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Berlin Inspire 2 or albion tundra?

Suppose I wanted to be a Vaughan Williams Newbie - what would you recommend ?
I better leave that for someone else. But I think you would want to have more than one or two libs to bring off a good VW symphonic piece! I don't have the main Spitfire orchestral strings, but my impression is that would be a good starting place. And I think you would need a pretty big template all across the orchestra. Subtlety is sometimes built from complexity, to contradict my previous post.
 
Really sobering points in these last posts ....... as I try to bridge this gap (over a year or so now) ..... between reaching $$$$-wise for one of top-tier Orch Libs versus newer alternatives.
Promos for The Orchestra, BO-Inspire(s), Time macro, Smart Orchestra, several SFA libs (Swarm, BDT, EVO Grid 3, have made it even more difficult to make the large commitment to Berlin, VSL, SFA. Afflatus has surely drawn attention.
( in keeping with hread ... also have Albions: ONE, Loegria, Tundra, and would gate to choose against BO_Inspire(s), or several others )

Always an issue between hanging on to past 'standards' and reaching for new directions. Thank-you for this encouragement to think freely and explore more easily ! :thumbsup:
 
To me, a lot has to do with how you want to write. I have a number of these ensemble libraries and I find they are great for getting a sound, but not so great when you want to learn orchestration because they combine too many instruments into one patch. You can't usually separate them. So you end up buying solo libraries or small ensembles to go with them.

I also am not so crazy about the synthy parts of Tundra. And Albion One. But I guess if you're doing sound track stuff it is useful. To me it is pulsing noise and most of the presets sound alike. My opinion so take it for what it's worth.

I think you can get something like EWQL SO gold for about $178 right now.
 
Really sobering points in these last posts ....... as I try to bridge this gap (over a year or so now) ..... between reaching $$$$-wise for one of top-tier Orch Libs versus newer alternatives.
Promos for The Orchestra, BO-Inspire(s), Time macro, Smart Orchestra, several SFA libs (Swarm, BDT, EVO Grid 3, have made it even more difficult to make the large commitment to Berlin, VSL, SFA. Afflatus has surely drawn attention.
( in keeping with hread ... also have Albions: ONE, Loegria, Tundra, and would gate to choose against BO_Inspire(s), or several others )

Always an issue between hanging on to past 'standards' and reaching for new directions. Thank-you for this encouragement to think freely and explore more easily ! :thumbsup:

All those new themed VIs are both liberating and constraining. By constraining us to a single genre, we are liberated to do what's possible within those constraints, and we are pre-forgiven for not reaching outside of them. The result of that kind of situation is that time is not wasted on yearning for something more, and projects get completed.

The hardest thing to deal with is the situation where the sky is the limit. Time and again that leads to endless flumoxing around while chasing some idea of perfection. There are those among us who can flumox their way to amazing accomplishments, and then there are people like me who have learned the hard way that the path to getting things done is to respect their limits, and then there are people who are simply lost in futile searching.

So in my case I have found that I have better luck with relatively constrained libs like Tundra where I can see the local horizons and work within them. I have never even tried to hammer anything out on a 1000+ articulation template monster, it's just not me and I'm too old to want to master something like that.

I have considered the OT orchestral libs, but I know I probably wouldn't use them extensively, maybe just a few articulations here and there. But for those cases it's just as likely that something from good old EW Symphonic Orchestra or Hollywood Orchestra, both of which I already have, or now even Amadeus, might work just as well. And of course there are now many very cool specialty instruments in the Inspires, Arks, etc...
 
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@ dzilizzi …. :thumbsup:
Well … not chops here to make comparisons; but have NI: K11U Symphony Essentials /Kontakt5 Factory Library (VSL), KH: Diamond Symphony Orch, Spotlight Solo Strings, Virtuoso Ensembles, Audiobro: LADD, some others …… surely enough to 'start' learning orchestration.

Then there are the motivational, stimulating, fun, creative aspects, which these many new, quality creations trigger.
Not disagreeing, simply noting my experience finding a way across this 'perceived' gap. :barefoot:
 
@ dzilizzi …. :thumbsup:
Well … not chops here to make comparisons; but have NI: K11U Symphony Essentials /Kontakt5 Factory Library (VSL), KH: Diamond Symphony Orch, Spotlight Solo Strings, Virtuoso Ensembles, Audiobro: LADD, some others …… surely enough to 'start' learning orchestration.

Then there are the motivational, stimulating, fun, creative aspects, which these many new, quality creations trigger.
Not disagreeing, simply noting my experience finding a way across this 'perceived' gap. :barefoot:
Oops, hope I did not offend! The person I was referencing in my post was none other than me. It's Fatalistic Monday at my house, as usual.
 
To me, a lot has to do with how you want to write. I have a number of these ensemble libraries and I find they are great for getting a sound, but not so great when you want to learn orchestration because they combine too many instruments into one patch. You can't usually separate them. So you end up buying solo libraries or small ensembles to go with them.

I also am not so crazy about the synthy parts of Tundra. And Albion One. But I guess if you're doing sound track stuff it is useful. To me it is pulsing noise and most of the presets sound alike. My opinion so take it for what it's worth.

I think you can get something like EWQL SO gold for about $178 right now.


The other side of this coin is ... and i’m Just theorizing out loud here ... maybe in the age of sample libraries, learning to orchestrate could be one a very different experience.

I’m not at all convinced that the traditional thousand page treatisie on orchestration which exhaustive documents the implications of doubling event last permutation of instruments with the bassoon makes precisely the same kind of sense it did in the 19th century when you had to work out as much as you possibly could on paper first because to try out a new doubling the bassoon with the violas and a piccolo to see if it would work would cost $2500 an hour (adjusted for inflation having, obviously, completely made that number up).

Tundra has also hilighted to me the need for solo instruments, but because the kind of composition it inspires often calls for various types of contrast and texture in orchestrational layers.

So I can entirely imaging a pedagogical approach to orchestration that acknowledges that it now takes 45 seconds, and cost a great deal less that $2500 an hour to see how well doubling with the piccolo is going to work, and so not having to have memorized a thousand pages of conventional wisdom on whether or not it’s a good idea in the first place - that is to say acknowledging that it is now perfectly practical to learn certain aspects of orchestration by experience instead of by wrote.

But also, why not start to learn orchestration starting at higher level of granularity - say of a level that happens to conincide with ensembles and articulatinos of Tundra. And then, with orchestrating on a higher level of granularity mastered, proceeding from there to increasingly fine grained level ...

... until you get to solo instruments. Which is backwards from the real world where you’re learn to write for chamber ensembles before you write symphonies. But it’s an accident of physics that ensembles are much easier to sample that solo instruments, so when working with libraries, we start backwards, as it were. Orchestring a cello ensemble library being much, much easier that working with all the difficulties of even the best solo libraries. so it’s another implicit assumption of conventional approaches to orchestrations - that the student will have experience writing for chamber ensembles first - that might reasonably be rethought when it comes to learning to compose with sample libraries.

In some sense this is what I’m fumbling through myself. And I now have very stong opinions of a large number of many ways in which I thing it’s interesting to blend a solo violin with a large ppp string section - and an even larger body of hard won experience to draw on of all the ways it is an extremely bad idea to try to blend a solo violin with a large ppp string section, for instance.



And while my solution for most problems in life is to buy a book, I really can’t say that I’be found the conventional books on orchestration well suited for where I’m at. Although a have a stack of them, and do aspire to get through at least some of them eventually.

Granted, there’s a powerful body of orchestration pedagogy geared to not learning orchestration this way, instead drawing the art of teaching orchestration as it’s been honed for two centuries. Whereas the grand sum of pedagogical resources geared to the way I’m advocating learning orchestration is, approximately, a couple of videos on YouTube.

But my argument is just that this is worth rethinking a little bit.

There’s an argument of course that Mike Verta And Alain Maynard And a few others are already doing this, in their focus on more over-the-shoulder, practical approaches to orchestrational pedagogy. But I think there’s. A great deal to be innovated yet.
 
I better leave that for someone else. But I think you would want to have more than one or two libs to bring off a good VW symphonic piece! I don't have the main Spitfire orchestral strings, but my impression is that would be a good starting place. And I think you would need a pretty big template all across the orchestra. Subtlety is sometimes built from complexity, to contradict my previous post.

Well now I really think there’s a good chance I might be a Vaughan Williams newbie :)
 
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Oops, hope I did not offend! The person I was referencing in my post was none other than me. It's Fatalistic Monday at my house, as usual.

Never, Bill !! Your comments are always taken in broad context of many instructive, helpful posts over long time.
Massive topic, this, and much is relevant.

My very narrow 'blurb' just forced a look in the mirror !! Clearly, choices like: EW (incl Cloud), Amadeus, Red Room Palette, others, wipe out my 'stated' dilemma over investment in full orchestral libraries. My "fuzzy' issue is whether top-tier Orch Libs are now a priority … at relatively high cost.
Likely not a 'right' answer ……

Guilty of analysis-paralysis :blush:

THX!
 
LOL! I totally understand what you are saying @ism about changing orchestration to fit an ensemble library. My point was not well made I think because I am starting out. I think what I'm trying to say is that I end up finding most ensemble libraries to limiting. As you said, they don't normally have soloists, which are sometimes needed. And maybe I don't want my flute with the bassoon. Or harp. Really, ensembles are more like a whole new instrument on their own. I just wish I started out with something like EWQL SO first and didn't waste money on a lot of these ensembles that I rarely use. Although I would really recommend getting the full Spitfire orchestra, it doesn't make sense for most starting out hobbyists. And EW stuff is almost on par with the better stuff.

After you have the basics, then fill in with ensembles. And Evos or other fun stuff.
 
So I've decided to not buy the inspires which wasn't easy as they looked to be a great deal. I'm going to wait and hope tundra goes on sale I'll also keep my eyeball on olfer Arnold's chamber evo, but I must investigate that one further. I'm not paid to make anything, it's just a passion for me. I have the native instruments symphony series for learning and cinematic studio strings which hopefully I will add their brass and woodwinds one day as to move away from NI symphony series. Hopefully this is the right choice for me but time will tell. I'd like to say a big thanks to everyone that commented in this thread as you've all been very helpful and informative.
 
So I've decided to not buy the inspires which wasn't easy as they looked to be a great deal. I'm going to wait and hope tundra goes on sale I'll also keep my eyeball on olfer Arnold's chamber evo, but I must investigate that one further. I'm not paid to make anything, it's just a passion for me. I have the native instruments symphony series for learning and cinematic studio strings which hopefully I will add their brass and woodwinds one day as to move away from NI symphony series. Hopefully this is the right choice for me but time will tell. I'd like to say a big thanks to everyone that commented in this thread as you've all been very helpful and informative.
Not sure this matters to you but as much as I love Tundra, Chamber Evolutions is more fun (and generally useful). I use the waves all the time. Tundra though has a lot more content.
 
So I've decided to not buy the inspires which wasn't easy as they looked to be a great deal. I'm going to wait and hope tundra goes on sale I'll also keep my eyeball on olfer Arnold's chamber evo, but I must investigate that one further. I'm not paid to make anything, it's just a passion for me. I have the native instruments symphony series for learning and cinematic studio strings which hopefully I will add their brass and woodwinds one day as to move away from NI symphony series. Hopefully this is the right choice for me but time will tell. I'd like to say a big thanks to everyone that commented in this thread as you've all been very helpful and informative.

Although practical and much needed, I myself have skipped all the orchestral tools Berlin and metropolis ark series. I still need woodwinds and brass, but hey who cares you can always subscribe to eastwest for full orchestra or get something cheap to go by if you really need it. Buying special and fun libraries like Tundra and olafur Evo will inspire you more and it's always fun to come back to for inspiration. Because it's a special kind of library it's unlikely to be replaced for a long long time. Sales coming soon. All the best
 
Yes that OACE looks like a lot of fun, now hope they have the xmas wishlist I've heard about.

they have confirmed about the wishlist from their videoblog so im told in other thread!
so get your money ready! Olafur Arnold Chamber Evolution is superb. Somehow a level higher than Spitifre Chamber strings which I have @Peterpiper . I don't have OACE but the demos really awesome.
For me,I am eyeing their Eric Whitacre Choir. Its supposed to be fun and unique.
Otherwise I may get Albion one for a complete orchestra. Somewhere down the road, I might grab Metropolis ark 2 or Berlin Inspire 1&2 for the kind of slow/moderate music.
Maybe then im done with orchestral stuffs. Hopefully.
 
My 2 cents on Berlin Inspire (version 1): it is a GREAT template library to write with on a laptop. It has a very small HD/RAM footprint, so you can have the ENTIRE orchestra playing tons of different articulations without crashing your DAW.

It's more classic sounding - not great for modern scoring. It's pretty wet and distant all around. I've found it's great for emulating 70s type film scores.

The strings and percussion are the strong points. Winds, Piano, and Harp are a bit weaker. Brass is pretty good with some compression, EQ, and stereo imaging.

Here a couple tracks I've done with Inspire:



 
These libraries are very different and for different genres as well. If you're looking for a "starter" and you like the spitfire sound, go with Albion one. Tundra is a bit more niche and is more about having cool, new textures to work with, while Albion one is a pretty general "contemporary" film score library. The Berlin Inspires are more of a general workhorse for orchestral writing though, so if you prefer to write orchestral music that's probably a better, more flexible and specific plan for you. I also want to do as many others here have and recommend the East West Composer Cloud, which gives you the full hollywood orchestra gold (with only 1 mic position) as well as many many other libraries for all genres of music (including things like silk, which handles most asian instruments overall better than any other library in my opinion, and Spaces II reverb which is pr
 
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