Master Class: Virtual Orchestra Virtuosity

Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Rob Shrock

           
 

USING FOUR OF THE TOP LIBRARIES IN A REAL-WORLD SITUATION

FIG. 2: MOTU Symphonic Instrument.

MOTU SYMPHONIC INSTRUMENT

MOTU Sym-phonic Instrument ($295; motu.com) weighs in at a mere 8 GB of samples and includes the fewest instruments, articulations, and ensemble configurations of all the products in this article. It is also more limited in its ability to manipulate the samples in sophisticated ways.

But it's the sound that matters most, and SI is a capable orchestral collection — among the favorite libraries of several top composers. It can be operated as a plug-in, or the instruments can be loaded into MachFive for additional parameter control and integration into a preexisting work-flow environment (see Fig. 2). Built-in traditional and convolution reverb are both included. It is by far the easiest to use of the four libraries featured, as well as the most affordable.

Because SI doesn't include con sordino strings, I used softly played sustains instead. It does provide separate first and second violin sections. For the most part, they sound like different samples altogether, so they can be layered. A few notes in the “sus f” patches (G above middle C and the high D) clearly utilize the same sample because they phase when played together on the same MIDI channel. (Using separate MIDI channels and a slight timing offset usually solves the problem if first and second violins play in unison.)

SI suffers from the same basic limitation in the brass and woodwinds as EWQLSO, in that the user must choose between a limited number of solo instruments — usually only one — and preconfigured ensembles. In the case of the French horns, two sections are provided: 4 player and 8 player. This is preferable to me, as the 4-player section is fairly dry and can pull off a 4-part orchestration without sounding too big, although it's still not an ideal solution.

A separate bass trombone is supplied, which helped counter having to use the same solo trombone for the other two parts in the orchestration. Four solo trumpets are available (Trumpet 4 is muted only), offering a nice amount of flexibility.

Of particular note are the two harps. I used Harp 1, which is smaller and more distant, and also more appropriate for the context of this arrangement. However, Harp 2 is a big, gorgeous instrument that would handle soloistic work very well.

Unfortunately, SI doesn't provide a lot of dynamic changes to the samples other than what is available via Volume and Expression or any sample switching using Velocity that is already programmed into the patch. So it's mostly a WYSIWYG library. (An Expert mode allows you to tweak some layering options for crossfades between patches.)

I wish MOTU had left out the saxophones (unnecessary for a symphonic collection) and maybe even skipped on the choir stuff (although it sounds pretty good) and delivered more content on the meat-and-potatoes orchestral sounds. In spite of the limited number of programs in such a small footprint of data, SI offers quite a bit of detailed orchestration due to the fact that the samples themselves sound really good.

SI's built-in reverb can eat up a lot of processing power, so I chose to leave it off and use a generic room while sequencing. Some of the reverb programs actually pegged out the CPU on my dual-core 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro with only one instance activated! However, the included reverbs are excellent, so I edited one of the Concert Halls for the final mix.

Because I typically mix and match instruments from many different libraries, I usually use an external reverb to unify the ambience and glue everything together. But MOTU's reverbs are a nice inclusion, and if you have enough processing horsepower, they sound great. I imagine they would be killer in a live setup that uses soft synths.