VSTs VS Real Samples - Are They Any Good?
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- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- In this video we compare Note Performer and VHorns with real samples. We discuss the pro and cons and what VSTs can't teach you.
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0:00 Intro
0:18 How we're going to do it
0:35 Our VST experience so far
2:30 Harmonize This
2:50 Alto sax
6:01 Tenor sax
8:46 Harmonize This - Ensemble
12:59 Anthropology
13:17 Muted trumpet
15:37 Baritone sax
18:18 Anthropology - Ensemble
22:17 Articulations
22:38 Confirmation
23.09 Confirmation - Ensemble
25:50 Tuba
28:36 French horn
31:45 Positives
34:28 Negatives
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sibelius, virtual instruments, dorico, finale, notation software, vst, Closed voicing, Sammy Nestico, Duke Ellington, open voicing, jazz harmony, music theory, Miles Davis, big band, soli, jazz chords, orchestration, miles ahead
Hi, I'm the guy who did the VHorns sounds.
One very important point: VHorns does not yet offer all the instruments heard. For those other sounds, I used UVI IRCAM2 solo instruments.
So: all tumpets, saxes and trombones were VHorns. Everything else (French horn, clarinet, tuba) was IRCAM.
Sorry this was not made clear.
Thanks for your help. And clarification on this point!
thanks for having me again alex! its always a pleasure 😊
Any time! Thanks for helping out :D
Hi Alex and Gabriel. Thanks for this interesting demo and discussion. In principle, I totally agree that the "real" thing with real musicians is the best way to get an authentic sound with lots of individual expressiveness. And music is a form of communication between people. Good point Alex to mention the Duke Ellington orchestra. The Jazz genre in particular lives from individualism in the way to compose, arrange, play, phrase and improvise.
I'm just a hobbyist and don't know much about arranging. But it seems to me that even the "classical" approach to compose and arrange while sitting at a piano involves a lot of knowledge about the instruments that are going to play an arrangement lateron. Ranges, voicings, phrasing, (Jazz) notation etc. So, is this really fundamentally different from using virtual instruments (VIs)? I think not. I would think that some voicings could be better tested with VIs than just with the piano. Of course, the real test at the end will be the real musicians again.
Nowadays, it's amazing what even free VIs can sound like right out of the box. Think about orchestral libraries like Spitfire Audio's free BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover. Compare the sounds of Musescore 3 and 4. Also think about the composers of film music when they use professional sound libraries. At least I cannot tell whether they used VIs or real orchestras. With MIDI there's also the possibility to use soundfonts which can give great results to demo a jazz arrangement. Since I don't play in a band, VIs have opened a whole new world for me to generate play alongs from MIDI.
I agree with the poster Andrew Kesler: With some experience you will get even better results with horn VIs than in the example in your video. For example, listen to the demos of the VHorns Sax & Brass VIs on Acoustic Samples' webpage. Most VIs are actually made to be played with a MIDI keyboard. This is not an optimal approach for wind instruments. Nevertheless, the results can be amazing with the right tweaks by knowledgable people.
By the way, the VHorns can also be played with breath controllers including Akai EWI (think Bob Mintzer) and Roland Aerophones. The Aerophone has a sax-like mouth piece with a "read" that touches a lever. You can control loudness and vibrato with your breath and lips similar to a saxophone. The playing gets a lot more expressive. If you care to listen to examples search for Alistair Parnell's videos on UA-cam (although he doesn't try to replace a real sax with it).
VIs aside, Alex, you are really blessed with your friends and collaborators like Gabriel, Fredrik or Patricio and your Dectet. Thank you and all of them for demonstrating and explaining the music of Gil Evans and keeping it alive. Keep going!
Best regards. Peter.
Thank you for your detailed comment Peter. It's a pleasure having such interested people watching and thinking about my videos. I'm glad so many people have commented with their own thoughts on this topic, and I think it could be worth revisiting at some stage.
I also feel compelled to mention that, like you, I don't use a DAW or any kind of big sample library. It's just Sibelius and NotePerformer on my laptop. I do the mockups strictly for myself and as an easy reference for anyone who would like to have one. An orchestrator friend of mine said to me recently, "It's amazing how good NotePerformer sounds if you know how to orchestrate!" That really sums it up imo.
Shout out to the great @patriciobottcher, amazing horn player.
Don't take that "human" sound for granted, it does take a great musician to make it sound like that.
Yes I agree! Thanks @Patriciobottcher
I love how I shouted 'terrible' at the same time as him after the first one
ha! :D
Great comparison, very interesting hearing them side by side. Really shows why one needs experience with real players. Understanding how something will sound based on playback like this is definitely a skill one needs to practise!
Absolutely. Thank you for your awesome tune!
Nice video guys - if using Sibelius, there is the ability to change the amount of swing with various settings from bebop to light, regular, heavy, triplet swing etc. This can be found in the performance menu(under play) - rhythmic feel...
Thank you Rain Tom!
I always tell people (who ask!) that the samples don't show you how the piece sounds, but they definitely show you how it goes. I've used some species of mockup since Sibelius 1 in a professional context and players, especially soloists and singers, really seem to intuitively grasp this concept and get something out of it. Thanks for another original and terrific presentation
Thanks for your input Tom!
VST is just a audio plugin format created by Steinberg. People should use the acronym VI for virtual instruments rather than VST. Otherwise it just causes confusion for people just starting out who may still trying to grasp what all these acronyms mean. There are many different plugin formats including AU, AAX, RTAS and many different versions of VST too (VST2, VST3, Intel, Apple Silicon Native, PC, 64-bit etc).
Yes good point. 👍
Thanks for another great video! I’m totally agree with you guys on pros and cons about vst sounds. I’ve been using Sibelius and np for the last years. It was good for my demos but I realized that this working process was not helping me with my writing 😢
In a conversation with Jim Martin (amazing arranger and owner of a great UA-cam chanel) he opened my eyes (ears 😂) with that. The problem is that sib and np is given to us bad references on basic things like; tempo/articulation, key/intonation, lines/leaps, playability…
I was super happy with np but I think that I’m going back to basic midi sounds, at least until I learn to play all instruments 😂😂😂
Thanks again for the magnifico channel!!
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I had a similar experience when I was really getting into composition. I started using it, and then realized it was killing my creativity and ability to write well for instruments.
In a daw , we tend to push the individual notes around by micro steps to get more of the live sound, a notation package is never going to get you there.
Yes true. You mean like a 'humanize' function?
All sorts of little tricks to loosen up the pitch, velocity, rhythm and articulation to get a more human quality.
Horns alway sound better in context of a group.
to give an accurate comparison for VHorns you need to demonstrate what they can sound like when played-in/programmed by someone who knows what they're doing. Simply using it to interpret notation doesn't give the full picture.
Yep fair enough. This is why beginners using them worries me a little. How will they learn how to write for real instruments?
Note performer plays back eighth note lines better when you use slurs for any legato phrase. Kind of frustrating considering a lot of modern charts don’t use slurs.
Yes true, you can’t see it in the examples but I did add slurs as it sounded weird without them! 😀
V horns actually not too bad…… but.
Best place to be is to use vsts during the writing process, but not rely on them . Use your understanding of writing to get you close , then the real musician to get you the rest of way.
Yep that's an option, and something we discuss at the end of the video. Is working with VSTs damaging for beginners though?
@@gilevansinsideout I'm a trombonist and I often run into problems with young composers, sometimes because VST ( digital playback) , sometimes because of just sheer lack of knowledge of the instrument they are writing for.
I love the gliss of a sixth from a low Ab..
Yes, and this is why they can be a problem. But this is something that can be helped with some study
Vst instruments can sound really bad… unless you know how to use them!
The way a good player can play out of tune 😂
Yep that is true! You get all of the realness
Sax is often the worst midi instrument of them all. Acoustic bass and piano are always good. Trumpet and trombone aren’t great but ok. Flutes and clarinets are no too bad but sax is always awful. They’re getting better but….. it’s not as crucial for long notes but for lines and things it’s never any comparison to the real thing.
Yeah I don't think I get my point across well in the video, as I have a lot of comments about how you can make the horns sound more real if you do x, y & z etc. But my main point is: How will arrangers/composers (who haven't heard a lot of jazz music, or played in jazz bands, or play a horn) be able to write effectively for them in the first place? In that way the samples aren't a replacement. They can't teach you how to write.