Remarks concerning Violin Romance in the Listening room

[Raymond62]

Here are some technical details

Panning
Flute I : 44L
Flute II : 15L
Cor Anglais I : 10L
Cor Anglais II : 20 R
Clarinet I : 15L
Clarinet II : 10 R

Solo Violin : Centered

Violins I : 50 L
Violins II : 30 R
Violas : 10 R
Violoncellos : 30L
Double Basses: 10L

Reverb
I used three sections, woodwinds, solo and strings
Ambience plugin woodwinds -11.7 dB wet/ -34 dry, solo -11.7 dB wet / -26 dry, strings -11.7 dB wet / -41 dry with predelay resp. 20 ms (wide 100%), 0 ms (wide 25%), 10 ms (wide 100%). Some damping and equalizing done in the reverb plug to lower a bit the harsness of the strings.

Editing
Rendered with Sonar 5 and edited with Adobe Audition equalizing to add more body to the lower-mid frequencies, mid-high's, lowered the high's.

Tremolo's
I used a lot of tremolo's in that piece and weren't satisfactory. Neither, the non-muted and muted tremolo's, sounded like tremolo's. Not even with all sorts of CC#'s. I think I found the solution. Copy those tremolo-ed notes to another track assigned to e.g. Violins I Sus and Short (and for muted tremolo's to Violins Sus-Short-Muted). Set the modulation to almost zero and lower the velocity to almost zero(on that extra track). Play them both and adjust the characteristics as you like. This is what I've done for tremolo's for violins I, II and violas and only when they have some leading significance in the piece.

General
It pays off when you experiment a lot with different combinations.
E.g. I noticed that with sustain pedal-on the overlapping notes for clarinets, as well as for Cor Anglais can (not always) cause some Sonar 5 error (stalling). Also the notes sound too long and blend together a bit muddy and shrill. And I encountered a "hanging" note in Cor Anglais (after quite a intensive search). Solution: I deleted the sustain pedal marks. No more hanging notes.

Question
Does anybody know of a script or little Midi program, to do a random Humanizing for duration of notes? In the discussion with Randy he told me that in "real life" consecutive notes of the same notated length never have the same value (duration).

Have fun and don't give up. When I do a project in Sonar I always save the latest changes and with this piece I ended up having 147 different versions.

Raymond

[rbowser-]

Interesting report on your big project, Raymond!

It will be helpful for others who read your report to keep in mind that due to a myriad of factors, every project is different, every computer's set up is different, and of course each musician/engineer approaches things differently. Everything is so variable that many things can't be reduced to a list of procedures which will always be the same.

One of things in your post here:

"...And I encountered a "hanging" note in Cor Anglais (after quite a intensive search). Solution: I deleted the sustain pedal marks. No more hanging notes..."

This is a known issue with Sonar and sprinkled throughout the Garritan Forums there's a solution which doesn't involve having to remove your important sustain pedal info.

You must use the VSTi version of GPO in Sonar, not the DXi. One must just make sure the VST .dll file is placed in the Sonar VST folder and acknowledged by the program. The hanging note problem is taken care of this way.

Congrats on the completion of your big project, Ray!

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[Hannes_F]

Question
Does anybody know of a script or little Midi program, to do a random Humanizing for duration of notes? In the discussion with Randy he told me that in "real life" consecutive notes of the same notated length never have the same value (duration).

My approach is this:
Let us assume you want to render a 5 minutes orchestra piece with 60 musicians. With a real orchestra every musician would spend say 10 or 20 minutes on this recording, so that makes 10 to 20 hours of "mantime".

I am willing to dedicate those 10 hours into the individual recording of my midi lines one by one. Since there are several sections involved and I can skip the waiting times a real obist has waiting for his solo I will eventually be done in 5 hours. Maybe even faster. Compared to the real thing it still is a real bargain (regarding the time only. We all know that real recordings are not beatable soundwise). But I think if we want a "human touch" we need human recording in the one or other way.

Why should I want to take a humanisation script take all the fun away that I am having playing my lines?

Hannes

[keithjfuller]

totally agree with hannes. i think it just takes time, and playing the lines in sometimes - theres no better way to get a human touch than that.

[Hannes_F]

... in case you want to test a randomisation script nevertheless, look for "Humanisator" here:

http://www.tobybear.de/p_midibag.html

But my theory is that if a human player differs from quantized rhythm there is an intention behind it that a randomisator can not offer.

[rbowser-]

I really like the advice from both of you, Hannes, and Keith, about how the best way to insure "humanization" in a MIDI project is to simply use a keyboard to play the parts.

"...Why should I want to take a humanisation script take all the fun away that I am having playing my lines?..."

Precisely. So well put. And that's how all of us using MIDI keyboards feel. It's still the same as in "the good old days" when having MIDI capability in our home studios meant we used keyboards to play music. There was no option of inserting notes into a strictly laid out grid, outside of the now-primitive and out-moded method of "step sequencing."

But I've noticed Raymond has said he not only doesn't use a keyboard, but that he never will--Why he says that, I'm not sure. I would need to let him speak for himself.

He's working in Sonar for finishing up his projects, but initially working in the hand-inserted notation way that a lot of people here work. I personally feel that makes for a large limitation, one I couldn't live with--and I've also had the distinct impression that a lot of people are working with Notation programs who actually don't have a pressing need for producing sheet music, so I wonder why they're doing it--Maybe because of all the hype and sales jobs that notation software manufacturers have indulged in? Because if someone wants to draw in notes, that can be with just as much accuracy in programs like Sonar--projects could be done all in one program.

But, be all that as it may. As long as people Do work in the modern version of "step sequencing," they'll be in need of various tricks to manufacture the element they're missing since they don't actually play their compositions. --It's something of a paradox, and an interesting issue.

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[Raymond62]

Hi Folks,

now I'd guessed that you use your keyboard NOT to play all the notes, but to use it also / or only for those CC#'s. So let's clear up things. My hands can not play fast sequences of notes anymore, but I can turn the modwheel, pitchbendwheel, sliders, and my feet are capable of pressing the pedals (I have to buy another expression pedal, then I have two of them).

Randy, I used my keyboards CC#'s to get that violin piece better. Must say that is feels a lot easier than drawing in Sonar.

Raymond

[rbowser-]

Hello again, all

This of course is into the old "notation" versus "DAW" debate, and those particular twains definitely look like they'll never meet.

It will be nice and convenient for all when these two different types of software are combined into one affordable package--that could certainly be done now if companies were so motivated.

But I think you just hit on a Major issue, Tom "Prince of Music" (who's The King, by the way? )--when you explained how you have to See when you're composing and arranging. Besides the main issue of needing printed scores, this could well be the other key issue that makes some people prefer using a Notation program.

As a happy DAW user, I mainly have to Hear when I'm composing and arranging. How it's looking on the staves is not much more than an interesting artifact which results from what I've done.

It could be somewhat analogous to cooking--I love to get in the kitchen and cook up a new dish, and I'd much rather Do the creation of the dish and write down the recipe later, rather than plan out the recipe first, write it down, and then create it. Something like that?

There seem to be many clever ways people squeeze organic life out of Notation programs, and I am very appreciative of their results. For my personality, and the way I work, to live with what I'm writing primarily in the aural realm, making pass after pass after pass isn't tedious--it feels "right" for me.

Raymond, I totally appreciate what you're saying about not being able to play the fast runs you used to. I've never had especially good playing "chops"--But when working in Sonar, as you do, there are so many ways to work, including inserting notes for fast passages, looping small bits to work on etc.

The keyboard, as you've discovered, Raymond, really is the fastest and most intuitive way to include cc data in a project.

And regardless of how much one is using a keyboard to create music, it all gets down to spending many more hours editing than it takes to record the music.

And--so on!

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[rbowser-]

Hello again, Tom

Yes, I see what you mean. You're saying again that the visual display is crucial to you. And I'm saying it's secondary to me because hearing what's happening as I build an arrangement is what guides me.

But this reminds me that I forgot to say earlier that in a program like Sonar you can have a visual display of what you're doing as you play-In the Staff view, the notes appear, and if you have several staves open you can instantly see what's in each part.

However people go about doing the work, the critical test for each section is when we push "Play"--and we see/hear if it sounds the way we want.

Randy B.
(rbowser)

[chesterdesmond]

First off I'd like to say that the piece is very well done, I went in to a bit of a trance while listening to its intricacies and (as usual when I listen to the compositions on the forum) being inspired to really learn this wonderful program.
rbowser, I find your comments interesting in that you hark back to the good ol days when real-time midi input was the norm yet question the reasoning behind using notation software which, given the context (ie classical composition), would be the ultimate way of re-capturing the days of old!
It seems to defeat the purpose of all this technology to use something as "primitive", yet incredibly useful and pure, as notation but I can very much see the appeal in notation software; if I had the theoretical knowledge I think I would be using it for composition. Especially to a classically trained or aware composer it would be like a dream come true I would think!
I'm taking your comments like going to a Medieval re-creation and suggesting the use of a light-sabre. While the obvious choice for quickly dispatching an opponent, it hardly fits the sentiment (for lack of a better word).
I find myself trapped into using a sequencer due to my lack of theoretical knowledge and find the bars of the piano roll to be almost an insult to the classical tradition, but I am (I can see after reading this) romanticizing the classical angle a bit. Anyway, not trying to start a debate or argue your point, just something that caught my attention and I see in your subsequent posts that you have already touched on some of what I've said.
As for humanizing compositions I am trying something which may seem a little silly; I am assigning human characteristics to players by inventing (in conjunction with a random data generator) personalities for each: ie one of the second violinists is a Hungarian fellow named Szever Salamon, aged 43, going through a divorce and rather brutally hung-over during this recording session; as a result his timing is rather questionable but he is playing very passionately and with a trace of sorrow... using this little backstory gives me a sense of unique style to use while playing the part and also gives me a great reason to avoid doing any actual work.
Much like this diatribe.