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The Audio Modeling SWAM String Orchestra

Wow - very nice!!
Did you perform each track separately? Or did you copy/paste tracks? Playing the Vi I part 16 times would be a chore, but always worth the trouble I would think.
 
Wow!
ok...
Curious what Mac can handle all these instances of SWAM, what reverb or spatializer (and if SPAT might help?), how you proceeded (just solo lines first and if so which ones first?) and how long it took.

Very nice!
 
Incredible! SWAM are my favourite orchestral instruments, but never heard them as an ensemble, and never imagined they could sound this good. To my ears at least, this is indistinguishable from the real thing. Congratulations.
 
Sounds really good. The dynamics are somewhat exaggerated in comparison to my favorite performance (e.g., the high strings are rather soft when the celli play the melody), but it's very convincing as a performance.
 
This is truly impressive, is it something you can set up a template for and get going pretty quickly or does it take a lot of lines being played in? Great work.

I do agree that the soft dynamics are far too soft, maybe a bit of compression. Otherwise it's quite convincing.
 


Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Op. 48, Mvt 1

16 SWAM First Violins in 4 stage positions
14 SWAM Second Violins in 2 stage positions
12 SWAM Violas in 3 stage positions
10 SWAM Violoncello in 2 stage positions
7 SWAM Basses in 1 stage position

Midi CC Performance with Tec Midi Breath Control, and Leap Motion VR controller.


I need to know how to did this. I'm assuming that for each stage position, you used one of the different presets that come with the SWAM instruments e.g. Instrument A, B, C, D? Or did you tweak each performance so that each line sounded slightly different?

Very impressive. Would love to here a very quick line done too, but given the potential effort required, I won't ask you to do this ;)
 
Great work @aaronventure!

Looks like all tracks was freezed after recording to set the CPU free again.

I experimented with SWAM string sections and the TEControl too.
My biggest SWAM section is 9/7/6/5/- up to now and is divided in tracks á
5 Vl1-a
4 Vl1-b
4 Vl2-a
3 Vl2-b
3 Vla-a
3 Vla-b
3 Vlc-a
2 Vlc-b.
So I have to play 4 tracks and copy midi from a to b (or play divisi).
I can play it in realtime without freezing using a slave PC but I still have crackles on full tutti.

Your mix and performance sounds great!

What I miss in the SWAM section (not in your track) is the pp-behavior. It doesn't sound as noisy and whispering as a real section when the tonal part of the note disappears in a decrescendo but you still can hear the bow noise. It sounds more like a mf-section with less volume. That's why I mostly add some samples on top.
 
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The holy grail for a workflow on something like this would be a script that takes a single track as an input and generates an arbitrary number of additional tracks that flesh out the section with enough parameter variation for acceptable layering.
 
This is exactly how it works in nature.: Many solo-strings together are a section. In the past I did so many experiments with sampled string instruments, but now we have such good virtual instruments. Bravo @aaronventure!
 
How many months did you spend on this utterly insane project?! Really impressive.

:) surprising, but not long. A couple of hours for tracking and mix.
My orchestral template it now all SWAM / SM so everything is set up, ready to go.

That said It took me a while to get my mix and figure out how to get the staging. My template was tweaked over the course of many projects over the last year and is a work in progress.

Appreciate the props.
 
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Wow!
ok...
Curious what Mac can handle all these instances of SWAM, what reverb or spatializer (and if SPAT might help?), how you proceeded (just solo lines first and if so which ones first?) and how long it took.

Very nice!

Thank you. Just a stock Mac Pro. 32G RAM, and SSDs. The Magic freeze button takes care of everything.
 
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Incredible! SWAM are my favourite orchestral instruments, but never heard them as an ensemble, and never imagined they could sound this good. To my ears at least, this is indistinguishable from the real thing. Congratulations.


Thanks mate.
 
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