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A short improvised choral piece using 8Dio Silka Choir

Since you want some feedback I think it would benefit from the following:

-More control over sibilance. Really watch those 'S's
-More variety in phrasing/dynamics. It's all quarter notes followed by a longer note. Try implementing some of the non-phrase based patches eg. shorts, longs, legatos etc. every note doesn't need a consonant.
-If you want to stick to a tempo sync patch you might want to try something slower. Maybe try some non tempo synced patches too
-If you have separate section patches, try breaking up the men and women into their own sections for more control. Don't use them at the same time all the time.
 
This is really lovely, and a nice demonstration of what Silka has to offer. A note on the mockup: for the most part, you are doing a good job of chiseling out those chant-like vocal lines but I hear some misalignments between the note transitions and syllable transitions (ie the syllable change happens slightly before or after the note change). You should be able to slide some note starts/ends around to resolve those. YMMV but when I am doing this kind of writing, I like to double check on headphones, where those types of inconsistencies are (for me) easier to notice.

I haven't used Silka, so I'm not sure how much of this is just baked into the lib, but my gut feeling is that you can smooth out the mod wheel curves on some passages for more authenticity (for instance, between 0:05 and 0:08) - a real choir singing that kind of material would not be singing pulsating micro-crescendos on each note. If I'm directing a choir singing this stuff, I'm asking for big beautiful arches across whole phrases.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I've now tried the legato toggle, it performs much better. I haven't tried seperating the male/female voices just yet. Is the new composition better?
 
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I really like your piece @mediumaevum. To me it has a very authentic character both sound wise and compositionally.

The S's do stick out a bit, you may try a de-essing dynamic EQ move to tame them a bit. The only other thing that I noticed on a second listen is that it's a kind of religious-sounding choral piece that one might imagine would have been performed in a stone church or a greathall, but your sound is pretty dry. Made me wonder how it would work if you added a bigger sense of space to it?
 
tpoots said:
I really like your piece @mediumaevum. To me it has a very authentic character both sound wise and compositionally.

The S's do stick out a bit, you may try a de-essing dynamic EQ move to tame them a bit. The only other thing that I noticed on a second listen is that it's a kind of religious-sounding choral piece that one might imagine would have been performed in a stone church or a greathall, but your sound is pretty dry. Made me wonder how it would work if you added a bigger sense of space to it?
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Is it better now (see video in OP)?
 
mediumaevum said:
I've also always wanted to learn the Palestrina-style. I think I could benefit from his methods.
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There is a pdf (Counterpoint, The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the 16th Century, Knud Jepperson) which I downloaded earlier this year exactly on Palestrina's style. It is quite academic with loads of examples.

TBH until studying parts of this pdf I was in the dark on Palestrina. I discovered he did one work using a bible passage involving a river--his writing style back then completely evokes the river by staggering the entries of SATB thus using rhythm in the 16C melodic lines kinda like a burbling brook.

Your work has a lovely sound. No knock, but it does a lot of stop-and-start with each short phrase. I can clearly see the phrasing displayed in the Soundcloud audio waves you posted. Your video edits which accompanies your posting #1 nicely match the pace of the piece.

I would surely listen to another of your songs especially as you delve into the Jepperson book. Palestrina had a poet's sense of rhythm and that's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

For a completely different Palestrina treatment (somewhat shocking) you might listen to my song I Left My Heart in HIP-Z which followed after studying portions of the Jepperson. The Palestrina counterpoint appears (instrumentally) after the beginning, the Isaac passage uses Eric Whitacre Library @4:30. Again, no match to your lovely Silka choir; but, my take.

Best, Bill
 
Robert_G said:
What might be an easy way to do this? I have Silka and would love to tone down the 'S's.
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A straight forward non-dynamic way would be to automate it or print/render it and make two cuts on either side of the desired area and crossfade the tracks. You can adjust the sides of the tracks to tighten the area or smooth it out by having wider crossfades. This way you can simply raise or lower the spot as you see fit.

This is how I do it since it doesn't mess with the natural timbre. I end up having to automate de-essers anyway so I figure it's best to dial it in manually. Try a bunch of stuff and see what works best for you.
 
mediumaevum said:
I've also always wanted to learn the Palestrina-style. I think I could benefit from his methods.
Click to expand...
Sorry for being late to the party! I would NEVER EVER call myself an expert on the matter but now I've studied that style "with a serious attitude" for around 6 years, so at least I know the basics. This may seem ironic or sarcastic, but in fact it's quite the opposite: learning that kind of polyphony is a very slow process - it may be frustrating at times, but in the end it pays off IMMENSELY (in other words, yours is a really good choice!).

Let me start by saying that you have a natural attitude towards feeling what is "cadential" from a voice leading perspective - and here comes the important part - without thinking too much about chords: you seem to understand well wheter a phrase is *asking for* a resolution or is *providing* an answer, and your answers are often sober while still proving a floor of cantability, so to speak.

That's good.

Of course, as you can imagine, studying the technique on a deeper level would speed up the rate of progress significantly, but I also understand that starting to go in the details here on a forum post would be stupidly unpractical. So I though about an experiment that could actually prove useful despite the limits we have right now - take it as a mini-game, if you will.

This is a famous work by Palestrina called Sicut Cervus, from the Youtube channel Smalin. IT'S NOT A SCORE, but rather in m.a.m. proprietary format, which is incredibly similiar to midi. I hope you'll find this detail helpful.
This is the game: try to transcribe just the upper line and the lower line using your ear (you can help yourself with vsts), then fill the inner parts until you feel they "make sense".
Now confront your result with what you see on video: it hasn't to be perfect and the single notes have absolutely no meaning - instead, try to focus on two things: melodic profiles and rests/voice entries.

This kind of counterpoint has an enormous set of incredibly strict rules, but through this experiment you should get at least a very good grasp of what people were expecting to get from a good performance.

Have a good listening, and I hope I wasn't too annoying - but I simply couldn't resist with such a direct request! :emoji_innocent:

 
Robert_G said:
What might be an easy way to do this? I have Silka and would love to tone down the 'S's.
Click to expand...
I'm most definitely not the person to listen to since I am just a beginner myself, that being said there are many ways and using a de-esser (whether you have a plugin that does this specifically, or you "DIY" your own solution using a compressor, or a dynamic EQ - both of which do the same thing in this context) is just one of them. @dhmusic described another method, and he's got more experience than I do with these things.

This article is a decent high level overview (just ignore the sales pitch) https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/the-dos-and-donts-of-de-essing.html

TDR Nova is a highly-regarded free dynamic EQ and this tutorial describes the concept I am referring to:
 
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