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Spitfire Solo Cello

my understanding is that the very highest setting of the vibrato slider is what implements the TM vibrato which is intentionally a very fast and intense vib so probably really only appropriate in certain moments.
 
Could you elaborate how you trigger these please ? :)

The instrument take cares of it - you just play fast notes :)

Here's a noodle - you can here the grace note effect (which I think probably arises from the arpeggio legatos that you hear more clearly in the Part mock up) starting at ~ 0:42, 0:52 etc.

Whatever it is, it sounds great, and this update opens huge new territory in the instruments sweet spots.

(Notwithstanding my terrible cello 'playing' here - there's some fabulous playability/performability in this instruments, though it still lags CSSS in out of the box plonkability ).

 
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How useful is it for legato passages that aren't so fast? Can it give you a bit of a slower legato transition without it sounding portamento? And what articulations are actually included in the patch?
 
I got it (with the EDU discount again hihi) and I LOVE it! Even more than the violin cause I've always been in love with the cello sound. Now a solo viola and we're complete 😃
 
The instrument take cares of it - you just play fast notes :)

Here's a noodle - you can here the grace note effect (which I think probably arises from the arpeggio legatos that you hear more clearly in the Part mock up) starting at ~ 0:42, 0:52 etc.

Whatever it is, it sounds great, and this update opens huge new territory in the instruments sweet spots.

(Notwithstanding my terrible cello 'playing' here - there's some fabulous playability/performability in this instruments, though it still lags CSSS in out of the box plonkability ).



plonkability?
 
This new performance patch has really made the solo cello far more expressive. I really like the piz and spic articulations at vib=0. This is really a great idea and I hope the Spitfire team adds it to the violin.
 
plonkability?

That effortless out of the box quality of playability. Not only the ability to plonk in some notes as if it were a piano and hear a nice performance, but the inability to plonk in some notes and have it sound bad.


Vir Harmonic is the crown Jewel of Plonkability in that all the arcs are recorder, so its almost impossible to deviate from an idiomatically formed phrase. (VH also offer some performability via key switches, but their mission is for a 'virtual performer' - ie. all you have to do is plonk in the notes like you're playing a piano, and the script and the samples handle interpreting the idiomatic crafting of the arcs for you).


But this comes very much at the expense of performability - understood as the ability to craft a performance yourself and not just press a key and hear a pre-recorded performance).


In that the Spitfire solo strings allow you to craft your own arcs in the dimensions of dynamics and vibrato - and in many cases *require* you to craft the arc - they also make it possible to craft terrible and unidiomatic sounding arcs. (For example, playing with all non vib, or all vib has a very harsh quality to them which, with a few exceptions, isn't really to my taste).


So SsS has superb performability (you can craft arcs in a way that would be simply impossible on Vir Harmonic, CSSS or Embertone instruments), but it does require a bit of practice, as well as a sense what idiomatic strings are about in the first place. But you can craft a performance in real time - so I would also distinguish performability from mere 'programmability'.


But this is also the source of the poor plonkability. The ability to craft a great performance comes with the ability craft a terrible performance. Which is what happens if you plonk in a line without thought for idiomatic crafting.


I'd still argue thought, that with a little practice, the SsS instruments have excellent playability (especially with the performance vibrato script I've been tinkering with). Not quite the much desired out-of-the-box playability. But maybe a 15-minutes-or-so-after-opening-the-box playability.


Instruments that are designed for great performability or even great 5-minutes-or-so-after-opening-the-box playability, really do suffer in the current youtube driven marketing environment. Embertone especially has suffered from some truly dreadfully, unnecessarily horrible initial-plonk "demos" of their instruments on youtube. Whereas an initial plonk on Bohemian cello or CSSS is going to sound much better, such plonking really doesn't give you a very helpful or complete sense of the instrument. Which is perhaps why I think it's important to develop these concepts a bit.
 
So I just applied for the EDU discount for the cello, is it likely that they'll get back to me before the 50% goes away, or not so much since it's Saturday?
 
This is absolutely right ISM - especially on your comments on the video review culture - it can be great, but also its childishly easy to make something sound terrible, either by accident (I just opened the patch and haven’t read how it works) or of course deliberately.

there’s a certain honour among developers that we don’t do comparison videos or “review” each other’s products. It would be very easy to skew it to make stuff look bad, when in reality we all put our hearts and passion into making great products to help people express themselves musically.

there’s nothing better than having multiple “flavours” in your palette. Back when I started this stuff hadn’t even been dreamt of!! It was a handful of EMU 2 patches and a proteus - and if you were flush, the expansion for the JV1080 😂
 
In your example, why does the volume constantly undulate up and down?


The simple answer is because I'm riding the mod wheel very hard.

But a more nuanced answer would include things like:


- Because I really love the dynamics of this cello, and tend to get carried away. Conversely, the absence of dynamics on the Balkus cello, or the Tin Geo really drive me a bit crazy. Simply the absence of any control of the dynamics on the Bohemian (or I think CSSS, though I don't have it).


- reigning in the dynamics, in the spirit of 'less is more' is something, on a technical level, that I'm still getting the hang of. I find I sometimes need to step back from a piece for a while to hear when I've gone overboard on the dynamics.


- In general, I like to compose with exaggerated dynamics. I find its easier to err on the side of a performance a line with excessive expression, and then decide how much to reign it in via midi cc later, that to err on the side of an excessively flat performance and draw in expression later.


- Which in turn is partly because I like to use the dynamic layers to form the attack of notes, as well as things like flourishes at the end of a phrase (which I think sounds amazing in this lib). So again the issue is learning to not overdo it.



- I also don't think I've not quite got the hang of mixing yet. The dynamics sounded more or less ok to me on headphones. But listening to them on a laptop speaker I can really hear the unevenness of the dynamics more clearly.


- Some of the arpeggios in this demo have a slightly more baroque, Bach-like quality. Which doesn't call for extreme dynamics. But I really love the dynamics of this cello. So on the one hand, I should probably learn to be a bit more restrained. But on the other hand, I really love the dynamics of this cello.



- The kind of lines I'm actually interesting in writing are lines where the musicality of a line is intimately entangled with their dynamic arcs. But I'm still learning just what this means.


- The demos of a lot of other instruments that don't support dynamic and/or vibrato crossfades (embertone Joshua Bell, CSSS etc to differing degrees) kind of bug me in how they lack this dimension. While they have multiple dynamic layers, you can't craft lines across dynamics. Which at times start to feel very flat.


- And also, it bears repeating, I really love the dynamics of this cello.


- Ultimately its just a noodle exploring expressive dimension. As an actual (virtual) cello performance, there are larger flaws my playing here the dynamics. Which are, happily, the easiest thing to fix.
 
- Because I really love the dynamics of this cello, and tend to get carried away. Conversely, the absence of dynamics on the Balkus cello, or the Tin Geo really drive me a bit crazy. Simply the absence of any control of the dynamics on the Bohemian (or I think CSSS, though I don't have it).
You can add mod wheel control over volume to any Kontakt patch.

I wish there were a way to scale the amount of modulation as you can do with VSL (via the curves) or set upper/lower liimits (VSL lets you do this too). I don't know of a way to do this with Kontakt instruments. It sure helps to adjust playability so I'm surprised this doesn't exist (or maybe someone will show me that I'm wrong?)

Trying to emulate instrumental pieces you like by doing mockups (and of course lots of listening) can really help hone your skills. It really helps to choose good examples too such as Yo-Yo Ma or Vengerov.

 
I wish there were a way to scale the amount of modulation as you can do with VSL

Fun fact - I'm actually using a Logic script that does precisely that (by taking over cc11, and coupling it to cc1). I find the default levels of the dynamics a bit extreme - good for high classical, but I found by the time you crank up the master volume enough to hear the p layer, the f layer blows your speaker

That said, I don't think that the issues in the dynamics are in above node arise from the absolute levels, Its much more that there's a certain jerkiness, or at least unevenness, to them.

Which is easily enough fixed with the midi pencil tool, one you decide how it should sound. I actually don't mind this kind of midi editing as a part of the composition process, it feels like sculpting - still a part of an artistic process, rather than mere technical programming (which other types of midi editing do feel like).
 
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So I just applied for the EDU discount for the cello, is it likely that they'll get back to me before the 50% goes away, or not so much since it's Saturday?
Yeah, they should get back to you in a day usually. But just so you know, you can only get 40% discount on it the Solo cello. 50% is for Albion One, Symphonic Strings and Eric Whitacre choir.
 
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