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Composing before the true legato and shorts era (early 2000),a retrospect

Yea, it pains me to think of how spoiled the youngsters are now to have these awesome orchestral libraries. The best thing going in my day was rompler synths, and they were a pale approximation for sure. Still have a Korg Triton which is a hell of machine, but no match for the likes of Spitfire, VSL, LASS etc. As for synth sounds, I still think it's better to go to the real hardware than software emulations, and I have a roomful of vintage synths and modular gear for that reason.
 
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Here's a track I made in 1999 :)
(at that time Bill Clinton was American President)
I apologize for the ugly bass drum!

 
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EgM said:
TL;DR I'd like your take on early 2000/Pre true legato and shorts sampling composing techniques, what you used and such. (Before Gigastudio/Kontakt)

(snip)

I would love to hear some of the songs you've written before the Akai/Giga/Kontakt era! i.e. 1990 to 2003 or so and the sample techniques you used to manage with those low res samples.
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Well done, @EgM, especially considering the limitations you had to work with!

During the period you're talking about—1990 to 2003—I first had a variety of E-mu and Kurzweil ROMplers—including the Proteus and K1200—and then an Akai S1000, an E-mu E-IV, and finally an E4XT Ultra. It was pretty spectacular to have 128 MB RAM!

Most of the articulations we get to play with today weren't commonly sampled back then. You were lucky to have separate longs and shorts, along with pizzicato. We usually layered string ensemble sample libraries with ROMplers and synths to get a fatter sound and then record them to 2" tape through an analog console, such as an SSL, Trident, or Neve.

Toward the end of that period, I had the following libraries for orchestration: Miroslav Vitous Symphonic Orchestra (Mini version), Peter Siedlaczek's Advanced Orchestra, and Quantum Leap Brass. They were a marked improvement over the early EIII libraries, ROMplers, and even the Synclavier libraries; but they didn't come close to the best of what's available now.

Thankfully, I was lucky enough to work with real players back then—record budgets were at their peak during the '90s—so the limitations of keyboards and samplers weren't as big of an issue as one might think.

Nonetheless, I'm grateful for the wealth of sounds I have now. They would be unrivaled by anyone from that time period. I daresay that goes for a great many of us.

Best,

Geoff
 
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Geoff Grace said:
Well done, @EgM, especially considering the limitations you had to work with!

During the period you're talking about—1990 to 2003—I first had a variety of E-mu and Kurzweil ROMplers—including the Proteus and K1200—and then an Akai S1000, an E-mu E-IV, and finally an E4XT Ultra. It was pretty spectacular to have 128 MB RAM!

Most of the articulations we get to play with today weren't commonly sampled back then. You were lucky to have separate longs and shorts, along with pizzicato. We usually layered string ensemble sample libraries with ROMplers and synths to get a fatter sound and then record them to 2" tape through an analog console, such as an SSL, Trident, or Neve.

Toward the end of that period, I had the following libraries for orchestration: Miroslav Vitous Symphonic Orchestra (Mini version), Peter Siedlaczek's Advanced Orchestra, and Quantum Leap Brass. They were a marked improvement over the early EIII libraries, ROMplers, and even the Synclavier libraries; but they didn't come close to the best of what's available now.

Thankfully, I was lucky enough to work with real players back then—record budgets were at their peak during the '90s—so the limitations of keyboards and samplers weren't as big of an issue as one might think.

Nonetheless, I'm grateful for the wealth of sounds I have now. They would be unrivaled by anyone from that time period. I daresay that goes for a great many of us.

Best,

Geoff
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Thanks for this Geoff :) I almost bought a pair of Akai back then but they were so expensive, I ended up sticking with the AWE32 with simm slots that I maxed to 8mb and the SBLive afterwards.
 
Dewdman42 said:
I actually bought EWSO on sale not that long ago and am about to start getting into it. I actually didn't know it was lacking the legato stuff or I might have chosen HW, but its ok. How generally do you folks using EWSO, program it to get the nicest legatos possible without the actual transition samples?
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There is a lot you can do with just the simple sustain patches ;)
 
Zeitgeist! The old compositions with using the old samples sounded good. I can't remember someone was asking for legato samples ... .
 
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What a fun thread. In the late 90s, I relied 100% on my Kurzweil PC88MX and 16 channels of midi. It's sort of amazing what the Kurzweil team could fit into what must have been 16 MB or so. My DAW was Cakewalk Pro Audio.
 
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Does anyone know what sample libraries Jeremy Soule used for Oblivion(2006)?

I heard he used Garritan Orchestral Strings for Morrowind, but I'm thinking he may have used EWQLSO for Oblivion?

 
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