Same notes, but more musical ?

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 2:56 pm

This is going to seem strange, but I just got the Garritan Personal Orchestra package, and I swear that whatever I play sounds more 'musical'.

I've noticed this before that some synths seem to 'flatten' tunes, make them more dull somehow.

But with GPO I play a little riff with, say, the french horns, and it just sounds like 'more of a tune' than if I play the same thing with a synth. Sweeter, more emotional, more separation in the notes, more movement in the melody ... how do I explain it ?

I may just be suffering a severe case of "new gear rapture"

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 8:06 pm

Thanks for this post. I ordered the GPO yesterday. It will arrive tomorrow I hope. I plan to try my hand at orchestral music but may also do some music which mixes these sounds with electronic sounds. I'm going to the mountains to make music next week.

Kensuguro,

Did you use a breath controller in your piece?

[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2004-03-04 20:09 ]

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 12:17 am

na, no breath controller, although it may be interesting to get one. I did all mine with knob tweaking. (heh, pretty "electronica" eh?)

bosone · Post by **bosone** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 3:23 am

i see that GPO is selling well on PlanetZ!!

Jerome · Post by **Jerome** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 5:18 am

But with GPO I play a little riff with, say, the french horns, and it just sounds like 'more of a tune' than if I play the same thing with a synth. Sweeter, more emotional, more separation in the notes, more movement in the melody ... how do I explain it ?

Thats because the french horns samples have a very complex modulation of various parameters. Some call this micromodality. A 440 hz sinus has less feel, emotion, intensity (etc) then a violin playing a "a", starting very softly with slow vibrato, making a cresendo with deeper and faster vibrato (etc). All the "feel"-stuff is in this complex modulation information.
So you could program a synth with all this micromodulation info and it will sound better, its a lot of work but it pays off.
Its a complex subject and maybe be I shouldn't write something about this subject when I'm in a hurry (I have to leave now) but I couldn't ressist.
Jerome

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:21 am

No, I'm glad you touched on this. I assume that with current synthesizer technology micromodality would have to be done in the sequencing? This seems like a great area for synthesizer engineers to work on.

[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2004-03-05 08:24 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:08 pm

On 2004-03-05 08:21, braincell wrote:
... I assume that with current synthesizer technology micromodality would have to be done in the sequencing? This seems like a great area for synthesizer engineers to work on.

No

at least the instruments of John Bowen and Stephen Hummel (to name a few) provide well defined parameter sets to make the sound expressive in a musical context.

But of course it's up to the musician to make use of that potential.
There are a couple of physical controllers available beyond the mod wheel, like AirControl, Kaos-Pad, ribbon and wind controllers.
Of course it wouldn't hurt if some more show up on market...

I have a Casio Midi sax (DH-200) which maps most of the air expression to aftertouch.
To make it sound like a real instrument - not necessarily a sax

you have to assign the aftertouch controller to several destinations with variable rates.
For 2nd hand prices between 50-100 bucks one can't go wrong - it's NOT a toy btw

Imho the capabilities of electronic instruments are often just overlooked (or underestimated) - I've recently been rather impressed by the potential of a TX802 (for example)

cheers, Tom

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:04 pm

About the breath controller, why not assign CC2(breath control CC) to a slide or knob on a controller? That can work, eh?

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 8:59 pm

Guys, please DO TRY Edirol Orchestra... and be surprised. I know it's not perfect, but in many ways it's superb.

Jerome · Post by **Jerome** » Fri Mar 05, 2004 9:09 pm

A breath controller works very different then a slider. Ofcourse they both send CC out, but when simulating a windinstrument its feels much more natural then a slider. You also have to use more then one controller for example, 1 slider, breathcontroller, aftertouch, modulationwheen pitchbend and CVpedal
Its great to link the breathcontroller to
1 volume
2 pitchbend
3 filtercutoff
4 filter (over)drive
all at the same time!
You have to tweak a lot (only a bit of volume and picth modulation, some more for the cutoff and drive etc just experiment) but then you can really modulate the sound intuitif. Add aftertouch for vibrato (lfo speed) and modulation wheel for vibrato depth (lfo depth) and you have a lot of possibilities and combinations.
To downside is that you have to spend time to master your new instrument (like a real acoustic instrument) to play it. Meaning practicing a lot. Its quite different then just playing the notes of a melody. Ofcourse you can (I do sometimes) multitrack the controllers, this can make it easier.
Ofcourse its not only for windsimulation, your synthsolos/lines will get much more impact when you modulate them the same way.

By the way, listen to pieces of great theremin players. They have great expression and feel in their playing. But the sound source is basicly a sinus with pitchmodulation and ampmodulation. Its the human's hands (and lips and breath) that makes the feel and put more emotion in music. It takes time to learn but...
Just try it

Jerome

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 8:32 am

I have a Yamaha WX5 MIDI breath controller. The thing about these is that they give you a lot of control but learning the fingering to play as naturally as I do on a keyboard could take years. I'm thinking about using it for breath only while I play the notes on a keyboard.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 9:20 am

yeah Braincell, the WX adresses the real woodwind player.
Fortunately the Casio can be played with a recorder fingering

and there's a transpose button to shift it whereever it's needed. If they just had provided a lips pressure sensor it would be almost perfect.

But they did a real good job in conversion of physical breath to midi controller values.
That's a point Jerome mentions above: you HAVE to tweak it - and he mentions another 'outfashioned' fact: it takes time to learn.
Obviously that's something rather unpopular today - everyone wants great sounds, innovative sounds, sophisticated I-dunno-what - but effortless and right out of the box

cheers, Tom

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 1:12 pm

hi Spirit

wich sampler do you use?

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sat Mar 06, 2004 8:39 pm

Kontakt. But I dislike it. I dislike it's confusing GUI, find it difficult to manipulate samples, it's not-intuitive, and greedy NI gives me the shites (still haven't bought the 1.5 update which would let me play GPO in Kontakt).

Other than that I rather like it's time-stretch and sample mapping abilities.

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 7:24 pm

I'm not sure which Casio sax you use but I had 2 of them (early models) and both broke within 2 years. They were so cheap that I didn't bother having them repaired (If this is possible). I threw them away. The WX5 and WX7 have transpose buttons as well.

On 2004-03-06 09:20, astroman wrote:
yeah Braincell, the WX adresses the real woodwind player.
Fortunately the Casio can be played with a recorder fingering and there's a transpose button to shift it whereever it's needed. If they just had provided a lips pressure sensor it would be almost perfect.

But they did a real good job in conversion of physical breath to midi controller values.
That's a point Jerome mentions above: you HAVE to tweak it - and he mentions another 'outfashioned' fact: it takes time to learn.
Obviously that's something rather unpopular today - everyone wants great sounds, innovative sounds, sophisticated I-dunno-what - but effortless and right out of the box

cheers, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2004-03-07 19:26 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Mar 08, 2004 8:24 am

do you refer to the 'screachy' internal sound playback ? That's in fact a design flaw: a capacitor breaks after some time - easy to replace.
The one I bought had this too and it was probably the reason why the dude asked only 35 bucks for it

There is of course some sacrifice on such a budget instrument - nevertheless CASIO could have saved the world from recorder playing kids...

cheers, Tom

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Mon Mar 08, 2004 8:01 pm

In that case the Casio is great! The lip pressure in the Yamaha units is excellent. I have to say that the VL70M sound module designed for use by the WX5 (but not exclusively) is an incredible synthesizer.