Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune - By my MIDI Virtual Orchestra.

My version of Claude Debussy's symphonic poem "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", L. 86, made with Logic Pro X in my iMac using virtual instruments:
◼︎ Score: IMSLP14736 imslp.org/wiki...
◼︎ Woodwinds: Cinematic Studio Woodwinds solo libraries cinematicstudi...
◼︎ Brass: Cinematic Studio Brass solo libraries cinematicstudi...
◼︎ Harps: Chocolate Audio's Glissando Orchestral Harp and Glissando Concert Harp www.chocolateau...
◼︎ Crotales: Samples from P. Siedlaczek's Advanced Orchestra
◼︎ String ensamble: Cinematic Studio Strings cinematicstudi...
◼︎ Solo violin and solo cello: Cinematic Studio Solo Strings cinematicstudi...
◼︎ Reverb: Valhalla Room valhalladsp.co...
◼︎ Video produced with Apple's iMovie.

[@BluemountScore]

Very well done! Great choice of libraries and well programmed

[@OttoPilot33]

Thanks!

[@anothercrappypianist]

Excellent dynamics. Very nicely done.

[@OttoPilot33]

Thank you.

[@marcel_schweder-composer]

Wow. This is awesome mock up work!

[@karlaskmusic]

Simply fantastic! Amazing job with all aspects of this mockup.

[@OttoPilot33]

Thank you!

[@MASimonish]

Incredible! Just amazingly well done!

[@OttoPilot33]

That you!

[@TomMAF4]

This is awesome and really realistic! There was obviously a lot of effort went into this!
I would love a look into the DAW midi/mixing work if that's the kind of video you'd be interested in making btw.

[@OttoPilot33]

Thank you.
There's not too much happening in the DAW, actually very little.
First, you have to consider that I have no formal education in music and what I do is just as a hobby, so my resources are limited compared to a professional workstation. As you can see in the description, I use only one library per instrument and mostly from the Cinematic Studio Series because their UI lets me control all articulations from one single Kontakt instance, they sound great and are very reasonably priced.
One key concept is that I create one track of solo instrument library per score part, because I think that is the best way to get a realistic orchestral sound and I can translate the score to the DAW exactly, part by part, note by note.
I never use ensamble patches, except for the strings, of course. Unfortunately I'm forced to use the transposition trick to avoid phasing problems with doubling samples because most library producers don't give us enough distinct solo instrument samples to form ensambles like in a real orchestra.
I don't do much mixing, I mostly just set a volume level for each instrument for the whole piece and then I rely solely on the performance. This is what I did in the case of this work. Once volume is set, dynamics and balance between instruments are adjusted just by the performance, exactly like conductors and musicians do in a real orchestra.
I normally use very little or no sound processing. The only plugins I used were:
1. Valhalla Room for the concert hall reverb for the whole arrangement on the output only.
2. A little EQ only to tame the muted french horn sample high frequency, because the default tone was too bright for this arrangement in particular. I used the default Logic Pro linear phase EQ controlled via automation to apply it only on the proper passages as indicated on the score.
3. I used the default Gain plugin to swap the stereo channel in some of the woodwinds and the horns to better positioning them in the stereo stage where I decided musicians were going to be sitting.
I never use compression neither limiters nor saturation or any other such effects. All instruments in this piece were left in their default mic settings.
The most important part is the tempo track (which you can see constantly varying in the screen shot) and the dynamics controlled by CC for musicality. Musicality is key. That's is something a put a lot of attention to and where I spend most of the time and it's specially important in works that require a lot of expressiveness, like this one.
I hope this satisfy some of your curiosity. If you have any more questions, I'll be more than happy to answer.

[@TomMAF4]

@@OttoPilot33 Thanks for that! Shows how far you can get with some careful midi-work. Cheers (Y)

[@zaharishtonov]

@@OttoPilot33 - Thanks for breaking your workflow down for us! Certainly it just takes love and care (and time) to get to that degree of precision. Cheers!

[@zaharishtonov]

Stunning work! Really enjoyed listening! You are a master of your craft! :D

[@Okrst12398]

Sounds phantastic! How did you get the score into the DAW? I assume MIDI, but... how? manually?

[@FranBarajasMusic]

l'après-MIDI

[@OttoPilot33]

😁👍 Debería haber escrito el título de esa forma 😄.