Making a great orchestra recording

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by Transcendental

Just wanted to chime in that NOTION has pretty incredible sounding playback that responds to articulations, dynamics and phrasing directly from the score. You can also "play" the piece back and create a .wav file that has rubato, holds and lots of nuance.

I've been hearing some great things about Notion - I'm waiting to see what the next version looks like as it seems as though they're almost there. But with version 5 of Sibelius coming out, it'll be a tough decision - upgrade or wait to see what the folks at Notion come up with.

However, I personally, wouldn't use notation software to try and produce a "final" piece. I'd much rather work in a DAW with an orchestral library to produce a piece without a real orchestra. DAWs are not even close to being able to produce reliable (readable) music, and notation software doesn't have the appropriate tools to efficiently approximate a "live" performance.

I think you still need both pieces if you do both "in the box" orchestral compositions and/or produce scores to be performed by live musicians.

Cheers, D

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by MaestroX

I'm looking at writing an article soon to explain some of the concepts of rendering good orchestral recordings. It may take a few weeks to write up but it would help many users round here.

Looking forward to seeing the article!

I find one of the best ways to capture more realism in your orchestral works is to actually practice and perform each part live. By practice, I don't mean, spend hours on each instrument, but run through the line so that you have it down practicing using all the appropriate controllers and key-switching.

I've seen some composers just cut 'n paste stuff from their piano sketch and then apply some robotic volume envelopes and wonder why it sounds so robotic.

If you capture a piece as a bunch of well practiced individual sections of instruments and preserve any of the imperfections (if I do quantize, it's always with very loose and random "snap-to" parameters), you get a much more realistic result.

Just my 2 cents...

Cheers, D

[TheFiveCount]

All of the above replies are great. I find one other thing to support having at least a decent DAW and sound samples:

When I am working on something (in Sibelius, SONAR, Notation, Finale, whatever...) I often get ideas totally unrelated to the music I am scoring that are triggered by the playback. When the goosebumps pop up on my arms as I am playing back a good part of the score (mine or others) I know I should stop and log this new idea somewhere before I forget it. This doesn't happen on a playback system where everything sounds like a $50 Casio keyboard.

Richard

[Transcendental]

chkn8tr (did I spell that right?

I totally agree that there's NOTHING like having live musicians perform your piece(s) and that it would be great if we could all play the instruments (all of them) that we want to compose with. (whoops, addendum; I just went back and re-read your post (slowly this time) and realized you were talking about isolating individual instruments, also and excellent practice and great way to refine!)

Seriously, I suggest anyone that has interest order a free demo of NOTION (you can order it from their website for free, really free, no shipping, etc.) and check it out.

Talk about an efficient way to get really good, surprisingly realistic idea of how your work is shaping up and might sound with an orchestra - it's pretty amazing! Plays back articulations, phrasing, etc. and can be "played" by the user...

Again, nothing like the real thing...but worth checking out...imho...

I guess this is my second 2cents worth - I'm up to 4cents - do I max out at a nickel or a dime?

Squelched

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by Transcendental

I guess this is my second 2cents worth - I'm up to 4cents - do I max out at a nickel or a dime?

LOL - depends where you're from I guess. The American-Canadian exchange rate is killer now - I'm getting about 1.85 cents for my canuck pennies...

But coming back to the topic, I wouldn't really expect any notational software to come close to replicating what the written piece would sound like in the "real world" - nor would I even try to make it do that. I treat the playback mechanism in Sibelius as a (VERY) rough approximation of what I'll hear live.

If I'm looking to have my composition sound good "in the box", I stick with composing, performing and editing in my DAW. Notation software does not have the tools to playback a composition in a convincing manner - nor would I expect it to.

Notation, in of itself, is by no means a precise medium to document and convey all the musical meaning that a composer wanted. At the very most, it's an approximation of what was intended. Yes, you have notes, articulations and dynamics..., but there is so much more detail that captured or conveyed through notation. But there in lies the rub - if you try to cram too much detail of intent into notation, then the whole notational system becomes way too unwieldy.

But, there is where I think the beauty is as live performance of music is such a personal and temporal thing - it's different every time.

There's my C$0.02... D

[reith]

Agreed, and admit that I'm getting disenchanted with computer orchestras. When it comes to solo players and contemporary they're a dead loss. After using and hearing sampled orchestras for a couple of years, I can't think of them as more than a rough guide to what a piece should sound like.

And I've yet to find a notation program that does all I want so I still work in pencil on paper. It suits me. A laptop running out of battery 2 hours into a TGV trip to Nice is about as useful as the bottom end of a mermaid.

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by reith

When it comes to solo players and contemporary they're a dead loss. After using and hearing sampled orchestras for a couple of years, I can't think of them as more than a rough guide to what a piece should sound like.

Yeah, you'll never quite get there - even with libraries that you need to negotiate financing to acquire. You can get something that's quite convincing, but achieving more realism comes at an exponential cost of time and resources...

Originally Posted by reith

A laptop running out of battery 2 hours into a TGV trip to Nice is about as useful as the bottom end of a mermaid.

LOL - I've always stuck with the fish on top/woman on bottom part of that age-old dilemma question...

D

[fiziwig]

Hi,

I'm a newbie to the forum, but reading the thread reminded me of something I once saw on a DVD special features segment on recording soundtrack music. (I wish I could remember which film it was, but alas...)

Anyway, the composer used a sampler but then overlaid a couple of live performances, typically one live oboe and one live violin. Having those two live instruments as part of the mix really brought the sampled orchestra to life at a considerably lower cost than a full live orchestra.

--gary

[Thorolf]

^ Hehe, I remeber on the four track as a teenager, when very synthetic brass stabs suddenly sprung to life by the addition of a lead live trumpet…

Regards

[Gopher]

Roger that about most samplers doing a poor job of solo instruments; that is the very reason I tend to stay away from solo pieces, since it's very difficult to get them to sound good unless you're willing to spend more time doing very fine-tuning (in technical terms, not arranging, like automating stuff) and using more articulations.
When doing passages with a lot going on, the finer details of playing instruments can be lost in the overall mix, so it's quite easy to get away with "poor discipline" without it making much of a difference (e.g. using a single legato patch to cover the "joined up" parts and a staccato patch to cover the "unjoined-up parts" :), but if you want to solo something, you're going to need a lot more patches, much more attention to the note velocities and velocity automation down to very short time scales to be able to have something that approaches reality. In situations like this, I would imagine that session players are worth their weight in gold. Pity I don't know any clarinetists in Norway now that I'm here.

Another problem is that throwing money at another sampler solution may not always help; different samplers, different players, different instruments, different acoustics, and they don't always line up.