The challenge of virtual vibraphones

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mhschmieder
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The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

Maybe even harder than flute to replicate realistically?

I've been using Pianoteq for awhile, for vibraphone, as it has a nice chime sound that also digs in. But as with their pianos, I'm starting to become more aware of certain problems inherent in modeled instruments, affecting how it sits in the mix and how the dynamics get muted when the instrument isn't soloed, so took another look at my recent sample libraries last night.

Greg's jazz vibes from Orange Tree Samples is very easy to use, and quite musical, even if it doesn't model every aspect of the vibraphone. It almost sounds 100% identical to Pianoteq's "M" model, showing how well Pianoteq models the timbre of specific instruments. The problem is that I despise Musser vibraphones! They sound dark, muffle, and muddy to my ears -- and I mean in person also, as I've been to a number of concerts where that brand is in use.

I had been preferring Pianoteq's "B" model (Bergerault), but overall my preference is for Yamaha gold vibraphones as they are warmer and their dynamics cut through the best of any.

Soniccouture sampled a Yamaha gold model not too long ago. It is an amazing library and covers everything you could think of, except maybe mallet-based dampening of just-played notes. I'm not sure how one would handle that, but it likely would require modeling.

The Soniccouture library is a hybrid sampled/modeled instrument. It's timbre is spot-on, and interestingly they are the only library to have separately sampled notes with motor on and motor off, then they use an LFO to cross-fade between them. More to the point, they use REAL sustain. And there's the rub. Vibraphone sustain is notoriously tricky. Actually, one should call it dampening.

So I searched for YouTube videos on how to use the sustain pedal on an actual vibraphone. I had never thought of that before because I didn't understand enough about how they're played to pick the right terms to search on earlier. I have a good deal of experience with marimbas, have owned smaller ones, have played friends' larger ones, and intend to buy one someday. But I thought I might get a vibraphone first, just for its applicability to jazz (though marimbas are quite versatile).

After watching the videos and tutorials, I've become convinced that vibraphone is one of the harder instruments to master, and that to make proper use of the Soniccouture library, it's going to take a lot of practice, but should be worth it as these songs are really livening up now and so having the vibraphone as the central instrument is now sounding like the right choice after all. :-)

What I did last night was spend HOURS editing MIDI, to add sustain on/off in strategic places, as a learning curve so I can determine whether to build an Apple Logic script to generate sustain events from pre-recorded MIDI. These are nuanced performances that I wouldn't be able to do as expressively if I started from scratch, and anyway I only own synths at the moment and no hammer-action keyboards (a necessity, in my view, for almost anything with a natural dynamic range).

The results are a mixed bag, as overall it sounds livelier and more organic and warm than with Pianoteq, but it's tricky to know exactly where the sustain should engage or disengage as it is contextual and not solely based on when a specific note begins and ends. Really intriguing!

I suppose I'll just solo the vibes parts now and tweak the sustain events and even note lengths, until I have the phrasing, legato, and resonance that I intended.

Of course, I am now wondering whether the next project I actually start from scratch (I'm mostly polishing up and finishing long-neglected projects at the moment), will be harder to do from a keyboard or from manuscript and MIDI editing. :-) It almost seems like trying to replicate proper vibraphone dampening via a keyboard and its sustain pedal, would be even harder than just playing a real vibraphone. :-)
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by stubbsonic »

Just a quick suggestion for the Pianoteq model. You can use the "dynamics" slider to control how much velocity effects volume (independently of timbre). It's an important control when you want to play with lots of expressive dynamics in your playing, but you want that to effect the timbre and attack more than the actual level. What is nice is that it doesn't compress the sound, it compresses just one aspect of the performance.

Another thing is to reach for the spectrum profile, the first slider is pretty nice for a basic EQ, and how "close" you feel to the instrument.
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

Thanks; it's an excellent model overall in Pianoteq and those suggestions do help (and were already being used to the degree that I had the patience to put much time into it a year ago).

Soniccouture has really gone to the next level though. They are dealing with aspects of the vibraphone sound that aren't part of Pianoteq's modeling yet. But the folks at Modartt aren't sleeping, and they pay close attention to what is going on in the sampling (and sample-modeling) world, so it wouldn't surprise me if they enhance their vibraphone model down the road.

Certainly Pianoteq made great strides forward with their second revision of the electromechanical pianos (and continue to improve the acoustic pianos, which is why it took so long for me to finally find a couple -- and I stress that it's only a couple -- of sample libraries that in certain contexts give me more of what I need in the mix context).
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by David Polich »

I love the guys at Soniccouture (good friends of mine) and yes their vibraphone is probably the
best sampled vibraphone on the planet. The thing that distinguishes the Pianoteq vibraphone is that it models the tonebar and resonator separately. When the tremolo is turned on, only the resonators
oscillate, the tone bars don't. Once your ear tunes into this behavior, every sampled vibraphone
suffers from tremolo that affects the sound of both the tonebars and the resonators, since they weren't sampled separately. I find it really annoying. That's why I'm sticking with the Pianoteq
vibraphone.
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

I'm not certain that's true, as I have a different recollection of what was sampled. I'll check the manual -- hopefully tonight, but I have a big download/install to take of so may run out of time.

At any rate, it's good to go back and forth between modeled and sampled, and to use each to inform better settings on the other.

As it is though, I happen to prefer Yamaha vibraphones by far over any other brand, and despise the Musser vibraphones intensely, but can tolerate the well-respected Bergerault models. I like Adams quite a bit as well.

One thing of note though, is that I had no sustain pedaling in these tracks originally, a I first played them on a Yamaha MOTIF at the time I composed them in their original form.

As the Soniccouture library is pure staccato without sustain pedaling, that forced me to learn more about how vibraphones are played (instructive anyway, as now I know for sure that I should buy a marimba before considering a vibraphone), and then to laboriously add sustain CC's.

It will be interesting to see whether the revised MIDI gives better results in Pianoteq than before, or worse results. If it becomes more dynamic and organic as a result, that may be enough, as I was about to layer more parts before the Soniccouture library made my vibes parts bloom more so that they could stand on their own as intended, as unadorned primary focal elements.
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

After several hours of MIDI editing of sustain pedal on/off times (and minor tweaking of a few note lengths here and there) last night, I ran things through Pianoteq again, and my conclusion is that it doesn't model how vibraphones are pedaled.

My results with the Soniccouture library are now close enough to where I hoped they would be, that the parts that are slightly weaker are acceptable as those are luckily places in the songs where the vibraphone isn't the lead instrument.

I do think though, that it will be quite challenging when I start a new song, to try real-time use of the Soniccouture library, as pedaling is SO HARD -- in fact, the reason why I started this topic.

And of course, it is hard on the real thing, and one of the things you have to master early and put lots of time into. What will be interesting to find out, is whether it is harder via a MIDI keyboard and sustain pedal, or on a real vibraphone. :-)
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

Here are two excellent resources on all things vibraphone:

http://www.aslongastherearebirds.com/?t ... phone-work

http://freepercussionlessons.com/how-to ... phone-101/

The descriptions line up well with the explanations in Soniccouture's documentation.
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

While looking at a so-far unimpressive new flute library that just got announced today (with the flute so buried in the mix that there is no way to judge), I found that the vendor, Fluffy Audio, has a vibraphone library that is set up to behave either as a piano or as a vibraphone:

http://fluffyaudio.com/shop/my-vibes/

http://www.fluffyaudio.com/files/MyVibesManual.pdf

I am checking out their demos now, to see whether I like the timbre and the articulations, as so far the first few audio demos seem nowhere near the level of quality of Soniccouture's library and more akin to Pianoteq's but without the advantages of Pianoteq (except maybe more realistic pedaling and/or note length handling, depending on which operating mode you choose).

Hmm, no acknowledgement of the source in the user manual, but they show a gold tone bar set so it might be Yamaha or Adams. The other demos are OK, but hard to judge by. I don't like the way this vendor prepares their demos in general, and that always makes me suspicious of library quality.

It is nice that the Fluffy library offers three mallet hardness choices. I'm used to that with marimbas, but don't know as much about the tradition of vibraphone playing to know whether mallets are typically switched across the registers or not (that's the traditional way; not the way you HAVE to play). Still, it's nice to have the choice. If I can find a sale, maybe I'll risk buying this library.

I gave the Orange Tree library another try last night, but still can't accept the timbre of a Musser vibraphone, as reputable as that brand is. Not my cup of tea. Hopefully Greg will add a second brand of vibes to his collection at some point.
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

New library with unique approach to mallets:

http://www.handheldsound.com/instrument ... g-mallets/#*

Only a few left at the introductory price of $129 before it goes up to about $200.

I grabbed mine as soon as I saw what they did, figuring it will find a place whether or not it ends up working well on my jazz album. No other library has this much flexibility.

As most of you know, Hand Held Sound is the vendor behind Flying Hand Percussion.

This library took me by surprise; I saw no discussion of it during development.
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Re: The challenge of virtual vibraphones

Post by mhschmieder »

I spent a good deal of time tonight with the new Flying Hand mallets library, for marimba and vibraphone (I detest xylophone so didn't work with that one at all).

The vibraphone sounds almost exactly like the Soniccouture library (Yamaha YV-3910M Professional Matte Gold), in terms of the raw samples. The image in the GUI isn't gold, so maybe it's the silver model (they only go as far as to say it's a Yamaha) -- I'm not sure how big the difference in timbre is between gold and silver as I've never had a chance to compare two of the exact same model side by side to isolate for just one variable.

The marimba doesn't sound as different from Spitfire's Frank Ricotti's Marimba as I would have expected. Spitfire did not identify the brand or model, so maybe they too used a Marimba One model.

Spitfire wins hands-down on the marimba, just due to having all the mallet choices. Hand Held Sound doesn't document the mallets used and doesn't appear to support mallet switching in any traditional sense of how that is done, but their four-mallet mode "sort of" does that, except somewhat bizarrely in the context of auto-arpeggio and auto-roll type features that are triggered by velocity and timing as well as other settings.

Documentation is very sub-par, incomplete, and inaccurate, for the Scoring Mallets, unfortunately. Maybe they'll revise and flesh out the manual later on.

Of course, Spitfire has no manual at all, which is quite maddening as there are some features in the GUI that are not "obvious", such as not being able to tell whether one can put it into a mode to auto-switch between hard and soft mallets based on the register (this is how symphony players play marimbas). No way can I bring up a browser during a DP session, just to watch a video that I can't bookmark on each viewing or easily find stuff in (often their videos are 30-90 minutes long). Why don't they see how important real user manuals are?

In terms of vibraphone choices and realism, Soniccouture wins hands-down even still. Partly because of the tremolo feature, and having sampled with fans on and fans off (without the motor factoring into the equation, as they then model that using LFO's and cross-fades).

That means that the Scoring Mallets library is a niche product that can only really be recommended if you need its unique features, which are primarily in the area of auto-glissando, auto-trill, etc. These features could come in handy if writing parts from scratch vs. playing them, but for my current projects I had already played all of the parts and thus didn't need any "help" on auto-roll type stuff for marimba. Perhaps that will come in handy on future projects where I build the mock-up strictly from scores vs. from manually played tracks. Hence the name "Scoring Mallets"?

Oh, one really nice advantage of Soniccouture Vibraphone is that it has two presets for the velocity curve, both of which would be a bit tricky to draw by hand. I find the S-Curve is usually the best as it minimizes harsh and aggressive over-playing that can make notes unintentionally pop out and thus damage the fluidity of phrasing. Perhaps counter-intuitively, "Smooth" is a more aggressive velocity map that brings harder attack at an earlier point and then tapers off gradually.
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