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Audiobro Modern Scoring Strings

I think you may get that with “spikes” in the CC1 data, little irregularities, perhaps placed around note changes I mean that will benefit the natural feel of the performance.
I actually do the same with SCS, although it's less for fingered clarity so much as counteracting the tendency of notes to swell from their attack, as in, they don't have a realistic attack transition volume. So I'm often leaving headroom for pushing the modwheel during transitionsso so there's real momentum in a moving legato line instead of nOTE bY nOTE grOWTHS anD swELLS thAT arENT reALISTIC phrASING aT aLL

Set it and forget it
I think in the end, this is what we want, anyway. I wouldn't want to adjust release times either, but I'd like to be able to set them short enough that we could get those fingered-hits in the legato transitions, like picking a stem from a cherry, and proceed to leave it there. The fades are likely what is causing the uneasiness me and some other folks are feeling hearing the legato transitions (which sound really pretty darn good - but yeah, CSS and the rest of the Legato Gang, there's always going to be that tendency to reach for them)

Setting Release to 0 for example resulted in exactly the same (a bit blurred) legato transition, but once you released the last note it instantly would cut off.
Yeah, that's a bummer. Hopefully will hear something back from dxmachina about the release times. I don't want to double-ping him since I already pinged him in a 4-paragraph post, he doesn't need me wasting more of his time for fingered legato today.
 
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The custom envelopes won't affect the legato... the speed controls have an enormous influence however.

But (and you'll have to forgive me because it's been an intense week and I'm a little blurry-eyed)... is what you're hoping to do mostly in regards to the connective tissue (that exact moment the finger depresses the string) or the subsequent new note? It's hard to sometimes put into words since it's all part of the same thing... but trying to see if I can offer a suggestion or just make a note here.
 
I tested these. Unfortunately - unless I did something wrong - it does not affect the legato transition but the actual release of the sound after you released the note. Setting Release to 0 for example resulted in exactly the same (a bit blurred) legato transition, but once you released the last note it instantly would cut off.
That makes more sense. These usually affect sustains and it should be there. But the legato transition/envelope etc has to be lock or else things are gonna get ugly fast i think. Meaning you'd have even more complaint about legatos!!! hehe!
 
@Duncan Krummel What do you think? Do you like the soloist in there? It's fun to have divisi for the realism and for the layering, but it's SO nice to hear this in a smaller string context too. The other thing that I hope people will explore when using the individual sections is the personality each has. I would venture that using Violins 1B will yield a different sound in your example, and you may like it more or less.

But just enjoyable writing. Made me feel nostalgic for my years playing in orchestras (even though I was just a dumb brass player keeping time).
 
The custom envelopes won't affect the legato... the speed controls have an enormous influence however.

But (and you'll have to forgive me because it's been an intense week and I'm a little blurry-eyed)... is what you're hoping to do mostly in regards to the connective tissue (that exact moment the finger depresses the string) or the subsequent new note? It's hard to sometimes put into words since it's all part of the same thing... but trying to see if I can offer a suggestion or just make a note here.
It's definitely challenging to put into words so I'll do my best.

In some instances where I'm expecting specifically a quick fingered legato/transition sound, it's sounding like there's a bit of a gap or delay or crossfade between the two notes, pretty consistently. That style of transition I'm hearing most of the time, with the soft silky connection between the notes is really pretty and I don't want that to get changed or removed by any means, but for fingered transitions specifically, yeah, RIGHT as the finger comes down like you are saying, it's something I feel either isn't there or isn't as realistically snappy so a lot of the legato lines are consistently flowing together and losing some of the realism from what would normally be a player fingering the notes with the resulting instantaneous note changes and that little "finger sound" (totally micro). I'm missing that hard/defined attack on the fingerboard and instant pitch change on the string for commonplace "fingered legato" - and I'm sure you know what I mean about the attack of the finger, that there would be no resulting accent of the note being transitioned to, just that the finger coming down on the fingerboard would be very articulated or just generally clear, and the resulting note change would be as swift as the attack of the finger. I just want to be sure I'm not screwing up the words. Sorry for the verbosity.

In the first 5 seconds when you can hear Itzhak playing the A-D A-D repeated pattern (and forgive me for linking the one of the world's best violinists, but, it's an example...) https://vi-control.net/community/threads/audiobro-modern-scoring-strings.101913/post-4766718

There is an instantaneous note change for the fingered legato without breaking the vibration of the string, and in some fingerings he attacks the fingerboard with the finger in such a way that there's almost an attack sound to the finger itself coming down onto the board that you can hear, but the note change is instantaneous; some of the other fingerings are softer and don't have that attack sound, but the note changes are still instant, and the notes, uninterrupted, remain very connected, despite the very swift attack of the finger and changing of notes. That's something I would love to hear being possible with some adjustable parameter, or just based on input velocity or something (forgive me, I still have some learning to do about your library especially given I don't own it, so I'm not sure how it would best fit into the workflow you've setup but I'm sure you'd have a solution in case this is something you'd be able to bring - that is, assuming you don't have a suggestion already that would make possible this kind of snappy but still smooth fingered transition - which if you do, hallelujah!).

Also, I don't imagine release week (or the weeks preceeding!) could ever be smooth. Congratulations (and thank you!) on getting it out and on releasing such a great product, there's a wealth of content to digest and enjoy and I hope I'm not coming across the wrong way by making this comment about the sound of the legato. I think this library is something special, the user demos keep getting better and better and I am more and more liking the sound. One of these months, I'll probably own it. Thanks for your time!
 
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I cannot make it sound exactly like Itzhak Perlman.



There are some challenges in the MSS solo violin to recreating this passage.

Here's some things I noticed / worked around:

  • A little phasing on a couple notes, almost like I hear two violins instead of one.
  • Fairly abrupt velocity shifts (big timbral / color changes for each of the four velocities) so I mostly stayed in the lowest of the four and cranked the volume.
  • A couple notes are "characterful" as they say.
  • The "Accent" attack sounds nothing like Mr. Perlman's hard fingers changing notes. So I used the "Norm" legato or a new note with no attack instead.
Around bar 3 I flipped to a short quickly to try to simulate Itzhak's bow change a touch early that almost sounded like a re-attack, so if you see the MSS screen "blink" around 0:24 that's what's happening.

Backing strings are the Ensemble patch from MSS, on the simulated sordino but with the brightness knob turned up quite a bit. The harps are from OT Ark 2 (six harps but who's counting?).

Mics were Close only, with a little of the Perdition convolution. I adjusted the built in high and low EQ levels to warm up the violin a bit.

I did start by trying the Intuition Solo Violin but it didn't offer enough control for me. Lots of "volume jumps" even though I was trying to play evenly, so I quickly moved on to the main interface.

Well done , sounds very good ,you passed that challenge with flying colours . Can you now try and do the same with a section of 8 ( or more) mss violins playing the tune like on the version I posted earlier .
 
There is an instantaneous note change for the fingered legato without breaking the vibration of the string
Pardon my ignorance – I'm not a string player, but are you talking about the two first notes? I imagine that what we hear there is an octave glide between two notes which are not on the same string, and that this is why it sounds the way it does.
 
This
Well done , sounds very good ,you passed that challenge with flying colours . Can you now try and do the same with a section of 8 ( or more) mss violins playing the tune like on the version I posted earlier .
This one 1:10. Or even better 2:26

2https://open.spotify.com/track/7jtYdNH9DUseQjLHQ8y2I6?si=D6e6AfDATqSESgicefenCw
 
I have no idea what to expect going forward with this library, I'm assuming there'll be updates but I don't suppose setting sights on Itzhak Perlman's solo playing as a goal for "playability and tweakability" regadless of first-chair or any-sized ensemble is within the realm of reason for any developer, haha... But boy, that solo violin attempt at that line was really something, and I can't help but admit it left me craving more. Really, that close-up intimate sound was very special, I'm actually pretty freaking excited about this library. The fact that MSS can just do that with a solo player/chamber sized-ensembles is too cool, man. Really, very exciting.


Pardon my ignorance – I'm not a string player, but are you talking about the two first notes? I imagine that what we hear there is an octave glide between two notes which are not on the same string, and that this is why it sounds the way it does.

No, the A-D-A-D that follow the first two notes were what I was referring to. But, I mean... You could still be right, maybe? I'm not a string player either, just an oboist. But even if those are all rebowed, there's an instantaneous transition between pitches that's generally mostly missing from the legato repertoire of MSS it seems. It's something I'm definitely going to be missing if I come to own it, which I'd like to. Especially given the Intuition patch adds a good level of dexterity to the whole library, quick note transitions instead of the more smoothed-out, hazy ones currently present are going to rob it of a lot of the realism that would otherwise be within its reach. Intuition or not, really, it would be a boon for the whole library IMO to have it. Just, of course, not on every transition - what there is now is good, but just not on every single legato transition, then it stops sounding as much like reality.
 
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is what you're hoping to do mostly in regards to the connective tissue (that exact moment the finger depresses the string) or the subsequent new note?
yeah .. sometimes hard to describe in words - best to do an example: When playing a legato from C to E (auto divisi OFF, overlapping notes), at the moment you're hitting the E the C obviously should fade off (being overlayed by the legato transition and the new note E). In case of MSS that fading off C is still audible for some ms, resulting in a bit hally blurred sound (E is already on its way, but C still audible). The intuition patches dont show that behaviour. .. hope that explanation makes sense?
 
@dxmachina That MSS firstchair legato on the Itzhak video sounded really good to me. I think the legato fuzziness is a lot more prevalent in this (wonderful) example from @Duncan Krummel :


I'm noticing it a lot of the time in the violas and below, less often but sometimes in violin, where the note transitions are hard to hear and the notes seem to fade together. Duncan, I know you're also busy, but I'm curious how it sounds when you turn the transition volume up and increase the speed (whether that means lowering or increasing the knob, lol). I'm definitely not hearing the lack of clarity as much in the solo example, and the one who posted the Itzhak comparison was one who most clearly demonstrated they'd gone to what appeared to be the extent of legato transition clarity - again, theirs didn't seem to be as problematic, so I'm wondering if this is still something solvable within the library right now.

Can post an example later if needed
I would personally like to hear it, for sure. If you're doing everything you can with fast transition speed, and variably the transition volume as well. These aren't things I'd want to leave on all the time so I'd hope the automatic/adaptive legato speed could parse the inputs into something predictable and desirable, but I remember hearing a lot of the demos having the same fuzzy legato sound in a majority of the transitions, so that's... some of what's giving me pause.
 
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Duncan, I know you're also busy, but I'm curious how it sounds when you turn the transition volume up and increase the speed (whether that means lowering or increasing the knob, lol)
thats something I tried as well .. it seems - again, unless I'm doing something wrong - all these changes in the legato settings do not whatsoever affect the actual release fade of the previous note, that seems to be a fixed setting.

At this point I have to admit this is really nitpicking of a small detail in that already amazing library - its less of an issue in ensemble/section playing as we already heard, but more in exposed (lyrical) lines in one section - but if this discussion helps pushing the library even further, even better ...
 
Honestly, I've been listening to this for hours and I am myself quite sleep deprived.

I'm just going to give everything a listen later and see if I've just started to go a little crazy. Congratulations everyone on your purchases / release, MSS sounds awesome, everyone's user demos are getting way better, fast. Listening again tomorrow we'll see if I'm starting to get a little lost after all these hours today of thinking back and forth about tiny stuff like legato transitions :)

^ @borisb2 I agree. exactly, the library sounds great, and this is pretty small stuff. Time to hang it up for now.
 
I think you may get that with “spikes” in the CC1 data, little irregularities, perhaps placed around note changes I mean that will benefit the natural feel of the performance.
Hmm.. I don’t think that will sound the same as those hard finger legato transitions, but it’s a pretty specialized sound. More like a hammer on in the guitar world. The emotion of the piece (Schindler’s) can be communicated without recreating Perlman’s performance of course. But I think I’d want a sample of the finger hitting the fretboard as hard and intentionally as he did to get that sound. Like a “hammer on” overlay lol.
 
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