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HW Opus Orchestrator - Walk Through Video

In case you missed this, here it is!
You are not serious are you??? Delete Please?
We have enough of the other post already,
this will just split us up and harder to follow.

Have you seen this?:
And decided we need THIS?
 
You are not serious are you??? Delete Please?
We have enough of the other post already,
this will just split us up and harder to follow.

Have you seen this?:
And decided we need THIS?
I disagree. That thread is a massive shit show spread across all Opus topics at once. It's not reasonable to expect someone to wade through the rapid pace of posts in that single thread when there's a distinct topic - the Orchestrator - to discuss.

In other words, half that thread is about people complaining about EastWest policies and behavior, and not discussion about the product itself. If people* are willing to cut that out or isolate it somewhere else, then perhaps that thread will finally be a good place to talk instruments and software. These are all valuable discussions, but not in the same place.

* And yes, that means you, since today you've stated that you're considering buying Opus just to make a video about the drama and to "use the F word few times like Daniel James...gain few Subscriber." (sic)

It's not like there's a new thread for strings, a new thread for woodwind ensembles, and so on. We already have examples here where this works, such as SINE Player and Orchestral Tools libraries having separate threads.
 
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Now, onto a question (concern?) I have:
What if a user intends to run Opus on a VEPro server that is a machine separate from their DAW? Will there be any viable MIDI export/drag-to-DAW?

Answer (sort of):
I got on a chat with EastWest support. The rep said they'll add this scenario to some tests.
 
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You are not serious are you??? Delete Please?
We have enough of the other post already,
this will just split us up and harder to follow.

Have you seen this?:
And decided we need THIS?
I've been knocking around VI-Control for quite a while, almost 10 years now. I was here during the great exodus of the Mike's from Cinesamples, when Carles left because re-peat was being mean to him. I remember well the shit show that ensued when Spitfire decided to make Spitfire Symphonic Evolutions available only to those who purchased Symphonic Strings (or something like that). I witnessed the great legato battle between Paul Thomson and Patrick DeCaumette that led to Spitfire leaving VI-C for several years. And of course, how could we forget the infamous dumpster fire that was the release of Hans Zimmer Strings?

But that Hollywood Opus thread is by far the stupidest thread I've ever read on this forum.
 
You are not serious are you??? Delete Please?
We have enough of the other post already,
this will just split us up and harder to follow.

Have you seen this?:
And decided we need THIS?
So if you're so anti-OPUS, why do you even post in Opus threads??? Honest question.
 
With the caveat that I'm just a hobbyist with virtually no training and no interest in doing this for a living - I just want to make some music for my own enjoyment - this looks kinda brilliant. I have TOC2 (TOC was something I set my sights on as soon as I got interested in VIs last year; I found a used copy on VI-C, and I bought the TOC2 upgrade immediately), and as much as I love what it can do, I could never quite get the engine to do what I wanted - it always felt like I was one level removed from where I wanted to be.

This really seems to address that - the granularity of being able to tell each section "play this part of the chord with this articulation and this many octaves up/down from the root" looks like exactly what I wish the Sonuscore engine could do (with their own samples). Along similar lines, I've been playing with the Orb Producer Suite and VSL's BBO in the last few days, just seeing what is possible when taking the four Producer plugins (Chord, Melody, Bass, and Arpeggio) and essentially auditioning different ensembles/sections/articulations to find a combination that I like, but it's still more hands-off than I'd prefer.

So, Hollywood Orchestrator really appeals to me, though I can certainly understand why people with training and talent are either uninterested or a bit hostile to tools that make composition easier for people like me (I'm not coming for your job, honest!).
 
You are not serious are you??? Delete Please?
We have enough of the other post already,
this will just split us up and harder to follow.

Have you seen this?:
And decided we need THIS?
relax dude .. didnt see Moderator on your profile
 
Now, onto a question (concern?) I have:
What if a user intends to run Opus on a VEPro server that is a machine separate from their DAW? Will there be any viable MIDI export/drag-to-DAW?

Answer (sort of):
I got on a chat with EastWest support. The rep said they'll add this scenario to some tests.
Good question.
The next one is how easy is it to switch from orchestrator presets.

Otherwise that thing seems depressingly useful.
 
Will there be any viable MIDI export/drag-to-DAW?

Yeah I'm very curious about that too. The presets are a good starting point, but I wouldn't want to start and finish a piece with the same preset throughout. I'd like to be able to program my own transitions from one texture to the next, not to mention fine tuning the envelopes here and there.
 
This really seems to address that - the granularity of being able to tell each section "play this part of the chord with this articulation and this many octaves up/down from the root" looks like exactly what I wish the Sonuscore engine could do (with their own samples).
I know that I won't be buying the Orchestrator now (maybe at the later 60% off EW price :)), so I only briefly skimmed the video and I'm going by the parts I quoted from you.

You can make the Sonuscore Orchestra play a part of the chord with a specific articulation and offset by up to 4 octaves. Choose the instrument articulation, assign it to the arpeggiator or envelope slot where you can choose the note selection (lowest, lowest 2, middle, top 3, top 2, top). You can build some intricate patterns that way.

Just in case you haven't seen this Sonuscore engine tutorial about building a pattern from scratch:
 
Yeah I'm very curious about that too. The presets are a good starting point, but I wouldn't want to start and finish a piece with the same preset throughout. I'd like to be able to program my own transitions from one texture to the next, not to mention fine tuning the envelopes here and there.

Well, it's right there in the FAQ, it turns out!

"
What is Hollywood Orchestrator?

Hollywood Orchestrator is our innovative Scoring Engine that is built into Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition, which can help you quickly produce results ranging from basic string arrangements to complex orchestrations. You can use one of the over 500 presets, modify them, or create your own. You can play the presets into your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), or export them to your DAW using MIDI export. With MIDI export, you can record complete passages with any Orchestrator preset with all data as MIDI regions. This enables you to adjust your recorded composition and change notes at any time as if you created these in your DAW.
"
 
I know that I won't be buying the Orchestrator now (maybe at the later 60% off EW price :)), so I only briefly skimmed the video and I'm going by the parts I quoted from you.

You can make the Sonuscore Orchestra play a part of the chord with a specific articulation and offset by up to 4 octaves. Choose the instrument articulation, assign it to the arpeggiator or envelope slot where you can choose the note selection (lowest, lowest 2, middle, top 3, top 2, top). You can build some intricate patterns that way.

Just in case you haven't seen this Sonuscore engine tutorial about building a pattern from scratch:

Thanks! I did know about this part of The Orchestra, but Orchestrator has at least one extra parameter (Arranger Mode) that defines which specific note(s) in each chord each section responds to, which seems to offer that bit of extra flexibility and sonic character that the TOC engine can't match.

Also, there's the ability to go way beyond the 5 parts in each TOC preset - it appears that each Orchestrator preset can have up to 16 instruments/sections defined (whether you'd want to do that, or just build presets separately for strings/woodwinds/brass/percussion, I'm not sure). I'm guessing this could be replicated somewhat with Multis in TOC, but that involves some mental gymnastics that are beyond me at the moment, honestly - Orchestrator appears, to my eyes, to make this more straightforward and understandable.

Don't get me wrong - I still think that the engine in TOC is great, but it appears that Sonuscore took what they learned with TOC and added some really nice new features that give some extra flexibility and playability in Orchestrator. The example of building a preset around the 12:00 mark in the intro video gives a nice example of this, demonstrating moving the Celli from playing the Lowest note in a chord (along with the Basses) up to the Middle 2 notes to make it the lead legato string instrument in a preset.

I also found the example of building a midi pattern in Orchestrator a bit more predictable than how things work in TOC, but that could just be how the interface presents it and how the individual sections respond.
 
As much as i disliked their initial trailer, this looks very practical and the examples sound great. The only problem is see is needing almost 1tb to store it. I have BBCSO Pro and i use only Core. I hope Gold will be a lot smaller than Diamond.
 
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With the caveat that I'm just a hobbyist with virtually no training and no interest in doing this for a living - I just want to make some music for my own enjoyment - this looks kinda brilliant. I have TOC2 (TOC was something I set my sights on as soon as I got interested in VIs last year; I found a used copy on VI-C, and I bought the TOC2 upgrade immediately), and as much as I love what it can do, I could never quite get the engine to do what I wanted - it always felt like I was one level removed from where I wanted to be.

This really seems to address that - the granularity of being able to tell each section "play this part of the chord with this articulation and this many octaves up/down from the root" looks like exactly what I wish the Sonuscore engine could do (with their own samples). Along similar lines, I've been playing with the Orb Producer Suite and VSL's BBO in the last few days, just seeing what is possible when taking the four Producer plugins (Chord, Melody, Bass, and Arpeggio) and essentially auditioning different ensembles/sections/articulations to find a combination that I like, but it's still more hands-off than I'd prefer.

So, Hollywood Orchestrator really appeals to me, though I can certainly understand why people with training and talent are either uninterested or a bit hostile to tools that make composition easier for people like me (I'm not coming for your job, honest!).
Well that's because, as far as I can tell, it isn't really composing. It's holding chords down like an auto-accomp on a Casio. Stick a memorable melody over the top and it becomes a composition I suppose, just like a guy in a hotel lobby playing Begin the Beguine on his Tyros. It's about that level.

With thousands of subscribers who know basic chord sequences, this stuff is going to get old very quickly, just like the original Stylus loops did. But if it saves time and time is money then rake it in by all means. Just remember that AI can do this non-creative easy stuff too and it will definitely be coming for people's jobs.
 
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