I've spent the past nearly 20 years using just about every iteration of Windows and MacOS developed during that time. Is it just me or are these two main commercial OSes just getting dumber and dumber? Like, treating the user like they are an incompetent baby that needs their hand held just to print a document? Hiding control panels? Obscuring useful metrics and functions? Why do I need to edit the registry of my Windows 10 machine every other month to bypass some stupid lock-out Microsoft put to keep users from uninstalling bloatware or force users to use this or that app? Why are their app stores both a continual joke of shady or useless apps, bloat, and inconvenience? Why do they seem to relish installing or downloading updates at the exact moments when I am trying to do something useful with my system, without so much as asking for permission? Why do both companies seem to take particular delight in collecting every fragment of personal information at every opportunity?
The more and more I grapple with this, the more encouraged I am to explore Linux. I've tried out ElementaryOS a bit and really enjoyed it, although it's fairly simplistic; Pop!OS is pretty cool looking too. I'm honestly not an advanced enough user to be comfortable with console windows or command lines more than once every few months/years, but, like... can't there be a happy medium of an OS? Something where the user can set and configure the system in a bajillion different ways with a GUI without their hands tied behind their backs for that simple luxury? Why does it seem like the choices are either "baby's first computer super-cuddly safe space GUI-based OS" or "YOU WILL BRICK YOUR SYSTEM IF YOU TYPE ONE WRONG CHARACTER, BUT WE ALSO DIDN'T BOTHER WRITING A USER MANUAL CONSOLE-BASED OS"?
The largest impediment for me is the question of drivers. MacOS' Core Audio is fantastic, reliable, and ultra low-latency. ASIO on Windows is buggy but does the job when it needs to. Anyone on Linux have experience using common audio hardware (e.g. interfaces, MIDI keyboards, etc.) on them? It seems like most audio hardware companies don't release software control panels for Linux, but perhaps through WINE or something like that a Windows version might be used, or there are a few exceptions? I quite like Ardour (I've been using its commercial offspring, Mixbus, for a few years with good results), so the DAW portion seems quite reasonable now.
Of course Adobe and several other major 'professional tools' companies in their "infinite" "wisdom" have not yet released any of their products in a Linux-compatible version, even though there are significant movements in the scientific, IT, and even video game industry to consider different OSes, so I have some hopes that will change... or other companies will capitalize on the shift and outdo those too stubborn to act.
A violin section doesn't sound like several solo violins. That's why sample libraries have ensemble patches. Since the day I discovered that (ages ago), when I make chords, I always use the ensemble patches. Yet, some time ago, I saw a comment in some forum that said something like "this sample library has only a 11 violins patch, so if I make a three-note chord it will sound as if 33 violins are playing".
I dismissed it as nonsense. This isn't true, of course, for the same reason that a three-note chord of a solo violin doesn't sound like three violins playing together. So, as a matter of course, if I have more than one instance of the same instrument playing together, I will always use the ensemble patch, because to my mind the sound will be more realistic than if I use solo samples.
And yet, recently I found a passage in a series of articles about orchestral writing with sample libraries that seemed to validate somewhat the view that I dismissed. And it said something I find reasonable: that how you go about these combined sounds depends on the sound you want to achieve (and it's true that ensemble patches usually sound bigger but duller). So what's your take on this?
By the way, the series of articles is the one whose first article is this one: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/...stra-part1. It's not bad, but I haven't found it very helpful, probably because I've been writing orchestral music for years, even though not continuously.
For years I have dreamed of making a submission to Overclocked Remix, and I'm finally trying to make it happen. This is only a half-baked draft right now, I want to expand it to be around five minutes or so. It isn't orchestral by any means, but whatever, the original material is now a classic in virtual orchestration, so that should count for something.
I'm using a combination of Virtual Playing Orchestra, Versilian Studios Community Edition, No Budget Orchestra (for the saxophones), and DrumGizmo's DRS kit.
Bonus points to the first person who names the original material (it shouldn't be too hard).
Here's a cool little trick: You can use Melda Productions MBandPass to set up a modwheel-controlled lowpass filter on patches of your choice. Works best on brass, less so on other instruments, but it might be a matter of finding the right filter type and frequencies. You can set the plugin up to respond to velocity instead, but since the filter is monophonic (i.e. it doesn't respond polyphonically to individual notes, like a normal sampler filter would) it can lead to some strange results when playing quick notes in succession. You can sort of hear the filter "opening" and "closing" in a very unnatural manner.
(this is not a finished, polished composition btw, just experimenting)
Lately I've been working on this idea for a piano + string trio piece so I composed it on musescore then dropped it into Reaper to be fleshed out by some "proper" instruments (namely Sonivox's Eighty Eight and Embertone's Intimate Strings) and also humanize it.
However I need to ask for some input on the reverb since I usually tend to drench everything in large cathedrals, but for this piece I would like something more professional. I'm using Dragonfly Hall (Large Clear Hall) for the piano and Dragonfly Room (Medium Clear Room) for the strings. I used two reverbs to experiment with different spaces but I'm open to any suggestion really. I've uploaded to my soundcloud a version with reverb and a version without reverb just for comparison and to provide a better vision of the mix and the sound of the VSTi's
Of course any other comment on the piece is welcome. Most of the expressive stuff is still under constant review.
With a little wink to Sam's sci-fi thread, here's a thought I had...
If a VO composer version of Kyle Reese had traveled back from present day to, say, 2005 or even 2010, past me would have been baffled and even a little horrified at learning that in in 2020, orchestral composing tools are STILL based on wave samples, only exponentially larger and more detailed. In the late 00's I was pretty sure this trend of brute-forcing instruments on computers using samples would be a passing thing, to be replaced by physical modeling or some kind of hybrid technology. But nope. We're still doing the Mellotron thing. Record stuff to the nth degree, make a machine play it back.
Seriously, are there no alternatives in sight? With sample libraries becoming increasingly more complex and resource demanding, it feels like they're "tools for audio playback" rather than "instruments", given the lag and latencies people seem to take for granted nowadays. It's a depressing development (if it can be said to be even that) and I find myself longing for something more clever, more efficient, more elegant.
Simply put, even the most advanced orchestral libs around today are based on a 1980's technological paradigm. And people are still buying into it, not looking for alternatives.
Any Kontakt user who'd be willing to shed some light on how Kontakt outputs work? Maybe it's the way plugin outputs are handled in Reaper that complicates things, I dunno, but this makes no damn sense to me at all.
Even though I load up a multi-out version of Kontakt, there aren't actually any outputs created inside the plugin except the stereo one, right? But when I create outputs and try to route them to the outside world (at least that's what I think I'm doing) I'm greeted with this incomprehensible little box.
And then there's the aux channels to boot, which I can't seem to get rid of even though I have no intention of using them.
Could someone please explain this to me like I'm a child? I know I have done this before but I don't remember how I did it. And it begs the question, why can't Kontakt just load up with all available outs configured by default?
Brand new super lite version of Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra has been released, only $/€/£49 (or free for filling out a survey, though you have to wait two weeks before you get it). Check out this review, it actually sounds pretty damn good! And yes, it's a complete orchestra with separate instrument sections, only thinned out in terms of mic positions, dynamic layers, RR's etc.
I am looking for a clever way to utilize my small collection of percussion samples and I was wondering if there is a VSTi that does that in the manner of the old hardware drum machines, with banks and patterns. It just makes more sense to me, having a sampler with such architecture when dealing with percussion, at least for folk/cinematic parts. I did some research but every VSTi I found was either outdated or beyond my simplistic(?) needs.
Anyone know of any such VSTi? What do you think of this way of using percussion?
In the sketch below, I used a solo clarinet and a solo french horn for a two part harmony. I wanted something full but unobtrusive and it seems to be a good blend.
I experimented with both a four horn section and a solo horn for the horn part, but realized that I couldn't decided which would be better because I simply didn't know what a composer with more know-how than me would actually do or why. To me, the sound is largely the same, but I wondered if there were some other reason why one would be better than the other. I know the general rule is just do what sounds good, but both actually sound good to me. Because of that, I feel like there is an opportunity to learn something about writing for horns here...
So, horns as harmony? I understand soft horns can blend with most anything, and it could even be useful to build chords with just the horns (the "horn pad" of old). Does a solo horn ever come up in a larger orchestra as just one part of a blend like this?
![[Image: kontakt.png]](http://mattiaswestlund.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/kontakt.png)
