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.