Orchestra Templates

[mcrein]

hello
i will be starting a very large classical music project for children shortly with an oriental component. i will be producing everything with sample libraries. (budget constraints)

i was wondering if anyone might have some instrument/MIDI set-up suggestions or shortcuts they could share. a la Sibelius sound sets.

i will be working with small orchestral setups. nothing epic. i will be using DP 7.24, EWQL Plat, EWQLSO, and a number of other EW Instruments, (gypsy, ra, silk, stormdrum...) as well as Kontakt 4.1 with a number of other libraries ( cinematic strings, voxos, some cinesamples stuff etc...)

my main machine is an i7 2.3ghz 4 core macbook pro with 2 SSD's (boot and one for the main samples). the rest of the stuff will be streamed off of 2 7200 drives connected with eSATA 6G express card.

i'm mostly looking for DP setup suggestions and MIDI templates if they exist. (if they are not proprietary of course...)

thanks so much for any suggestions or advice

michael

[mhschmieder]

I'm not quite sure what you are looking for. Are you looking for some shortcut to do MIDI patch changes? probably not much help as only MAS plugs are multi-timbral and could potentially benefit from such economies beyond just making a VI rack of the VI instances you need for similar orchestration so that you can re-use them in each project or chunk (there are multiple ways to go about this, but I'll screw up the terminology if I try to provide details now while at the office vs. at home and by my manual and a running instance of DP).

I suspect what you are most looking for is what we would call a Project Template in DP. This may or may not involve folders and sub-folders, and internal busses for instrument groups.

A word of warning with this approach: make sure NOT to record ANY audio in your initial project BEFORE saving the project Template, or future projects and/or chunks will place audio files in the same directory as the initial project, potentially losing the data later on -- unless this longstanding bug was fixed in DP7. So, create a blank project first to do all your setup work, save as a Template (e.g. name it "Orchestral for Kids"), and then start new projects using this template (suggestion: make it the "default" when you first save it).

I do not have such a template to send you, unfortunately, as I have yet to do two projects that have all that much overlap of orchestration to make it worthwhile for me. But maybe someone else here has done so. And if so, use it to open a new project, do NOT record any audio, tweak the project setup to match what you need, then resave (with a new name, probably) and make the default (for now). This will probably still take less time than doing one on your own from scratch.

I delete all the ones DP ships with so that I don't accidentally use one of them or have it become the default, but I seem to recall that it ships with one or more orchestral templates (or maybe did in an earlier version). Take a look to see.

I've also never used VI racks (I forget what they're called as my brain is mostly in work mode right now while I'm eating my lunch), as my old computer crashed due to their impact on system resources, and I never got in the habit yet on the new computer. My recollection though is that they maintain copies not just of the VI but of its settings (such as patch selection and treatment). You might also be able to use Clippings or plain old Chunks to drag around groupings of orchestral VI instances to cover your full orchestral sound palette.

[mcrein]

thanks for the advice. i will try and set one up the way you suggest. if anyone has a t3mplate he'd be willing to share as a starting off point, it would be highly appreciated.
thanks again
michael

[willheim]

Scoring templates are really not sharable. They are so personalized and everyone's rig responds differently, and you end up having your own go to sounds -

you just gotta start building it section by section, finding your own way.

start section by section, some people like key switches, some don't.

[mcrein]

thanks w
kinda figured that. i've already started...
m

[studio_651]

hi michael,
as someone who recently went through the same process (and continue to refine my template constantly), i just wanted to mention that i was inspired by some of michael patti's videos on youtube. his screen name on there is c0mp0ser (the letter "o"s are replaced by zeroes). he has two videos on there that specifically walk though his template (which uses DP and plogue bidule). he also has a few that show his process for composing quickly (e.g. "live composition in under 8 minutes"). those videos are relatively old now and i'm sure he's changed his template quite a bit since then, but they might give you some ideas. you can even hit pause on the video and check out some of the specific libraries and instrument patches that he uses.

personally, i had a major "template breakthrough" once i started housing my VIs outside of DP in a 64-bit VI host. i started with the 64-bit version of bidule (inspired by c0mp0ser's videos), and more recently, i've switched over to vienna ensemble pro (because it provides more latency-compensated MIDI ports than bidule can). if you do that, you can load up as many instruments as your RAM allows (instead of being subject to DP's limit of < 4GB RAM). another bonus is that when you switch between different DP song files, you won't have to re-load all your samples each time.

other than that, i would take advantage of DP's track folders to group your MIDI tracks into instrument families (e.g. strings, brass, winds, etc). also, if you'll need to provide stems, make sure you set those up ahead of time so that you can produce them quickly when the deadline is looming. good luck!

[mcrein]

hi studio

thanks for the excellent advice. i was looking at bidule and VEP pro. b
bidule seems somewhat complicated though i'm sure for what it can do it is quite unique. VEP looks very interesting. for the money they're also throwing in some key elements of the vienna library.

how do u find working with VEP? is it complicated to set up? i can understand the advantages you mention. do you run it on your main machine?

i will only be using my new macbook pro (i7 quad core) to run things, (need to stay fundamentally mobile) so i'd like to offload as much work as possible from the computer. i presently have 8 gigs ram, though i am thinking about going to 16. do you think that would be worth doing?

also, did you find the vienna epic orchestra provided with VEP useful?

if you had a minute i would love to know how you would set up the following in VEP.

here's a little rundown of what i already have.

EW composer's collection. (EWQLSOPlat, Silk,Ra, SD2, Gypsy,Pianos Gold, EWQLSC, Voices of Passion) running on PLAY.

i also have cinematic strings, session strings, VSL epic horns, a bunch of tonehammer stuff including emotional piano, some cinematique stuff, cinedrums, cinetoms, drums of war, voxos, and whole bunch of other libs. all the above runs in Kontakt 4.1.

thanks for the help

BTW, if there are any orchestrators looking for a little work please contact me. there is a little budget available.

michael

macbook pro i7 quad 2.3 ghz outfitted with 2 SSD drives. 240 gig and 480 gig.

[wrathy]

I just PM'd you.....

VEPRO: without a doubt the best solution. I run it on my DAW machine and a Slave. Can't say enough about it. Some of the nomenclature gets a bit tricky to digest (VI Frames, MetaFrames, decoupled mode) but I'd be happy to send you a quick "how-to" right outta the box list.

More RAM: depending on what you want to run, you might need more. You can never have enough RAM.

Epic Orchestra is nice, but not super versatile. I can't say I have used it much, as most of its content is replicated elsewhere in the larger VSL collections. But its great to get a taste of what the VSL stuff is all about.

As I mentioned in the PM, I do use EastWest stuff, and PLAY is working well in my template, although some users have had problems (which might have been solved with PLAY 3, but I have not upgraded to that release as of yet....waiting to see how it plays out, pun intended).

best.

[studio_651]

i agree with wrathy on all points.

VE Pro, especially the new version 5 that just came out this week, is superior to bidule if you have a large palette (over 8 multi-timbral VIs) because of its ability to keep all of your MIDI tracks latency-compensated. i also agree that VE Pro is a bit hard at first to wrap your head around (by comparison, bidule is much easier and there are lots of tutorials out there for setting it up), but it seems like a better horse to bet on, especially as you expand your palette and the number of computers in your network.

you can definitely never have enough RAM, and remember that you'll need more free RAM than you might think for the OS and DP - you can't just fill it all up with samples or else DP will start acting really weird and/or crash on you.

also, good move on upgrading to SSDs - i just got two 120GB SSDs from OWC and they're really worth it! they should allow you to lower your preload buffers in kontakt (kontakt>options>memory>instrument preload buffer size) which will cut down on your RAM usage considerably. with faster drives, you don't need to load quite so much of the beginnings of notes into RAM.

epic orchestra is mostly ensembles so it might offer you something to layer your orchestrations with, but it's not very versatile. i do like the solo oboe d'amour and cornet that are in there though.

i too have a ton of play instruments, but i tend to leave them unloaded until i need them since i rely more heavily on kontakt instuments (LASS, cinebrass, symphobia, spitfire albion, percussion, and solo strings, tonehammer emotional piano, etc.). for a while there people were having a lot of trouble with play and kontakt not playing nicely together and i guess i just stayed away from it for a while - i need to revisit play though after i get the other issues sorted out.

and by the way, i only run VE Pro on one computer (mid-2010 3.33 gHz 6-core mac pro w/ 32 GB RAM). i mostly switched to it for the ability to have more than 8 MIDI ports with latency-compensation, but eventually i'd like to set up some slave macs (possibly those new quad-core i7 mac minis that are being talked about over on the vi-control forum).

[mcrein]

since both of you guys seem to mention not being overly impressed with the epic orchestra stuff, and i do have a whack of stuff from session strings, cinematic strings to EW gold and plat, is there any way of getting the VE pro without the extra stuff?

also, how would you guys set up the SSD's? i have a 240g for the boot drive with all the apps and plugs on it and a 480 g drive it thought i'd load the play stuff on. (EW plat, Choirs, etc) wouldyou perhaps recommend running the EW stuff of the external drive connected with eSATA 6 and load all the Kontakt stuff on the internal SSD?

thanks for the help...i will probably get the VE PRo. sigh. more stuff to learn.

m

[wrathy]

Michael,

Studio 651 makes some great points. I think the VSL as "horse to bet on" is perfect. Its going to be around for a long while and is always being updated.

Epic Orch: it comes with VEPRO as a freebie, to entice you into the world of VSL (and what a world it is, albeit very pricey). I would not let Epic Orch be something that influences your decision too much. It just gives you a very cursory look at some of the VSL ens instruments.

As far as drive allocation, I do not use any SSD's; I have way too many drives as it is. I try an spread as much out as possible between drives, and never "fill them up to the brim." 75% is about as high as I go (in terms of sample drives). If I were you, I would put the most sample-intensive VI's on your SSD's. For Kontakt and EW libs, the samples can live anywhere you want....

I do not pretend to be super-knowledgable when it comes to this sort of thing. Many others around these parts have way more tech savy than I do.....

PM me if you want the template file I mentioned.

best.

[mcrein]

PM me if you want the template file I mentioned.


i thought i did...
m

[studio_651]

hi michael,
as far as i know you can't buy VE Pro without Epic Orchestra.

as for the 480GB SSD, have you ever thought about loading it into your MBP's optical bay (where your cd/dvd drive is currently)? if you're like me and don't use your cd/dvd drive that often, taking it out and putting your second SSD in its place might be an option to look into: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDAMBS0GB/ you can then get an external enclosure for the cd/dvd drive and connect it via usb: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/VLSS9TOPTU2/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; an internal connection is going to be faster than eSATA if you can swing it. but if you don't go for that, eSATA would probably be your best bet - it's faster than firewire or usb. i'm not sure how thunderbolt drive connections stack up against internal connections (it's probably almost as good), but your MBP may or may not have one of those.

wrathy is right that you want to spread stuff out onto as many drives as possible because it will distribute the load and keep your samples streaming quickly (no dropouts or cut-off notes). you also want to avoid filling up traditional drives all the way because they become less efficient as they fill up. from what i've seen, the jury is still out on whether or not you need to leave any free space on a SSD that you're not writing to. with such short seek times, i would think that you can fill them up a lot more than traditional drives, but like traditional drives, they're still going to hit a wall at some point as far as how many samples they can stream at one time. again, the less any one drive has to do, the better so if you can set up an eSATA array of drives (go for a JBOD array if you're using traditional drives), that would help take the strain off of the one SSD sample drive. i have a 4 disk rackmounted drive array (JBOD) attached to my mac pro via mini-SAS (faster than eSATA) that i keep my 2nd tier libraries on (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MRP1UMSAS/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). and no, i don't work for OWC, i've just had a lot of success with them hahaha!

regardless of how you end up connecting that drive, i would keep your most commonly used sample libraries on it, whether they're the kontakt or play or whatever. you may have to experiment a bit with drive allocation, VE Pro, etc. but finding the sweet spot of your system is definitely worth it. researching online and getting advice from other people can get you pretty far (to use a football analogy, it might get you down to the 15 yard line), but since everyone's system is different (a unique cocktail of hardware, OS version, DAW, plugins, drivers, work habits, specific musical goals, etc.) the rest is up to you! i'll help however i can though - lord knows i've learned a ton from others on this forum (and also over on vi-control.net)!

[mcrein]

thanks studio
actually the 480 g SSD is already in the drive bay. OWC did the conversion and my macbook does have thunderbolt though i have no drives yet.
thanks for the advice. all very sound. much appreciated.
m

[Steve Steele]

Question for anyone in this particular forum. I just got an early 2008 MacPro 8 core, 20GB RAM, running DP, PianoTEQ, Kontakt, etc... I'm thinking of doing two things and I need some advice.

1) I want to replace the hard drives. I was thinking of going with a 480GB SSD as my startup and app drive. Two Hitachi 2GB Deskstars in a RAID for my recording (write to) drives, and another 2 or 3 GB HD for storage (samples, video, photos and audio that Im NOT working on - will keep current projects on the SSD. That fills up my 4 internal bays. I could use my second optical bay for another SSD drive if there is a good reason to justify the extra money spent. Then I was going to get an external 3GB firewire drive for backing up. Is this the best solution? Is this the best way to use the SSD drive, and should I be using the two 2GB drives in a raid at this point in time? (If it were 1999 I would be using a raid but is it necessary still, or should I go a different route with the recording drives?

2) For orchestral software I'm looking at several options. VE Pro, and their other products, Wallender's Orchestral and Band Brass and Woodwinds and Saxophones, Notion 3's hosting app, and then of course all of my VIs and samples. But I want a traditional orchestral library, and I love the interface of VE Pro and Notion3, and the ability to run the VIs/Plug-ins in 64bit until DP8 comes out.

I'm ready to buy, so any advice would be most appreciated! Thank you.