Idiomatic control of orchestral sections - What do you use?

[Tusker]

This question is presumably for forumites who score for movies, tv, radio and theater, using orchestral and choir sections on a computer for mockups in your writing. Others may have the information I seek as well.

 

Do you use orchestral libraries like VSL, Spitfire Albion to get precise articulations such as short, pizz, spiccato, etc. If so, what is your preferred controller scheme (continuous pedals, sustain pedals, keyboard notes, etc.) for articulation and dynamics. Are there similar tools for choirs, or is it slim pickings?

 

If one was to develop skills in improvised "orchestral" play, possibly on a laptop (Current MBPs max out at 16GB), is there a simple path you would recommend, perhaps beginning with orchestral strings and winds and possibly adding voice sections later? I assume this a sinkhole into which you could throw the better part of $10K on software libraries but let's assume a $2K start for software instruments for now. Where should one begin?

 

Yes, I'll need to hang around https://vi-control.net/community/ but I thought I'd ask my friends here first. Thanks for any advice you may offer.

[mate stubb]

A baton?

[Geoff Grace]

You're right, Jerry, that VI Control is an excellent resource for people who want to score using orchestral and choral libraries. The options in this field have ballooned in the last decadeespecially in the area of orchestral libraries.

 

There are two types of orchestral libraries: ones that part out the samples so that you can play each instrument separately (i.e. violins, violas, trumpets, etc.) and those that sample sections (i.e. high strings, low strings, high woodwinds, etc.) so that you can sketch arrangements quickly. The first type offers more control and the second more speed. Most composers who do this for a living have at least one of both types and more often have several or many of both types.

 

The best choices in this area are partly dependent on the sound you're interested in. There are plenty traditional librariessome with reverb baked in; others recorded dry. There are also libraries that feature extreme dynamic ranges and unusual instrumentation aimed at cinematic trailer scoring. There are hybrid libraries that mix normal samples with synthetic or heavily processed sounds, and there are phrased based and ostinato based libraries.

 

If you're planning to do this on a laptop, your options are more limitedat least if you want to have the full instrumentation with multiple articulations loaded at once. The best library I know of is one that was designed, in part, for that purpose: Orchestral Tools Berlin Orchestra Inspire:

 

[video:youtube]

 

A great starting point might be to buy Inspire and subscribe to EastWest's Composer Cloud. Their Hollywood Orchestra series sounds great, and they're about to add the Hollywood Choirs to it. Between those options, you can start with a small investment and have all of your bases covered while you survey the rest of the market to see if there are products you might like better.

 

If you want to improvise and play an orchestra live, ProjectSAM Symphobia 2 might be a good option:

 

[video:youtube]

 

As for controllers, some people use expression pedals and others use sliders. On the sliders front, one of the composers at VI Control has released his own product that looks pretty nice. It's covered in this thread: FaderCtrl. Here's another option, reviewed by Christian Henson from Spitfire Audio:

 

[video:youtube]

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Tusker]

Geoff,

 

Thank you. Your post is everything I need to begin thinking about this path.

 

If you're planning to do this on a laptop, your options are more limitedat least if you want to have the full instrumentation with multiple articulations loaded at once. The best library I know of is one that was designed, in part, for that purpose: Orchestral Tools Berlin Orchestra Inspire:

 

Some range of articulations appear to be key to the improvisation process. I am not married to laptop levels of portability. Not being very handy with racks and wires it was easy to mention a consumer grade option with it's limitations. Thanks to your response, I found some vendors like Sonnet who can help someone stay in OSX, with a relatively mobile rack-mount of a decently specced computer.

 

It's covered in this thread: FaderCtrl. Here's another option, reviewed by Christian Henson from Spitfire Audio:

 

[video:youtube]

 

Ha! Suitably appropriate, since it was Mr Henson's excellent Albion videos which illustrated how quickly even a sketch with these tools could be insanely compelling. It's all his fault!

 

Thanks again.

[Geoff Grace]

Happy to be of any help, Jerry!

 

Before you give up entirely on a MacBook Pro, here's another video from Christian that I think may be helpful. He travels a lot, commuting regularly between Edinburgh and London, using his MacBook Pro on the commute. In this video, however, he's in Tokyo. He itemizes his travel rig at about the 2:20 markincidentally, showing the Behringer controller he gave up for the smaller Palette sliders he reviewed in the video above. That said, the most important thing is the 2TB portable Samsung SSD he uses:

 

[video:youtube]

 

He doesn't used the tired cliché "game changer" to describe the SSD, but that's essentially what he calls it.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

Also, if you're using Kontakt instruments, this tip will help you keep your RAM usage to a minimum:

 

[video:youtube]OSfsOp9TfXE

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Tusker]

That is truly really helpful, Geoff. A two tera-byte portable SSD sounds gargantuan to somebody who is not whipping up tv scores every week. 32MB Macbook pros may be an option in 2018 according to some analysts. This project of mine may take a year or so to plan and realize, but thanks to you we are off and running!

[Mark Schmieder]

I have found nothing as precise and realistic as VSL, and own everything of theirs, except the new surround sound expansions for their Synchrony series of sound stage recordings as I don't see myself doing multi-channel mixes any time soon.

 

I have a lot more besides VSL, but keep coming back to it once I have the time to do all the articulation mapping for realistic phrasing that is expressive and non-static. It's a LOT of work.

 

For quick-and-dirty, I am finding that nothing beats Chris Hein's recent offerings, and for certain instruments and genres, I do still use Sample Modeling a lot for brass (but not so much Audio Modeling for woodwinds or strings).

 

It's situational, but I can get very realistic timbre and phrasing from the brass instruments (and sometimes even the saxes).

 

Certain instruments from VSL stand out above the others, such as the flutes and most of the oboe and bassoon families, the orchestral horns (more the ensembles than the individual horns due to the weaker sound of the Viennese variant of that horn), and especially the solo strings (though less so the double bass).

[Rod S]

Guys, thanks for the comments in this thread, this is a topic that interests me but A LOT to learn still. Currently reading an orchestration book (and have another lined up) to get some basics. My wife is always surprised of the comments about the score after I see the movie, always been an interest for me.

 

Spent last night going through some of the Christian Henson videos. Surprised about the wealth of material in youtube from experienced folks sharing the knowledge (also enjoy the Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg) videos).

 

I have an acquaintance that has VSL (not sure what package). Over the holidays I'm planning to go check it out.

 

Need to do some research on setup. My MBP is short on HD space, and I thought I could do streaming from my thunderbolt drive, but reading some of the comments I'm in doubt. Will do some more research.

[Geoff Grace]

Rod, judging from my experience, if your Thunderbolt drive is an SSD, it should work well enough.

 

And I agreethere is a wealth of experience being shared via YouTube videos these days.

 

Best,

 

Geoff