Here is another one of my songs. It is just a fun song entitled, “Elephant's Minuet”, although it does not strictly follow the form. In the piece, I use the Synchronized Solo Strings.

Mark

Gerry,

I liked the opening motif A LOT and I liked the melody of the first for lines. You are an excellent composer. As you asked me to make a choice, I would choose the vocalist, Kiri. I did note that you commented on the warmth and tenderness of her voice. I would agree.

Mark

Sam,

     I personally liked the composition.  And I also liked your giving us an explanation of the piece in background.  It is nice to hear something different here.

Mark

Hi All,

     As an experiment, I tried arranging one of my old symphonic movements as a synchronized solo string quartet. I like how it turned out.

Mark

Hi!

     This is a song that I have been working on which uses the Synchronized Solo Strings. There is an initial section that repeats, followed by a different section that in ways is similar. The song ends with a tiny variation of the first section. 

Mark

Hi All,

     I believe the problem is now resolved. It may be been a bad Player download.  I started to download the sound files again, but the Download Manager checked the files, found no errors and went directly to the install icon. After the samples were installed, I downloaded and installed the Player again.  This time it worked and the violin 1 was working correctly. The Sibelius Sound Set is now working correctly as well..

     I still do not know the reason it did not work previously.  I was pulling my hair out for a week stuplifed. Why did 4 out of 5 instruments work correctly the not the 5th instrument?  I am glad it is now resolved.

Mark

I am not kidding.  After using Sib7, VE5 and VI Solo Strings I+II, I upgraded to Cubase10.5, Sib2020.3, VE7 and SySolo Strings and I encountered many problems.  As the Violin I is not producing a sound, I must use 2 Violin 2 in the player to make a quartet in either Sib2020 or Cubase 10.5.  (A common link is the Player).  And even though I load the SoundSet for Sib, it is not working correctly. Nor is the expression map working correctly in Cubase 10.5

What did I do wrong?

Mark

Hi VSL,

     I just purchased Vienna Ensemble 7 and the Synchron Solo Strings.  However, the Violin I does not produce a sound in either Sibelius 2020.3 or in Cubase 10.5.  The rest do produce an audio output.

      Also, I believe that the new Sibelius Soundset may contain errors as I cannot trigger staccato and pizzicato articulations.

Mark

I have placed the VSL program files in both C:\Programs Files\Common\VST2 and C:\Program Files x86\Common\VST2.  Then I started the x86 VEP Server.  I ran Sibelius but the VSL programs were not listed.  So I did a rescan in Sibelius and ran it.  The VSL was still not present. I am using Win10.

I need help, please. 

For some reason, my VSL programs do not appear in Sibelius 7.1.   They used to appear, but one day they did not and have not appeared since then.   I have the correct paths set in Sibelius and I have re-installed it plus the VSL programs and number of times.

 Mark

Andi

   When can we expect the settings for Sibelius to be updated to reflect the new instruments? 

Mark

I am having problems also.  I downloaded the two files and put the licences on my elicencer, but the download manager cannot find them!

Edit: The problem was solved with a re-download of the Download Manager.  Sorry to use your thread, but we were talking about the same program and files.

Mark

Thanks for all the improvement suggestions, Francesco and Max.  I spent the weekend re-humanizing the pieces.  I changed many of the Vibrato samples and used them more selectively.  I also put in ritards into some of the pieces.  Although I have the complete concert guitar samples, I did not use any beyond Level 1.  So here is the updated versions which I drafted in Sibelius, humanized in Cubase 8.5 along with VEP, VIP, VS (Resonance preset) and MIR (.75 Main)

(File links in first post.)

Mark

Originally Posted by: Francesco Pirrone

Originally Posted by: thomamd

Edit:  I can be brutal with myself when I get tired.

In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with doing variations on a masterpiece. 

But doing a variation and not declaring it is wrong. Over the years, I have had about 300 pieces on the web.  There probably only a hundred now as I periodically redo the entire site.  With two exceptions, it has been my work. This piece and the piece I called "Sinata K.297" have actually been somewhat a source of grief. It was fun doing them, but many times I wish I had never uploaded them, but what do you do after 200 views? All I really wanted was tips on a better guitar sound!

Edit:  I guess you guys felt as I did when someone played a folk song accreditted to the singer when I recognized the melody and chords as John Dowland's "Lachimae."

Mark

Originally Posted by: Acclarion

Speaking of sharing, I wrote an album of instrumental love songs for clarinet and piano, entitled Reflections, which is performed by Acclarion (my wife, Becky, and me). A preview is available at Acclarion on Youtube and the album can be purchased at CD Baby and on iTunes, search Acclarion.

Thank you for listening, if you feel inclined to do so!
Dave

Dave!

While I do not care much about your full orchestrations, I love your CD!  So much so, I purchased a copy.  I downloaded it and I am listening to it as I type.

Mark

The more I think about it, the more I think that I should not attach my name to the Opening and Reprise.  Although I changed a lot from the original Vivaldi, a casual listener would think that it was just a change in instrumentation.  Performers can take credit for performing masterworks, but I do not think I changed enough to call the composition mine.  Perhaps if I ever get around to describing all the pieces on the website, I can tell the listener about the original.  Till then...delete!

Mark

Edit:  I can be brutal with myself when I get tired.  I reached a compromise...just call it, "Variations on RV 108."

Thank you, Francesco and Max!

The question of reverb is a good one.  I have used the effect more in the past.  However, a conductor once advised me to be cautious with reverb as it is too often used in some Classical recordings to hide deficiencies.

Max is right about the over-humanization.  Although Francesco would agree that the version you hear now is much better that the first version, I over compensated with too many Vibrato samples.  I guess I still have a lot to do.

I should mention that although the Minuet, Trio and Duet are my work.  The Opening, and therefore, the Reprise is a badly plagarised Vivaldi.  I would never attempt to sell it.  I was sent a score that I messed with.  Vivaldi's score is infinitely better! Just access Youtube "Vivaldi RV 108" and you will see what I mean.

Mark

I was very intriqued by the opening of your piece.  It suited the mood I am in right now, but for some unknown reason, the music suddenly stopped with almost 3 minutes remaining. Was that intentional or a problem with my computer?  I assume that you used sounds other than the VSL.

Mark

Thank you Paul and Andi.  I have things working now.

Mark

Thank you for the kind words about my music, Francesco!  Actually, the duet was written years ago as a flute/guitar duet, but when I uploaded it here, I was told that the flute part was unplayable due to lack of enough spots to breathe.

Mark

I need some help, please.

When exporting a Sib file as a midi file for input to Cubase, do I select the version that asks if it is going to be played to the same computer or select the option to export to a different computer?

When the file is input to Cubase, do I load the VSL soundset for Cubase?

I have been pulling my hair out trying to get all the options tried, but never successfully. I notice the the midifile uses key switches to change articulations, so I enabled Keyswitches in VE.  VE is responding to most of the Sib imbeded keyswitches, but if I add a D#1 for violin pizz, nothing seens to happen.

Thanks,

Mark

I just finished re-humanizing my Concert Guitar pieces.  I discovered that my using more Vibrato samples that non-Vibrato samples, I liked the finshed result a lot better.  When I  play my classical guitar, I do not use Vibrato as I tend to play Lute music and use my fingers to produce a much more mellow sound and not the traditional finger-nails used for guitar.  I wish that there were samples for just finger playing.

http://www.markthomas.ca/virtual-classical-guitar

Hope you like them,

Mark

Francesco

    I really do not think that you hijacked the thread.  It was started as a a joke post to begin with.

    Be well,

Mark

Francesco

    It is not hard to get lessons with Tom Hess.  He takes students of all levels and styles, but he expects that you be commited to the instrument.  Just google "Tom Hess."

Mark

Now that I have the Concert Guitar samples, I thought I would redo the files.  Also, for the first time in 10 years, I thought I'd use Cubase to humanize the performance.  Although the software has changed over the years, there is still the bug that prevents Cubase from importing xml files.  But I manged to import as midi files.

I do not know the reason, but the top guitar sometimes sounds like it wants to be a banjo!

Files redone.    http://www.markthomas.ca/virtual-classical-guitar

Mark