# Bartok Music for Strings



## liquidlino (Dec 23, 2021)

Just the first 16 bars of this haunting piece. I'm stunned by how well CSS pulls this off. I also learnt just how long it takes to transcribe sheet music to midi - not helped at all by the shifting chromatic notes, constantly having to work out what note is being played. Mild processing to give a recorded feel (I even recorded room ambience for some hiss and shuffling of feet, breathing etc for fun).


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## studioj (Dec 23, 2021)

great work!! dig the almost vintage-y vibe. love this piece so much


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## liquidlino (Dec 23, 2021)

studioj said:


> great work!! dig the almost vintage-y vibe. love this piece so much


It was interesting, I was using a recording on youtube as the reference, and I just couldn't figure out why, when the 2nd violin comes in, the other parts weren't gelling together. I thought it was my dynamics, but they seemed ok. Then I twigged - CSS has the parts quite widely panned and spaced out by default. So I narrowed the stereo wide, and suddenly everything started gelling like on the recording. A little bit of Arturia Mello-Fi (free this week), Phils cascade gently tickling, very ultra mild EQ and compression - nothing much, but I really like the end result.


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## Rob (Dec 23, 2021)

beautiful...


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## dhmusic (Dec 23, 2021)

liquidlino said:


> Just the first 16 bars of this haunting piece. I'm stunned by how well CSS pulls this off. I also learnt just how long it takes to transcribe sheet music to midi - not helped at all by the shifting chromatic notes, constantly having to work out what note is being played. Mild processing to give a recorded feel (I even recorded room ambience for some hiss and shuffling of feet, breathing etc for fun).



I like the vibe/approach you're going for here and I think you're selling it pretty well. It sounds like you processed the master and lost most of the air from the recordings though. It could be accurate to the reference for all I know, but typically on recordings like this I'd expect a lot more roomtone in the upper frequencies. I like that you chose to narrow the space, I think that was a good call. Really nice work.


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## Scamper (Dec 23, 2021)

Sounds great. I still can't imagine a better library for this than CSS.
Room ambiance is always great, but custom made, even better - even though it might sound a tad smaller than the string room sound.


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## liquidlino (Dec 23, 2021)

dhmusic said:


> I like the vibe/approach you're going for here and I think you're selling it pretty well. It sounds like you processed the master and lost most of the air from the recordings though. It could be accurate to the reference for all I know, but typically on recordings like this I'd expect a lot more roomtone in the upper frequencies. I like that you chose to narrow the space, I think that was a good call. Really nice work.


I think it's mello-fi that's removed the air, I noticed that too. I did toy with putting the same piece again afterwards on the video, with all the vintage processing removed, just clean CSS. But, well. I didn't...


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## liquidlino (Dec 23, 2021)

Scamper said:


> Sounds great. I still can't imagine a better library for this than CSS.
> Room ambiance is always great, but custom made, even better - even though it might sound a tad smaller than the string room sound.


Yep - sadly I only have one mic, or I'd have setup a stereo pair to get a proper feel to the ambience. Something for the future... A nice stereo matched pair is on the shopping list, for doing my own instrument samples as well.


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## dhmusic (Dec 23, 2021)

liquidlino said:


> I think it's mello-fi that's removed the air, I noticed that too. I did toy with putting the same piece again afterwards on the video, with all the vintage processing removed, just clean CSS. But, well. I didn't...


It might help to process the ambience/room layers either separately or in parallel having some of it in a bus mixed with the strings while keeping some of the dry portion with all of the natural presence. Then you can glue the space together in the master bus with more control over the air/presence.


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## Noeticus (Dec 23, 2021)

liquidlino said:


> Just the first 16 bars of this haunting piece. I'm stunned by how well CSS pulls this off. I also learnt just how long it takes to transcribe sheet music to midi - not helped at all by the shifting chromatic notes, constantly having to work out what note is being played. Mild processing to give a recorded feel (I even recorded room ambience for some hiss and shuffling of feet, breathing etc for fun).



This is great, but can you PLEASE do the 3rd movement? 
You know, the scary one used in "The Shining".


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## dcoscina (Dec 23, 2021)

Noeticus said:


> This is great, but can you PLEASE do the 3rd movement?
> You know, the scary one used in "The Shining".


Would require a real solid portamento up and down in the violins…


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## liquidlino (Dec 23, 2021)

Noeticus said:


> This is great, but can you PLEASE do the 3rd movement?
> You know, the scary one used in "The Shining".


Man, I was originally thinking to do the whole movement I and then go from there. But it took three hours to do the midi just for this short section, at which point I pulled the pin. It's all the flats and sharps and naturals all over the place, and very busy, and changes time signature every SINGLE bar! I have no idea how people play this live. Certainly couldn't sight read it.


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## Trash Panda (Dec 23, 2021)

dcoscina said:


> Would require a real solid portamento up and down in the violins…


Drat! If only CSS was good at that. 

Great job @liquidlino !


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## jazzman7 (Dec 23, 2021)

You have not let the dust gather. Well done, Liquid!


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## liquidlino (Dec 23, 2021)

jazzman7 said:


> You have not let the dust gather. Well done, Liquid!


Indeed not! I was inspired because I was reading through "The Study Of Orchestration" (I'm reading it end to end, like the autistic fool I am) and got to this piece as it's used in the strings section to illustrate some points. I was listening to it on You Tube And I thought, "I know I'll put this into CSS, that'll be fun". As it happens, sometimes it doesn't have to be fun to be fun. It proves the point though, that if you feed quality composition, and take lots of time on programming, CSS can sound exactly like a real performance. I'm still not 100% sold that different legato speeds have different timing, that's a pain in the backside, and at odds with how easy the rest of CSS is to use, but I hear there's lookahead timing coming as an update, so that'll be amazing. Even just making ALL legatos have the same timing would be sufficient, 333ms. The script could just hold the source note a little longer to take up the extra time for the shorter legatos.


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## jazzman7 (Dec 23, 2021)

liquidlino said:


> Indeed not! I was inspired because I was reading through "The Study Of Orchestration" (I'm reading it end to end, like the autistic fool I am) and got to this piece as it's used in the strings section to illustrate some points. I was listening to it on You Tube And I thought, "I know I'll put this into CSS, that'll be fun". As it happens, sometimes it doesn't have to be fun to be fun. It proves the point though, that if you feed quality composition, and take lots of time on programming, CSS can sound exactly like a real performance. I'm still not 100% sold that different legato speeds have different timing, that's a pain in the backside, and at odds with how easy the rest of CSS is to use, but I hear there's lookahead timing coming as an update, so that'll be amazing. Even just making ALL legatos have the same timing would be sufficient, 333ms. The script could just hold the source note a little longer to take up the extra time for the shorter legatos.


Ha! Good to hang out now and then with fellow Madmen. It's why I'm here. 
(I should say, Madpeeps!)


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## dcoscina (Dec 23, 2021)

liquidlino said:


> Man, I was originally thinking to do the whole movement I and then go from there. But it took three hours to do the midi just for this short section, at which point I pulled the pin. It's all the flats and sharps and naturals all over the place, and very busy, and changes time signature every SINGLE bar! I have no idea how people play this live. Certainly couldn't sight read it.


Bartok was notorious for using mixed modes. It’s in the fibre of his harmonic style and removes expected Chord resolutions


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## Noeticus (Dec 24, 2021)

dcoscina said:


> Would require a real solid portamento up and down in the violins…


More like a gliss. 

Which is why I love SWAM Strings, as it can do glissandi galore.


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## dcoscina (Dec 24, 2021)

Noeticus said:


> More like a gliss.
> 
> Which is why I love SWAM Strings, as it can do glissandi galore.


Is a gliss not a played scale? The figures Bartok used are more glides or portamento going up the string. I could be wrong


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## Noeticus (Dec 24, 2021)

dcoscina said:


> Is a gliss not a played scale? The figures Bartok used are more glides or portamento going up the string. I could be wrong


In this case the gliss is not a played scale.


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## dcoscina (Dec 24, 2021)

Well played sir.. Well played! I skipped the instructions at the beginning of the score. I have been using the Norton Score edition since uni days. It is like the Reader's Digest of classical scores. LOL


Noeticus said:


> In this case the gliss is not a played scal


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## mikrokosmiko (Dec 28, 2021)

Bartok rules. Whoa, those strings sound so good, very nice programming skills you have


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## liquidlino (Dec 28, 2021)

mikrokosmiko said:


> Bartok rules. Whoa, those strings sound so good, very nice programming skills you have


Honestly, I don't. This is probably only the third or fourth thing I've created ever with orchestral VI instruments. Even though I've bought a fader controller, I still just drew in the curves by hand, editing and re-editing until they sounded good to my ear. It wasn't quick... I think this 16 bars took me about 4-5 hours end to end. But I learnt a lot in the process! (which was the point of the exercise).


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## filipjonathan (Jan 2, 2022)

Sounds really nice!


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## Tatiana Gordeeva (Jan 3, 2022)

liquidlino said:


> I still just drew in the curves by hand, editing and re-editing until they sounded good to my ear. *It wasn't quick... *I think this 16 bars took me about 4-5 hours end to end. But I learnt a lot in the process! (which was the point of the exercise).


Nothing that good is ever quick!  Very nice job!!


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## Rob Elliott (Jan 3, 2022)

excellent mockup. went through my Bartok 'stage' - miss listening to his work. Also JW had to of listened to this when he wrote some of the cues on War of The Worlds (dead floating bodies on the river...)


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## dcoscina (Jan 29, 2022)

Rob Elliott said:


> excellent mockup. went through my Bartok 'stage' - miss listening to his work. Also JW had to of listened to this when he wrote some of the cues on War of The Worlds (dead floating bodies on the river...)


Williams also did a string fugue much like the first movement for AI (Cybertonics)


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