New Revolutionary Realistic(?) Violins Sample Library

[filmmusic 2,536]

This news may interest all the composers here:

http://8dio.com/?btp...o-violins-vol-1

I just learned about this sample library yesterday which apparently may bring a revolution in legato string playing (the most difficult thing with sample libraries).

the demos sound ok, of course every demo in these circumstances is built in a way where the drawbacks can't be shown..

(e.g. i didn't hear any full melody schindler's list type, to see how they sound there)

the one thing I will say, that I am saying over and over, and see the realilty of it in many forums is this:

Most of us are spending hours and hours trying to figure out these sample libraries, trying to learn the tips and tricks, trying to make our compositions more realistic sounding but we spend NO time in the thing that matters:

STUDY THE MUSIC.

Study orchestral scores, classical, film scores, etc, learning compositional techniques (not midi programming techniques) etc. and that's the basic reason why film music of today isn't as good as it used to be (always in my opinion, because there might be some people that like it better nowadays).

People I see in forums concerning audio, samples etc are so much knowledagable of sample libraries and midi programming but no knowledge at all of harmony, melody, orchestration etc.

In the end THAT is that I think that counts (at least I hope that counts still).

[Nemesis 272]

Well said!

[Datameister 2,396]

Well said indeed. As someone who's been trying to learn a lot about sample libraries and so forth, I nevertheless agree that they have very little to do with writing excellent orchestral music, and film composers seem to be too focused on this end of things these days.

As for this specific sample library, they didn't really post any informative samples, so I don't really have an opinion on it.

[BloodBoal 7,542]

[BLUMENKOHL 1,086]

Meh.

One could argue that musical stagnation is the result of studying too many old compositional techniques and sheet music. It is no more effective than telling a novice author to read lots of classic novels to become a good author.

What you end up with is people like...a lot of the composers we have today. People who read and listened to things they liked, and made an entire musical language out of what they enjoyed without fully comprehending the technical details behind them.

There is this misconception that the current state of music has risen out of ignorance of the past, if anything it's the exact opposite.

Artists are sprinting all over these days, because great content is so readily available to consume, versus two hundred years ago. Because of this the problem is these artists haven't learned to run, walk, or even crawl. They listen, see, or read something they like and spend their lives sprinting to emulate it.

And then of course there's the subject of music theory. It was once a small but wondrous subject, based off of mathematics, science, and physics.

Unfortunately music theory has grown into a terrifying monster, its new monstrous flesh forged out of critical analysis of the works of Western composers from the last few centuries. It has morphed from being a mathematical and scientific foundation of sound to musical dogma. It teaches a frame of mind, a line of thinking, a method of writing, when it once taught pure fundamentals. Music theory today is no longer a set of tools to empower composers. It is advertised as a recipe to writing good music. Just look at the original post. What does it imply? If you want to write good music, study music theory! Rather than opening up worlds, it locks you into a system.

Wanna write music? Learn and understand what sound is, how it works, why it works. Get the tools down. And then experiment. You'll end up with shitty music and wonderful stuff, but you will learn and understand what you're doing intuitively. Don't let some old bald man in a classroom tell you how the tools should be used or what techniques you should use. Learn for yourself why things work the way they do. Develop your own recipes.

You are not a laborer. If you are an artist you are a creator. Methodology and recipes are what we give peons so they can follow them blindly. Tools are what we give to creators to create. The problem with film music today is that we have too many peons and not many creators.

Oh and don't try to write damned Star Wars.

[pixie_twinkle 60]

Wanna write music? Learn and understand what sound is, how it works, why it works. Get the tools down. And then experiment. You'll end up with shitty music and wonderful stuff, but you will learn and understand what you're doing intuitively. Don't let some old bald man in a classroom tell you how the tools should be used or what techniques you should use. Learn for yourself why things work the way they do. Develop your own recipes.

Spoken like someone who clearly doesn't understand the importance of learning how to walk before learning how to run. Your approach is simplistic and idealistic, but not realistic. I know all too many people who say exactly the same kind of thing you just said, and then sit down at the piano to play their "masterpiece" which usually consists of a few basic triads (played theatrically with extremely disproportionate emotion and rubato). If you want to create new music, please do the world a favour and learn your theory and study scores first! A great composer is someone who learns the mechanics of theory, orchestration and composition while simultaneously developing his own style and voice. It is possible to be creative and original without also being ignorant, believe it or not.

[filmmusic 2,536]

Wanna write music? Learn and understand what sound is, how it works, why it works. Get the tools down. And then experiment. You'll end up with shitty music and wonderful stuff, but you will learn and understand what you're doing intuitively. Don't let some old bald man in a classroom tell you how the tools should be used or what techniques you should use. Learn for yourself why things work the way they do. Develop your own recipes.

One can't expand and break the rules, if he doesn't know what the rules ARE.

and of course I didn't imply to confide oneself in a strict theoretical system/

But you must first learn the tools and then use them as you feel and you like..

and Midi orchestration and samples libraries don't teach you that.

Do you know why many other compsoers are writing the music they write?

I saw in numerous videos how they work.

They compose in a software like nuendo or cubase etc. The process is like this more or less:

"ok, i put this great motif I found in this midi channel. Now: copy-paste-copy-paste-copy-paste-copy-paste-copy-paste-copy-paste-copy-paste....etc"

"Ok, I'm done with this, what a wonderful track I made. Now let's get on with the other midi channel.

oh, I think i will leave it all to one just note. Ok, done with this. Gone to the next"

and the result of this is a minimalistic music which is always the same and remains the same without expanding, developing, variating etc.

If you don't sit down with a pencil and paper, this loop thing won't teach you how to compose music.

That's how I see it..

...played theatrically with extremely disproportionate emotion and rubato...

Funny that you should mention this pixie, because I have seen it too in many such people.. Totally agree

[BLUMENKOHL 1,086]

I have said nothing about being ignorant. If anything, I am promoting knowledge and an understanding of the mechanics and theory of sound and music. What I am discouraging is following dogma and music recipes from the Church of Music Critics who Interpret The Works of Greater Composers Than Themselves Because They Didn't Have What It Takes.

If you believe following recipes and studying some scores without understanding how or why they work makes you a great composer, you're probably a peon yourself and your work is just as bland and dull as the rest of what's out there. Which it probably is, as I don't see any world renowned composers around here.

Studying great scores and having someone tell you this note and this note equals this sound doesn't make you a great composer any more than being an English major makes you a great author. Sorry. It just doesn't. It's nothing more than fact memorizing.

We need artists and composers that have a deep understanding of sound and music who can therefore create, not just someone armed with a list of chord progressions we've heard a billion times over.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,801]

Blume, you need to know the basic recipe before you can put your own spin on it. Meaning you need the education, AND the imagination to come up with something that is wholly yours.

Williams' education did not make him the composer he is now, but it did allow him to channel his musical imagination.

[filmmusic 2,536]

ok, I didn't say anything about following recipe and dogmas etc... Just studying scores.(which is followed by understanding how and why they work)

thats is all that good composers have done. Eveyrone was based in their former..

Korzeniowski for example. Has he made anything radical? Has he brought any REVOLUTION to film music?

No! (of course he is still very young).

BUT, it shows that the man KNOWS music and he makes some very good music from what I have heard..

as i've said elsewhere, to become a GREAT composer it needs 2 things: education and talent.

If you have just one of them, either only education, either only talent, you don't become great.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,801]

I don't mean to be offensive, but the composers on this board are probably very well educated, but not that talented.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,086]

Blume, you need to know the basic recipe before you can put your own spin on it. Meaning you need the education, AND the imagination to come up with something that is wholly yours.

Williams' education did not make him the composer he is now, but it did allow him to channel his musical imagination.

The problem is, most musical education (in fact, most education in any art) today isn't about providing theoretical understanding as a tool for the artist. Most of it is just teaching students how composers of yesteryear did their thing and the end results of what they stumbled upon.

It's like me teaching you physics by telling you Newton let go of a ball and it fell to the ground. Therefore objects that are let go fall to the ground. Congratulations you are now a physicist.

You'll come out of school and go around, and when a you encounter a problem where something needs to be dropped you are armed and ready for it. But that's about all you can do. You don't have an understanding of why the ball drops. So if you encounter a situation where say...you let go of an object and it needs to go up you're out of luck.

That's what I see with most people coming out of art schools and music schools. They can apply what they know to what they are familiar with, but they lack the fundamentals behind what they've essentially memorized.

If you take a random classical music student right now and replace the conventional orchestra before him with a completely new alien set of instruments, they will be completely at a loss for what to do. Their recipes for orchestration, for example, are useless. They exist in a limited system, and they are not armed with the fundamental rules in acoustics and sound that apply universally regardless of the system. They are armed with what JS Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart discovered when they tackled their own unique problems.

The evidence for it is CLEAR as day. Everything today more or less sounds the same, it's all trite rehash. You think Steve Jablonsky didn't study old composers and music theory? He was musically "educated" at UC Berkely before he even joined Hans Zimmer and co. And look at the great innovative work he's pumping out. Look at the snooze fests Mark Snow is pumping out, a Juilliard alum.

These people aren't creators. That's what the musical education system is pumping out into the world. People who repackage the works of greats.

You want to be more than a repackager? Learn the properties of sound waves. Learn what octaves and semitones are. Learn about the fletcher-munson curves. Understand superposition. Etc. Etc. Etc. And then learn the basics provided in music theory classes. The truths. Not the "the last 400 years of western music as interpreted by Dr. Klerb McKlerbson." Understand what is happening at the simplest level when you play two notes at the same time. If you fully understand the simplest fundamentals, you could write your own textbook on music theory, because you have everything that music itself has to be music.

[filmmusic 2,536]

2 new demos are out.

again no demo with an active moving melody but mostly sustained notes..

[Henry B 51]

Blume, you need to know the basic recipe before you can put your own spin on it. Meaning you need the education, AND the imagination to come up with something that is wholly yours.

Williams' education did not make him the composer he is now, but it did allow him to channel his musical imagination.

The problem is, most musical education (in fact, most education in any art) today isn't about providing theoretical understanding as a tool for the artist. Most of it is just teaching students how composers of yesteryear did their thing and the end results of what they stumbled upon.

It's like me teaching you physics by telling you Newton let go of a ball and it fell to the ground. Therefore objects that are let go fall to the ground. Congratulations you are now a physicist.

You'll come out of school and go around, and when a you encounter a problem where something needs to be dropped you are armed and ready for it. But that's about all you can do. You don't have an understanding of why the ball drops. So if you encounter a situation where say...you let go of an object and it needs to go up you're out of luck.

That's what I see with most people coming out of art schools and music schools. They can apply what they know to what they are familiar with, but they lack the fundamentals behind what they've essentially memorized.

If you take a random classical music student right now and replace the conventional orchestra before him with a completely new alien set of instruments, they will be completely at a loss for what to do. Their recipes for orchestration, for example, are useless. They exist in a limited system, and they are not armed with the fundamental rules in acoustics and sound that apply universally regardless of the system. They are armed with what JS Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart discovered when they tackled their own unique problems.

The evidence for it is CLEAR as day. Everything today more or less sounds the same, it's all trite rehash. You think Steve Jablonsky didn't study old composers and music theory? He was musically "educated" at UC Berkely before he even joined Hans Zimmer and co. And look at the great innovative work he's pumping out. Look at the snooze fests Mark Snow is pumping out, a Juilliard alum.

These people aren't creators. That's what the musical education system is pumping out into the world. People who repackage the works of greats.

You want to be more than a repackager? Learn the properties of sound waves. Learn what octaves and semitones are. Learn about the fletcher-munson curves. Understand superposition. Etc. Etc. Etc. And then learn the basics provided in music theory classes. The truths. Not the "the last 400 years of western music as interpreted by Dr. Klerb McKlerbson." Understand what is happening at the simplest level when you play two notes at the same time. If you fully understand the simplest fundamentals, you could write your own textbook on music theory, because you have everything that music itself has to be music.

Way too generalized. There are so many reasons that modern music is so dull, and so many reasons it isn't. What aspect of modern music are you looking at, anyway? Just big budget, Hollywood films and their imitators? That's an insanely small segment of all film, TV, game, dance, theater and pure concert music... which itself is a little niche in the overall umbrella of "music." I mean, there's just so much going on in so many different places that it's impossible to assess where we are anymore.

Also, why blame music theory and composition programs? Yes, of course some of them stifle creativity. Some don't. By all accounts, we're much freer now than we ever were. In the 1940s and 50s, most composition programs relentlessly taught serial or twelve-tone music. So who came out of that, a bunch of serialists who had forgotten how to write tonal music? Well, yeah, quite a lot of them. Maybe they're teaching today. And then there were composers like Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. Every educational system has its successes and failures. So call Steve Jablonsky and Mark Snow the failures if you want. I agree, they're pretty boring. But I'd like to hear how it's college educations that are the culprits. Not individual influences. Not lifestyle. Not employment. Not what the producers want to hear. You've worked in film so it's curious that you didn't address the many, many ways in which composers have their voices eradicated.

[Sharkissimo 1,975]

Re: the sample library, I like the first demo, namely the sustained chords, portamenti, and fingered tremolo. Reminded of Herrmann and Walton.

It's like me teaching you physics by telling you Newton let go of a ball and it fell to the ground. Therefore objects that are let go fall to the ground. Congratulations you are now a physicist.

Blume, I totally see where you're coming from, but as said, you're making way too many generalisations yourself. I mean for one, compositions students (at least at places like the Royal College of Music) are just taught one system of thought, and learn it by rote. They learn all of the old school and contemporary methods, from figured bass to graphic notation. By doing so, they see the ups and downs of all these man made constructions, and from this set of tools, they begin to form their own identity as composers. Likewise, there's no one fixed text for orchestration. You've got the old classics like Berlioz's and Rimsky-Korsakov's (the later being more of a case study of that composer's style and a fascinating historical document than anything else) mid-century stuff like Walter Piston's, and then Samuel Adler's, and the most contemporary books. Some even covering film orchestration. The most varied of these spanning the whole distance from the basics to the most avant-garde techniques.

Likewise, studying everything from the most cutting edge to traditional scores, will let the composer decide according to his own tastes and instincts where to go. In Herrmann's words:

'Remember old maps, before World War I, how the world had big white spots every now and then? You looked down below, it said “White, Unexplored.” That’s film music. It’s all unexplored.’ ”

[pixie_twinkle 60]

I think composition students in general are taught a much wider variety of styles today than they were in the past, which can't be a bad thing. This is certainly the case in the US, at any rate. Back in the '60s, American universities taught primarily 12-tone and serial music to their students, which seems very shortsighted with the benefit of hindsight. While I think it's important that composers understand how serialism works, it's hardly the only technique worth learning. These days composition students learn all sorts of techniques, covering a wide spectrum of contemporary styles and genres. That's certainly the case in graduate school. Undergraduates may still be required to write classical-style pieces to develop their basic skills, but once those skills are evident I'm sure they are encouraged to find their own voice. As for listening to music and studying scores, well if the only exposure to score study and music-listening the student gets is in the classroom, then the student is clearly not a particularly serious musician. He should be developing his own style, and studying the music he wants to learn outside the classroom, while using his composition lessons to get feedback and advice from the teachers.

[BLUMENKOHL 1,086]

OK, I did make sweeping generalizations.

[A24 4,768]

A great composer is someone who learns the mechanics of theory, orchestration and composition while simultaneously developing his own style and voice.t.

Didn't you like Yes, Vangelis, Paul McCartney?

[pixie_twinkle 60]

Damn you and your excellent memory! (We're all entitled to our vices... )

[Richard P 4,665]

I think that once you get past the basics of music theory - notation, techniques, etc, which is the bit that requires education, the rest is really up to the composer's talent at writing melodies that stick and forming compositions that work as music. If they come up with their own techniques and it works, great.

I definitely agree that the focus should not be on who's got the most realistic sample library. I once borrowed a midi keyboard and tried cubase, and the best I could do was some shitty piano motif and some very generic synth string wanderings (basically something that even a low budget TV show would probably reject).

I have no musical education, so I had no idea what I was doing beyond what sounded ok to my ears. I'm sure that would improve given training, but it certainly wouldn't if I were merely given the world's best samples.

[Sharkissimo 1,975]

I think that once you get past the basics of music theory - notation, techniques, etc, which is the bit that requires education, the rest is really up to the composer's talent at writing melodies that stick and forming compositions that work as music.

That would mean Schoenberg wasn't a composer.

There's more to composition than hummable tunes.

[Richard P 4,665]

Yes, but they help.