# EW Hollywood Series sound set?



## 10Dman (Jan 23, 2016)

Hello guys!
I'm just wondering if anyone of you have had experience with "The Sound Set Project"?
I use Cubase to do my mockups, but I would like try out some new sounds for Sibelius (7.5 atm) when notating some of them, as I have the complete Hollywood series diamond and some other libs from them like symphonic choirs 

Here is their website for those who also are interested: http://www.soundsetproject.com/soundsets/eastwest/

Best,
10Dman


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## Mark Bailey (Jan 23, 2016)

The Hollywood brass, strings, and SO sound sets all work quite well in my experience. Setting up the payback devices is a bit tedious but once you're done it integrates fairly nicely. I ended up setting up a VEPro instance and pointing it at that. It handles large numbers of VST's better than directly in Sibelius and the mixer and inserts capabilities are much nicer (for reverbs, eq etc). It's really nice hearing decent samples coming out of Sibelius  

The if you need to tweak them, the sound set editor isn't too bad either, once you get your head around how sound sets work.


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## Mark Bailey (Jan 24, 2016)

10Dman said:


> Thanks for the reply, Mark  Is there any demos of the Hollywood series in use as sound set? I've only seen demos of EWQLSO so far, which sounds fair enough. But The hollywood series is quite a bit newer, and should sound somewhat better even with a sound set, right?



I've not seen any demo's using the Hollywood series in particular, but there isn't much to demo to be honest. The vst's sound just like they normally do, no magic, the sound set it just doing the work of transparently key-switching/channel changing etc to use the correct patch for the articulation notated for example staccato dot -> key-switches to staccato patch for those notes, slur -> use legato patch etc etc... It also tells Sibelius which CC to use for dynamics to apply dynamics markings. The sets also adds extra staff text to the playback dictionary for switching between different versions of the same articulation for example in Hollywood strings choosing which legato or runs patch of the many available, what type of vibrato etc. This is all explained in the manuals, which can be downloaded without buying anything, definitely worth a read first if you are thinking of getting a set, they will tell you what each particular set supports. 

I started by buying a set to evaluate if it would work for me (the sets are inexpensive), was happy, and ended up purchasing more sets (HW Strings, HW Brass, HW Woodwinds and SO). Personally I've found them useful for my needs: Hobbyist who writes in Sibelius, can't play keyboard for sh*t and prefers working with notation anyway, but likes good sounding samples


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## Paul T McGraw (Jan 29, 2016)

Mark Bailey said:


> I've not seen any demo's using the Hollywood series in particular, but there isn't much to demo to be honest. The vst's sound just like they normally do, no magic, the sound set it just doing the work of transparently key-switching/channel changing etc to use the correct patch for the articulation notated for example staccato dot -> key-switches to staccato patch for those notes, slur -> use legato patch etc etc... It also tells Sibelius which CC to use for dynamics to apply dynamics markings. The sets also adds extra staff text to the playback dictionary for switching between different versions of the same articulation for example in Hollywood strings choosing which legato or runs patch of the many available, what type of vibrato etc. This is all explained in the manuals, which can be downloaded without buying anything, definitely worth a read first if you are thinking of getting a set, they will tell you what each particular set supports.
> 
> I started by buying a set to evaluate if it would work for me (the sets are inexpensive), was happy, and ended up purchasing more sets (HW Strings, HW Brass, HW Woodwinds and SO). Personally I've found them useful for my needs: Hobbyist who writes in Sibelius, can't play keyboard for sh*t and prefers working with notation anyway, but likes good sounding samples



I am also a hobbyist and prefer to write in Sibelius. So far, what I have been doing is exporting a midi file to Cubase, then doing a ton of editing on the midi file to get a decent rendering. Have you tried going this route?

I have not tried using sample libraries with Sibelius as you describe. Are you using NotePerformer within Sibelius? NotePerformer gets a fairly good sound, but still not the best.


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## Mark Bailey (Jan 29, 2016)

Paul T McGraw said:


> I am also a hobbyist and prefer to write in Sibelius. So far, what I have been doing is exporting a midi file to Cubase, then doing a ton of editing on the midi file to get a decent rendering. Have you tried going this route?
> 
> I have not tried using sample libraries with Sibelius as you describe. Are you using NotePerformer within Sibelius? NotePerformer gets a fairly good sound, but still not the best.



Hi 
I've tried hooking up Cubase to Sibelius before via virtual midi cables using loopMidi so that Cubase is hosting the VST's, but still using Soundsets in Sibelius to do the basic dynamics and articulation switching for me as a starting point. I could record the midi output from Sibelius for later editing, but I abandoned that in favor of just hosting in VE Pro and not getting too hung up on realism. Mainly because hand editing the midi to try and get more "performance" out of it was very time consuming and I couldn't make enough difference to make the time worthwhile, maybe with lots of practice I could, ultimately I preferred to just concentrate on writing side for the time being. I know I should really learn to play the keyboard properly so I can just perform into Cubase for mockup purposes but finding the time as a weekend only warrior isn't easy while trying to learn composition at the same time (excuses excuses, I know hehe). If I were to post music on here for critique I'd go your route and edit the midi to polish it as much as my skill level allowed but my writing is too weak to share with the world yet lol, but that's fine I'm slowly but surely improving over time and most importantly having fun doing it 

I've played with NotePerformer and quite like it, it's definitely a step up from the built in Sibelius sounds, but not as nice as using top notch samples, but it does have the advantage of being much more lightweight, my VE Pro metaframe takes a good 5 minutes to load even on SSD's, but NotePerformer is pretty much instant!, and it's also pretty well balanced out of the box, something that is a pain point with lots of my regular VST instruments.

What's your experience, what have you found works for you?


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## Paul T McGraw (Jan 29, 2016)

As I mentioned, I write in Sibelius using the NotePerformer soundset. Once a composition is completely finished, I print the score, then transfer a midi file to Cubase. Once in Cubase I use the MIDI data to drive samples, but I have to spend lots of time editing the data, and sometimes I have to replace a line by playing it in from the keyboard. Since I have always used standard notation, I wish it was possible to avoid all of the extra work. I have some hope that the new Steinberg notation program will offer a better solution when (if?) it is finally released.


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## snattack (Jan 30, 2016)

Paul T McGraw said:


> As I mentioned, I write in Sibelius using the NotePerformer soundset. Once a composition is completely finished, I print the score, then transfer a midi file to Cubase. Once in Cubase I use the MIDI data to drive samples, but I have to spend lots of time editing the data, and sometimes I have to replace a line by playing it in from the keyboard. Since I have always used standard notation, I wish it was possible to avoid all of the extra work. I have some hope that the new Steinberg notation program will offer a better solution when (if?) it is finally released.



I find it easier just playing stuff in rather than editing midi data. That depends on how much of a keyboard player one is, but I'm fairly crappy and playing in 1 part/time works fairly well


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## wcreed51 (Jan 30, 2016)

It's still in beta form, but you should check out Overture 5:

http://sonicscores.com/

It has the MIDI editing features we've all wanted!


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## Mark Bailey (Jan 30, 2016)

wcreed51 said:


> It's still in beta form, but you should check out Overture 5:
> 
> http://sonicscores.com/
> 
> It has the MIDI editing features we've all wanted!



Looks pretty interesting!


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## JonFairhurst (Feb 1, 2016)

Paul T McGraw said:


> As I mentioned, I write in Sibelius using the NotePerformer soundset. Once a composition is completely finished, I print the score, then transfer a midi file to Cubase. Once in Cubase I use the MIDI data to drive samples, but I have to spend lots of time editing the data, and sometimes I have to replace a line by playing it in from the keyboard. Since I have always used standard notation, I wish it was possible to avoid all of the extra work. I have some hope that the new Steinberg notation program will offer a better solution when (if?) it is finally released.



^^^^
This.

It's up to the composer/performer to decide if the right approach is to a) live with the MIDI as-is, b) edit the MIDI with a mouse, or c) play it in by hand. Sometimes the editing (b) is related to key switches or the equivalent to bring in the right articulation. I might keep the MIDI notes, but record just the mod-wheel live. In the past, I tried hooking Sibelius up to my samples and doing the key-switches with hidden notes, but this mixes up composition and performance and is no less work than doing the key switches in the sequencer. 

The bottom line for me is that Note Performer is good enough to support my composing needs. When I add staccato or pizzicato to the score, it just does it with no hassle. When I go from mp to f, I get a reasonable velocity change. It's enough to allow me to imagine how it would sound from an orchestra or sequencer.

The nice thing about exporting the MIDI to the sequencer is that you get the full skeleton immediately. And you have all of the features of a sequencer that was designed to create a final performance and mix.


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