How do you fake a trill and make it sound real?

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FMiguelez
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Re: How do you fake a trill and make it sound real?

Post by FMiguelez »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:So what sounds worse? Breaking the constancy of the sound with a recorded trill or having the crappy MIDI sound?
Well, having a library with multiple trills always helps to avoid that dichotomy :)

You get them in semitone and tone flavours. Sustained, accelerando, ritardando, cresc,, dim., etc. You can also put fp or sfz patches together for great accent effects. You can also manipulate the inner speed of the sample, as well as its attack and release.

They can be made to sound great quite quickly. Certainly quicker and much better results than doing MIDI trickery for synth sounds!
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Re: How do you fake a trill and make it sound real?

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

But will it match the sound of the VI you're using? If so then go for it. If not, just move your fingas really fast and hope for the best. :)
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Re: How do you fake a trill and make it sound real?

Post by FMiguelez »

Shooshie wrote:
Speaking of Wallander Instruments, which Fernando has mentioned a few times, I happen to have a recording of literally the first time I ever blew a note on Wallander Instruments.
Wow!

I must say I'm impressed (they sound great even in my laptop. Tomorrow I'll hear them at the studio).
I loved the trumpet! The vibrato was very good.
I also notice you can play with intonation a little as well? And the crescendos sound quite smooth. The trills are actually not that bad.
The dynamic range is quite impressive.

The thing I didn't like much so far are the attacks in p or mf notes, and the sound of legato of a few intervals was a little off (e.g., at the endings of the trills).

So you did all that in real time with your controller? I have no idea how a wind controller works, but do you control the vibrato with your lips?

I ask because programming an equivalent thing in VSL would take much longer than that (unless you play your pre-programed faders and knobs in the keyboard controller as if they were a wind instrument while you also play the melody and keyswitches :? ).

I think that if you have the chops to play a wind instrument and have a nice controller, you could actually work faster with Wallander than VSL (at least for wind instruments).

So what do they mean by "modeling"? What and how do they model? Are samples used at all, or is it all just... modeling?

The horn is excellent as well!

What fingering do you use in the controller? A flute's?

You couldn't achieve those results without being a fluent wind player, correct? Otherwise I might just try it myself!

Thank you for posting that, Shoosh 8)
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"In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ― Richard Feynman
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Re: How do you fake a trill and make it sound real?

Post by Shooshie »

Remember: that was the first time I ever blew a note out of Wallander's interface. It was the demo with the controls locked down. In other words, that's the WORST I ever sounded on it, and it was 7 years ago.

Can anyone do it? With practice, yes. But yeah, it helps if you're a woodwind player. And it took me nearly 30 years of figuring out how to adjust sounds so that they play well via a Yamaha WX-5, so you can imagine how surprised I was when Wallander played that well "right out of the box."

That's why I have recommended Wallander so much, but the responses have been so negative that I keep quiet about it most of the time now.

Meanwhile, I have several complete string sets from VSL, including the new Dimension Strings, so I know what it's like to use trill samples, too. Frankly, at best VSL makes me feel like I'm in a straitjacket, expressively. But this latest set — Dimension Strings — is by far the best thing I've seen from them. I can almost get expressive performances from it. There's a lot that I don't know about VSL's interface, though, and I'm learning every time I use them, so that's getting better.

The best library for playing live, for me, was the Miroslav Vitous library. It responded easily to controllers without too many artifacts. It had its drawbacks, but you could create reasonable performance from it. When the guys from Albion Spitfire were being such asses about a question I asked, it was Miroslav that I used to put their demo in its place. Someone had recorded the flute intro into L'après MIDI d'une faun, and it was so bad that it made me wonder if expression was even possible on their instruments. So I asked how it was wired up for controllers, to see if my fears were justified, or if it was just a bad performance. They wouldn't tell me, and chose to respond with ridicule of ME for questioning their supreme judgment. I think somebody said that if I was so concerned, then post an example that was better. So I did. I posted three examples from three libraries, and they all were better. But the best one was from Miroslav. Here it is:

Debussy: L'après MIDI d'une faun; flute introduction with Miroslav Philharmonik's flute.

I'm not sure whether I used Miroslav or Garritan for the next one. Unfortunately, the file crashed, and I was never able to get it back. So, this is exactly what I recorded one night, with no hope of ever altering it. Of course... I could play it again.
JS Bach: Flute Partita in a minor, Allemande (2008)

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Re: How do you fake a trill and make it sound real?

Post by FMiguelez »

It would be so interesting to listen to the Debussy or Bach with the Wallander and your controller.

While they are well performed, you can definitely hear "the age" of Miroslav. The sound comes nowhere near the Wallander (assuming the flute is as playable as the trumpet). In the Debussy, the crescendos sound fake and not smooth (I can clearly hear the CC ramps). The Bach staccatos sound synthy... The attacks sound all the same. There's no variety in them, so the "tp tp tp tp tp tp" sounds almost like a Roland south american pan flute patch after just a few notes.

But those are great examples to keep as "control samples" to see how much technology has improved.

I am surprised you said Wallander has got negative responses here... When you factor in the price, the size of their libraries, and the apparent ease of use, they sound like a good option to have!
I'd still have to hear more (ensembles, other instruments, etc) to form a more complete opinion, but I really like the idea of playing wind instruments with a wind controller. It just sounds so intuitive and one can perform very expressively (if one has the chops).

I used to play the recorder (quite well) when I was a kid :)
Would that be a start?
Mac Mini Server i7 2.66 GHs/16 GB RAM / OSX 10.14 / DP 9.52
Tascam DM-24, MOTU Track 16, all Spectrasonics' stuff,
Vienna Instruments SUPER PACKAGE, Waves Mercury, slaved iMac and Mac Minis running VEP 7, etc.

---------------------------

"In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ― Richard Feynman
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