraries and some of Spitfire libraries, the main reason I dont use them is the size. They are unbelievably ginormous and unnecessarily so.

I also, as a side note, do not want to introduce complexity in my workflow. Running Ensemble over a network, while neat, adds unecessary complexity that I just dont need or want. As the famous line goes, the more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

Synchron pianos is already one of the biggest piano libraries out there, surpassed only by another piano library that touts a terabyte and a half as I recall. I am glad that VSL decided to release the special edition synchron variant, as it serves well enough to my ear to use for orchestral work, and hell, I think the special edition variant is STILL larger in size than most piano libraries on the market.

Finally, I dont think it is beneficial to anyone to suggest that performance is better with higher sample rates. What we are doing is vastly different than what many articles are writing about, which is simple playback. We are adding FX and we are not merely simply playing wav audio. The audio format is in a proprietary format, not native to what soundcards are acustomed to playing, which adds overhead, increasing processor usage.

All this having been said, I am not against having an optional download for those that want higher quality, although, if this option is provided, I dont understand why they should need to sell it as a "give us more money" choice, because they already have the samples in this format. It would not or should not require much more effort on their end to make this option available, and it should be a free choice, as it is with every other library on the market that offers quality choices (Sonokinetic for example, it is a free optional download).

Personally, no offense meant, but I find it highly suspicious that anyone can tell the difference between 48 and 96 sample rates. Now, between 16 and 24 bit, in very specific circumstances, that I can tell the difference, but the circumstances where I can tell the difference are very specific, having to do with dithering with certain frequencies and lower volume levels. However, who am I to get into a debate over whether someone can hear a difference?

Anyway, I have Physics homework to get back to, make the option available free of charge, choice is never a bad thing, I merely wanted to address the notion that performance was better with higher sample rates.

Originally Posted by: Crystal

I just find this from a french site (https://deveniringeson.com/frequence-echantillonnage/) :

“(...)les pilotes de votre carte son (surtout les convertisseurs professionnel) seront optimisés pour une fréquence d’échantillonnage donnée. En général, les pilotes ASIO de vos convertisseurs sont optimisés pour la fréquence d’échantillonnage maximum qu’elle propose : 96 000 Hz et 192 000 Hz dans la majorité des cas. Ca peut être surprenant, mais vous aurez moins de latence et plus de soulagement pour le micro-processeur avec une fréquence d’échantillonnage plus grande.”

Reverso translation :

“drivers on your sound card (especially professional converters) will be optimized for a given sampling frequency. In general, the ASIO drivers of your converters are optimized for the maximum sampling frequency it offers: 96,000 Hz and 192,000 Hz in the majority of cases. This may be surprising, but you will have less latency and more relief for the microprocessor with a higher sampling rate. »

It could be an element for the discution about latency.

 

Gabiel Plalame

Right, but we arent just talking about playback, we are also talking about adding FX. The reverbs and other FX we add to our sounds becomes more complex (thus, significantly higher processor usage) with higher sample rates. Its easy enough to test, if you have a library that contains multiple sample rate options, both with and without FX.

On the off chance that they were included in "Drums" under Percussion, I found them, plus rolls. Yay Vienna, ok, now I know where to find them. I shouldve thought to look here, Ive been using the ones from epic orchestra all this time :(

I have both Starter Edition Complete for VIPro and Synchron (1, 1+, 2, 2+, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7) and I am curious, why do the starter editions not include your Taiko drums? I have it in Epic orchestra as a bonus instrument, but would love a way to drag this into the starter edition section of Synchron player, as I am forever forgetting where these things are and end up digging around in other libraries to find them, or, even better, Im sure you have a variant of them that has not only strikes, but rolls as well. Any chance an update can be provided for SE license holders that add the Taiko drums?

As a long time fan of Smart Orchestra (I use it for both live performances and for sketching), I really wish you had your beautiful coronet in here. It is, without a doubt, my favourite sampled instrument you guys have. I do not know why it is never mentioned when discussing the praises of VSL. In one of your videos for the expansion, you asked for instrument suggestions, well, here you go.

In addition to the coronet, Id also like to see a low brass and high brass ensemble in here. They dont need to be separated into different instruments, Trombones and Tubas mixed is just fine for low brass,

Also, phrases, where are the prebuilt phrases? This is a sketching library after all! Runs, rhythmic phrases, prebuilt chord structures, some sort of arp structure. I get it that Synchron isnt built with this functionaility, but you have it in Vienna Instruments Pro, but alas, the choices in Instruments Pro are also lacking. Its a feature with almost no presets. Now, as I understand it, prebuilt phrases are included with your complete libraries, but I do not understand not including them with the starter edition libraries. The starter edition libraries are extremely powerful and short changing them by suggesting that good phrasing just cant be done without the full set of articulations is just untrue. Sonuscore's The Orchestra Complete has fewer articulations than even the special edition core bundles and it has an arpegiiator that is just stunning and so easy to use. You really should purchase a copy of this and take a look at it, as far as orchestral arps go, there really is nothing better.

I have written tons of prebuilt runs and phrases inside of Instruments Pro, including rhythmic, runs, and chorded trills that unfortunately, are suck in Instruments Pro and cannot be used in Synchron Player that I use all the time (I have even written a few canned fanfares that I use for live performances from time to time).

Originally Posted by: dmidi

Originally Posted by: littlewierdo

Not to mention the memory footprint. A full orchestral piece requires 60 plus gigabytes of ram for me, and that is really nothing in comparison with what it could be. There is a reason why 44.1 at a 16 bit depth rate was chosen for CD audio, this is considered just above the maximum quality that anyone can hear a difference. Anything above this is really unecessary, unless you are time stretching samples (think slow motion video, the more frames you have, the smoother it will be). When it comes to orchestral, I dont think time stretching samples is something many people are apt to do.

1. No disrespect, but have you read the thread?  This is about LIVE instrument playability quality, not RECORDED/MIDI music file playback sound quality or time stretching. 

To summarize, there is a negative effect of latency on pianist's sense of hearing and motor cortex processing as impacted by low sampling frequency.  That is, if you press a key and you expect to hear the sound in 3 Milliseconds, but the sound instead comes to you in 6 Milliseconds, that will be as if the sound board has moved from 3 feet away to 6 feet away.  A bit wierd to say the least.  And that assumes no other latency elsewhere in the sound processing chain.  As there always is this latency in every component, the cumulative effect of latency might mean that the piano sounds as if the sound board is 10 feet or more away.  And that's before we start to consider the effect of jitter, which can be described as the sound board constantly shifting back and forth several feet, with this perceived movement happening from note to note or even during the resonance of a single note.  Aye...very bad indeed for your brain to be 'hearing' the grand piano vibrating back and forth.

Also note that as this jitter is likely random, good luck trying to achieve consistent playback between pieces. And that is true even for playback of MIDI notes in which instruments are closely placed.

There is a way to elilminate the 'sound shifting':  By roughly doubling the frequency from 44 to 96 Khz, the latency of the VSL library is cut in half, and that allows for a more consistent and authentic playing experience. And by doubling again from 96 Khz to 192 Khz the latency is halved again and we have more 'latency headroom' to stay under the audibility threshold.

Don't take my word for it, but do take VSL's deafening silience on this topic as being problematic.  I suggest if my explanations are not sufficient, please research and understand other trusted sources.

2. As to RAM requirements, this piano at 24 bit 44.1 Khz currently has a RAM requirement of 4-6 GB.  Doubling the sampling frequency will half the latency and only require a total of 6 GB * (96/44.1) = 13 GB.  Most laptops with any sort of multimedia claims will have 16 GB RAM or more.

To editorialize a bit, VSL is doing an enormous dis-service to themselves and their customers by attempting to ignore the issue.  Unfortunately, an uneducated customer at some point becomes a frustrated customer...and that's a net negative for musical creativity and classical music as a whole (LONG LIVE POP MUSIC?).

I have, and its chalk full of misinformation and jumps back and forth between audio quality and latency, I was speaking to the audio quality side of the discussion (my response back to you, did YOU read the thread?).

Latency is a huge, convoluted mess of a problem that cannot be nailed down to just one thing, as some have tried to do in this thread. Audio interfaces do not "perform" better with certain resolutions over others, and yes, I confirmed this with a friend of mine who designs audio interface circuitry for ASUS.

Also conveniently missing from this conversation is the significant increase in processing power (and thus delay) required to play back audio with effects at higher sample rates. RAM access times and storage to RAM access times are another big factor, and then, probably the biggest elephant in the room not even discussed is, where the majority of the latency comes from, the MIDI / USB / Firewire interface.

I work with sounds from all sorts of sources, ranging from Orchestral Tools crazy 24 bit samples to, by comparison, EastWests lighter sounds and latency is of ZERO concern to me. It is within expected tolerances of 15-20 MS, all of which is easily compensated for by Kontakt, Play, and Vienna's engines, which have settings that work very well for this. Very rarely do I have to go back and correct timing, unless I am working with something that needs to be REALLY tight (big percussion sections or many staccato notes that need to be really tight).

Finally, most DAWs, on the playback side of things, have a track delay setting that virtually eliminates this problem. My guess is, you havent set a predelay setting in your DAW, look into it, this conversation becomes a moot point once you discover this setting. Then you run into a different problem, calculating the predelay, or determining what the predelay setting should be, because it is different for each manufacturer of soundfonts, and can even be different from library to library (the general default numbers to set in your DAW are 30, 60, or 120 ms). From there, you can add additional time depending on your standard latency, so I usually add about 15 ms and everything I record and playback is spot on the beat.

If you email support, they will work something out with you. They should have an upgrade path, but the way Vienna (in my opinion, mistakenly) looks at it is, going from VI to Synchron is an upgrade, going from Synchron to VI is not an upgrade. The one thing I can tell you is, regardless of their policy and what they say on the forums, they are interested in making a sale and they will give you a good price, probably near equivalent to the upgrade from VI to Synchron path.

As to whether it is worth it, in my opinion, it is. Synchron is great for having an out of the box good sound. Synchron however is very epic, Hollywood movie soundtrack sounding, which is not always what I am looking for. VI on the other hand provides a more subdued sound that I can, if I choose, make sound more Hollywood'ish, or, I can use less a less "epic" timbre for when I am writing for a more "classical" feel. After all, Im not always looking to have people feel like they are listening to a soundtrack.

The coronet is one of the special gems in the VI collection, by far, it is my favourite solo instrument, followed by the classic oboe, and the flexibility these instruments offer in the VI version far surpasses the synchron versions. By having a less wet and heavily eq'd version of these two solo instruments, I am able to use these two solo instruments for a more soft and mellow tone than what the Synchron versions allow.

I might also add, VI is incredible with MIR Pro.

The biggest issues with VI instruments however is, they dont sound good out of the box. They will require some pre-tweaking. If you are willing to spend some money, Vienna provides easily set presets that make them sound good, but it will cost you. For starters, Instruments Pro ($160) is a must with VI instruments. Given that they are giving away the features of VI Pro in Synchron, I am still unsure why they are selling VI Pro, but it is what it is. The premium features offered in VI Pro range from humanization to (unbelievably, you have to purchase VI Pro for this next feature) polyphonic legato, and some very useful functionality like time-stretching. You will also want either Ensemble 7 Pro or Vienna Suite for the useful eq and compression presets. I would recommend Ensemble 7 personally, as I dont feel like Vienna Suite offers anything appreciable that Ensemble 7 Pro doesnt offer, especially for the 3x price difference. Finally, you will need a good reverb engine. MIRx is ok, albeit quite expensive for what it is (almost zero settings & cannot be used outside of Vienna Instruments), but it sounds quite good. It is also worth noting that they still do not have a Synchron stage MIRx roompack available, so it is a bit tricky getting VI instruments to blend with Synchron instruments if you are using MIRx. MIR Pro on the other hand is the top reverb engine choice for orchestral instrumentation, but is the most expensive reverb engine on the market, with altiverb coming in at about 66% of the price difference, and, MIR Pro offers a Synchron roompack, so you can make VI instruments blend perfectly with Synchron instruments.

In short, be prepared to spend some serious cash on VI instruments, outside of the purchase for the VI instruments. I have both Synchron and VI instrument special editions 1-7 and 1+ and 2+, VI pro, VEP 6 Pro (three licenses), VEP 7 Pro (1 license), Smart Orchestra, Smart Spheres and its addon, MIRx complete room pack, and MIR Pro unlimited + all of its roompacks. I only mention what I have purchased licenses for so you know that everything I am saying is coming from experience. You can expect to spend an additional $320 minimum for Instruments Pro and Ensemble 7 Pro at a minimum, then potentially another close to $500 for MIRx complete, or $1600+ for MIR Pro complete, but what you get in the long run is far more flexibility than what Synchron offers, at the cost of price and time that must be spent tweaking each instrument to make them sound good (which is much easier / faster to do with the purchase of Ensemble Pro and MIR Pro).

Because 2 mic positions per instrument doesnt capture the full room sound. Im sure Ill get pushback on this, but in our church, we place microphones at the instrument location, and microphones in the left, right, and rear balconies. The result is astonishing, and since audio coming into these balcony microphones contains a mix of all instruments, there are nuances that you just dont get having each instrument mic'd in its own, isolated channel.

Having re-read what I typed several months ago, I wasnt exactly clear on this, but I dont want 4 mic positions for 1 single instrument, I would like 3 additional microphone positions that emulate all of the sound being produced by all instrumentation at the same time. Hence, a microphone on the stage would capture that instrument, relatively isolated from all the other instruments. The other 3 microphones placed say in the balconies on the left and rear would capture and produce the audio one would hear if they were standing at that microphone position while the entire orchestra is playing (these microphones would not merely capture the sound of just one instrument, they would capture the sound produced by any instrument that is currently playing).

As I understand it, the processing is done on a per instrument basis, so, if I place a microphone in the balcony and I dont tie it to say the timpani, isolating that microphone will result in not hearing the timpanis at all.

In the business, we call these room microphones, and I would like the ability to place at least 3, and have them function like a room microphone would in a live setting.

What I would like to know is, what am I getting with this new library that I would not already have with the Special Edition VI Pro or Special Edition Synchron Edition libraries I already have? No new instruments and I dont see any new articulations, with exception to I think fluttertongue, and, some confusing lingo about vibrato being progressive or auto, which I dont understand.

The video demo Guy Bacos put together is wonderful by the way, but could be easily reproduced with the Special Editions, so I dunno. Its a great price, I might have pruchased it if I werent going to be broke for the next month paying for Physics / Math classes.

Originally Posted by: Pixelpoet1985

2) I downloaded the library yesterday. Today there is a new verison. What's the difference? Do I need to download it again?

2) For Vienna Instrument products, go to the Start menu --> Vienna Instruments Pro and launch Directory Manager. Download the update and drag the file into the Directory Manager window, this will apply the update.

For Synchron libraries, I believe the update will automatically install through the download manager.

You dont need to redownload the entire library.

My Ensemble startup time is about 5 minutes, all of it because it is "scanning plugins". The bizarre thing? I have 5 plugins - Synchron Player, Synchron Pianos, Vienna Instruments Pro, Kontakt 6..1.1, and Omnisphere. Closing Ensemble is not as bad, but it does still take about 2 minutes.

I am running a core i7 8700k with 64 GB of ram, Kontakt runs on a 10 TB spinning drive, everything else is installed to an M2 SSD (the libraries are all stored on a spinning drive, but the actual software and plugins are on the SSD).

This has nothing to do with the number of plugins, since I only have two plugins that are not Vienna products, and omnisphere + Kontakt are not anything unstandard. I would be surprised if anyone writing music does not have these two products installed, Ensemble should not have any issues with these two plugins.

VEP 7 is also pretty unstable, frequently crashing whenever I have a MIDI track loaded in Cubase with an instrument already loaded in Ensemble and I delete the track from within Cubase 10.4. If it didnt take 5 minutes to re-open it and another 10 minutes to load my orchestral libraries in, it wouldnt be so bad, but it sure does put a damper on creativity to have it crash and know that its going to be 15 minutes before I can start working again.

VEP 6 had no such issues, and by the time I upgraded to VEP 7, VEP 6 was so wonderfully fast and stable. I expected issues initially, but not a year after its release.

Not to jump in here, but the technical term for this is velocity layers, when you see this listed elsewhere, or even in the documentation for Vienna, that is what this means. Since MIDI supports 127 volume levels, and it would be infeasible to get a real player to play at 127 different volumes, the playback software will determine which velocity layer to play based on the velocity value the DAW sends to the playback software. If you have only two velocity layers that are, for the sake of making this easy split at 1-63 & 64-127 (these values will be different for every soundfont manufacturer, and can even be different from instrument to instrument from the same manufacturer), if the value received is 63 or under, it will play the audio file associated with a softer timbre, and 64 or higher, an audio file associated with a louder timbre. The playback software further increases or decreases the playback volume based on this number.

You can manipulate this to create some very odd effects, or, get an instrument to cut through a mix by manually setting a velocity level of a note to 127, but setting its main volume very low. This will have the effect of tonally sounding like the player is playing as loud as they possibly can, but the actual volume of the note will be very quiet. I use this technique quite frequently when I need an instrument to stand out a bit more, but I dont want its volume to overpower the mix.

I also use this strategy in reverse quite frequently. I really love the Vienna horns, but, I cant stand how blatty they sound at higher velocity levels (there is a sort of 'buzz' they have at the highest velocity layer). I set the velocity for each of the notes in the horn section to something like 80, which is often too quiet, and then I use the main volume or velocity xfade, depending on the degree of laziness I am feeling at the moment to make them louder.

There is probably a better way of doing this, but understanding velocity layers helped me to make things sound how I hear them in my head, and the beauty with computers is, we can do things with instruments virtually that are not possible in real life. It may not be realistic, the way I do it, but it ends up sounding the way I want it to.

Far be it for me to recommend something to a perfect piece, but I have one thought I am curious if you considered.

At the 27s and 34s mark, there is a descending line the horn plays that is three notes, have you considered shortening these notes just a tad to allow the room reverb to carry the notes? Its a really small thing, but something I thought might work.

2:07-2:55 This is fabulous, I wish there was more of this. I love the playful flute, almost like a butterfly trying to get the big beast to play, the beast is tentative at first, but eventually gives in.

Throughout the piece, there is an almost reverant undertone while not becoming depressing, thanks to the careful flute flutter and run placements, its brilliant.

Originally Posted by: Paul McGraw

I'm sorry to be responding so late to your post. The video is very professional. I do not see how you could get anything better, even if you paid pros thousands of dollars.

The music, both arrangement and mid-performance was fabulous. No "civilian" (non VR user) would ever think this was anything but real. The performance was very musical. 

The mixing and mastering were awesome. You managed to get rid of the harsh upper frequencies without losing clarity. If you can do this with just the special editions, I would love to hear how you would do with the full libraries. 

Thank you for the kind comments <3 As a student, I can barely afford what I have, it will be a long, long time before I am able to afford the full libraries. The mixing and mastering I have to admit is made easy by Ensemble Pro 7, its almost not even fair to take credit. I mean, the EQ and compressor almost do the work for you, you just have to move a slidy knob or fiddly slider and use your ear :)

Thank you, this is high praise :) I really enjoyed writing this arrangement. Too bad homework keeps me too busy to write as much as I want, Physics, as interesting as it is, is not as interesting as music.

I am very much looking forward to whenever you finish and finalize your giant orchestral piece! I enjoyed the 40 minute one you put up a few months ago, but if I recall, you eluded to it not being finished?

I know there is a sale going on right now for students, unfortunately, the timing is awful. If this sale were going on in November, Id take advantage of it, but alas, the first two months of a new semester involve paying for my classes and text books. Since I pay out of pocket (no grants / loans / government assistance), it costs me about $1200 for 2 classes just for enrollment, and another $500 for textbooks, which leaves just enough for ramen noodles and bills...

Interesting, no one mentions the lute...

This sounds great! There is one glaring thing missing... Big Bang implies percussion... Timpanis rolls and hits, bass drum rolls and hits, cymbal crashes and rolls? I can maybe forgive the missing timpanis, but how is there no big cymbals and bass drums?

Yes, I know they are available in your other libraries, but they should be included here.

Your gigantic 36 inch bass drum even mixed with your taiko perhaps?

Originally Posted by: Itchy

Just my opinion, and I've been known to speak with my foot in my mouth many times, but this is my understanding (I earned my B.M. degree in Music Production and Engineering years ago when digital audio was new.)

You’re saying that systems these days are *optimized* for sample rates like 96KhZ @ 24-bits… to the point where input, processing, and output at that rate is actually *faster* than it would be if it had to digitally convert half as much data? Hmmm. You mention a few clock cycles to convert. I’m not a CPU expert nor an Apogee employee, but my understanding is that latency in one's system depends on I/O, processing, and conversion (at least). If I were a betting man I’d guess the nanoseconds it’d take interpolating half as much data would ballpark-equivalent to natively-processing twice as much data.

Not to mention the memory footprint. A full orchestral piece requires 60 plus gigabytes of ram for me, and that is really nothing in comparison with what it could be. There is a reason why 44.1 at a 16 bit depth rate was chosen for CD audio, this is considered just above the maximum quality that anyone can hear a difference. Anything above this is really unecessary, unless you are time stretching samples (think slow motion video, the more frames you have, the smoother it will be). When it comes to orchestral, I dont think time stretching samples is something many people are apt to do.

I could be mistaken, but check to make sure the artiiculation is changing BEFORE the note change, on portamento. Playing an E, lets say for 4 bars, then a C for the next 4 bars. If you set the articulation to change right at the start of the 2nd measure, ie. the C, sometimes Synchron doesnt catch it. Instead, I set the articulation to change say 1/16th of a beat before the start of the second measure.

I think the reason is, Synchron doesnt have a 30 ms delay before it plays a note, VI does. This means, if you set an articulation change at exactly the same point that the note changes, VI has a 30 ms lead time to change the articulation, whereas Synchron does not.

I havent confirmed this theory, and it may not be the answer to your question, but you might try changing the articulation just a fraction of a beat before the note change happens and see if that works.

Originally Posted by: Acclarion

Thanks, Bill!  This was one of the bigger projects I've been working on, and it's funny, but the more I think about it, music might be one of the only pursuits where more work=less reward.  Case in point:  I spent a significant amount of time on the midi for this piece, which has been met with absolute silence on every online outlet I've shared it (your comment being the only exception).  However, short 2-3 minute tracks always generate some activity (and are a lot easier to put together than something like this!) 

It's sad to me that this type of music rarely finds an audience, and that many people don't feel confident talking about it and/or listening to it in the first place. It always feels like we write artistically for ourselves and our fellow artists, when it would be really nice for it to connect with non-performers (this piece, for example has already received a bunch of positive feedback from some musician friends I sent it to, but zero from the general public).

Rant over :)

Dave

My sentiments exactly. I write because I feel and want to express that, and want to share that expression. What non-musicians dont understand is, we write to share. Just as we like to speak in places where we are being heard, the same is the case with music.

I am sure no one here needs to hear this, music is a universal language, expressing emotion and story to anyone, regardless of race, religion, creed, etc.

I have reached the conclusion that, I am writing for myself. Even music I have written and shared here has received so little feedback, yet, I dedicated months of my life to its creation. What I write is a little different than what folks here tend to write, which is more classically themed (I tend to write cinematic, very dynamic volume changes, and in many cases, much more simplistic than what I commonly hear here). I shared an arrangement of Amazing Grace, which I posted on various groups including here, facebook, twitter, music composer groups I am involved with on Facebook, etc. and crickets is all I heard, with I think 1 response here. I spent a month and a half on it, in conjunction with working a full time job and a full time school schedule.

I often wonder if we have become so jaded and consumed in our own ventures to look at what else is going on?

We as people seek validation. We want, we need to know that we are headed in the right direction, and unfortunately, even musicians consistently forget this.

I only have one comment on your piece specifically, forgive my lack of further insight, but, this feels a bit like a more busy Debussy? I am curious if that was intentional?

Okies, it turns out I use this all the time, just didnt realize what it was called. Bummer that the SE editions dont have non-vibrato samples

Ill have to look and see if the special edition libraries have non-vibrato samples, Ive never used crossfade, havent really fully understood what it is doing...

I am in love with your Cornet. There is something about it, and in my opinion, it doesnt get the recognition it deserves. It blends really well, it also cuts through a mix like nothing else.

However, before I purchase, and I suspect I wont get to purchase it while the sale is on, I have a question.

One of the three demos doesnt seem to work (the one by Guy Bacos, Romantic Blues). I ended up downloading the MP3 file, but just letting you know the demo file isnt working. By the way, holy cow, listening to it while I type, Guy does something just magical with the strings in this piece.

More important than the above is my question, is there vibrato control for your full libraries? Im talking about controlling the speed (how fast a full cycle between starting at a fundamental tone, going above, back to the fundamental, then below, then finally back to the fundamental tone, occurs) and intensity (how many cents both above and below the fundamental tone will occur).

I think I have seen every video on your website and I have never seen vibrato controls mentioned. It seems to me that provided you have notes recorded flat with no vibrato, it would and should be easy enough to electronically alter the two parameters I mentioned above. Sure, it maybe wont be as "pure" as if the vibrato is baked in, but I dont think anyone would notice the difference.

This sounds like you have a note playing immediately at the start of the song. Most DAWS for whatever reason, will not consistantly play a note that starts at the beginning of a track. I dont know why. This is why the usual recommendation is to shift everything one measure in, and when you do the conversion to notation, select your range of measures starting with measure 2.

I dont use cakewalk, but another option is to set the piano roll to the highest resolution setting (in Cubase, this is I believe 1/128) and offset the note just a smidge from the starting location. It wont be noticeable to the listener, and its an easy fix for notation software to correct the notation of the first note. In fact, most modern notation software has fuzzy logic and will just round the duration up, so if you were playing a note that started at 2/128 and played to 128/128, it would just round that up to a quarter note.

For whatever reason, most DAW software wont actually get the resolution to as fine as the MIDI spec allows for, which is x/479 per beat (479/479 is equivalent to a quarter note for whatever time signature you are in).

I didnt see any attached image, but on occasion, I end up having to reset MIDI for occasional glitches like this. I dont end up with stuck notes, I end up with stuck CC data. MIDI is like an over complicated house of cards, its amazing it hasnt fallen apart. The whole thing feels so fragile. I wonder if that isnt what is happening with your CC7 data. Do you have any way of looking at what the realtime value is for a specific CC?

Originally Posted by: jasensmith

It's an interesting arrangement and I think it sounds pretty darn good.

Also those Special Edition collections are sounding better and better as time goes on.

BTW how did you get that footage? Is that some stock footage you found somewhere? They didn't let you fly a drone through Arlington National Cemetery did they?

Thanks :)

This took alot of massaging to get them to sound nearly realistic, there are a few parts that a trained ear will probably hear right away, 1 spot in the second verse, the beginning of the key change, and the grand canyonn pan / flag shot, and maybe a few other places, but I feel like I am getting a much better idea of how to do this.

As to the footage, it all came from Youtube, each scene from longer clips that I cut out to string together the video you see.

The Declaration is actually just an image, and I programmed the movie software I use to pan down the image.

There was also the dilema of watermarks, many of the clips contained watermarks, and I wanted clean video with no distracting and ugly watermarks, so I zoomed in slightly so that the watermarks were not visible in the video, for example, the slow pan of Lincoln at the beginning (which is why the top of his head is slightly cut off haha). One video, I used the same technique of zooming into the image, because the drone propeller was visible in the video (the Mount Rushmore flyby).

Finally, the video needed to line up correctly, so I time stretched some of the video clips to make it timed exactly to the music. The Lincoln video was time stretched, the Declaration was programmed, so no stretching required, and everything else was the left alone all the way until the very end, starting with the grand canyon where I had to stretch that scene and the flag scene I think I sped that up, and the jet flyby was also sped up dramatically.

As to the cemetery footage, this is not Arlington, I believe it is a cemetery in Georgia, where they built a replica of the reflecting pool and washington monument, this is what you see just after the key change / modulation. The actual real Washington Monument is significantly taller, and the real reflecting pool is significantly bigger.

Arlington does not allow photography without a permit, which is why there is very little amateur footage available of it.

The video editing itself was done with Vegas Studio, and I used a plugin for Firefox to download the video, and an online video editor to cut out the parts I wanted from the videos I downloaded. Once I had everything, it was relatively easy to just drag and drop everything in, and once I learned how to use the software, the time stretching, text, and zooming was very easy and straight forward to do, as well as programming the pan across the image. Vegas Studio was made for this exact sort of thing, it seems to have everything you could ever want for putting together a video collage, with exception to font choices and font animating (programming animated text is a pain in the butt, so I didnt do this... I originally wanted to use a handwriting font for the text at the beginning of the video).

Anyway, more info than you probably wanted to know haha...this was my first time using Vegas, and probably my 10th complete composition, Im starting to really get the hang of it.