# Templates: Articulations vs separate instruments



## JCold (Apr 10, 2022)

Yes, templates again - I realize that it's a very subjective topic but any opinions appreciated.

Running Studio One and mostly Spitfire products(BBCSO, Abbey Road, a few others), although my question is really DAW-agnostic.

Spitfire offers up a BBCSO template which essentially breaks out the orchestra sections into groups with their own VCAs, and mostly each fundamental instrument comes in multiple articulation flavours, for example flutes will have Legato, Longs and Shorts - and each entry is customized to only load those particular categories, to save on resources. Strings are a little more broken out, with five categories.

This is very similar to other templates, but my major question is: they have shorts and longs as discrete instruments, but lately I've been getting into using sound variations in Studio One(expression maps in Cubase), which lets you flip between articulations on the fly without the old method of key switches where you had to be careful about midi editing effecting a key switch(they're in their own "space" now, outside of midi notes per se). You can perform it with the key switches and/or you can fine tune the transition between legato and staccatissimo afterwards, which in my mind is more like a real instrument. You don't have a "legato" section.

The advantage is you save memory, the disadvantage is if you quickly want a marcato on *this* phrase in a sequence that previously isn't considered that style, you now have to edit the instrument to allow it, and the name is "incorrect" - it's a mix of styles. So isn't it better to simply have a couple of string instruments, with all the articulations? Add more if you need it?

Of course the short answer is - set it up how you like it and try...I know.  Just wondering if anyone else has gone down this road...

Cheers,

J.C.


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## soothingpanic (Apr 10, 2022)

I’ve been wondering the same thing - and have been preferring this setup vs track-per-articulation as it seems to better exploit sound variations and results in a score/track list which better matches what you’d end up with on paper (as you said, no ‘legato section’). It’s a tradeoff, but for me this setup is a better tradeoff vs the additional mixing control afforded by track per art.


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## samphony (Apr 10, 2022)

I think it is subjective in multiple ways. I use a mixture of articulation switching and single tracks. 

If you want your notes in the instrument editor to be as tight on the grid as possible you’ll have to use single or breakout groups of tracks due to different track delay requirements. 

If you don’t mind nudging notes off the grid until an articulation sounds right you can have all on one track and switch with an articulation method of your choice. 

Before I used @babylonwaves articulations my concept was based on midi channel switching. Meaning my sampleplayer of choice held a Maximum of 16 channel based instruments so I had the flexibility to use both methods. Single track articulation switching and sometimes breaking out certain channels onto their own tracks.


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Apr 10, 2022)

Sample delay usually differs between the various articulations of an instrument with legato needing more delay offset than shorts for example. AFAIK it’s not possible to specify this with Expression Maps etc., is it?


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## CT (Apr 10, 2022)

My template also uses mostly BBCSO, Abbey Road, and other Spitfire libraries. I have it set up in score order with one track per instrument, only breaking that when all articulations don't fit into a single instance or something.

I greatly prefer to work this way, and use a lot of Articulation ID stuff (Logic's equivalent of what you're talking about in Studio One I guess) now when I need to change faster than I can reliably keyswitch while playing live. It keeps the notation generated much cleaner too. As you say, you have to really just try out different methods, but this one has been working very smoothly for me, as someone who wants to keep the DAW experience as close to working with a written score as possible. If something really needs finer control, it's easy enough to duplicate a track to treat a particular element differently, or to apply a different offset (though usually I'll just do this manually in the piano roll after playing).


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## gsilbers (Apr 10, 2022)

JCold said:


> Yes, templates again - I realize that it's a very subjective topic but any opinions appreciated.
> 
> Running Studio One and mostly Spitfire products(BBCSO, Abbey Road, a few others), although my question is really DAW-agnostic.
> 
> ...


not sure if youve seen this?









Buy Studio One Sound Variations


This collection of Presonus Studio One Sound Variations supports all commercial orchestra libraries.




www.babylonwaves.com


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## Freudon33 (Apr 10, 2022)

Personally, I use a mix of the two.
keyswitches and separate articulations
all this in cubase with all expression maps
all tracks are disabled and enabled on demand
I prefer this approach because who needs all the articulations of all the instruments in a composition
it saves ram and cpu resource


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## Jdiggity1 (Apr 10, 2022)

I typically have instruments split into articulation categories - Legato, Longs, Shorts, Effects.
So my Woodwinds folder will look like:
Piccolo Legato
Piccolo Long
Piccolo Short
Piccolo FX
Flute Legato
Flute Long
Flute Short
Flute FX
etc.
Each of these tracks can use expression maps or whatever keyswitching method you like, but it offers flexibility in a couple of key areas - stemming and mixing, and resource management.
It allows you to split up shorts and longs into separate stems, which has become a common request from media music mixers. But even at the instrument-level, it just allows you to mix them a little differently for balancing, or processing them differently. A lot of libraries need their shorts volumes adjusted to match that of the longs, for example, and longs/legatos can usually tolerate more reverb than shorts can, without making things too soupy.
For resource management, it allows you to keep your Legato and FX tracks disabled until you need them, or conversely, having only the Legato enabled so that all the other articulations are not taking up memory and CPU.

If you set up each instance to contain your articulations on different midi channels (1- staccatissimo, 2- staccato, 3- tenuto, 4- marcato, etc.) Then you can always just add an extra midi track and assign it to the specific midi channel if and when you decide you want a dedicated track for a specific articulation.


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## tack (Apr 10, 2022)

I'm a track-per-instrument guy myself, which means articulation switching. In my opinion, this decision matters (or doesn't) depending on the kind of music you make and the outcome you're looking for.

If you're desperate to squeeze every last inch of life out of your virtual instruments, lots of minor articulation changes are a fact of life, and I simply can't see how you can do something like this using a track-per-articulation project without wanting to blow your brains out.

Meanwhile, if you're mocking something up as a quick sketch that will eventually land in the hands of a real orchestra, speed is likely more important than obsessing over your virtual instruments and fussing with articulation management in your DAW.


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Apr 10, 2022)

tack said:


> I simply can't see how you can do something like this using a track-per-articulation project without wanting to blow your brains out.


It's actually pretty quick. You soon learn which note lengths sound best using which articulations.

In the above example, mute all the notes, then copy/paste the midi to the various tracks/articulations.

On the Staccato-track, unmute the Staccato-notes. On the Long-track, unmute the Long-notes etc.


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## JCold (Apr 11, 2022)

Thanks for all the feedback. Yup, gsilbers, I actually picked up Art Conductor and it was using that which got me into this train of thought. I think based on the feedback here I'll use a mix of the two for starters and see how it goes.


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## Wensleydale (May 17, 2022)

I hope it's OK for another newbie to continue this thread. 

I'd prefer to use one track per instrument if possible. I'm using Logic, and I know how to use articulation sets to assign articulations to existing MIDI notes. But I'm not sure how to select articulations when _playing_ the notes. I would rather not have to click around inside Kontakt for this. And keyswitches are not ideal because I have a Keylab mkII with only 61 keys. 

But the Keylab mkII does have 16 buttons which can be programmed to send CC messages. In the case of Spitfire libraries this means (I think) that I could lock the instrument to UACC and use these buttons to send the necessary CC32 messages. I've tried this and it seems to work. The buttons are actually sending each CC32 message twice -- once when pressed and once when released -- which offends my tidy mind but probably doesn't matter. Still, I suspect that there is a simpler solution which I'm missing. And I'm not sure whether CC messages would work at all with non-Spitfire libraries. Do other developers have something similar to UACC?


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## onnomusic (May 17, 2022)

Wensleydale said:


> I hope it's OK for another newbie to continue this thread.
> 
> I'd prefer to use one track per instrument if possible. I'm using Logic, and I know how to use articulation sets to assign articulations to existing MIDI notes. But I'm not sure how to select articulations when _playing_ the notes. I would rather not have to click around inside Kontakt for this. And keyswitches are not ideal because I have a Keylab mkII with only 61 keys.
> 
> But the Keylab mkII does have 16 buttons which can be programmed to send CC messages. In the case of Spitfire libraries this means (I think) that I could lock the instrument to UACC and use these buttons to send the necessary CC32 messages. I've tried this and it seems to work. The buttons are actually sending each CC32 message twice -- once when pressed and once when released -- which offends my tidy mind but probably doesn't matter. Still, I suspect that there is a simpler solution which I'm missing. And I'm not sure whether CC messages would work at all with non-Spitfire libraries. Do other developers have something similar to UACC?


if you use articulation sets you can use the same midi messages (from the buttons, could be notes, cc values whatever you want) for all your different libraries. So it doesn't matter when for instance your wanna select a legato, and for instance Spitfire needs a cc32 value, an audio imperia library C-1 and ARK1 D-2, the same button always does the same. look into it, it works really well


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## Wensleydale (May 17, 2022)

Thanks, but I don't understand. If I've programmed a button to send CC32 #20 (legato in UACC), how would I get the same button to send C-1 instead when the instrument is an Audio Imperia one? Wouldn't I need to customize the buttons separately for each library?


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## babylonwaves (May 17, 2022)

Wensleydale said:


> Thanks, but I don't understand. If I've programmed a button to send CC32 #20 (legato in UACC), how would I get the same button to send C-1 instead when the instrument is an Audio Imperia one? Wouldn't I need to customize the buttons separately for each library?


That's where Articulation Sets come into play. You send a note and the Articulation Set turns that into a command that changes the articulation. The Articulation Sets are per instrument, so the same note you send can trigger different commands depending on the instrument you want to control.

The "button" sends the note that stays the same.


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## ed buller (May 17, 2022)

TBH...it's SUCH a personal decision. Spend time with both....one will seem a better choice than the other then and you can focus on the music.

best

e


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## Trash Panda (May 17, 2022)

I try to stick to one instrument per track. In Reaper, I control articulations via MIDI channel. In Studio One (which I'm currently using most often), I use the Sound Variations.

I tend to stick to libraries with consistent timings between articulations to avoid headaches.


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