# How Hard is It for the Instrumentalists Recording for Samples?



## Rodney Money (Jan 22, 2017)

The recent Orchestral Tools comment concerning their flute player posed this question in my mind? So how hard is it for the Instrumentalists during these recording sessions? Boring, easy, torture, just another gig?


----------



## trumpoz (Jan 22, 2017)

Hey buddy - put yourself in the trumpet players shoes.......

Think about 5 x round robins at 4 dynamic layers for stac, staccatissimmo, marcato, marcato longer and they have to be perfect from low F# to a 4th ledger line G. 

5 - 10 seconds at 4 dynamic layers throughout the same range keeping pitch perfectly steady with a consistent tone.

All intervals slurred up to an octave.....

Double triple tonguing, mutes.

My chops are stuffed just thinking about it.

I assume it is similar for all instruments.


----------



## airflamesred (Jan 22, 2017)

Rodney Money said:


> The recent Orchestral Tools comment concerning their flute player posed this question in my mind? So how hard is it for the Instrumentalists during these recording sessions? Boring, easy, torture, just another gig?


All, I would imagine Rodney, and I would guess at a degree of satisfaction knowing that folks all over the world are assembling your sounds into something tangiable.


----------



## Paul T McGraw (Jan 22, 2017)

I would hate it. And back when I was being paid as a cellist, I don't think I would have done it no matter what it paid. Well, if it paid say, $1,000 per hour, I guess I could make myself do it.


----------



## ysnyvz (Jan 22, 2017)

Torture. You have to suck the soul out of musicians, if you want a good sample library.


----------



## d.healey (Jan 22, 2017)

The musicians I've sampled enjoyed it. It was boring for sure but it was something that they hadn't done before and was in some ways challenging because they had to focus on each individual note in great detail which is something that doesn't really happen when performing a piece of music, because the notes aren't isolated like they are for sampling. Also I try to treat my musicians well with lots of breaks and refreshments, I also take on any input they give - which is advisable since they always know more about their instrument than I do.

I've done some 6+ hour sampling sessions and if it's boring for the musician it's even more boring in the control room.


----------



## Stiltzkin (Jan 22, 2017)

General longs/shorts etc the musicians don't tend to mind. Unnatural Legato transitions at the upper and lower ranges of the instrument on the other hand are quite taxing, because the music is written to basically be an exercise (to get it done in a decent time frame and still keep in musical anyway).

Also if the musicians are finding it that boring, you might not be doing a good job "inspiring" them. If you just give them sheet music and get recording, that'll usually give some dead samples - they need context, at least what little context you can give for a sample library 

And I agree with David, it can get DAMN boring in the control room, especially on a 12 hour day.


----------



## EvilDragon (Jan 22, 2017)

ysnyvz said:


> You have to suck the soul out of musicians, if you want a good sample library.



I disagree on this one. Totally depends on what the library is supposed to _be about_.


----------



## Rctec (Jan 22, 2017)

ysnyvz said:


> Torture. You have to suck the soul out of musicians, if you want a good sample library.


It's the very opposite. You try to make them play at their most committed and refined. As expressive as possible. You are not sampling an instrument, you're sampling the performance by an artist. You hand-pick each player. You get them to perform in a beautiful space. You want each note to have a little character, but still make for cohesion. And it takes a looooong time, so you better have some seriously entertaining stories ready. But once the great player truly gets in "The Zone", You get diamonds!
We've been doing this for a long time at AIR, with truly the best players. (Slightly different set-up and players from my esteemed colleagues, the Gentlemen from "Spitfire", who get a very similar sound, since they seem to share a complimentary aesthetic). We are now starting on the next generation...
But if you think buying a sampler and a sample library is expensive, you should see what we have spent over the years.... but it's been truly worth it. We still have a sound that can't quite be beat. And it inspires me every day. And a sampler that does things other samplers (luckily) haven't even thought off....

-Hz-


----------



## jononotbono (Jan 22, 2017)

Rctec said:


> We are now starting on the next generation...



This sounds beyond exciting and I don't even know why because I can't even imagine the magnitude of ridiculousness that is no doubt about to happen. I do often wonder how many SSDs Remote Control uses haha!


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen (Jan 22, 2017)

I've been both the sampler and the samplee and have found that it's not too bad in being the instrumentalist in terms of getting bored but it is very intense in terms of trying to give your best and having a consistent performance. You need really great players to be able to do this. Being the sampler and sitting in the control room is much more boring although you can't let your guard down and need to listen attentively in case anything needs to be redone.


----------



## Rodney Money (Jan 22, 2017)

trumpoz said:


> Hey buddy - put yourself in the trumpet players shoes.......
> 
> Think about 5 x round robins at 4 dynamic layers for stac, staccatissimmo, marcato, marcato longer and they have to be perfect from low F# to a 4th ledger line G.
> 
> ...


So, you are saying it's somewhere in between editing a polished score for publication and being married to my first wife? Thank you for the additional information, my friend. It truly means a lot and that is a good check list by the way. So 5 x round robin on dubba G at dynamic pianissimo? Bring on the pain then, lol.

My 2nd biggest regret in college was not diving deeper into my required electronic class back in the day. I just remember my professor playing us a sample of a VSL trumpet and thinking to myself, "I'll never need this," and when he asked us to sample a sound, just one articulation, I mistakenly did not even think of the possibilities of what I could accomplish. We had access to two brand new state of the art studios, and I bet I did not spend 30 minutes in them. The project was due Monday and I did it Sunday night after a concert. I took the mic, recorded the shortest fff straight, cup, and Harmon muted accented staccatos you've ever heard, stretched out the samples on the keyboard and done. What a wasted opportunity in my life, and my professor was not impressed either. I was his A student, but that semester he gave me two things: a talking to and my only C. But still to this day, my short muted articulations have been the most accented biting shorts I've ever heard from any samples. Too bad I erased them. If I could go back to school knowing what I know now, I would take back those missed opportunities and probably worked on the most complete brass library. I had all the resources, all the players, and it would've been for free also. Maybe one day again.


----------



## NoamL (Jan 22, 2017)

All those legato transitions must be killer. Just some ballpark math, if you do 12 up and 12 down, and you sample all 3.5 octaves of the cello in semitones (42 notes), minus however many legato transition samples aren't needed because they're impossible or go out of range, that still works out to something like 800-1000 samples.

There seems to be significant savings in SSD/RAM just from having a smaller range to sample (trumpet < horn etc).


----------



## Rodney Money (Jan 22, 2017)

Rctec said:


> It's the very opposite. You try to make them play at their most committed and refined. As expressive as possible. You are not sampling an instrument, you're sampling the performance by an artist. You hand-pick each player. You get them to perform in a beautiful space. You want each note to have a little character, but still make for cohesion. And it takes a looooong time, so you better have some seriously entertaining stories ready. But once the great player truly gets in "The Zone", You get diamonds


This is a beautiful paragraph, HZ, thank you for sharing your invaluable knowledge and experience with us yet again. I've been mentioning to people on the forum for over a year now that Samplers need to first get the right players on the right instruments in the right room, and you would've thought that I said something truly off the wall full of nonsense. Even the veterans here have said it doesn't matter about the player and such, but it's mostly about the script writing. I've tried explaining the importance of the performance of the player first, but I felt I as though I was simply throwing my words to the wind.

Congratulations on your success through your passion and hard work, and may your samples keep inspiring you as you have inspired others.


----------



## d.healey (Jan 22, 2017)

NoamL said:


> All those legato transitions must be killer. Just some ballpark math, if you do 12 up and 12 down, and you sample all 3.5 octaves of the cello in semitones (42 notes), minus however many legato transition samples aren't needed because they're impossible or go out of range, that still works out to something like 800-1000 samples.


Editing those legato samples is worse than playing/recording them


----------



## Reegs (Jan 22, 2017)

Echoing everyone above, it's much harder playing with the repeated consistency of musical expression than the dynamic expression permitted by a live performance.

VSL used to have a fantastic series of interviews with some of the musicians they'd recorded and their experience with the process, back when they'd just finished the Silent Stage. I remember there was one with Freddy Staudigl, one of their principal trumpet players, but the site has gone through several revisions since then and sadly I can't seem to find it.


----------



## trumpoz (Jan 22, 2017)

Rodney Money said:


> So, you are saying it's somewhere in between editing a polished score for publication and being married to my first wife? Thank you for the additional information, my friend. It truly means a lot and that is a good check list by the way. So 5 x round robin on dubba G at dynamic pianissimo? Bring on the pain then, lol.
> 
> My 2nd biggest regret in college was not diving into deeper into my required electronic class back in the day. I just remember my professor playing us a sample of a VSL trumpet and thinking to myself, "I'll never need this," and when he asked us to sample a sound, just one articulation, I mistakenly did not even think of the possibilities of what I could accomplish. We had access to two brand new state of the art studios, and I bet I did not spend 30 minutes in them. The project was due Monday and I did it Sunday night after a concert. I took the mic, recorded the shortest fff straight, cup, and Harmon muted accented staccatos you've ever heard, stretched out the samples on the keyboard and done. What a wasted opportunity in my life, and my professor was not impressed either. I was his A student, but that semester he gave me two things: a talking to and my only C. But still to this day, my short muted articulations have been the most accented biting shorts I've ever heard from any samples. Too bad I erased them. If I could go back to school knowing what I know now, I would take back those missed opportunities and probably worked on the most complete brass library. I had all the resources, all the players, and it would've been for free also. Maybe one day again.



Hehehe - polishing a score definitely!

Maybe we can talk about a flugelhorn library in the future (once I find a replacement for my stolen Couesnon).......


----------



## ysnyvz (Jan 23, 2017)

Rctec said:


> It's the very opposite.


I didn't mean they have to play like robots. My approach to sampling is a bit extreme. It becomes a physical and psychological challenge for musicians.


----------



## DeactivatedAcc (Jan 24, 2017)

Apart from the few composers that have some of my private orchestral/choral libraries, most people aren’t aware of what I’ve been up to and I don’t usually talk about it publicly, so my perspective can be taken with a grain of salt.

For me learning to work with players has had a real learning curve associated with it. How I originally approached sessions when I was starting is polar opposite to what I’m doing now in almost every single way.

Traditional notation and standalone sampling approach - even performed expressively in a great room - tends to have a limited ceiling of potential in musicality.

My penchant rather, is towards true cohesive performance approach and creative post-pro steps for making different assets work together. Recording specific content as the main focus and then systemized building of the material. None of the “now lets do a staccato/sustain here and wait 4 seconds for it to ring out, then do it again.” Purist, standalone sampling leads to predictably stunted results.

You can get the musicians to work less hard, and get a better result - with the right, often heavily performance-based, approach and correlated post-production. How much of a difference is subjective, but its enough of a difference for me to tend towards it, and generally less of a strain on the players than the alternative. Especially for expressive vibrato and legato recordings, and cohesive shorts. I’ve had a lot of sessions in the past particularly on string legato where they were in overdrive trying to manage the intonation and expression, and it was entirely my fault for making them work harder for a lesser result. It’s easy for intonation to go off the rails on heavy string vib, and I was up to 15-20 takes of legato intervals on some stuff because things weren’t setup appropriately with the notation & bowing. Fast-forward through years of iterative sessions and variations at different configs/tempo thresholds/bowings. At this point, they’re able to get closer to the mark, with less work put in. The same has been true for cohesive shorts and other things.

The caveat of heavily performance-based sessions and related post pro often is you can end up with instruments that while expressive, are rough around the edges as a result of the process (xfades, odd attacks, ambience bleed, etc). Which is why I think most people probably dismiss heavily non-standard approaches, at least for commercial releases. But I will take a few rough edges in samples any day of the week.. Because being overly reactive to that kind of thing distracts from the important stuff.


----------



## Christof (Jan 25, 2017)

Rodney Money said:


> The recent Orchestral Tools comment concerning their flute player posed this question in my mind? So how hard is it for the Instrumentalists during these recording sessions? Boring, easy, torture, just another gig?


I did cello sampling for VSL for almost 15 years and it was an incredibly good experience, you have to be super focused but you learn to play your instrument in a way you would never do in a Mahler symphony 
I enjoyed every session and I am looking forward to new adventures...


----------



## Flaneurette (Feb 3, 2017)

Giving performers some incentives might help, as it can be really boring.

I performed for a couple of my own instruments: various guitar, flutes and some miscellaneous instruments. It is indeed tedious. When sampling a guitar, it is required to keep the hand as steady as possible for about 10 seconds on each note. That is more straining than I anticipated, because one is inclined to apply tension to keep the string sustained. Repetitive strain injury is a real possibility. It also takes a good amount of consistency to keep notes at a similar dynamic. It felt like playing my favorite song on 10 beats per minute... 

Doing sample recording with microphones is also intense, as any noise that's made breathing, chair movement, rustling of clothes will be in the recording. From my experience it is more intense than recording songs, where ambient noise isn't of great concern, and sometimes even welcomed. But a sample is naked, and has to be pristine to stand on it's own.


----------

