Sample Modeling's Viola released today

[mhschmieder]

http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/swam_viola.php

Long awaited; hopefully the cello is next.

As a reminder, the earlier instruments published by Garritan were the Gofriller Cello and the Stradivari Violin, with the Viola having originally been planned as the third in the series.

It is interesting that they released the Viola first, as this helps those with the earlier libraries fill out their section before they contemplate replacing/upgrading the other two libraries (whose future release will doubtless include loyalty offers). Also, it means they are delaying any direct comparisons of the new technology vs. the older Garritan-released work.

I bought this new Viola library as soon as I got home from work today, at steep loyalty discount.

I have only fiddled with it so far (pun unintended), so haven't yet tracked with it or compared it to VSL in some current project work, but look forward to that hopefully tomorrow.

What I did notice though, is that it has considerably more features than the SWAM woodwinds products. In fact, they refer to this enhanced engine as SWAM-S.

There are some interesting switchers on the main panel, for bowing vs. pizzicato etc. It looks like it may be very easy -- compared to standard sample libraries -- to generate a single track with varied playing and/or bowing styles, as opposed to having to split to multiple tracks or do a gazillion keyswitches.

I haven't yet investigated what sort of intuitive auto-switching the engine does given a standard MIDI track (or even via live playing), in terms of it looking at note lengths, overlap, attack, expression and other MIDI CC (much of which is of course assignable).

Note that the VST version crashes Studio One (latest update) repeatedly, but the AU version works fine. I always audition plug-ins in Studio One first, to protect my DP projects. So, I haven't yet opened it in DP.

[Bowman]

Thanks for posting this.

Solo strings are very difficult to sample. All things considered, this one is quite good.

I have some reservations with what I hear in the demos. I'm not nuts about the instrument sampled (a bit on the bright side), the staccato (spiccato to string players) has way too much bite for my taste, particularly in the czardas, and I find the slides (portamenti, if you insist) a bit precious. I don't think a whole lot of real life violists would bother with that sort of thing in this context.

As usual, you will be better off if you can hire an actual player for your work. Failing that, this could be useful.

Bowman

[Martini Hill]

Holy crap! This sounds amazing! Never heard of Sample Modeling. Def want to check it out! J

Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk

[stubbsonic]

I've always been impressed with Sample Modeling's ability to make these instruments sound very expressive and playable. I don't know what kinds of behind the scenes articulation switching is going on, but the results are impressive. Whoever does their demos definitely shows the higher-end potential of their software.

[David Polich]

Thanks for posting this.

Solo strings are very difficult to sample. All things considered, this one is quite good.

I have some reservations with what I hear in the demos. I'm not nuts about the instrument sampled (a bit on the bright side), the staccato (spiccato to string players) has way too much bite for my taste, particularly in the czardas, and I find the slides (portamenti, if you insist) a bit precious. I don't think a whole lot of real life violists would bother with that sort of thing in this context.

As usual, you will be better off if you can hire an actual player for your work. Failing that, this could be useful.

Bowman

Demos on the website aren't all that well done. That is the fault of the people who did them.

Not sure what you are referring to in saying that the portamenti are "precious". I have the old Strad Violin and Gofriller Cello, which were done by the Sample Modeling guys, and the portamento is a bit tricky because it is based on scripting - like an Excel sheet, it works on an algorithm, which roughly translates to "if 'x' and 'y' occurs, then 'z' is the result". So it takes some practice to master playing this instrument (just like it does to play the real thing).

Yes you're right, a real player is always preferable. Most of us don't have the money to hire real players, especially for demos and arrangements. That is why something like the Sample Modeling instruments is such a necessity.

[Bowman]

Not sure what you are referring to in saying that the portamenti are "precious".

As I said, I don't think a whole lot of real life violists would bother with that sort of thing in this context. One of them is between two locations on the fingerboard which wouldn't permit the slide you hear.

Once again, I'm not saying this is a bad VI; I just have a few problems with the demos.

And if anyone can do better with this instrument, I'll be the first to applaud.

Bowman.

[mhschmieder]

BTW there are almost two dozen different timbres available for this Viola. WAY more than for the woodwinds in the family.

I like to map Aftertouch to Vibrato Rate (which is assigned by default to CC19) and leave Vibrato Depth at CC1 (Mod Wheel). There's a lot more to dig into vs. the woodwinds though, and I've barely scratched the surface.

Unlike with their Kontakt instruments, I have still found it a bit tricky to find the best match of CC's -- whether for keyboard-entered, WX5-produced, or manuscript-driven parts. EXP in the SWAM instruments gets applied a bit differently, and attack velocity is actually used as well (and EXP is used for more than one thing; or at least can be depending on your settings).

It's a bit confusing due to comparatively scant documentation in the user manuals, so I just experiment and make my own Best Practices notes as I go along.

[Shooshie]

Haven't seen it yet, but if the controls are the same as those in the Strad and Gofriller Cello, they are really designed for keyboard players, and not for a MIDI Wind Instrument. I'm hoping they saw the error of their ways and allow for the user to set other possibilities than the one set of controls scripted.

The biggest problem in the violin and cello is the portamento. It is accomplished by holding down two keys simultaneously, which is impossible on the Yamaha WX5, a MIDI wind instrument. At the same time, it often interprets two adjacent notes on this instrument as being down "at the same time," for reasons of which I'm not entirely sure.

Camille Saint Saëns: The Swan

Here's an example I recorded nearly 8 years ago and have posted here many times. This is performed live, and I don't remember there being any further editing of the part, the point being to see what you can do in real time. The vibrato, if I recall correctly, was created "manually" by me as I played the WX5. That is to say, it's jaw vibrato, produced the same way you produce it on a saxophone.

I eventually capitulated and began using the built-in vibrato, controlled by two expression pedals, one for speed and one for depth. I don't think I had done that here, but was still doing vibrato the hard (and more expressive) way. This was another failing of the previous Sample Modeling offerings; it just wasn't designed for user-created vibrato on a wind instrument. That's typical of most VIs, though, so it was I who finally gave in and started doing vibrato the way the VI developers want you to do it. It's not expressive, and it always sounds canned, but they just don't make the regular vibrato easy for you, so rather than fight it on every note you play, it's just easier to use the pedals.

Anyway, the portamento was unpredictable, and sometimes random, but usually it happened when I wanted it to. I can't describe the process to make it happen; it was more of a "feel" thing, but then sometimes it happened when I wasn't expecting it.

It's important to remember that this instrument was from about 10 years ago. It was the pinnacle of the art at the time it came out. Nothing came close to it, not even the VSL instruments of the day. I was sad when Garritan and Sample Modeling parted ways, and the instruments were no longer available, but they still play in Kontakt as far as I know.

Just thought I'd post this for some contrast and comparison. Also, to see if SM has learned anything in 10 years of virtual instrument making.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

Coincidentally I found this file while looking for something else. It shows the setup I was using for the Roland FC300 pedal board with the Stradivarius Violin and Gofriller Cello. The Roland unit only allows for 5 saved setups, so I had to assign the same controls to each Virtual Instrument, rather than customize the pedal unit for each instrument, with a total of 5 possible pedal setups available for use anywhere in my MIDI studio. That made it important to keep a record of what I was assigning where, thus these little pages in my notebooks, scanned for future reference. Surprise... here we are in the future, referencing these relics of the past.



To understand the diagram, you first have to realize that most of the pedals have 2 functions, and that the "mode" pedals change from one set of functions to the other. (red vs. green labels) The expression pedals also have latch switches set for tapping the top of the pedal (pretty firmly, I might add), and the other two switches — between the expression pedals and the "mode" switches — are single-function latch switches. (actually, all switches can be latch or momentary switches, depending on your settings)

In addition to this, there is a diagram for the Yamaha WX5 wind controller, with all its assignments for playing the same virtual instruments. Just thought it might be of interest for anyone to see what goes into setting up VIs for live performance with these specific pieces of hardware.

Roland FC300


Shooshie

[Bowman]

A lot of ink gets spilled on the subject of stringed instrument vibrato and rightly so. Without getting overly technical, it can be produced in four ways: from the arm, from the hand, by just wiggling the fingertip, or by a combination of the above. Considering the relationship between sound production (a function of the bow and a heck of a lot more complex) and vibrato, it isn’t hyperbole to say that the possibilities of sound variation of solo stringed instruments are almost infinite. It takes decades (a lifetime, really) to become even remotely good at it. To try to imitate any of this with a VI, as well-programmed as it may be, and in the hands of someone as expert and inventive as Shooshie, is a major challenge and one I’m tempted to say is the next thing to impossible.

As for portamento, this is not a term my colleagues or I used much while studying or working. We talked about slides, glissandi if we were feeling poetic or sophisticated (gliss for short), or in New York in the 70s, a nice, juicy schmeer.

Slides, glisses, whatever you want to call them, were a very important part of string playing in the romantic period, so much so that there was a rejection of them post-WWII. (This was the same movement which rejected unbelievably long symphonies, gargantuan orchestras, and tonality.) Consequently, my generation grew up studying with people who hadn’t much use for the notion. Absent instruction and guidance we slid around like toddlers on a skating rink. I eventually learned to use slides on those occasions where I thought the composer might have thought them expressive, but the rest of the time I avoided them. Some string players confuse slides as an expressive technique with shifting from one position to another. The latter can be disguised as the former, but it isn’t musical.

My point is this: sounds produced by this or any other VI may sound pretty good. They may be beautiful, they may be expressive, they may be inspiring, they may even be musical, but from what I hear in the demos, this one doesn't really, really, in absolute truth, sound like a viola played by a real violist.

I appreciate that VIs are a lot less expensive than hiring the real thing. I doubt that there is anyone on this board who doesn’t understand the concept of budget limitations. But while applauding the advances in technology which allow VIs to keep improving, not to mention the talent and dedication of the people who produce them, let’s not forget the limitations.

Finally, the best student I ever had, the one who could play me under the table the day of her audition, hated slides. She found them vulgar, cheap, repulsive, and would use a lot of her considerable arsenal of techniques to avoid having to use them. One day when we were working on a major romantic concerto (one that she subsequently used to win a series of important auditions) I suggested a slide in a place where just about everyone uses one. The withering look I got back should have been filmed. She is not only one of the most talented students I ever had, she is also the most successful. Occasionally, when a conductor asks for it, she will smile politely and produce a very discreet, subtle, tasteful glissando. But on her own, not a chance.

Bowman.

[David Polich]

My point is this: sounds produced by this or any other VI may sound pretty good. They may be beautiful, they may be expressive, they may be inspiring, they may even be musical, but from what I hear in the demos, this one doesn't really, really, in absolute truth, sound like a viola played by a real violist.

I appreciate that VIs are a lot less expensive than hiring the real thing. I doubt that there is anyone on this board who doesn’t understand the concept of budget limitations. But while applauding the advances in technology which allow VIs to keep improving, not to mention the talent and dedication of the people who produce them, let’s not forget the limitations.

Finally, the best student I ever had, the one who could play me under the table the day of her audition, hated slides. She found them vulgar, cheap, repulsive, and would use a lot of her considerable arsenal of techniques to avoid having to use them.

Bowman.

That's all academic. I'm a keyboard player, I need a solo viola VI, this is excellent, I'll use it. If you are a string player yourself, obviously you don't need it.

I already pointed out that the demos aren't that well done. Trust me, better results can be achieved. You just have to be a good player, programmer, and MIDI editor.

Your "best student" had an attitude problem. If she was hired in for a recording date, she should
have done what the conductor and the score called for. Without being a prima donna about it.

[Killahurts]

I've been wondering lately if my Strad violin and Gofriller would even work anymore? It's been 5 or 6 years since I used them.. I got pretty good at it too, I used several pedals to control them, including the "bowing" pedal. I have the DVDs in there, but I don't know if they would even install anymore. IIRC, there was a Kontact Player that they came with, which is probably no good now, but could I install the programs and have them work with the full version of K5? I think I'll work on this today, I really loved those instruments, and I would like to get them into my rig again.

FWIW, as a keyboard player I like the gliss/portamento when it's done with overlapping notes. This is how LA Scoring Strings work. The amount of overlap, in conjunction with velocity, determines the length and quality of the gliss.

Finally, the best student I ever had, the one who could play me under the table the day of her audition, hated slides. She found them vulgar, cheap, repulsive, and would use a lot of her considerable arsenal of techniques to avoid having to use them.

Well that's one of the silliest things I ever read here. She would find even my most beautiful music unbearable, lol!

[David Polich]

Killahurts, yes your Strad Violin and Gofriller
Cello will work in Kontakt 5. As long as you
have the original installer discs...install and
then authorize them via the NI Service Center
just as you would any other Kontakt library.

[mhschmieder]

I had to set VST as the default as the AU version fails validation in DP 9.01 under Yosemite.

I haven't used it yet; I had a lot of compatibility issues to deal with from other vendors today and didn't quite sort those out.

[monkey man]

I've found the site's not clear enough on this for me, Mark, so I figured I'd ask you:

Are all the plugs available in a SWAM version or do some require the Kontakt Player?

I'd prefer to be able to purchase the proprietary format as I've not committed to NI and besides that I do prefer things to be more "simple". Additional capabilities' being on offer wouldn't surprise me either.

Still looking forward to building that pop / funk brass section and replacing the VL70-m's saxes, flutes and trumpets with these, mate. Been sold on SM's offerings for some years now. Definitely on the cards for 2016. Hopefully they offer some sort of a deal at some point; I've yet to notice one's being available...

Sorry if the question's silly / unwarranted / explicitly covered on the site.