SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

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mhschmieder
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SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by mhschmieder »

Just received the newsletter today. Am FAR too busy at work to add details or delve deeper, but if exchange rates are in effect vs. pre-established per-currency prices, this post-BREXIT time may result in favourable prices for many.

http://www.samplemodeling.com/newsletter/062016/

Quick skim sees intro price until end of AUG of 129 euros and 10% loyalty discount (yes, that isn't much). Didn't check whether Gofriller (Garritan) customers get an additional discount. Does appear to have no relation to that product other than maybe for Lessons Learned.

Although the Viola disappointed me, Cello is an entirely different instrument and may take well to SWAM technology due to its wide expressive range and extended frequency spectrum.

Hopefully I'll be able to take care of this tonight. I am finalizing some solo string parts on an album, so it would be good to review this product before making final sound source decisions. I keep going back to VSL, but that takes eons (like, many hours per part) in order to find the ideal articulation splits.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by mhschmieder »

BTW, The Cello has a gazillion more features than The Viola. I'm about to shut down the browser and do some tracking, but may not have a chance to post an updated report tonight.

The woodwinds were also all updated over the past week.

It would not surprise me if The Viola gets an overhaul soon based on what they learned from doing The Cello. Hopefully when that happens, it will pass the AU test. Even the VST fails in StudioOne.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by David Polich »

I may not be able to afford the Cello for awhile, but the update to the Saxophones (which I
own) is free, so I was able to download and install that. It's definitely an improvement - the
sound is better, and the added articulations are a plus. The instruments feel more playable.

Hoping to get the Cello before the end of the summer.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by mhschmieder »

Yes, the saxophones and clarinets -- even the flutes -- are much improved.

I ran out of time and energy to try out The Cello last night, as I instead spent 90 minutes re-tracking all of my remaining parts that use the SWAM woodwinds (not so many compared to a year ago, as I now take the extra time for VSL instead as the timbre is so much better for the flutes and also the clarinets -- even the saxophones, depending on context).

I didn't notice they had ADDED new articulations, so I'll have to give those a try. I suppose they kicked in automatically, because I found every passage sounded more natural, with articulateness that wasn't there before and no false legato triggers anymore.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by stubbsonic »

Those demos sound SO expressive and musical. It's really stunning what they do with fake instruments!!!
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by David Polich »

Tried to order it, but couldn't get past the "I agree to the terms and conditions" portion of the order form. There is no checkbox to check for that...at least none that I could see. Anyone else have this problem?
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by Shooshie »

David Polich wrote:Tried to order it, but couldn't get past the "I agree to the terms and conditions" portion of the order form. There is no checkbox to check for that...at least none that I could see. Anyone else have this problem?
Haven't been there for this offer, but I've seen that happen before in other places. Switched to FireFox and it worked. So, you might try a different browser momentarily for this.

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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by towerproductions »

This cello might also be worth checking out for some . I just downloaded it yesterday after getting it at the preorder price of $99 . Sounds very good so far after briefly playing around with it and looks more even promising with lots of free updates still to come in the future.

https://www.virharmonic.com/bohemian_cello
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by Shooshie »

The SampleModeling Cello
A Lesson in Lines
I had not heard these until just now. I think I've been wanting to put off the disappointment of listening and realizing... just another set of samples. But today I couldn't put it off any longer. I had to know.

I started with the third demo: Brahms Sonata in F minor. If they can make an instrument worth hearing, this piece will reveal it. It opens... ladaDAAAAA...
I nearly cried.
My wife was sitting here. I said "They DID it! They really did it!"
I don't know if she understood what I meant or not, but you can tell from the opening pickup to the sustained D that this is a line. This is what it's all about. If you can do this, you can do anything. THIS is what MIDI has SO much trouble accomplishing. This is what I've spent the past 30 years trying to emulate, to varying degrees of success, on hundreds of instruments.

I have not learned any more about it. I would like to believe that it's as simple as picking up my WX5 and playing that. Maybe with some pedals or keyswitches, maybe velocity cues, whatever, but I want to believe that once set up, I could sit here and produce that in real time, even if all my fingers and toes and breath and eyebrows are busily making it happen. To play phrases like that is the dream. Once you can do that, it's no longer a "Virtual" instrument. It's just an instrument. It's like the Velveteen Rabbit; it has become real.

What nearly all sample developers have focused on is making perfect recordings of individual notes and bowings. Fine. The better the samples, and the better the recordings, with attention to starting on zero crossings, etc., the better our ability to coerce them into sounding like a line.

It's all about the line
But what SampleModeling has focused on is using their research and technology to produce lines. Not just notes, but notes which are aware of the notes around them, and which join together and make lines. It's no easy thing. The Gofriller Cello that they sold through Garritan years ago, and which I can still play in Kontakt, is an excellent first attempt. As they explained in their ads of the time, they spent a great deal of time weaving the wave forms together so that there is no discernible pop, gap, click, or other emphasis which would reveal that two separate bowings produced those notes. Still, there was much to be desired. For one thing, the Gofriller Cello and Stradivari Violin were made for keyboards, not wind controllers, so playing them on a wind controller was a bit of a kludge. Portamentos tended to happen spontaneously without intent. Sustained notes cut off after some time, as if the total phrase length could not exceed, say, 15 seconds. On a wind controller they played horribly out of tune. (largely the wind controller's fault, but can be overcome with some instruments) You could fix it with editing, but one wished for perfection during performance. How wonderful it would be to play this live. There were other minor problems, but all in all, the Gofriller Cello and Stradivari Solo Violin were a new paradigm in sampled instruments. But then... they disappeared, and all was quiet. What happened to them? They released brass and winds, and each seemed to have a lot done right, yet not completely right. Not enough to steal me away from Wallander. But what about those strings? Were they going to bring back the violin and cello?

It's apparent now that SampleModeling had plans. They've been working hard at making these things right. Now, I'm not going to tell you how right they are, because I don't know yet. I've got to buy them and download them and see how they play. If they are as I am hoping, then this is the be-all, end-all of instruments. But I'm not going to absolutely rave about them until I know this. It's a demo, and instrument makers can slip a lot past you in a demo played by a skilled craftsman. I say craftsman, because that's what I feel like when creating musical lines on instruments that do not naturally produce them. I can do it, but it's not like performing as a virtuoso. It's a craft. The demos could be more craft, elevated to a new level. Or... they could be the holy grail of MIDI: virtuosic lines. I won't know until I play it.

1st Impression: whether art or craft, something good is happening.
Still, to hear those demos, I can tell you this: SampleModeling has done something that NO ONE ELSE has done. I don't know what it is, yet, but it's right there in the demos. Anyone who has spent time making serious music with virtual instruments, where every nuance counts or hurts, can tell that these demos excel at what is the hardest thing to do: making a line.

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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by Shooshie »

I just listened to the Bohemian Cello. It's nice, but it still suffers from what most sampled instruments suffer from: it's hard to make a line. It has two demos; first the Improvisation, which plugs along with one sample after another, each individual sample put together to imitate a line. Then there is "The Mosquito," which certainly shows well-recorded and well-produced bowing techniques, but don't be deceived; you can't make a true line out of those. Staccato, pizzicato, marcato, col legno, sforzando, and such can produce beautiful phrases that imply lines, but they do not connect, so you can't really call them lines.

Real musical lines not only connect, note to note as needed and dictated by the music, but they say something. They contain crescendos, accent, and always dynamic movement. Most of all: there is sense to them. It's like the actor practicing "To be or not to be, that is the question," and they go through it over and over, emphasizing different words in different ways, trying to explore depths where no actor has gone before (impossible, of course), to mine some hidden sense: "To be or NOT to be. To be or not TO be. To BE or NOT to BE." etc., etc. We do the same in music, and sometimes we DO find lines that maybe nobody has produced before, or at least, that we have not heard before. But the essential thing is that they make sense in context with all the lines around them, and they must join together in making a piece of music: a coherent whole which expresses something worth going to hear. (or worth buying a record)

If you can't produce those lines, then you have no business selling yourself as a performer or recording artist. It's the musician's stock in trade, the brushstroke of the musical artist. So, if you play an instrument that can't produce these lines, you're wasting your time. And as one who has wrestled lines out of instruments that didn't want to produce them, I can tell you that it is VERY time consuming; so much so that it's much easier to play them on a real instrument and not worry about this virtual stuff until it matures.

Many virtual instruments can make some kinds of lines, but not others. The demos usually hover around one-mood where the lines are pretty much all the same. That usually means somber, quiet and slow. Making spirited, dynamic, connected lines is much harder to do. I think the Bohemian Cello is another contender in the somber, quiet and slow category, but probably does not have the technology to do what Sample Modeling has done: real musical lines within a broad range of styles, especially the romantic.

Just my opinion, and without actually buying it and playing it, I can't pretend that my opinion is worth much. But that's my impression from the demos. Nice separated articulations, but no big breakthroughs on connected musical lines. Maybe if they posted a recording of Brahms' Cello Sonata in F minor I'd change my mind.

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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by mhschmieder »

Yeah, I played with Bohemian Cello quickly last night after the L-O-N-G download finished, and SampleModeling is WAY better in terms of timbre and realism of phrasing.

I bought Bohemian Violin and Cello for the early phases of composition, as the "plays itself" characteristic can help refine a part before taking the trouble to get out an appropriate controller to generate MIDI CC's that will be used with SampleModeling or articulation-switching libraries.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by Shooshie »

I just bought SampleModeling's The Cello and The Flutes. While the demos of the Flutes were horrible, I did hear one video on YouTube that suggested potential for them, and it appears that there has been an update since those original audio demos were made. Hopefully the not-so-good parts were not the instrument, but the players. It takes a while to adjust to a good VI. Lots of options, etc., so maybe the people making the demos just hadn't explored it all yet.

That's me hoping that my $290 purchase of The Flutes was not in vain.

However, I have a much better feeling about The Cello. If I can do as well as the demos, I'll be happy.

Shooshie
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by mikehalloran »

Ok, I'm interested. I'd love t have an instrument I could play again and I was a cellist once upon a time.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by mikehalloran »

Just for kicks, I downloaded the demo tracks' MIDI files, opened them in Finale and assigned various solo celli that I have including the one from GPO 5 (I upgraded over the weekend).

Most of them sounded surprisingly good but none matched the 'line' (good term) of the instrument in SampleModeling's demos.

The price isn't that much. I have to get this and figure out how to make it work for me. I have the perfect project, too, an unpublished set of Beethoven arrangements for cello that I did for some students in 1998. I always meant to record them myself and publish but never did.

No doubt it will be Christmas before I'm done as I figure out which controllers to use and how to apply articulations to each note and phrase to make these lines sing the way that they should. It's something to strive for.
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Re: SampleModeling's The Cello is now available

Post by cuttime »

I have the Garritan Gofriller, and have long considered this the gold standard of solo strings. Getting it to sing was never an easy task, but use of the pedal (#64) was essential for a decent legato, along with judicious use of other controllers. The odd portamento blasts that Shooshie mentions had to be limited within DP using the Change Velocity plug. I'm sure that the developers have come a long way since then, but I sincerely doubt that it will be 100% musical right out of the box. I can't even imagine using it with a wind controller.
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