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Samplemodeling Solo & Ensemble Strings Released

You mean natura harmonics? Sure, they offer many alternatives. I was just thinking about what I would expect from a harmonic portamento in a string library in the first place ... and I think it would be sliding artificial harmonics before the seagull effect. ;)
fair do's...I mentioned it because of the way you phrased your post. I've used the pitch wheel with VSL to get gliss harmonics which worked quite well over a limited distance, but I digress...
 
@servandus, can you play them sul pont and trem (or both at the same time) and how loud/quite can they convincingly go? I don't suppose there is pizz harmonics too is there?
 
The library doesn't let you control the position of the bow over the strings, so you can't play sul tasto or sul pont bowings yet. But it might be possible to combine the tremolo and harmonics keyswitches. I'm not in my studio right now, but I'll check it later and let you know.
 
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The library doesn't let you control the position of the bow over the strings, so you can't play sul tasto or sul pont bowings yet. But it might be possible to combine the tremolo and harmonics keyswitches. I'm not in my studio right now, but I'll check it later and let you know.
I would be interesting to know, if Giorgio might possibly have spoken about these omissions, when he recently wrote about SM Strings getting "even better in a next future" ...!?
 
@mikeh-375 No, you can't play tremolo and hamonics simultaneously. And when I tried to simulate a tremolo by rebowing fast enough, you get back from harmonics to ordinario as soon as you press the sustain pedal or the rebow/détaché keyswitch. So, it's not only tremolo, rebowing doesn't work either when you're playing harmonics (and, by the way, the tremolo sounds weird to me even playing ord.)

@Vardaro You're welcome. You know that when it comes to these kind of techniques (harmonics, flageolet tones, natural, artificial, open, stopped, etc.), the terminology is sometimes used/translated differently in different countries, so better a video than thousand words.
 
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the seagull effect or harmonic glissando as used Stravinskys firebird is a special sound produced by just one finger sliding over any of the strings. It triggers the full series of overtones in a specific pattern.

I was a little confused by servandus' post as well, and I too thought I must be misunderstanding something he was saying. [EDIT: removing some stuff which in hindsight was carelessly-worded enough that it might seem like I'm telling FriFlo things he clearly already knows, which was not my intention. I was using the general 'you' but it easily might have sounded like I was referring to one personally specifically; mea culpa.]

These are the harmonic glissando techniques I'm aware of:

1) The glissando on the natural harmonics of an open string, as described in the portion of your post I quoted above. [EDIT: Servandus explains later in the thread that some people do casually refer to this as "seagull", though in my experience that term is reserved for #3 below.]

2) The glissando on artificial harmonics, which in orchestral music is almost always produced via the "touch 4th" method. Because the space between intervals gets smaller as one plays higher on the string, touch-4th harmonics require the player to constantly adjust the spacing between the stopping finger and the node-touching finger, to maintain the distance of a fourth. If a melody is written in artificial harmonics, you will hear a lot of un-notated micro-portamenti even from the best players, because this technique is akin to playing a melody with one finger. If a touch-4th artificial harmonic glissando is notated, the default sound produced, absent any additional special instructions, will be a smooth, continuous pitch shift, just like a stopped glissando but in harmonics.

3) Seagull harmonic glissandi are accomplished when the player does not change the spacing of their fingers to maintain "touch-4th" but instead keeps the distance between fingers constant. Thus as the fingers traverse the strings and the spacing of intervals consequently narrows or widens, the node touched is not always the 4th, producing the seagull effect.


I'm not familiar with the library yet, but it's my understanding that it should be able to emulate #1 by playing the appropriate notes from the overtone series. From servandus' post, it sounds like #2 (both the glissando example and the melody on harmonics example) can be accomplished by playing at low velocities. There are far more examples of these techniques in the literature than there are of #3.

It doesn't sound like #3 is possible with the current version of this library -- but does anyone know of any library that offers seagull harmonic glissandi? If so, please fill me in. Perhaps xSample might have it for soloists, but I'm hoping seagull glissandi played by entire sections are available somewhere. (I wouldn't be surprised if no one offers this, however –– it's a very fun effect but definitely something to be employed very sparingly or it will lose its impact; it may not be worth the inve$tment to offer such techniques in a traditional (not sample-modeled) library.)

The manual for this library says "harmonics, artificial and natural" ... but it doesn't seem to say how the player specifies which one they want. Can someone who owns the library fill me in how one specifies natural harmonics? It may not matter in the virtual world, but in the real world the difference in sound between natural and artificial harmonics is not-insignificant, and they are best used in different contexts (and combining them together is unsatisfactory).

Disclaimer: it has been many years since I last played the cello, and I was never a virtuoso. If anything I've said here is mistaken or incomplete, I hope string players will correct or amplify so that we all may learn.

p.s. btw Fritz, I really get a kick out of that JW action figure every time I see one of your posts. I wish it wasn't just a mockup but was actually available for purchase ;)
 
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I would be interesting to know, if Giorgio might possibly have spoken about these omissions, when he recently wrote about SM Strings getting "even better in a next future" ...!?

I'm hoping the same thing ... but also that things like sul ponticello, sul tasto, etc. will also be available sooner rather than later. There are a plethora of techniques possible on real world instruments, and it would probably be prohibitive to sample them all the traditional way. But the samplemodeling approach means it's possible to eventually come very close to mimicking the real instrument even in extreme situations (e.g., pizzicato sul ponticello con sordino). Put another way: samplemodeling's approach comes closest to the ideal of writing, then subsequently mocking up a virtual performance, rather than being forced into "writing to the samples" to a greater or lesser extent.
 
Until Version 2.x (!) perhaps we can "play at seagulls" with separate "artificial harmonic" notes and pitcbends?
 
..and if we slide our one (unpressed) finger between these "natural" harmonics, we dont' get a slide, but a fuzzy mess with maybe some other hartmonics on the way...

But quite a beautiful fuzzy mess! Especially when an entire section does it ad libitum.
 
Until Version 2.x (!) perhaps we can "play at seagulls" with separate "artificial harmonic" notes and pitcbends?

If you try it let us know how it turns out! Nonetheless, I'm sure Peter & Giorgio always prefer (read: will settle for nothing less) that every technique officially offered in their instruments be playable in real time. (Maybe I'm misunderstanding the workaround you're describing, but it sounds like it would require stitching together a bunch of separately-laid-down snippets to emulate a fast seagull gliss? ... either that or you're much more coordinated than I am!)
 
Has anyone who already owns the library played around at all with getting a traditional Celtic fiddle sound? The almost-no-vibrato part should be easy enough, but I'm curious if the "raspy" bowing style (deliberately not as smooth as possible, somewhat mimicking the sound of the chanter on the uilleann or highland pipes) is easily obtainable?

Somewhat related, but back to the classical genre: the manual says there's a controller for "bow noise" but is that the appropriate parameter to try to emulate "at the frog" and punta d'arco?
 
@mikeh-375 No, you can't play tremolo and hamonics simultaneously. And when I tried to simulate a tremolo by rebowing fast enough, you get back from harmonics to ordinario as soon as you press the sustain pedal or the rebow/détaché keyswitch. So, it's not only tremolo, rebowing doesn't work either when you're playing harmonics (and, by the way, the tremolo sounds weird to me even playing ord.)

@Vardaro You're welcome. You know that when it comes to these kind of techniques (harmonics, flageolet tones, natural, artificial, open, stopped, etc.), the terminology is sometimes used/translated differently in different countries, so better a video than thousand words.

Thanks for that Servandus, very useful info to know before making a decision.
 
Having started to play around with the library, I'm really intrigued by the possibilities presented by the timbral shaping parameters, which allow you to mess with the overtones in realtime. Hasn't really been brought up at all in this thread yet. I'm using one of the motion sensing TEC breath controllers, and mapping overtones to nod/tilt and then bobbing my head where I want accents seems to be helping with performance liveliness. Stuff like getting a cutting, focused sound on attacks and then backing away to a duller sustain or increasing brilliance across an upward run.

Easily the most playable string library I've ever used, to the extent that even if I were ultimately going to use a different library for a mockup, I'd consider doing the initial recording with this and then mimicking that performance when programming with the final library.
 
Having started to play around with the library, I'm really intrigued by the possibilities presented by the timbral shaping parameters, which allow you to mess with the overtones in realtime. Hasn't really been brought up at all in this thread yet. I'm using one of the motion sensing TEC breath controllers, and mapping overtones to nod/tilt and then bobbing my head where I want accents seems to be helping with performance liveliness. Stuff like getting a cutting, focused sound on attacks and then backing away to a duller sustain or increasing brilliance across an upward run.

Easily the most playable string library I've ever used, to the extent that even if I were ultimately going to use a different library for a mockup, I'd consider doing the initial recording with this and then mimicking that performance when programming with the final library.

Ah, didn't even know about this parameter. When you say 'helping with performance liveliness' I'm guessing this point also bleeds into the actual tone of the strings? A number of people were asking about whether the library can get that 'bite' you might get at ff etc and I wondered if you found that it helped in that respect?
 
I might be missing something, but does anyone know why CC17 (general purpose) is linked to expression/volume when it's not activated for any of the parameters and it's not mentioned at all in the manual?
 
Hi, guys. Attached is a file where you can hear:

1) {0:00} an excerpt of M. Rózsa's violin concerto to illustrate what I mean when I say that no other library that I own manages harmonics like SM does. It feels like magic to play...

2) {0:12}... so like magic, that you can easily get "impossible harmonic glissandi" out of this library

I was a little confused by servandus' post as well, and I too thought I must be misunderstanding something he was saying. No offense, but I think there might be a misunderstanding in your post as well (or I misunderstood when reading you).

Yes, I was too lazy to explain :) Let's do it for the sake of clarity, so that those who don't have the library can better understand what we're talking about here. The first note of the glissando is a g4, which is only available in the violin as a the first natural harmonic of the G string. Well, if you start in that note, and slide along the string in a real violin you would get a "Firebird" glissando (let's call it that way for clarity: in Spanish we call it "natural harmonic glissando", and (as I think you do in Enlglish) refer to it sometimes casually as a "seagull" glissando, although seagulls proper only appear, as you rightly said, when you do what we call "an artificial harmonic glissando" but without adjusting the 4th interval along the string). Well, what you get, as you can hear in the file, is not a Firebird gliss. but a "fake ordinario gliss. with harmonics" as I put it in my first post, i.e. the type of glissando you could get if the first g4 was available as an artificial harmonic. I hope it's more clear now.

The manual for this library says "harmonics, artificial and natural" ... but it doesn't seem to say how the player specifies which one they want. Can someone who owns the library fill me in how one specifies natural harmonics?

Natural, artificial... and they forgot to mention the "impossible harmonics" (ab4, a4, sib4, etc.). It's so nice to have them :) To answer your question, there's no way to choose between natural or artificial. There're just "harmonics"; all fall into the category of "beautiful, SM harmonics".

3) {0:19} the dynamic range of some harmonics

@servandus, can you play them sul pont and trem (or both at the same time) and how loud/quite can they convincingly go? I don't suppose there is pizz harmonics too is there?

Very nice dynamic range as you can hear. And no, there's no pizz. harmonics.

4) {0:44} Fiddling with the detaché keyswitch, bow speed/pressure controlled by CC11/velocity, note length not relevant (the detaché keyswitch works like the sustain pedal)

Has anyone who already owns the library played around at all with getting a traditional Celtic fiddle sound? The almost-no-vibrato part should be easy enough, but I'm curious if the "raspy" bowing style (deliberately not as smooth as possible, somewhat mimicking the sound of the chanter on the uilleann or highland pipes) is easily obtainable?

I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with traditional Celtic music to do a decent job here, but I think you can draw some conclussions listening to these examples. I hope so, at least. No vib. at all here. As you can hear, the detaché is nice and light, although in high velocities triggers always exactly the same bow change noise, something that produces kind of a "machine gun effect" just by that noise. A little randomization/variation in the spectrum and, above all, amplitude of that noise would be highly welcome to avoid monotony. This bow noise I'm talking about doesn't seem to change at all with the "bow noise CC", which does affect the timbre of the note as you bow along the string. Is quite noticeable and nice to have this under control. I couldn't play this in real time even if you give me $1000... (well, maybe I could try). Seriously, I think this kind of things have to be edited.

5) {0:54} Fiddling without the detaché keyswitch, bow speed/pressure controlled by CC11/velocity AND note length (extremely important, imo)

Also non vib. You get rid of that detaché noise when you play ordinario in this way. It feels very natural to play like that in real time. But if you edit your performance further, you really can do wonders. By the way, I think I don't need more edge in the solo instruments. They can be as "aggressive" as I could possibly need.

I hope you find this useful. After having fun with the library for a couple of days, I'm beginning to dig deeper in it. And this is SM: there's a world to learn in this library. So many things in your hands that can change the tone and behaviour drastically (as pmcrockett says, the timbral shaping is something to spend some time with. I did not try real time control, but you can change the tone of the instrument in some incredible ways. In fact, if you lower all bars to the min. you can hear something quite near to con sordino).

But I think, the more interesting thing I could share with you is: BEWARE, wind players! The instruments react really, really well to CC curves that mimic the gesture of a real bowing on the string. I notice that in a big way with these examples because of the non vib. If you blow your breath controller as you do with a wind instrument, you're going to witness the birth of a new criature that sometimes resembles an accordion, and sometimes just a sonic Frankenstein. If you articulate with the tongue, the detaché attacks you get are not aggressive; instead, they become utterly unrealistic. Similarly, if you, try to control the overall dynamic arc with your breath and trust your fingers to shape the internal phrasing, it may work very well for lyrical lines or slow bowings, but it won't let you control fast bow movements in a realistic way. It depends much on the musical context and the articulation you're using (ord., det., harm. etc). Sometimes is very subtle, but maybe because of my familiarity with string instruments, I find it quite dramatic.

Anyway, I hope this could be of some help to you.
 

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