# Orchestrating with Staffpad, Noteperformer and Daw which is most realistic



## sonofharris

I quote realistic in relation to a real live orchestra.
I have been writing orchestral music for some time now and I have been using both Staffpad and Sibelius with Noteperformer playback. I write the same thing twice side by side with the hope in getting a more realistic understanding.
I have had my concerns for some time now that maybe some of these instruments are not realistic enough in some situations. 
Apart from my concerns of realism I have also not been entirely happy with the overall playback quality of both noteperformer and Staffpad.
Listening to some of the productions out there done in a Daw with top end sample libraries made me decide to try this route.
Taking a section of one of my pieces With a large orchestra I then played in the parts in Cubase with Hollywood orchestra and opus, I later balanced all volumes correctly as I was a little off in my playback. The outcome was horrendous. Yes, the sampled instruments individually are great, also I done the same thing with other samples (Native instruments ultimate)
It was only when I started taking away certain instruments from the mix that the sound started to improve, eventually sounding great.
I isolated the woodwind section at first and it was horrendous sounded like a cheap organ playback.Many of these instruments were doubled. Instead of using 2 oboes I reduced to one removed bass clarinet thinned out the brass etc.
It then sounded amazing.
The Staffpad and Noteperformer mock-ups were good I suppose I just wanted better, more realistic.
So what is going on here? In some sections of the piece I have trombones playing g2 at pp producing a completely different sound to Staffpad and Noteperformer, with those it sounded smooth and conforming, the sample in the daw was standing out in that situation and if I must say probably much closer to a real orchestra.
Can any one offer me some advice on this, All would be appreciated, Thank you.


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## Montisquirrel

Are you using StaffPad stock-sounds or some third party libraries?


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## dcoscina

Staffpad expansion libraries sound very good, especially for lyrical writing. I recently finished a brass quintet commission using Dorico and NP because staffpad couldn’t keep up with the real fast writing. The brass in particular in NotePerformer are really good. Certainly enough to pass onto a live group for reference when they get the charts. 

Professional orchestrators on this forum have sung Noteperformer’s praises and I concur- the read through performance recordings I got were not far off from the NP brass mock up.


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## ed buller

Highly recommend Dorico:






Dorico ET The Flying Theme Mockup Straight From Score


I think DORICO is the bee's patella. This the score typed in ( about a day's work ) NO cc tweaking just dynamic markers and Tempo Fiddling. Some Reverb and a taste of Comp across the Master Bus. Mostly VSL with a little help from Berlin and Spitfire...




vi-control.net





Best

e


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## sonofharris

Montisquirrel said:


> Are you using StaffPad stock-sounds or some third party libraries?





Montisquirrel said:


> Are you using StaffPad stock-sounds or some third party libraries?


I use third party libraries, sometimes I use stock as I have found occasionally third party libraries are rhythmically off


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## sonofharris

The library file size with both Staffpad and Noteperformer are very small in comparison to some of the libraries out there Staffpad Berlin strings 2.39 gig, Hollywood strings diamond 400+gig. Some of the raw sound and certain character is lost in Staffpad sound libraries and this is understanding this can however give the orchestrator a real misinterpretation of the real thing especially when you are stacking instruments on top of each other.
you take away some of that character of the oboe and your blending is going to be completely different


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## Woodie1972

Reading your post, I was wondering what your question exactly is. Since you use both Staffpad and Sibelius, I guess you are a composer who prefers notation (just like me), so be aware composing in a DAW is really something different. Maybe you're totally happy with a piano roll, I don't know, but although I know my way in a DAW, I highly prefer notation over a DAW, so I use Dorico, which is a great hybrid of notation and DAW, especially with the up coming update. Sibelius and Finale are not really capable of creating well sounding playback, at least not as easy as Dorico or a DAW. 

I have no experience with HO opus, I use vsl, and they are great for orchestral mock-ups. Maybe create a track from an exciisting piece with your HO library and see if that works? If yes, then look further regarding your own orchestration techniques and find out what could be improved.


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## sonofharris

Woodie1972 said:


> Reading your post, I was wondering what your question exactly is. Since you use both Staffpad and Sibelius, I guess you are a composer who prefers notation (just like me), so be aware composing in a DAW is really something different. Maybe you're totally happy with a piano roll, I don't know, but although I know my way in a DAW, I highly prefer notation over a DAW, so I use Dorico, which is a great hybrid of notation and DAW, especially with the up coming update. Sibelius and Finale are not really capable of creating well sounding playback, at least not as easy as Dorico or a DAW.
> 
> I have no experience with HO opus, I use vsl, and they are great for orchestral mock-ups. Maybe create a track from an exciisting piece with your HO library and see if that works? If yes, then look further regarding your own orchestration techniques and find out what could be improved.


Yes, I do prefer notation as opposed to a daw but Im after a really good sound playback, and a more realistic one at that. I have just finished writing a large symphonic work using Staffpad and Sibilius (with Noteperformer Playback). There are a few concerns with the orchestration which was decided upon using the two programs as a reference sound guide.
I will look into Dorico, Thank you fro that.


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## soundofmaw

I'm a Dorico user as well and highly recommend it. However, this is on the horizon - MuseScore 4 with Muse Sounds - enter the notes and hit play, that's it (no other fussing with CC's or complicated VST mapping - unless you want to use your 3rd-party VST's, which you can)...



Similar to StaffPad but for desktop, and totally free. The beta is supposed to be out soon. It will be interesting to see if it can live up to the expectations. But for now, Dorico is pretty phenomenal.


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## Woodie1972

Wow, despite the fact I really love Dorico, this update for Musescore looks pretty darn good!


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## blaggins

Hmm, is MuseSound the Staffpad engine underneath the covers?


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## Markrs

blaggins said:


> Hmm, is MuseSound the Staffpad engine underneath the covers?


Yes, most likely as that would have been one of the main reasons for buying the company behind Staffpad.


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## Piotrek K.

NotePerformer and, as far as I understand, StaffPad playback engine were made with one simple thing in mind - notate and hit play to hear your music without extra hassle. Within DAW nothing works like that. Your libraries are tools that have no mind of their own while NP is powered by machine learning and masterful coding and with StaffPad someone spent tons of hours to make the playback as nice as possible. In DAW you are the machine learning and that someone from StaffPad combined. You need to do everything by yourself (vibrato, dynamics, attacks, articulations), you need to be aware of phasing issues (when playing same instrument in unison), set up microphones and reverb etc. DAW gives you much more possibilities, different dynamics handling, much more control, much more freedom and... much more of a hassle.

I really can't wait for that MuseScore


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## sctaylorcan

Markrs said:


> Yes, most likely as that would have been one of the main reasons for buying the company behind Staffpad.


Seems like a reasonable guess, and wouldn't it be cool if we would be able to use purchased StaffPad extensions (I think I bought them all ) in Muse Score 4 and/or Muse Sounds in StaffPad one day? I wonder!


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## Markrs

sctaylorcan said:


> Seems like a reasonable guess, and wouldn't it be cool if we would be able to use purchased StaffPad extensions (I think I bought them all ) in Muse Score 4 and/or Muse Sounds in StaffPad one day? I wonder!


Apple don't let the developer know who owns add-ons as far as I am aware. This is the reason you have buy the add-ons for Windows tablets and Apple tablets separately rather than buying once and using on either platform.

So sadly I don't think it will be possible. On top of that I don't think the 3rd party developers would allow it for fear it caniblises their sales.


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## Jett Hitt

Markrs said:


> Apple don't let the developer know who owns add-ons as far as I am aware. This is the reason you have buy the add-ons for Windows tablets and Apple tablets separately rather than buying once and using on either platform.
> 
> So sadly I don't think it will be possible. On top of that I don't think the 3rd party developers would allow it for fear it caniblises their sales.


The only upside is that the developers might be inclined to produce versions for Musescore. There are tons and tons of Musescore users, so it could be a pretty good market for them. On the other hand, Musescore will be able to use VSTs, and my understanding is that they have immediate plans to expand these capabilities right after Musescore 4 is released.


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## sonofharris

soundofmaw said:


> I'm a Dorico user as well and highly recommend it. However, this is on the horizon - MuseScore 4 with Muse Sounds - enter the notes and hit play, that's it (no other fussing with CC's or complicated VST mapping - unless you want to use your 3rd-party VST's, which you can)...
> 
> 
> 
> Similar to StaffPad but for desktop, and totally free. The beta is supposed to be out soon. It will be interesting to see if it can live up to the expectations. But for now, Dorico is pretty phenomenal.



Checked out Dorico looks good , this will work for me if I could only get the thing to work.
I downloaded trial pro 4. Once pc is started Dorico opens ok but if i close it and then reopen I have to restart pc, and it crashes with East West Opus nightmare.
Any tips mate.


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## Woodie1972

Maybe the VST audio engine is still running in the background, causing Dorico to crash when you re-open it. Maybe check in your task manager if this is the case, and if yes, kill the process 
Why Hollywood crashes I can't say as I don't have the library, but 9 out of 10 times it's a bad plugin. Updating the Play plugin might solve that.


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## sonofharris

Thank you


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## soundofmaw

sonofharris said:


> Checked out Dorico looks good , this will work for me if I could only get the thing to work.
> I downloaded trial pro 4. Once pc is started Dorico opens ok but if i close it and then reopen I have to restart pc, and it crashes with East West Opus nightmare.
> Any tips mate.


I use Hollywood OPUS with Dorico and haven't had any issues so far (just to confirm that it does work). If you're still having a problem with crashes, I recommend posting the details on the Dorico forum - other users and the Dorico team are very responsive: https://forums.steinberg.net/c/dorico/8


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## sonofharris

soundofmaw said:


> I use Hollywood OPUS with Dorico and haven't had any issues so far (just to confirm that it does work). If you're still having a problem with crashes, I recommend posting the details on the Dorico forum - other users and the Dorico team are very responsive: https://forums.steinberg.net/c/dorico/8


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## resinsoft

I feel staffpad sounds really bad according to its mixing and utilizing the 3rd party libraries. 
Note performer doing a really good job of utilizing synth sound and pannings/positioning, but it is synth
If you have big sound library and DAW, and a lot of knowledge, expansive plugins, and time, of course, you should play in DAW.

Personally I am using note performer, because I don't have expansive plugins, mixing knowledge and a lot of time wasting on production.


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## odod

soundofmaw said:


> I use Hollywood OPUS with Dorico and haven't had any issues so far (just to confirm that it does work). If you're still having a problem with crashes, I recommend posting the details on the Dorico forum - other users and the Dorico team are very responsive: https://forums.steinberg.net/c/dorico/8


do you have the playback template? because I have been looking for ages and also the expression


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## Vlzmusic

resinsoft said:


> I feel staffpad sounds really bad


Thats a rare reaction to Staffpad. Probably the first I encounter so far.


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## muratkayi

resinsoft said:


> Personally I am using note performer, because I don't have expansive plugins, mixing knowledge and a lot of time wasting on production.


I think this paragraph explains why...could be wrong, tho


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## ed buller

Dorico with a constructed Expression map template for all your libraries. It takes a while to get right but once done it will work for pretty much everything .

View attachment ET The Flying Theme Dorico Mockup.mp3


Best

ed


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