I wanted, partially as a corrective, to share a couple of new noodlings. You might remember that I shared a couple earlier - and in my defence, they sounded pretty good to me at the time. Though in retrospect ... ouch. (The sin quo non of this library is that you absolutely *have* to use the vibrato)
In fact, I've come to understand the fundamental subtlety of this library lies in the very particular way it allows you to craft the phrasing via the dynamics and vibrato.
So here's some noodling - starts with the (old) first chair Vl, then Vc, Va:
If you listen carefully, you can really hear how all the dynamic layers are used constantly to get the expressiveness that this style is going for. Even - or perhaps especially - within single notes. In the end, I really feel this gives you an expressive dimension that even other best in class library like the Joshua Bell and the Bohemian simply lack.
Similarly with the vibrato. But it's not just that the vibrato is a nice expressive dimension (though it is). It's that while on their own the vibrato and non vibrato samples are a bit harsh (and maybe even a bit static), when you perform them together in the right proportion (see notes below) the sum is more than he whole of the parts. I'll admit that at first I was puzzled by the absense of a nice and pleasant out of the box progressive vibrato (a la CSSS). But with a bit of work with the vibrato (and some scripting - see the notes below), I find that there's an expressiveness here that I find I *much* prefer.
Almost every single note in these noodlings is crafted with the vibrato, and a great many of use 2 or 3 dynamic layers in their shaping. All, I think, to great effect.
And its an effect that for all the brilliance of the Joshua Bell and Bohemian instruments (for which I have nothing but effusive praise) you could never reach with them.
(And of course, the time machine vibrato scripting takes this even further, although it's not used here)
And while is something that will be perfectly obvious to string players, I've also managed to put my finger on another point of angst that has long afflicted me in my struggles with solo strings. It involves how important these expressive dimensions are in ensembles.
To demonstrate this - well of couse I aspire to someday to be able to share with a series of brilliant compositions that fully exploit these expressive dimensions ... but for the moment here's another completely raw, noodling. This time it's 4-parts (including the new virtuoso Vl) and the proof of concept I'm going for here is to just to demonstrate how important these particular expressive dimension are within an ensemble:
(again - all improvised, mod wheel only, raw performance, no midi programming)
Admittedly this a bit cacophonous, but I think the proof of principle here is that you can really hear how important these expressive dimensions are the the effect of the quartet as a whole.
Come to think of it, here's maybe a simpler example, borrowed from another thread. In the couple of bars following ~0:55, when the full ensemble enters:
I think you can really hear how the phrasing of each line is performed with respect to the others.
As someone said on that thread "I can almost hear the players watching each other's wrists". Which I think captures something about why having the ability to craft the vibrato and dynamics even on a single note is so important.
Going from this library back to the Bohemian instruments (although again I have nothing but effusive praise for them) all the dynamics and vibrato are pre-recorded. So while they give you these magnificent solo performance, when you hear them in a duet, the composer can't coordinate the phrasing in this way at all. The players can never be seen watching each other's wrists.
Which is where the details in the performance become so important - like the shifing of the vibato, which adds a kind of rhythmic dimension to each line, or the dyanmic swells across layers (and I'll emphasise that its the tibre change that makes this work, so its all about the dynamic crossfade ).
And this helps me put my finger on and angst that I felt but couldn't quite express in listening to - especially acute in trying to do thinkgs like get the JB violin and Bohemian cello to play together. They can actually sound great together. But they sound like two prima donnas who don't seem to be paying much attenion to one another, much less watching eachother's wrists.
So again, it's not just that that recording these instruments in the same space helps them blend (although of course there's that too). It's that here, finally, are the expressive dimension to get them to play in this style as an ensemble, watching eachother's wrists.
I also think that the official legato demos massively undersell this expressive capacity in that they focus on a very different, and to my ear much more high-classical style in which the higher dynamics dominate. Andy's recent demo, for instance does use the dynamic crossfades in, for instance long crescendos. But he uses this capacity sparingly. Its equally brilliant. But not at all why I bought this library.
The lameness of the actual compositional content of my noodlings aside, I'm starting this feel a real turning point in the long history of my Solo String Angst. And now that I think of it, maybe its a good time to thank Luke and Sandy at Spitfire support for the years - gosh, it really has been years - of patiently fielding my (not always very, er, focused) questions on across a variety of dimnsions of my Solo String Angst.
**** notes on scripting vibrato and dynamics:
All of these noodling are played using only the mod wheel, and no cc21 (with the ocassional touch of the sustain pedal).
Vibrato is controlled by a "performance vibrato" script, which I'll share shortly, which does the following:
a) vibrato (cc21) is inferred, in the first instance, entirely from dynamics (mod wheel). Between the 3 above noodling across the different instruments, there's maybe about 600 individual switchings between vib and non vib. And in all but a handful of cases (which could be handled via the sustain pedal or a bit of midi editing) I think both that i) these switchings are very important to the expressiveness of the phrase, and ii) the script gets it right. I'd also argue this represents quite a lot of cognitive overhead freed up to focus on thinkgs like composition and performance rather than cc21.
b) This script also implements a kind of "midi compression" on the upper dynamic layers to reign in the dyamics a bit.
I find that the levels of the default dyanamics are bit extreme for my taste. They might be great for the high-classical style of Andy's demos, but I find that I prefer them to be a little less extreme.
Another way to put this is that by the time I crank up the volume so that you can really hear how great the lowest dyamaic layer sounds in a passage that isn't ostentatiously soft, the top dynamic layer have become so bombastically loud and you don't really get any benefit from it existing in the first place.
So the easy solution is just for the script to reduce the expression when you're in the higher range.
The upshot of all this is that in the above noodling you can hear individual notes crafted with dynamics across all three layers, without blowing up you speakers.
c) there also some balancing of the vibrato levels going on in the script, which helps in getting smoother transitions between non vib and vib.