Chris Hein solo violin
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Sid Francis
Senior Member
Why don´t you also insert a link? I searched on the site of best service and get no hit with Chris Hein Violin :-(
Sid Francis
Senior Member
Thank you so much. Just wondering, because there are no demos to click. However I found them on Chris´ site
I could already betatest the violin. It´s a great instrument. The legato transitions (slured and portamento) especially are wonderful (as you can hear in the demo). I also like the possibility to modify the note heads via velocity or midi controller. This already worked pretty well with the brasses and winds and does an excellent job with the violin as well.
Sampling a violin always leaves some desires left, it´s a well known difficult task but Chris did a very good job (I might even retire my Embertone violin, but maybe having 2 violins is not an awful mistake
)
Regards
Raindog
Sampling a violin always leaves some desires left, it´s a well known difficult task but Chris did a very good job (I might even retire my Embertone violin, but maybe having 2 violins is not an awful mistake
)Regards
Raindog
Sid Francis
Senior Member
Thanks for your experiences. I saw in the given Best Service link, that "Try Sound 2.0" is also on the way and this will probably provide the possibility to test the instruments over the net with a much shorter latency than now. I will definitly try Chris´ Violin then.
Rob Elliott
Senior Member
+1. I would love to also know this.
Chris Hein
www.chrishein.net
Thanks all for your interest.
More info about the Solo-Violin is here: (broken link removed)
The detailed answer is a bit longer:
If you have an instrument with only a few functions, you won't spend much time because there is simply no way to edit.
You can spend hours with a solo violin track, but you don't have to.
I thinks, especially the "False Valse" video shows that it is possible to get pretty realistic results.
Now, how much effort so you have to spend to achieve this?
Naomi, the violin player, and I spend weeks in the studio to study what is going on the real instrument and how we can re-create that the with the sampled instrument.
There are many details in attack shapes, articulations, dynamic, special efx, etc. we discussed.
In addition I tried to implement the many functions so that its easy to access all the nuances.
Note-Heads, Hot-Keys, Blending, Sustain pedal for portamento or runs, are functions which work in realtime.
All in all I spent a whole year for the development of CH-Solo Violin.
Honestly, I was surprised myself how good this all works. The Solo-Violin is the best instrument I ever made.
However, back to the topic:
There are many function to design an exposed solo track in detail, but you don't have to use them.
If you play a lyrical phrase without much extras, you probably don't have to touch any button at all.
The dynamic and legato engine do a great job in the background. There are enough sustained articulation to find the right sound.
From here you can start to fine-tune the performance.
The time you'll need for this only depend on the degree of quality and variations you'd like to include.
Let me give you only a few examples:
Dynamic.
You can play the up to 8 dynamic layers velocity sensitive without any editing.
You can ride CC11 to play the dynamic changes, thanks to the phase-aligned samples this works smooth over all dynamic layers.
Attack shapes / NoteHeads:
The Note-Heads let you switch through the 12 short articulations in realtime with a MIDI CC.
Its also really easy to edit them in your DAW. Higher value = faster attack. Done with a few clicks.
The note-heads are a real timesaver. Instead of switching articulations to get an accent at the beginning of a note,
simply move the fader or paint it in your DAW.
Note-Heads are perfect for these little grace notes, up or down which happen permanently on a violin.
Trills:
There are several ways to throw in a trill on the fly:
Play them manually (The legato engine works fast enough), use the blending CC, use a Hot-Key to trigger the trill.
All done in realtime or easy to edit in your DAW. Choose the method which works best for you.
Portamento / Runs:
Simply press the sustain pedal to switch from Legato to portamento or a playable run.
Assign different key-switches to portamento or Glide-Mode to access both.
Vibrato:
Beside the vibrato articulations, the intelligent LFO Vibrato you can play the vibrato manually in realtime using the vibrato Hot-Key.
I could continue for hours, but these are the basic functions you may need for a detailed performance.
An example for the workflow:
The Paganini demo was done using an existing MIDI file. (Thats why it sound a bit too much quantized)
All in all I spent 5 hours to edit the MIDI track. I didn't change articulation very much, I mostly used the Note-Heads with its 8 dynamic layers and edit CC2 and velocity to vary the notes.
Its was really fun to edit that and see how it works, a lower Note-Heads works for softer phrases, the higher ones provide that ricochet like attack.
The fact that the Note-Heads also play legato by overlapping notes avoids some more articulation changes too.
The flageolet articulation from 1:38 worked very well, because we also recorded short flageolets with a better attack.
OK, enough talking.
I wish you could just try and feel how intuitive this instrument plays.
There will be much more videos in the near future going through all the details.
Chris Hein
More info about the Solo-Violin is here: (broken link removed)
Thats a really good question. The short answer is of course: It depends.
The detailed answer is a bit longer:
If you have an instrument with only a few functions, you won't spend much time because there is simply no way to edit.
You can spend hours with a solo violin track, but you don't have to.
I thinks, especially the "False Valse" video shows that it is possible to get pretty realistic results.
Now, how much effort so you have to spend to achieve this?
Naomi, the violin player, and I spend weeks in the studio to study what is going on the real instrument and how we can re-create that the with the sampled instrument.
There are many details in attack shapes, articulations, dynamic, special efx, etc. we discussed.
In addition I tried to implement the many functions so that its easy to access all the nuances.
Note-Heads, Hot-Keys, Blending, Sustain pedal for portamento or runs, are functions which work in realtime.
All in all I spent a whole year for the development of CH-Solo Violin.
Honestly, I was surprised myself how good this all works. The Solo-Violin is the best instrument I ever made.
However, back to the topic:
There are many function to design an exposed solo track in detail, but you don't have to use them.
If you play a lyrical phrase without much extras, you probably don't have to touch any button at all.
The dynamic and legato engine do a great job in the background. There are enough sustained articulation to find the right sound.
From here you can start to fine-tune the performance.
The time you'll need for this only depend on the degree of quality and variations you'd like to include.
Let me give you only a few examples:
Dynamic.
You can play the up to 8 dynamic layers velocity sensitive without any editing.
You can ride CC11 to play the dynamic changes, thanks to the phase-aligned samples this works smooth over all dynamic layers.
Attack shapes / NoteHeads:
The Note-Heads let you switch through the 12 short articulations in realtime with a MIDI CC.
Its also really easy to edit them in your DAW. Higher value = faster attack. Done with a few clicks.
The note-heads are a real timesaver. Instead of switching articulations to get an accent at the beginning of a note,
simply move the fader or paint it in your DAW.
Note-Heads are perfect for these little grace notes, up or down which happen permanently on a violin.
Trills:
There are several ways to throw in a trill on the fly:
Play them manually (The legato engine works fast enough), use the blending CC, use a Hot-Key to trigger the trill.
All done in realtime or easy to edit in your DAW. Choose the method which works best for you.
Portamento / Runs:
Simply press the sustain pedal to switch from Legato to portamento or a playable run.
Assign different key-switches to portamento or Glide-Mode to access both.
Vibrato:
Beside the vibrato articulations, the intelligent LFO Vibrato you can play the vibrato manually in realtime using the vibrato Hot-Key.
I could continue for hours, but these are the basic functions you may need for a detailed performance.
An example for the workflow:
The Paganini demo was done using an existing MIDI file. (Thats why it sound a bit too much quantized)
All in all I spent 5 hours to edit the MIDI track. I didn't change articulation very much, I mostly used the Note-Heads with its 8 dynamic layers and edit CC2 and velocity to vary the notes.
Its was really fun to edit that and see how it works, a lower Note-Heads works for softer phrases, the higher ones provide that ricochet like attack.
The fact that the Note-Heads also play legato by overlapping notes avoids some more articulation changes too.
The flageolet articulation from 1:38 worked very well, because we also recorded short flageolets with a better attack.
OK, enough talking.
I wish you could just try and feel how intuitive this instrument plays.
There will be much more videos in the near future going through all the details.
Chris Hein
Rob Elliott
Senior Member
Thanks Chris for the details. Your demos at the bottom of your linked page are not active - coming up soon?
Chris Hein
www.chrishein.net
Thanks for the hint Rob, but Idon't exactly know what you mean.
Could you send me a screenshot to [email protected] ?
The buy button saying "Coming 3/2016" is wrong. Do you mean that?
It leads you to the Harmonica, which is a mistake.
Although, see it as a suggestion and get the Harmonica while you wait for the Violin.
The CH-Solo Violin is at NI for encoding now.
I really hope we can release the beast within the next two weeks.
Chris Hein
Could you send me a screenshot to [email protected] ?
The buy button saying "Coming 3/2016" is wrong. Do you mean that?
It leads you to the Harmonica, which is a mistake.
Although, see it as a suggestion and get the Harmonica while you wait for the Violin.
The CH-Solo Violin is at NI for encoding now.
I really hope we can release the beast within the next two weeks.
Chris Hein
airflamesred
The crumpet man's thinker
Unlike the acoustic counterpart then!?
I don't have this, but do have both the winds and brass librarys and can say that the note-heads are a time saver in themselves in just general workflow. I'm certainly no keyboard player but have found a set up (velocity and CC based) that suits me and I think there is versatility enough to have one to suit you.
I am still looking for a playable violin that can also do some eastern playing styles.
Do you think that is achievable in what you have included in the samples & bowings? ( I can send you a link with some examples if you want)
Related questions:
I see the sustains and sustain vibrato, so that means the first one is non-vibrato?
And this is also the 8 layered dynamics? And if this is the non-vibrato patch then most likely I can use with that the key/ artificial vibrato?
Btw: There is a flutter tongue parameter in the gui visible in the blending section. Is this a perticular technique I don't know about with a violin?
Do you think that is achievable in what you have included in the samples & bowings? ( I can send you a link with some examples if you want)
Related questions:
I see the sustains and sustain vibrato, so that means the first one is non-vibrato?
And this is also the 8 layered dynamics? And if this is the non-vibrato patch then most likely I can use with that the key/ artificial vibrato?
Btw: There is a flutter tongue parameter in the gui visible in the blending section. Is this a perticular technique I don't know about with a violin?
Chris Hein
www.chrishein.net
Yes, examples would be cool. MIDI files would be even better.
I have no idea if this would work. How far east do you want to go?
Middle eastern violins are hard to re-create because of the permanent strange tuning changes.
A micro-tuner is build in, but that alone won't do the job.
Far Eastern violins are different in timbre. An Erhu sounds completely different.
Related questions:
Yes, sustain is straight notes without any vibrato. The Lyrical vibrato has a progressive vibrato which is also good to use the manual vibrato, at least for the first second before the vibrato comes in.
The sustained articulations have 6 dynamics, the shorts have 8, the specials have between 3-8.
Yes, the key-vibrato makes most sense on the straight sustain articulation.
Thats because the videos were done with the beta version where the graphics haven't beeb finished.Btw: There is a flutter tongue parameter in the gui visible in the blending section. Is this a particular technique I don't know about with a violin?
In the final version it says "Tremolo" and lets you blend into the tremolo articulation.
Flutter tongue on a violin, haha, great. I could imagine a Jimi Hendriks style violin performance.
Chris Hein
Przemek K.
Senior Member
I've had this lib for several months now, so I did spend a lot of time with it creating demos and testing it.
I may be biased but from a users point of view I can say for sure it's very playable out of the box.
I figured that some of you may be a bit scared (don't be) when watching my Valse demo video where I used so many keyswitches and cc data, but thats's my preferred method. (This matching was also more of a test for me personally to see how far I could push this lib). The thing is, that in the original version of this demo I used less keyswitches and cc data, and only later on after Naomi
performed my piece on her Violin, I thought of trying to match her performance as close as possible I could do at that point of time (early beta).
The thing is, it depends on the piece of music you want to write. If you mostly write lets say lyrical/flowing type of music, just use 1 or 2 articulations, namely sustain expression long and/or short, that's it. If you want to do some really complex stuff you can do that too, but you will have to put more work in it. For creating fast sketches, you just stack one short articulation on top of the sustains and you can play most stuff in realtime.
Having said that, it's a really versatile lib, extremely agile if you want it to be too.
But the best thing is always to try a library if possible, and as Chris mentioned it will be possible to do that with Try Sound 2.0
I may be biased but from a users point of view I can say for sure it's very playable out of the box.
I figured that some of you may be a bit scared (don't be) when watching my Valse demo video where I used so many keyswitches and cc data, but thats's my preferred method. (This matching was also more of a test for me personally to see how far I could push this lib). The thing is, that in the original version of this demo I used less keyswitches and cc data, and only later on after Naomi
performed my piece on her Violin, I thought of trying to match her performance as close as possible I could do at that point of time (early beta).
The thing is, it depends on the piece of music you want to write. If you mostly write lets say lyrical/flowing type of music, just use 1 or 2 articulations, namely sustain expression long and/or short, that's it. If you want to do some really complex stuff you can do that too, but you will have to put more work in it. For creating fast sketches, you just stack one short articulation on top of the sustains and you can play most stuff in realtime.
Having said that, it's a really versatile lib, extremely agile if you want it to be too.
But the best thing is always to try a library if possible, and as Chris mentioned it will be possible to do that with Try Sound 2.0
Thanks Chris and Przemek K. I`m really excited about this release. The only small thing that`s holding me back is the tone of the instrument. Maybe just from where I`m listening to it, so I want to have a listen on my better system later. It does look incredible though.
Thank you kindly for your answer Chris Hein.Yes, examples would be cool. MIDI files would be even better.
I have no idea if this would work. How far east do you want to go?
Middle eastern violins are hard to re-create because of the permanent strange tuning changes.
A micro-tuner is build in, but that alone won't do the job.
Far Eastern violins are different in timbre. An Erhu sounds completely different.
Related questions:
Yes, sustain is straight notes without any vibrato. The Lyrical vibrato has a progressive vibrato which is also good to use the manual vibrato, at least for the first second before the vibrato comes in.
The sustained articulations have 6 dynamics, the shorts have 8, the specials have between 3-8.
Yes, the key-vibrato makes most sense on the straight sustain articulation.
Thats because the videos were done with the beta version where the graphics haven't beeb finished.
In the final version it says "Tremolo" and lets you blend into the tremolo articulation.
Flutter tongue on a violin, haha, great. I could imagine a Jimi Hendriks style violin performance.
Chris Hein
unfortunately I have no midi files of the examples, nor do they exist, also not from myself. I could put up some notes off course, but since it will involve various cc commande and/ or keyswitches it seems too remote for a midifile.
Nevertheless I could try and play something in later today so you have got something to fiddle with .
The links to some examples are:
( this is a favourite of mine)
Both fantastic players!
Ps: nice to see how in different cultures musicianship gets treated differently, the first vid the violin player receives some "appreciative money" in an unusual way
And I know and understand that the particular violins and playing techniques they use will not be achievable without actually having sampled it( like the overtones shift used).
But I do hope, since you have an extended range implemented in your library that some of the bowings might actually be possible.
And your option with a seperste vibrato depth and rate is welcomed since they use a slower vibrato then western / classical styles .
I am interested if you think its possible to some degree, and if you indeed would like a midi file I can send you something later today.
Thanks so far.
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