"The Heroic Journey", a new orchestral piece by me.

[YoungProdigy]

Hey, YoungProdigy here. Just finished the "The Heroic Journey".

You can listen to it here:

As always feedback is welcome.

[Slimy]

If you're trying to get a realistic orchestra sound, I think you should add some reverb and "mess up" the attacks of some of the notes. The staccato bassline sounds like it's being played by robots. Are you combining a flute and horn for the melody? Collectively, they seem too loudly mixed compared to the sparse backing instruments, especially because they sound like they're supposed to be solo samples.(?)

[YoungProdigy]

3 hours ago, Slimy said:

If you're trying to get a realistic orchestra sound, I think you should add some reverb and "mess up" the attacks of some of the notes. The staccato bassline sounds like it's being played by robots. Are you combining a flute and horn for the melody? Collectively, they seem too loudly mixed compared to the sparse backing instruments, especially because they sound like they're supposed to be solo samples.(?)

The thing is, is that there's already reverb. I'm using the FL Studio "Large Reverb" preset. I've also already edited the attacks of the notes.  Unfortunately nothing can be done about the samples not sounding good right now. They're dated and sound robotic because of the lack of velocity layers. I'm going to update to East West Hollywood Orchestra eventually; but for now I can only use the dated Miroslav samples in Sampletank 3.

The samples are section patches; but like I said, they're from a 2005 library which is why they don't sound that great. There's really nothing I can do about that right now.

[Slimy]

9 hours ago, YoungProdigy said:

There's really nothing I can do about that right now.

I don't believe you. Lack of velocity layers? You can still control note volumes in your DAW, right? What if you tried muffling the tone of your bass notes, and you mixed a few of the samples together for each note? What about the bad mixing? You can still fix that. And yes, the song does indeed have reverb. But what if you added a shorter, but less dry reverb patch to blur notes together a bit?

My own copy of EWQLSO Gold wouldn't sound nearly as good if I just slapped notes into my DAW and expected it to do all the rest.

[YoungProdigy]

1 hour ago, Slimy said:

I don't believe you. Lack of velocity layers? You can still control note volumes in your DAW, right? What if you tried muffling the tone of your bass notes, and you mixed a few of the samples together for each note? What about the bad mixing? You can still fix that. And yes, the song does indeed have reverb. But what if you added a shorter, but less dry reverb patch to blur notes together a bit?

My own copy of EWQLSO Gold wouldn't sound nearly as good if I just slapped notes into my DAW and expected it to do all the rest.

Yes, I can control note volumes in the DAW. But it doesn't actually change the sample such as in more advanced libraries. With the Miroslav samples in Sampletank 3, whether you play a note soft or hard it's the same sample. As for the reverb; I don't think there's anything less dry than the "Large Hall" reverb.

Yes, it's true you can't just slap on notes with EWQLSO. But with larger samples, more velocity layers and round robins; you can get a much more convincing sound.

When you said the French Horn sounds like a solo section; that's because it only has 19.24mb of samples. You can't really fit the detail of a real French Horn section in 20mb.

[timaeus222]

31 minutes ago, YoungProdigy said:

Yes, I can control note volumes in the DAW. But it doesn't actually change the sample such as in more advanced libraries. With the Miroslav samples in Sampletank 3, whether you play a note soft or hard it's the same sample.

Uh... http://cgi.ikmultimedia.com/ikforum/viewtopic.php?t=11043

Quote

"Do Miro 2 instruments have velocity layers in addition to round robins?"

"Yes they have velocity layers." ~ Peter_IK

Unless I'm looking at the wrong Miroslav library, or if you simply didn't get the full version, it looks like there are some velocity layers. It's not the same sample at different velocities.

-----

31 minutes ago, YoungProdigy said:

As for the reverb; I don't think there's anything less dry than the "Large Hall" reverb.

Yes, it's true you can't just slap on notes with EWQLSO. But with larger samples, more velocity layers and round robins; you can get a much more convincing sound.

When you said the French Horn sounds like a solo section; that's because it only has 19.24mb of samples. You can't really fit the detail of a real French Horn section in 20mb.

You say it as if you can't adjust FL reverb presets, when you can. Did you try adjusting the low cut and high cut to blend the low and high sections more? Did you try increasing the room size? Did you try lowering the crossover frequency so that it's not at 500 Hz? Did you try adjusting the Damping?

I do think the French Horn sounds like an ensemble, but it's not very thick, which would indicate that you didn't layer slightly different timbres together. It doesn't matter how large the sample size is; if you didn't take the effort to thicken up the sound yourself via simple layering, you can't make the excuse that the library developer didn't do it for you.

[YoungProdigy]

16 minutes ago, timaeus222 said:

Uh... http://cgi.ikmultimedia.com/ikforum/viewtopic.php?t=11043

Unless I'm looking at the wrong Miroslav library, or if you simply didn't get the full version, it looks like there are some velocity layers. It's not the same sample at different velocities.

-----

You say it as if you can't adjust FL reverb presets, when you can. Did you try adjusting the low cut and high cut to blend the low and high sections more? Did you try increasing the room size? Did you try lowering the crossover frequency so that it's not at 500 Hz? Did you try adjusting the Damping?

I do think the French Horn sounds like an ensemble, but it's not very thick, which would indicate that you didn't layer slightly different timbres together. It doesn't matter how large the sample size is; if you didn't take the effort to thicken up the sound yourself via simple layering, you can't make the excuse that the library developer didn't do it for you.

That's Miroslav 2. The samples that come from Sampletank 3 are from Miroslav 1. The Miroslav 2 samples do indeed have velocity layers and round robins. The Sampletank 3 Miroslav samples are from the original 2005 library; not the newer one that just came out. The original 2005 Miroslav samples have no velocity layers or round-robins.

I might try adjusting the low cut and high cut. I may also try adjusting the room size.

As far as layering goes; would it be a good idea to layer the section patches with the solo patches?

[timaeus222]

6 minutes ago, YoungProdigy said:

As far as layering goes; would it be a good idea to layer the section patches with the solo patches?

Since the section patches are pre-blended, and the solo patches aren't, ultimately, layering those (assuming the section patches sound thick) would make it still sound like a solo instrument atop a section. If that's what you're going for, that's what you'd get, approximately.

If you just want a thicker section, layer section patches, like french horn + trumpet or french horn + tuba, depending on whether you want a thicker midrange or thicker low end (respectively).

[DMT Produktionen]

15 hours ago, timaeus222 said:

Since the section patches are pre-blended, and the solo patches aren't, ultimately, layering those (assuming the section patches sound thick) would make it still sound like a solo instrument atop a section. If that's what you're going for, that's what you'd get, approximately.

If you just want a thicker section, layer section patches, like french horn + trumpet or french horn + tuba, depending on whether you want a thicker midrange or thicker low end (respectively).

Sorry for hijacking this thread, but how do you learn how to use reverb? I made the mistake of not mastering my native fl studio reverb before moving on to Vahallareverb. What do you mean by blending notes and cutting high/low end of reverb? All I know is that I can make the whole track stick by putting reverb on the master and cut the low end when needed.

[timaeus222]

Well, I just had a lot of practice, and I try to listen attentively to the changes I make in my reverb, even if I had to exaggerate some edits along the way to hear them. You may want to try the ArtsAcoustic Reverb demo to have a flexible reverb that should help you learn more via the visuals.

-----

FL Studio comes with four sends by default on the far right (they're labeled mixer tracks 100-103). Instead of putting reverb on the Master track, I put reverb designed for specific types of instruments on each send (such as drums [except kick], strings, brass, woodwinds, etc). Sometimes you could even separate them based on their reverb response if that helps (bassy, midrange-based, trebly, etc). Since each type of instrument is not expected to reverberate the same way in the same room (the walls of the room reflect certain frequencies differently than others), you now have the flexibility of accounting for that.

Typically, you don't really want to have a low low-cut frequency for bass instruments, for instance, because it would then leave in the wet mix that is, say, below 200 Hz. That adds some mud to the mix, since it can add reverb to a bass, making it a little more "boomy".

Similarly, depending on the situation, you may not want to add trebly "hiss" to certain instruments that you want to be distant (to feel muffled/dull), in which case you should then not have a very high high-cut frequency (the higher it is, the more "hissy" the treble reflections become, since the higher frequencies in the wet mix are still present).

Blending notes basically means changing the way the room's walls reflect overlapping frequencies so that the instruments sound like they're in the same room. Some reverb plugins (such as ArtsAcoustic Reverb) allow you to adjust the amount of low, midrange, and treble Damping ratios, which aids in that respect.

[YoungProdigy]

At the end of the day; what are you guys expecting from samples from a 2005 library?

I will take timeaus222's tips and try to adjust the reverb; but it still won't sound like a real orchestra.

I'll also try layering.

There are some things I can do to improve the piece production wise. But the samples themselves lack the velocity layers and round-robins to sound convincing. Real instruments have a different timbre depending on if a note is played soft or loud. Libraries like EWQL simulate this by using multiple velocity layers. The Sampletank 3 samples from Miroslav Philharmonik 1 don't have velocity layers or round-robins.

I'll eventually upgrade to Hollywood Orchestra; which will allow me to get a much more realistic sound. But until then, I'm stuck with these samples.

[timaeus222]

For what it's worth, even Miroslav Philharmonik 2 sounds pretty good. Plus, you should be familiar with its interface already.

[Neo-Nut]

Rather than commenting on the quality of the Sample library I thought I'd comment on the actual 'Music' , after all I'm sure that's why you posted anyway?

I love the staccato parts at the start and you really nailed the 'vibe' of this kind of piece, reminds me a bit of old Actraiser well similar anyway , but yes I enjoyed this but it's rather short ? Is there more to this track or is it still in progress?