Kirk Hunter + Legato phrasing demo

[Thomas_J]

I\'ve been conducting some new experiments lately. Legato-phrasing using short snippets of 0.5 sec wav files gathered from various sources of music. I did this with solo horn in an earlier project and the result was pretty interesting. Now I\'ve conducted the same experiment using Kirk Hunter and legato phrasing samples (to connect the notes). I would very much like a library with these capabilities in the future, because, as you can hear, it adds an incredible amount of realism to the passages.

(The kirk hunter library doesn\'t have any piano samples and thus the first note sounds a bit weird.) This is just a short sketch.
http://home.online.no/~finjaco/Jazz2k - Cellilegato.mp3 (\"http://home.online.no/~finjaco/Jazz2k\")

Thomas

[This message has been edited by Thomas_J (edited 01-22-2002).]

[PatS]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Thomas_J:
I\'ve been conducting some new experiments lately. Legato-phrasing using short snippets of 0.5 sec wav files gathered from various sources of music. I did this with solo horn in an earlier project and the result was pretty interesting.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

\"various sources of music\"? Do you mean pre-recorded music other than your own? Is that legal?

Maybe you\'ve answered this question already (I don\'t have time to search through the forum), but did you apply this technique to some of your epic-sounding demos?

Pat

[This message has been edited by PatS (edited 01-22-2002).]

[KingIdiot]

Thomas There are slides in GOS if thats what you\'re talkinga about. Or are you actually talking about something else.....I figure it is something else since KH has slides as well right?

Anyhow. I\'m planning on doing some tweaks to the slides in GOS that will make them more \"playable\" and easier to use with more variations. Slides to different notes and possibly some sustains at the end and beginning of each slide for a smoother transition. Also different speeds.

With Legato mode and tiny bits of slides here and there it should sound pretty fantastic.

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Really...I am an Idiot

[This message has been edited by KingIdiot (edited 01-22-2002).]

[Jamieh]

Hey King, where are the slides in GOS? I looked for about 5 seconds last night and couldn\'t find them. I assumed they would be on the alternate patches, but I guess I assumed wrong.

[Simon Ravn]

Thomas_J, this sounds cool as always. So where are the samples from. Can you recommend any specific works for ripping off great string-ensembles notes to make your own library? http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[gabriels]

Thomas,
Wonderfully smooth. What do you mean by experimenting with snippets to get this type of legato phrasing?
Gabriel

[KingIdiot]

Hey Jamieh they are in with the LongBows http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

There are articulations for slide with mod wheel down Xfade into Long Bow sustain.

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Really...I am an Idiot

[Thomas_J]

No, I\'m not talking about slides. Those are only half useful, half of the time. I\'m talking about recorded legato intervals that connect the notes seamlessly.

The thing is that this is just an experiment. I figured I\'d try it with celli today because I had a great amount of ripped legato samples lying about on my hd (that I ripped ages ago from a borrowed concert piece ((by one of my teachers) in the school\'s library). I cannot remember any specific works that feature celli in unison but there are many, I can assure you of that. But why limit yourself to only celli?

Pat: I didn\'t take more than 250ms of sound from anything so I would guess that it is legal. It\'s not like I\'m ripping motifs or anything. Picture a symphony recording. Somewhere in that symphony there\'s a slow pizzicato passage. Lets say you ripped out ONE single pizzicato pluck and saved it. Now, if you used this pluck in your own music I don\'t think people would be screaming \"OH MY GOD that\'s the pizzicato pluck at 45:34 in violas - in Schönberg\'s sym. no.2! - conducted by \"whomever\", played by \"whatever orchestra\"\" http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

I didn\'t utilize this technique on anything else except on \"this is goodbye\" for the horn part. The way it is now, it takes waaaay too much time. It\'s simply not worth it http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

That\'s why I\'m hoping perhaps Garritan or someone else will pick up this technique and implement it in an update or something. It\'d be very useful!

The technique in detail:

Find a spot in a piece where an instrument (or instrument group) plays a solo part. Extract the few milliseconds of sound where the player changes bowing or plays up or down an interval. Save it. Do this for all the variants you can find. Transposing will work up or down about a minor 3rd without starting to sound completely odd. Needless to say you need a great deal of this type of samples to make it efficient in your music. That\'s why it\'d be interesting to have some sample developer look at the technique.

Thomas

[This message has been edited by Thomas_J (edited 01-22-2002).]

[Jeff Hurchalla]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Thomas_J:
[B]I would very much like a library with these capabilities in the future, because, as you can hear, it adds an incredible amount of realism to the passages.
B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes this is definitely a good thing..
The problem is that for libraries to have legato phrased samples like you used essentially means doubling the size of the library, since with Gigastudio the same samples can\'t be used for both legato and normal attack samples. We really need to be able to define start points in the editor that can bypass the attack portion of the samples. Right now the limit to how far in you can start is maybe 50 milliseconds or something similar - not very useful! Sure there\'s ways around it, and we worked around it in GOS for example, but there\'s really no substitute for it being a feature in Gigastudio. I\'ve heard it\'s difficult for Nemesys to do, but let\'s hope. It may help if you add your request to their list too http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[Jeff Hurchalla]

Ah I misunderstood you (I thought you were working with the Kirk Hunter samples on the mp3). That\'s an interesting idea. Technically there\'s no reason why it can\'t be done, though it takes some special midi handling that Tascam probably wouldn\'t choose to implement. But something like Maestro could do it. I\'d need sample material before I\'d have a reason to create that program/features, but it\'s a cool idea. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[PatS]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Thomas_J:
Pat: I didn\'t take more than 250ms of sound from anything so I would guess that it is legal. It\'s not like I\'m ripping motifs or anything. Picture a symphony recording. Somewhere in that symphony there\'s a slow pizzicato passage. Lets say you ripped out ONE single pizzicato pluck and saved it. Now, if you used this pluck in your own music I don\'t think people would be screaming \"OH MY GOD that\'s the pizzicato pluck at 45:34 in violas - in Schönberg\'s sym. no.2! - conducted by \"whomever\", played by \"whatever orchestra\"\" http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I don\'t know the law on this, but I would still advise you to be careful with your approach. It sounds very interesting, though.

Good luck!

Pat

P.S. You meant Schoenberg\'s Chamber Symphony No. 2, right? http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

[Damon]

ThomasJ, those cellos do sound very good. Very expressive.
Smooth legato phrasing as well.

[KingIdiot]

Well my point about slides is yes they are only half usefull half the time due to the constraints put on them. I think I have a few ideas that could make them much more usefull.

Of course actuall legato samples would be the most useful http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif Did you jsut rip any interval and match say a half tone legato with a major third interval? or did you rip and place to exact movement?

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Really...I am an Idiot

[Beckers]

Thomas

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Thomas_J:
Pat: I didn\'t take more than 250ms of sound from anything so I would guess that it is legal. It\'s not like I\'m ripping motifs or anything. Picture a symphony recording. Somewhere in that symphony there\'s a slow pizzicato passage. Lets say you ripped out ONE single pizzicato pluck and saved it. Now, if you used this pluck in your own music I don\'t think people would be screaming \"OH MY GOD that\'s the pizzicato pluck at 45:34 in violas - in Schönberg\'s sym. no.2! - conducted by \"whomever\", played by \"whatever orchestra\"\" http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

The copyright for the composition is completely seperate from that for the recording. You can obviously use a note from any compostion, as you can use a word from any book. However the copyright protects every millisecond of sound of a recording. It would take some special gear to prove you took your snippet from a certain recording; it would, no doubt, be masked in your recording, and who is going to care anyway. But to stay legal you would require permission.

[This message has been edited by Beckers (edited 01-22-2002).]

[Beckers]

Thomas

Thinking about it, if you produced a successful soundtrack or something, I had hit hard times and I knew you had used a 0.25s snippet from one of my recordings, I might say \"I\'d like a piece of that\", whip out a time magnified wave finger print, or FFT frequency spectrum analyser(OK I\'d need more than 0.25s) and see you in court

I\'d be a mercenary ****, but better off.

[This message has been edited by Beckers (edited 01-22-2002).]

[Beckers]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Beckers:
Thomas

Thinking about it, if you produced a successful soundtrack or something, I had hit hard times and I knew you had used a 0.25s snippet from one of my recordings, I might say \"I\'d like a piece of that\", whip out a time magnified wave finger print, or FFT frequency spectrum analyser(OK I\'d need more than 0.25s) and see you in court.

I\'d be a mercenary ****, but better off.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No actually what I came in for:- 6 mths ago I was told by Ilio that KH Virtuoso series was coming out in GS format with additional samples -? including piano. I\'ve lost track of this \'cos of GOS. Anybody heard?



[This message has been edited by Beckers (edited 01-22-2002).]

[Robert Kral]

Beckers:
You\'re right. If we were aloud even milliseconds of sampling from previous recordings I would have hard drives full of them by now, but it just isn\'t permitted.

Thomas: great idea however!!! I haven\'t listened to the example as I\'m sure it works great. I just commented last week to my \"live player\" woodwind guy that its often what\'s BETWEEN the notes that makes a huge difference between real and sampled.

Roland Orchestral Family contains all intervals (up to an octave) of solo French horn. They sound fantastic. This library must be ten years old now. To my surprise I haven\'t seen anything like it since!!!

[PeterRoos]

Hi Thomas,

Take care with the space character in files names on a web server. Always problematic.

This link works:
http://home.online.no/~finjaco/Jazz2k%20-%20Cellilegato.mp3 (\"http://home.online.no/~finjaco/Jazz2k%20-%20Cellilegato.mp3\")

VERY interesting, maybe you can explain the steps in little more detail?

Thanks for sharing you experience and knowledge!

Peter

[Beckers]

This idea of sampling real instrument legato is obviously the most organic way. However, in the absence of a legato library there may be an easier way:

I have been using various ways of producing smooth legato. One is similar to the above, but in MIDI, giving(dare I say it?) smoother results than GOS LEG with MT. This is by using a short masking note across the legato notes, pitch-bent in the middle, in a seperate MIDI track. Before GOS I used a Kirk Hunter HRD sample, with the attack slowed to 0.5. Now I use the masking notes from the GOS LEG files, copied into seperate files, attack slowed to 0.5. To produce smooth legato between notes A and B, I place an additional note A at note-on B in a seperate track. Pitch-bend to note B is inserted at the same point, over approx. 0.1sec. (Easy using two points and interpolate) This produces a slight portamento effect. The masking note is then shifted forwards across the pitch bend by 100 ticks (I do the whole track at once at the end). the track volume is set to approx half the value (obvioulsy individual masking note volumes may need tweeking further using CC1 or 11 at different points in the piece). Now if Maestro Tools could do this it could be used in real time.

And, hey, -no copyright issues!

Incidentally, for experimentation only, unlicensed samples can be used by claiming \"fair use privilege\". But the minute these are used in a recording with commercial intent, or even for public display, copyright infringement occurs.

Also incidentally, posting a link to a recording on a Web site with a large following such as this is public display.

(Incidentally to the extreme, let\'s not get into the copyright issues surrounding links to unauthorised mockups of copyrighted compositions...?)

[KingIdiot]

Beckers I totally understand what you mean witht he POrtamento effect.

Which is why I want to edit the slides. I haev a few ideas to make them usable as an addition to making Legato Mode smoother. And on top of it give variation to legato attacks As well as give variation to slides and movements. It will require some sample editing and maybe a talk with Jeff to make it part of Maestro and put it to Real time use.

What I\'ve been doing with slides is use CC11 to fade in only the part I want, but its tedious and frustrating. So I\'d like to make it easier and add more options in the end http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

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Really...I am an Idiot

[Beckers]

I hadn\'t thought of using the slides for this. By comparison pitch bend sounds evil on its own, particularly over larger intervals. However this does not matter, as the transposed sound is quickly masked by the incoming B note, leaving just an unnoticable glimpse at the note change-over, giving a smooth transition without humping. It works best for slower passages. For fast passages, using short bows, I shorten the attack and the length of the masking notes (taking care the release doesnt incur on the next pitch bend). the masks need a higher volume than for slow passages. (For best results I sometimes cut and past all B notes onto a seperate track using a slightly longer attack copy of the same short bow sample). I set the bend range in GS to 5 or 10 semitones which makes it easy to corrlate to controller value in the sequencer. Quick and easy. But nothing beats Maestro Tools for gain against pain ratio.

[This message has been edited by Beckers (edited 01-23-2002).]

[Beckers]

I\'ve so far failed to get any real smooth legato out of DD solo violin because of the slow attack. I\'m working on another tack.

No - I take that back. Just a tweek = smooth legato with pitch bent mask

[This message has been edited by Beckers (edited 01-23-2002).]

[si]

Hey man, I lost good sleep time trying to get your method to work. Desperate for nudge free legato. GS doesnt seem to recognise pitchwheel messages. Tried portamento. Zip. Please help

Si

[Beckers]

Perhaps the bend range is set to 0 the instrument file you\'re using? Check in the instr editor (r. click on the instr.; properties; set bend range to 10, or more according to your needs). Also set bend range in your sequencer.

[si]

There was also something else wrong, but now it works!! Beautiful legato with OA violin section so far. Great tip. Now I need to edit all my files. More sleep deprivation. Or I\'ll call in sick tomorrow. Yep

Thanks

Si

[Beckers]

My method of using pitch bent fills is easier if you keep templates. I keep several in a seperate file. I put a template containing a pitch bend of 1 semitone, pasted at quarter note intervals, in tracks either side of the track of fills (masking notes), rising pitch in the track above, falling in the one below. I then toggle tracks, copying and pasting pitch bends where required, using \"Expand\" to extend the pitch bend to the required interval.

Of the ways I have tried this seems smoothesth

(Vitous is cheapo? His solo violin responds better to this legato method than DD)

Bx

[si]

Hi Beckers and anyone that reads this

This pitch wheel method is a lotta work, Is there an easier way to produce smooth legato (apart from overlapping notes) I don\'t have GOS with this Maestro Tools thing. I have all of AO, cheapo Vitous, DD solo, much Xsample