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Barkingdogstudios 31 December 2003

Hi,

I am working on a project with some folks where we're using midi horns and strings along with live bass, drums, keys and three vocalists.

I have recorded my live drums along with the midi tracks and the more I listen to it, the more "cheezy" the horn and string parts sound.
I'm using SONAR XL and a Korg X5RD module.

A friend of mine raved about Atmosphere as a sample package. Has anyone heard about it? What little I could find says it's pretty good especially in the strings department. Can anyone recommend a good package for adding midi strings and horns? Thanks.

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Ethan Winer Thu, 01/01/2004 - 07:03

Dog,

> Can anyone recommend a good package for adding midi strings and horns?

I use Sonar and rely entirely on SoundFonts. If your budget is large and you don't mind a lot of added complication, GigaStudio and libraries for it sound good. But to me the disadvantages of the Giga stuff far outweight the advantages.

I use LiveSynth Pro as a SoundFont player with Sonar because it's very simple and uses very little CPU. The company that made it is no longer around but you might be able to find a copy somewhere.

--Ethan

Barkingdogstudios Thu, 01/01/2004 - 09:52

Ethan,

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been trying to find out where I can get a copy of LiveSynth Pro without any luck. I'm going to contact Cakewalk tomorrow to see what they suggest. I noticed that VSampler 3.0 comes with SONAR 3 and that it can play soundfont sounds as well. Maybe that's what the folks at Cakewalk are going with in the absense of LiveSynth Pro.

Cheers.

UncleBob58 Fri, 01/02/2004 - 07:03

Having the best samples and synths helps, but nothing can beat great programming.

Avoid horn "chords" from one patch. Use a different sound for each part. Double the same way.

Perform the parts in real time and DO NOT quantize. If you cannot play that well, use a groove quantize or humanize feature in the sequencer.

Work on tunings. Bb instruments tend to be sharp on the B and F#. Strings get sharper as the volume increases.

Horns and strings will be slightly "rushed" depending upon attack times.

Use a good stereo spread simulating the positions of the real instruments.

:p:

Barkingdogstudios Fri, 01/02/2004 - 11:55

Ethan,

Ok, I called Cakewalk this morning and they said that the makers of "LiveSynth" just "sort of disappeared ... stopped answering their phone". I upgraded to SONAR 3 anyway partially to get VSampler but mostly to get the new features (VSampler on it's own is almost as much as the $199 for the upgrade!).

In the meantime, the sales guy at Cakewalk told me I can just re-install LiveSynth off of the SONAR XL installation disk. It's only good for another thirty days though. I downloaded some sound font files from soundfonts.com. They are considerably better than the sounds coming from the Korg module. I have also looked on other sites. There seems to be quite a range of prices and quality. Do you have a favourite source of font files?

In any case, thanks for your help.

Ethan Winer Sat, 01/03/2004 - 07:48

Dog,

> It's only good for another thirty days though.

Right, so what good is that? :td:

> I downloaded some sound font files ... Do you have a favourite source of font files?

I have a lot of very high quality public domain SoundFonts. Again, if you email me with your address I'll be glad to send you my collection.

--Ethan

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