Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Orchestral Sample Libraries from Asian Developers

constaneum said:
Joe Hisaishi....my favourite too. I labeled him as Asian version of John Williams....

Why Hans Zimmer? coz it's the latest trend??? Dont get me wrong, i do like some of his works, like Pirates of the Caribbean. However, he's like Nobuo Uematsu as well. Everyone looks up to him and wanna be like him. He brings in interesting things for orchestra but lots of movie soundtracks , i'm hearing Hans Zimmer style music every where. Same thing isn't it at the end? ahaha
Click to expand...

Haha yeah thats why i say for better or worse. For better in that fact that he was new blood that offered some new elements and approaches, but for worse because as you say he has become somewhat of a trendsetter that too many tried to imitate. It’s hard to find an equivalent songwriter, producer or composer from the last 10-15 years and thats a dry spell that isn’t good for progress. This even shows itself in how rare it is to get standout anime, games and movies at level of the things out of the 90s and 80s in Japan. Everything has become scaled down and less imaginative. You got a few rare exceptions of course, but overall the world of imagination in Japan has gone smaller rather than bigger.
 
chocobitz825 said:
This even shows itself in how rare it is to get standout anime, games and movies at level of the things out of the 90s and 80s in Japan. Everything has become scaled down and less imaginative. You got a few rare exceptions of course, but overall the world of imagination in Japan has gone smaller rather than bigger.
Click to expand...
I couldn't disagree more.

Nostalgia is a poison.
 
Sarah Mancuso said:
I couldn't disagree more.

Nostalgia is a poison.
Click to expand...


I'm not saying it needs to return to what it was, I'm saying its current state of being is less the result of inspiration, and moreso the result of restrictions in resources, budget and opportunity. In response, much of japanese media has take one of two paths. Give up and focus on a limited scale release aimed at Japan only, or the other side which attempts futile superficial attempts at mimicking western media often at the expense of its "japanesey-ness". Neither has shown to be more profitable, and neither has shown to help encourage creators to try more. Also because of this, consumption of Japanese media is down and is often lost to other markets. Jpop and its other popular forms of media have been replaced with KPOP in the public eye. Anime has moved away from Japanese studios to non-japanese studios that do "anime-ish" productions for less than Japanese studios cost. Gaming companies that have attempted to keep up with the international market have underperformed. Japan's overall market value is decreasing and the only reason it still makes noise is because of the japanese markets unique consumerism that favors physical media.

Don't get me wrong, Japanese media, composition and the market overall can be better without trying to be what it was. My issue is with an uninspired Japanese market, despite its incredible potential for international success and unique identity.
 
Outsourcing has been a thing for decades to reduce the labor burden, but as far as animation production goes, Japanese productions are still primarily made in Japan. There are even English-language sites like Sakugablog that get as deep as chronicling the contributions of individual animators and other staff members in the industry, so all this information is readily accessible.

Meanwhile, Japanese media’s international streaming revenues from China, the west, and elsewhere aren’t insignificant and are continuing to grow, so while Japan doesn’t have Kpop it’s still putting out a lot of media that the outside world cares about. There’s real innovation that hasn’t gone unnoticed, too: Houseki no Kuni was used as reference material for the advanced CG animation techniques in Into The Spiderverse.

And now being entirely subjective here, I’ve frequently been awed by the creativity, versatility, and pure skill of many of the composers and other creators coming out of Japan, and reducing that to “90s JRPG music” is missing a lot.
 
Can we come back to the idea that there are great string players in Japan, and money in sampling those players well, making user-friendly VIs, and selling those globally?

What would be the best sound to market - standard orchestra-size sections in a concert hall, or smaller sections perhaps in a studio? If any classic high-budget JPRGs used real strings, how were those recorded? Sorry, I have no clue... I remember knowing somebody who played Final Fantasy maybe 15 years ago, and I remember the "stop fisting android girls" meme from Nier two years ago, and that's all my knowledge of those things.

I'm in contact with Unreal Instruments via machine-translated English, helping get GUIs set up for that free stuff, which will hopefully help make it more popular globally. Will post that in the freebies thread when it's ready. That's a looooong way from sampling orchestral strings, but it might well lead to smaller commercial instruments, which might then lead to bigger instruments. Insert "I'm doing my part" meme here, haha.
 
Sarah Mancuso said:
Outsourcing has been a thing for decades to reduce the labor burden, but as far as animation production goes, Japanese productions are still primarily made in Japan. There are even English-language sites like Sakugablog that get as deep as chronicling the contributions of individual animators and other staff members in the industry, so all this information is readily accessible.

Meanwhile, Japanese media’s international streaming revenues from China, the west, and elsewhere aren’t insignificant and are continuing to grow, so while Japan doesn’t have Kpop it’s still putting out a lot of media that the outside world cares about. There’s real innovation that hasn’t gone unnoticed, too: Houseki no Kuni was used as reference material for the advanced CG animation techniques in Into The Spiderverse.

And now being entirely subjective here, I’ve frequently been awed by the creativity, versatility, and pure skill of many of the composers and other creators coming out of Japan, and reducing that to “90s JRPG music” is missing a lot.
Click to expand...


So for clarification, I don't mean that Japanese studios are en masse flocking to foreign studios to save costs. What I mean is that anime reached such a level of popularity that many non-japanese properties came about to make anime-like new IP. This is cases where western cartoons or comics are made to look like japanese style, and for the user-end the difference of is irrelevant. It doesnt matter if its "made in japan" or not. those new products in japanese style don't create revenue for the japanese market. Its not, at this point, a complete takeover of any kind, but the problem lies in Japan's inability to make products that serve the general international market, outside of the niche otaku-anime fan market. So in the long run, non-japanese entities can resell japanese style products that better suit foreign markets, decreasing the need for authentic japanese products.

Anyways, I had it in my mind to responsd to everything, but it would have been long and off topic from what this thread was about. Conversations for another place and time.


DSmolken said:
Can we come back to the idea that there are great string players in Japan, and money in sampling those players well, making user-friendly VIs, and selling those globally?

What would be the best sound to market - standard orchestra-size sections in a concert hall, or smaller sections perhaps in a studio? If any classic high-budget JPRGs used real strings, how were those recorded? Sorry, I have no clue... I remember knowing somebody who played Final Fantasy maybe 15 years ago, and I remember the "stop fisting android girls" meme from Nier two years ago, and that's all my knowledge of those things.

I'm in contact with Unreal Instruments via machine-translated English, helping get GUIs set up for that free stuff, which will hopefully help make it more popular globally. Will post that in the freebies thread when it's ready. That's a looooong way from sampling orchestral strings, but it might well lead to smaller commercial instruments, which might then lead to bigger instruments. Insert "I'm doing my part" meme here, haha.
Click to expand...

I definitely think that a first step is intimate solo/quartet-to-chamber size strings. The detail that can be had in that size can better showcase the quality of Japanese players, as well as some of the common ways in which a lot of Japanese productions are done. So again I reference prominy which sound INCREDIBLE but is totally unplayable. This is everything I want to avoid. It's a hard thing to say if the most natural way is to take the most expressive performance and let users enjoy that like Tina Guo's Cello V1, that is full of character at the expense of versatility, or if its better to go along the CSS route and try and make the most playable library that gets as close as possible to the expressiveness available from the players. I've worked with a number of players who commonly are involved in the recordings of strings, piano and other instruments on anime, pop and gaming projects (final fantasy included) but my issue here with making such a library is the programming.
 
thesteelydane said:
Well, I live in Hanoi, does that count? While I'm not Asian, I do at least operate out of here most of the time. That said my (for now...) only product was recorded in Copenhagen, but I am now recording a bunch of traditional Việt instruments in ways they were never meant to be played. Nothing orchestral though.
Click to expand...
So bunker strings was recorded in Copenhagen? Care to elaborate on which stage/studio? I am not aware of any other libraries recorded in Denmark, so it could be fun to know.
 
chocobitz825 said:
I definitely think that a first step is intimate solo/quartet-to-chamber size strings. The detail that can be had in that size can better showcase the quality of Japanese players, as well as some of the common ways in which a lot of Japanese productions are done. So again I reference prominy which sound INCREDIBLE but is totally unplayable. This is everything I want to avoid. It's a hard thing to say if the most natural way is to take the most expressive performance and let users enjoy that like Tina Guo's Cello V1, that is full of character at the expense of versatility, or if its better to go along the CSS route and try and make the most playable library that gets as close as possible to the expressiveness available from the players. I've worked with a number of players who commonly are involved in the recordings of strings, piano and other instruments on anime, pop and gaming projects (final fantasy included) but my issue here with making such a library is the programming.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree that something smaller would be more practical to start with. Also easier to arrange the people and space to record. Chamber might be easier than solo because things aren't quite as exposed. Say, a 3-cello or 4-violin ensemble.

A developer might jump on the opportunity to partner with you on something like that. Not me, I got too much recorded already and want to get a choir recorded in Ghana on top of it, but seems like there is money to be made here. Either a foreign developer who can handle the scripting and interface and everything, or a Japanese developer who's willing to implement your ideas of ease of use. If you know players who can do this right, that's already a big step.
 
Excellent tutorial !
I wish too that editors make their tutorials so straightforward & funny :)
 
Premier Sound Factory has some keys and an acoustic bass in HQ to offer, if I'm right they're recorded in Japan:

If you're interested in traditional japanese instruments as well, I made a list of what I've found so far here:

List of Japanese Instruments VSTs

Hi, I'm going to copy/paste a post I did on a different forum just in case someone is interested in japanese instruments as VST and if you do know some more to add to this list For those interested in japanese VSTs, I did some research on Japanese VSTs months ago, I ended up buying some of...
vi-control.net vi-control.net
 
Literally can't click on anything on that page apart from the Link to the free version Zip File at the bottom and a symbol at the top that gives you the whole library without the samples. Turned adblock off and same thing. I presume you mean this bit but can't click anything. :emoji_confused: 1564759029077.png
 
In case it might be of help, when you buy something on booth.pm you can switch the language to English at the very bottom of their website:

Bildschirmfoto 2019-08-02 um 18.15.37.png

If I remember correctly you might need to make a second account for payment on pixiv, at least this is how I make my purchases on booth.pm... hope it helps
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom