# Hello from Paris



## LordLarsa

Hello everyone,

I'm super happy that I found this forum (really randomly). I'm Lise from Paris, and I compose time to time by pure hobby on Reason 10 and I like doing orchestral suff. I'm not a total newbie but I still need to discover. I'm currently struggling choosing which orchestral set to choose between all the propositions: EastWest, VSL, Best service, for the one I heard about.

The kind of sound and stuff I love and my goal are the sounds of Hitoshi Sakimoto (a video game composer):



I'm more into video games musics/composers with colored music than movies and I need an orchestral set of course but also I would love world mystics sounds like the RA set from East west.

I saw the deals on Eastwest and the Hollywood Gold Orchestra deal at - 60%, and I'm seriously interesting to buy it.

Also I love how the RA set sounds, but someone told me the library was sounding out dated and Best service Ethno World Instrument 6 was better... I listened the both, and I don't know if it's caused of the music samples proposed but I found the RA set from EW maybe less realistic sounding but more beautiful and colored than Ethno World that sounded really realistic but more "washed out". I don't know... What do you think? Am I wrong?

Thanks for your advices and nice to meet you! I would like to decide me before the Eastwest deals are off


----------



## wickedw

Hi Lise and welcome!

I haven't used any of the EastWest libraries so I have no opinion that can help you  But I just want to make sure you know about their composer cloud: http://www.soundsonline.com/composercloud . Just so you don't feel rushed by the bombarding of sales on libraries, they'll go on sale again 

Also I absolutely love your city, or well, I love the good parts of it


----------



## ghandizilla

Welcome to VI-C Lise,

More and more french people on this forum. Could be cool to have "native" speaking subforums.

You should check Composer Cloud, so you would have RA and the Hollywood orchestra and be able to try it, test if it's OK for you. Hollywood Orchestra sounds great, some don't like the individual articulations patch system, some like it (it's useful to go deeper in the mix). You have to try it to be sure.

I didn't know you could do orchestral stuff with Reason 10  Don't know how it handles MIDI editing tho.

Ethno World 6 sounds OK, it has microtuning, legato on some instruments, a lot of "ornemental" articulations and loops, a built-in convo reverb. I don't own RA, but Ethno World 6 works well as a bread & butter ethno thing.

There are no outdated libraries. It would be like saying "there are outdated sounds". There are libraries more deeply sampled, with more or less advanced scripting which frees you some time, but for example you can do awesome legatos without having true legato, if you take enough time of MIDI programming. So I would not pull off because RA is old. If you love the sound, if you feel the content matches your need, go with it.

Concerning Sakimoto, great reference (I was more into Uematsu when I began  ). You should go with a very expressive (lot of articulations) orchestra suite not to feel too limited with the expressivity of this kind of music (Berlin and Hollywood come in mind). And transcribe everything you like of Sakimoto.


----------



## fiestared

LordLarsa said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'm super happy that I found this forum (really randomly). I'm Lise from Paris, and I compose time to time by pure hobby on Reason 10 and I like doing orchestral suff. I'm not a total newbie but I still need to discover. I'm currently struggling choosing which orchestral set to choose between all the propositions: EastWest, VSL, Best service, for the one I heard about.
> 
> The kind of sound and stuff I love and my goal are the sounds of Hitoshi Sakimoto (a video game composer):
> 
> 
> 
> I'm more into video games musics/composers with colored music than movies and I need an orchestral set of course but also I would love world mystics sounds like the RA set from East west.
> 
> I saw the deals on Eastwest and the Hollywood Gold Orchestra deal at - 60%, and I'm seriously interesting to buy it.
> 
> Also I love how the RA set sounds, but someone told me the library was sounding out dated and Best service Ethno World Instrument 6 was better... I listened the both, and I don't know if it's caused of the music samples proposed but I found the RA set from EW maybe less realistic sounding but more beautiful and colored than Ethno World that sounded really realistic but more "washed out". I don't know... What do you think? Am I wrong?
> 
> Thanks for your advices and nice to meet you! I would like to decide me before the Eastwest deals are off



Have a look to "Silk" from East West, don't know what you're looking for, but Silk est un vrai bonheur à utiliser, I use it for a long time, and still didn't find it's limits... Bienvenue, Parisienne... (un ancien Parisien)


----------



## Loïc D

Bonjour Lise.
I'm living in Paris too and hobbyist composer too.
And I do like japanese composers too (more on the Sakamoto / Hisaishi side).

I don't own RA / Ethno World but has the opportunity to work with it and I do share your opinions.
Since you like ethnic textures, you should check the instruments produced by Edouardo Tarilonte (I think he's distributed by Best Services).

I own East West Quantum Leap Orchestra Gold but I don't use it anymore : I've switched to several instruments for several purposes, mostly ensemble / solo, on the cheaper side.
I found EW products to be quite bothersome to work with (Play !) and lacking a proper support.

Full range orchestra are rather expensive (Orchestral Tools / Spitfire Audio) but there are tons of other companies producing great instruments at a cheaper rate.

This forum is full of resources & advices, so I can only advise you to perform searches on specific topics.

Some very famous composers are also lurking around here and giving priceless opinions and hints 

Bienvenue


----------



## LordLarsa

Thanks for your answers! It lightens me a little. I think I will probably buy the Hollywood Orchestra (with the sales) and wait a little for RA or something else cause it's less of an "emergency" for me. 

Anway, you were saying that Play is bothersome to work with? Is it not easy to handle?


----------



## ghandizilla

PLAY was buggy in the first releases, seems stable by now. Less and less complaints. What a lot of users still complaint about PLAY is :
- CPU usage
- no "Purge" function (as something that would automatically reload triggered samples)

So you'll need a 32go RAM workhouse to have the full Hollywood Orchestra run smoothly.


----------



## LordLarsa

Oh okay, CPU is important, I hope it's not that bad... I saw some images, and indeed it doesnt look very appealing. Does it take time to load? I will make it play in Reason 10. And I have a 16go RAM...  32go RAM is a lot, but I guess it's when you use like 50 different instruments at the same time?


----------



## ghandizilla

Will be difficult to have _all _the articulations loaded in a single template, but you could make a "core" template easily with 16go RAM. A 3ghz 4-core CPU will be enough to run everything. Worst case scenario: you occasionally freeze some tracks to free some CPU usage.

ADD: A one-month subscription to Composer Cloud would let you actually test if everything runs smoothly before pulling the trigger.

ADD2 : Yes, 32gb is if you load everything. For instance, you could load all instruments but not all playing techniques, sparing advanced articulations would let the thing run at less than 16gb, as I witnessed at a friend's place.


----------



## LordLarsa

Okay, I understand well, thanks! If you say it was fine at your friend's home, I suppose it should do it, I'm not sure it would be a necessity to load really everything up. It's true that a full orchestra needs everything anyway, but probably not all the articulations are needed in one track.

My computer is SSD by the way, maybe it can help!


----------



## ghandizilla

SSD is invaluable. Will avoid you sample issues: it's just the beginning of the samples that is loaded into RAM, the rest is streamed from HD. So on long notes, with a SATA, you can have "jumps". SSD avoid you that. And patches load fast as hell.

Regarding articulations, I don't think you'll use harmonics, flageolets, bartok pizz, pre-recorded runs, sul pont.. in all your orchestral works. So you can make a template without them, and just load the additional articulation on the fly when needed.


----------



## Mars

I haven't seen it mentioned, and I didn't bought it because my basis are covered, but if I had to begin today, I would have bought Orchestral Tools Inspire ! 
http://www.orchestraltools.com/libraries/berlin_orchestra_inspire.php

More expensive than Eastwest Hollywood orchestra (with less instruments and articulations, of course), but lighter on ressources and have a great sound.


----------



## ghandizilla

Yes, I have recommended OT Inspire to a beginner in another thread yesterday.

But in this thread, we have someone who will need the full range orchestra, given the models, so I went to another advice  Nevertheless, OT Inspire may be a first step before building a full OT Orchestra.


----------



## Mars

The Eastwest deal is the best deal on the market for a beginner, that's for sure. 
That said, you can easily lost yourself within the maze of articulations and it's hard (impossible ?) to build a full template with 16gb


----------



## ghandizilla

I don't know at what level the OP is regarding craft, but I've always thought it's better to start from the beginning with the full orchestra, because you can get accustomed very quickly to ensemble patches and get lazy. Not a problem if you aim "epic" realms, but for the "whole orchestral palette", I would not recommend beginning with ensemble libraries.

Yes, you can get overwhelmed by the wealth of instruments in an orchestra. But grouping two or three layers of instruments is not that hard to learn. ScoreClub's Orchestrating the Line (1 and 2) courses are a goldmine to go through this "overwhelming" effect, and to get a clear sense of how a full orchestration can be reduced to two or three layers. So if the OP is at a low-level regarding orchestration, not a problem, there are some cool and quick learning tools out there.

ADD: My main 140-tracks Reaper template runs on a 16gb machine. Never crashed, never got a problem with it in five months, even with demanding things like CSS+CSSS or soloists + a2 + a3 patches for winds and brass. But I have Kontakt's purge function to thank for this. With PLAY, you would really have to reduce the thing to core articulations, so it's important for the OP to be aware of this issue.


----------



## Loïc D

Absolutely : no need for an overcomplicated template in Play (or any other tool). Just pick what you need.
Since I'm only hobbyist, I found over the years that I don't even need a template (each project is quite different from the previous one).

I own Berlin Inspire, and it really has lots of features, but only very little separate sections / solo instruments.
It's great for sketching (as Albion One does), but if you want to write separate tracks for each instrument/section, you'll have to go for a full featured orchestral product. I honestly feel limited by this "ensemble" approach (moreover for woodwinds & brass). And it's probably not the best way to learn orchestration.

You could opt for separate products (like Cinematic Studio Strings for Strings, Caspian for brass,...).
At this point, EW Gold is a good option : the Play engine has improved over the years even if it's way behind scripted engines (like Kontakt or VSL). Scripted libraries are not _per se_ better, they are just easier to use.

Since you mentionned ethnic libraries, I almost forgot our good old (French!) UVI. They just launched a 40% sale of their ethno bundle.


----------



## ghandizilla

LowweeK said:


> Absolutely : no need for an overcomplicated template in Play (or any other tool). Just pick what you need.
> Since I'm only hobbyist, I found over the years that I don't even need a template (each project is quite different from the previous one).



Or you can make different "flavours" of your template. For instance, I have six versions of mine depending on if I need wind doublers, mutes, a large room, a big or a little string section. I even have a mono flavour with a high cut @12khz to get this "1960s" sound. So I'll start with the "closest" flavour, and then, make modifications on the fly (delete and add things, adjust mixing) depending on the project. Found it was the best way for not being stuck in the same sonic qualities and in the same time not spend hours setting things up at each project.


----------



## LordLarsa

I'm reading you, it's interesting. So in fact, Berlin Inspire is good for beginners cause they have "ensemble" already set and ready to use, instead to collect one instrument and see what fits with the other one? 
I have to admit that I don't know any orchestral theory, I just do it with the ear. I will post my soundclound of what I already done in another topic more appropriated.


----------



## ptram

Just today, I received an offer from… Paris! UVI is selling at a discounted price their World Suite. I don't have it, but it sounds very nice!

https://www.uvi.net/world-suite.htm...ail&utm_term=0_3375a13ef3-fc2bbecab7-30958973

Paolo
(Part-time living in Paris, but unfortunately not now! :( )


----------



## Mars

So an "ensemble library" might save you some time, but you have to be aware of its limitations. 
For instance, Inspire says you've got this for woodwinds : 
- Whole Ensemble
- Flutes + Clarinets 8va
- Bassoons + Clarinets 8va
- Solo Flute
- Solo Clarinet

If you need a bassoon or piccolo melody, Inspire do not have that, but Eastwest has it. If you need a powerful horn ensemble, Inspire can't do it (you either have to go with a solo horn or a Trumpet + Horn ensemble)... Etc

But still, it covers a lot of stuff, and some other ensemble library (like Albion) will not give you the same flexibility. 
All in all, Inspire will give you a "pre-orchestrated" orchestra with solo instruments and a great sound out of the box.


----------



## Illico

Hello and welcome to VI-Control !

Few years ago, I had the chance to buy East West QL Symphonic Orchestra Gold for less than 200€, it's an old librarie (>10years), but a very complete orchestra (with a lack of true legato). The Hollywood deal seems very interesting. Check the instrument list to have an idea. I second that you probably need a good system with SSD disks and minimum 16Go (32Go should be nice). I hope to hear soon your compositions.


----------



## LordLarsa

Thank you! It really lighten me up about all those. I will buy the Hollywood Orchestra during those sales (4 days left!), I think it will fit very good to what I want because I will also need solo instruments (like piccolo). 
And I will think about the World Instruments cause as I say I don't need it right now, but indeed listening to the samples, my heart balances more towards RA from EW (loved how it sounded) than the others that I could have chance to listen. I will see if I think again about RA and wait the others sales or also buy it now, I have until the 31 May to think. I guess - 50% sales is good, I don't know if they do more sometimes. Ehh, buying the both at the same time still expensive!


----------



## ghandizilla

If you begin in orchestration, as you wrote yesterday, I would strongly recommend to quickly get grouping skills, so you have a clear vision and don't feel overwhelmed by the full orchestration. I can't recommend https://scoreclub.net/all-courses/ (Alain Mayrand's courses) enough. It seems pricey, but _totally_ worth it. You can also grab a book: Joseph Wagner's Orchestration is fine if you do piano before orchestration, Peter Alexander's Professional Orchestration is all around and IMO better than Samuel Adler's book.

Also, you can make MIDI mock-up of pieces you like. Grab sheet music on IMSLP (for example late 19th century russians), and try to make your virtual instruments play the music: it'll help you handle and mix them, you'll compare with a recording and see if your balance is correct, you'll be challenged to make them sound expressive, it's great to get some vocabulary (orchestra devices and voicings, harmonic progressions) *and *get better acquainted with your tools


----------



## Dominic Stein

Welcome to VI-Control Lise!


----------



## Vardaro

Bienvenue à I.V. Contrôle!


----------

