New solo cello library

[cbergm7210]

Using it right now...

http://cinesamples.com/product/tina-guo ... llo-legato

[Shooshie]

Nicely priced. Will it make me sound like Rostropovich?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Only in the bathroom...

[williemyers]

I'll be anxious to hear the first mockup of this cello doing "the gold standard"(!)
Here's Embertone's: https://soundcloud.com/embertone/bach-e ... akus-cello
Here's my favorite - Casal's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1YtvFZOj0

[FMiguelez]

I'll be anxious to hear the first mockup of this cello doing "the gold standard"(!)
Here's Embertone's: https://soundcloud.com/embertone/bach-e ... akus-cello
Here's my favorite - Casal's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1YtvFZOj0

I heard the first link from Bach. Overall, I think it sounds quite nice. The attacks sound good. For something this exposed, it's generally very good.

But the swells really bother me... I can hear the CC ramps (or what sounds like them). While it sounds well programmed musically, there's something about those dynamic changes that doesn't sound right to me (the changes from f to p). I can't put my finger on what it is.

[williemyers]

I heard the first link from Bach. Overall, I think it sounds quite nice. The attacks sound good. For something this exposed, it's generally very good.

FM, give the second link ("Casals") a listen, if you have the time. IMHO, it points out that no matter how good our sample library's get, the end result will never match a great instrument in the hands of a virtuoso....

[FMiguelez]

FM, give the second link ("Casals") a listen, if you have the time. IMHO, it points out that no matter how good our sample library's get, the end result will never match a great instrument in the hands of a virtuoso....

Ha!

What a difference! After listening to Casals, side by side with the VI rendition, it now sounds like crap, of course. I mean, what wouldn't sound terrible when compared to one of the Celo masters of all time?

I wonder why the VI rendition is not using more legato patches? It sounds like too many separate bows and not as legato as Casals' or any other master's performance.

Either way, it certainly is a BIG step forward from those old Roland Cello patches, yes? Especially when not compared to a great live performance

BTW, thank you for pointing me to that Casals link. I didn't listen to it because I thought it was another VI rendition example, and I had heard enough of it. I'm still listening to it, and it's making my evening.
Man, such gorgeous music. It's giving me goose bumps.

I think Bach was an alien

[Shooshie]

Just for comparison's sake, here's a piece I did with Garritan's Gofriller Cello many years ago. This is unedited; recorded as-played. Pitch is a problem with it on the Yamaha WX-5, but that can be edited. There are other technical problems with the Gofriller as well, but I won't go into them; it's been unavailable for almost as long as I've had it. They discontinued it shortly after I bought it from Garritan.

Camille Saint-Seans: the Swan, from Carnival of the Animals

Shooshie

[FMiguelez]

Just for comparison's sake, here's a piece I did with Garritan's Gofriller Cello many years ago. This is unedited; recorded as-played. Pitch is a problem with it on the Yamaha WX-5, but that can be edited. There are other technical problems with the Gofriller as well, but I won't go into them; it's been unavailable for almost as long as I've had it. They discontinued it shortly after I bought it from Garritan.

Camille Saint-Seans: the Swan, from Carnival of the Animals

It's almost impossible to sound bad with such music. Not fair!

I just listened to it. It sounds fine as long as it is not compared to a real live performance by a good artist. But I bet it might fool most lay people into thinking it's the real thing. It won't fool us, but you rendered a nice performance nevertheless, Shoosh. If I got anal, I could pick "problems", but that's not the point.

What I can say with confidence is that, if I had to choose, I'd prefer to listen to a well performed and programmed VI rendition, like Shoosh's or the Bach above, instead of a bad live performance by a musician who is not a top pro.

Same with orchestral mockups. With today's libraries and technology, a great and carefully crafted orchestral mockup will sound MUCH BETTER than any amateur, student-level, or semi-pro orchestra.

That's how high the bar has been raised with these new technologies.

[bayswater]

It's almost impossible to sound bad with such music.

True. I started listening thinking "does this sound like a cello?". 10 seconds in, I just listened. It doesn't matter if it sounds like a cello.

[Shooshie]

It's almost impossible to sound bad with such music.

True. I started listening thinking "does this sound like a cello?". 10 seconds in, I just listened. It doesn't matter if it sounds like a cello.

When I first started trying to make classical instruments on devices made for the pop music of the 1980s (Yamaha boxes, mostly) I couldn't even get close to the actual "sound" of the instrument. What I learned was that even more important than the sound is the idiomatic phrasing and traits. We would play instruments that were little more than an electronic buzz, in triangle, sine, square or sawtooth form, and apply the phrasing of a trumpet, violin, or flute, and people would recognize them as what we intended. Of course, if you'd compared to a real one, they'd have probably gotten angry for fooling them. But the inverse is also true: the exact copy of an instrument's tone will not be convincing without the idiomatic phrasing of that instrument. You have to learn to "make" that sound.

My goal in the 1980s was to play with musicianship so that they would stop asking the question "is it a fiddle?" (or trumpet or cello, or whatever) and just listen. We just wanted people to enjoy themselves and quit calling it "electronic music."Believe me, that's what EVERYONE called it until they heard it. And most of them added "... but I don't really like electronic music."

There was something else I learned. If you compare 5 recordings of, say, that Bach Cello Suite #1, you'll hear 5 widely divergent sounds. Knowing that it's a cello recording, and knowing that it came from a certain era, certain microphones, recording medium, and so forth tempers your ears so that you hear it as a "real" cello, when in fact it sounds only vaguely like the real thing. Again, the idiomatic phrasing is what seals the deal. You recognize it as a cello because of HOW it's played. But oddly we never hear someone choosing one of the 5 recordings and saying "THAT'S the real one. The others are fake." When I've been able to slip in something that I've created in the studio with our present-day VI's, people rarely notice. They are expecting a real recording, so they accept it as real. But tell them that one of them isn't real, and they'll be on their toes, searching for the one that sounds wrong.

It's an interesting world.

Shooshie

[FMiguelez]

What I learned was that even more important than the sound is the idiomatic phrasing and traits. We would play instruments that were little more than an electronic buzz, in triangle, sine, square or sawtooth form, and apply the phrasing of a trumpet, violin, or flute, and people would recognize them as what we intended. Of course, if you'd compared to a real one, they'd have probably gotten angry for fooling them.

But they deserved to be fooled, because only a fool would be fooled by confusing a sine or square form with a trumpet, violin or flute, no matter how idiomatically programmed!

When I've been able to slip in something that I've created in the studio with our present-day VI's, people rarely notice. They are expecting a real recording, so they accept it as real. But tell them that one of them isn't real, and they'll be on their toes, searching for the one that sounds wrong.

I certainly hope you're talking about lay people and not professional musicians...

I agree with you that idiomatic imitation of a real instrument during the VI programming is KEY to approximating a realistic performance. But I think it's equally important to have decent patches or sounds to begin with. Otherwise, no matter how idiomatic one programs the VI, it will still sound like an idiomatically played plastic instrument (machine-gun repetition notes, no legato sounds, no portamento, fake crescendos/decrescendos, honk-like attacks, etc.).

I really think you need BOTH elements at a minimum. One without the other will simply not work, do you agree?

[BKK-OZ]

I think Bach was an alien

I've read three biographies of Bach, and an entire book about the Cello Suites (Pablo saved them from being lost forever, long story).

I still do not pretend to understand the other-worldly mastery of these works in any intellectual sense. But I understand them absolutely in my soul.

Sometimes a (quite competent) cello busker plays the suites in the lane way down below my apartment. I am 6 floors above where he plays and I still get mesmerized by the faint traces of the music that waft up to me.

The Cello Suites carry me away. They are timeless.

Don't think I want to listen to them played on a VI though - I like the squeaks, breaths and all the rest you get from a human playing them.

[FMiguelez]

[
The Cello Suites carry me away. They are timeless.

Don't think I want to listen to them played on a VI though - I like the squeaks, breaths and all the rest you get from a human playing them.

Agreed.

But it must be a worthy human who dares playing them. It should be unlawful otherwise.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Same for Zoltán Kodály's works for cello, solo and with piano. Here's a sample.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MEUIGjfHNw