Quote:DOES THE MUSIC SOUND CRAPPY IN YOUR OLD 80'S / 90'S PC GAMES?
FatBoy was created specifically to make MIDI sound better. Hopefully, a lotbetter. Any games which utilize MIDI-based soundtracks will sound dramatically different with FatBoy.
I would not be surprised if several of the general midi instruments available in this one sound suspiciously familiar, but still there may be some gems of interest.
I'm VictorSeven, an amateur composer and pianist (mostly into videogame stuff). I am always trying to improve my composition techniques (and I have little idea of orchestration). I found this forum the other day and I really wanted to register and talk about music and learn new stuff. Also, I saw that main members are known names to me
I've been working with Virtual Playing Orchestra and some other freebies for some time. However, I want to start composing for games more seriously, so I decided to invest a bit of money to upgrade my libraries. Reading this topic I think that my best options are the VSCO 2 Pro and EWQL Hollywood Orchestra Silver.
There are two important things here I need.
- First, I compose mostly for games, and I do not want to sell myself as "epic/rpg music orchestra" musician because I do not feel confident enough to do that. Also I like to do also jazz and electronic music, and I enjoy composing for different instrumentations and styles.
- Two, my workstation is ALWAYS OFFLINE, so I need a way to activate my buy withouth being connected to the Internet.
Regarding EWQL, I haven't found any detailed guide on how to activate the instruments without connection. Looks like I actually need the iLok key in this case, but I am not sure. I would like to clarify if it is possible to do this and how.
It looks like EWQL has more quality and articulations, but it only features "classical" orchestra instruments. These are the main pros of this library.
On the other hand, VSCO2 Pro has a bunch of exotic instruments and some jazz-sampled stuff. In the manual it states clearly that the registration only needs me to install NI manager and write my activation code.
So I would like to know your opinion. Price is similar (EWQL Hollywood Silver is 300€ vs 230€ of VSCO 2 Pro). For now I believe that VSCO 2 has a decent quality to start in the market and would give more flexibility, but I'm a complete noob and I believe it is better to listen to you before.
So, nice to meet you all! I understand that you may be tired of this kind of questions. I will come with many interesting orchestration questions next time, I promise!
I'm starting this thread as a place where we can discuss who plays what real instruments, and how we can collaborate to help each other with live parts.
Mattias or another moderator, feel free to rename this and put it in the right place.
As mentioned a few times before, I practice clarinet. I spent seven years in school band, then didn't touch it for quite some time, then a little over a year ago I bought a bit nicer replacement for the cheap student clarinet that I had, and started practicing again.
I don't have a lot of experience recording, but to "audition" my sound, here are two tracks with me on the clarinet:
I'm trying to get more comfortable arranging brass and percussion. Here's a fanfare inspired by granite cliffs that are common in the mountains around where I live.
Hey folks!
Long time no see, I was kind of on an orchestral hiatus and did some other stuff, but now I'm slowly returning there to try out some ideas. I'm doing some games ost for some friends right now and I decided to combine some parts of a metal band with some orchestration, this is just a small hint of whats about to come. https://instaud.io/36rh
I'm relatively new to playing this style so all criticism regarding mixing, composing and so far are appreciated, especially regarding the guitar tone. Also, do you have any references for this kind of style, that is in standard tuning? I tried to get some mixing references, but it was all with vocals and down tuned a lot, which made it super hard to draw comparisons.
So on Facebook I'm a member of the VGM Academy group. I don't comment much (and post not at all) but a few days ago someone posted this:
Quote:Hello, everybody! I'm a mexican composer. New member here, but looking to get practice and connections. I mosty arrange using synthetic sounds, since I have almost no practice in recording orchestral instruments. I wanted to ask a couple of things: a) Do you know a good affordable sound library for orchestral sounds? b) Do you know any good online resource to learn orchestration? Thanks!
I saw this and read it and realized that yes! This is something for which I have a level of knowledge adequate to help them. So I wrote a small book.
Quote:1: the SONiVOX Film Score Companion is reasonably inexpensive, but the software is, frankly, not very good. There's no disk streaming which means it's a nasty RAM hog. They are monotimbral; you'd need a separate instance for each section of the orchestra. I've heard various other problems with it, too, which have been detailed over at the Scoring Central forums. I would recommend only as a very last of last resorts - I might even go as far as to warn you against purchasing it. This option is a difficult one for me because the sounds are fantastic; warm, rich, lush, etc.; but the front end is awful.
2: Digital Sound Factory offers a number of cheap, older sample libraries. These are, however, not really ideal for if you intend to write orchestral music commercially because these samples, again, are very old. Once again, not ideal.
3: If you have Kontakt or Kontakt Player, the Versilian Chamber Orchestra 2 Full Edition may fit your needs. It is inexpensive and offers all standard orchestral instruments and a reasonably generous selection of auxiliaries, too. However, because this is a chamber orchestra, it may not be ideal for massive, epic-type tracks, at least not without layering in some other sample libraries. You can, of course, take a listen to demos yourself to find out - they have a website and a Soundcloud. VSCO2 offers two pro options.
4: If you can not afford the above three, there is still a completely free option - the Virtual Playing Orchestra, which is comprised of public domain samples, all of them looped, retuned, etc. so that they fit together. The sample sources come from as diverse as the Sonatina, the No Budget, the Versilian CO2 Community Edition, and various others. You will need a soundfont reading VST, of which there are a number of options. With a good reverb applied to the VPO, you have the best free orchestra there is.
5: If for some very bizarre the VPO does not fit, you can, of course, utilize the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra in its original form, likewise with the No Budget Orchestra. I do not recommend this.
6: There is, of course, beyond this, something which is neither inexpensive but poor, inexpensive but good, or free - I speak of the abandonware software Edirol Orchestral, which is... iffy. It's comprised of Roland samples ranging from the 80s to the 2000s, and the quality correspondingly varies. It's all wrapped up in a very low RAM usage VST. I've had two instances loaded without a single problem, and this at a time when I had only 2 GB of RAM. (For comparison, my computer and DAW could only run 2 instances of the SONiVOX Strings before Reaper crashed.) For a PS2-type of sound, it's positively ideal.
7: EWQL offers a subscription service called the Composers' Cloud which allows you to use their products at a far lower price than it would take purchasing them. (They currently have a holiday sale on for their ComposerCloud X option putting it at $19.99 a month for a year.)
8: In the realm of older libraries, the Garritan Personal Orchestra 5. This is, mind you, rather dated and old. I've heard other stuff about it such as it requiring babying by way of effects to sound good; but do NOT take my word for it.
9: Best Service offers the Complete Orchestral Collection of Peter Siedlaczek's libraries. This is, as with DSF's orchestral libraries (not, mind you, their Emu libraries but their own libraries), is one of those retro sample libraries.
10: In the same realm of the retro sample library is the Prosonus Orchestral Collection.
11: Miroslav Philharmonik 2 is almost, but not quite, a library akin to this. I say almost because it has been updated, so it's a very weird sort of in-between library. This is a nice option because it has a few auxiliary instruments in it that, say, SONiVOX and VPO lack. MP2 is currently on sale (€149.99 = $170.23 [usually €299 = $340.46], VSCO2 PE $229), which means you can purchase it for less than it would cost you to purchase the VSCO2 Professional Edition.
12: Naturally, there are numerous General MIDI soundsets. I wouldn't recommend these; crawling through them to find something that sounds at least reasonably professional would be extremely time-consuming. Again, if you have no money to spend, just get the VPO.
13: There also the DSK Music VSTs. These are not very good.
14: Beyond this, options become progressively more and more expensive, and, correspondingly, more and more professional and with a larger and larger learning curve. There are probably other inexpensive options out there, but if there are, I don't know of them. (The old adage: do your research.) I, personally, would recommend either the VSCO2, MP2, or VPO if you're aiming to go as cheap as possible. Beyond that you'll have to listen around to demos, see what people say about the library.
15: TO ORCHESTRATION. It must be noted firstly that the usage of sample libraries for orchestral music, and writing for an actual orchestra, are subtly different skills. MIDI Orchestration is the art and practice of making sure your virtual orchestra sounds realistic; while Orchestration itself is the art of writing for a genuine symphonic orchestra such that you achieve a good sound and the orchestra can play it. MIDI Orchestration involves a great deal more hands-on editing with CC parameters etc. to make your sounds sound like they are being performed. With Orchestration your concern is much more with "can the orchestra play this?" and "can this actually be heard?" Sample libraries are dishonest - you may get an audible sound with a harp with a library that you can hear at least a little well no matter how loudly the rest of the orchestra plays. In a genuine orchestra, a harp played forte could only be heard if the rest of the orchestra played mezzo-forte or piano.
16: I can not really recommend anything as regards to MIDI Orchestration. There are videos and articles out there if you look for them, but I can not at this moment recall any specific sources. In the realm of orchestration itself you have a variety of options - the YouTube channel OrchestrationOnline, the blog Orchestra Sounds, and obviously you will want a few books: Adler's Study of Orchestration 4th Edition, Piston's Orchestration seem to be the best consensus picks, the latter for starting out with and the Adler later on. The OrchestrationOnline website has other recommendations as well as a blog.
You thought I was exaggerating.
Anyway, having written so much, I realized that I could probably, with a little bit more research, turn this into a fully-fledged article.
So I'm thinking of doing just that. Since I know this forum is filled to the gills with people more knowledgeable then I, about free and affordable libraries, and not only that but people who have recorded and compiled and created such libraries - three of which I mentioned in my post (SSO, VSCO2, and VPO) - I figured you all could, possibly, help. Even so much as direction as to what to research, and where, would be helpful. This is stuff that you all are experts at. I am a dilettante. If you can help in any way, however minor, I would appreciate it.
Have you shut down the SSO landing page at sso.mattiaswestlund.net? I noticed because it's been the #1 source sending people to virtualplaying.com and the number of daily visitors to my page has just dropped. After all these years it seems Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra still has plenty of active references to it on the internet.
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