It's funny how a person who is used to using just pencil, paper, and Finale is now excited about new recording software for rendering. It came about because I had several people in the past few years ask me if I could write music for their projects such as TV shows, videos, art shows, dance productions, etc. I said sure, but are you going to hire the musicians because I'm not? So I decided to jump into this world to make renderings for clients.
Last year I thought Cinesamples was my complete answer, but then I soon discovered that no library was perfect and the best answer was to mix the libraries. I also learned that even if your samples were recorded in a great room like Sony, they still needed a plug-in like East West's Spaces Reverb to both sweeten the sound and make them come alive.
My budget was only $1100 and I needed so much to feel the holes in Cinesamples. I needed better woodwinds so I "got the best" which was Berlin Woodwind's Main Library. I needed better strings which would have ate my budget fully so I purchased East West Spaces Reverb Plug-in to beautify those strings and Cinesamples' Tina Guo Legato Cello for added expression. I needed a piano, so I also went from Cinesamples, Piano in Blue. These "epic" sample developers do not know what flugelhorns or euphoniums are so then I had to order both the flugelhorn and euphonium solo from Vienna Symphonic Library. But the one library I am most excited about is Spitfire's Bones Volume 1, because Cinesamples' trombone ensembles are almost worthless because they lack true legato and the timbre cannot go to the rich mellow sound of true low brass.
So those are my new toys that I am downloading this week. Let me know if you have any questions why I pick those libraries over others.
~Rodney
Replies
They sound better than anything else on the market, have a bunch of articulations, the blend well with other libraries, and very playable out of the box. The clarinet ensemble, for example, blends better with CineBrass than CineWinds!
Socrates Arvanitakis said:
It's funny, the one I used the most is the one I thought little about, the Tina Guo cello. If they did full articulations with that beast, it could be the best cello vst on the market but sadly the Mikes at Cinesamples were too busy thinking of a sound design library. The spitfire trombones are beautiful, the piano beautiful, and the VSL instruments sound good but take the most tweaking to work with. I believe the best purchase was East West Quantum Spaces. Now I cannot live without it.
Chris Carman said:
Rodney Carlyle Money said:
Hi Rodney.
Listened to your festival piece (again). Incredible piece and great sound.
Hasn't been performed live yet? Shame if not.
My question is about the horns. How good do you need to be to get those semiquavers?
I know our horn players would never be able to play that piece, all amateurs, although our first horn played fourth horn in Schumann's Concertstuck.
Thank you for the compliments, my friend. I have not heard it live as of yet, but it is being played across the United States in about 4 schools now including Central Florida University with a band of over 300 this fall. The 16th notes in the horns are actually a lot easier to play than one might think. It is in an easy range with a tempo of bpm=58-62, so it would be the same as playing eight-notes at 120. Any high school horn player should be able to play it.
I am currently scoring this piece for orchestra for the ballets that I have been commissioned to write. When it is all said and done, it should run around 10 minutes hopefully. Hear is just a quick listen of 2 minutes rescored for full orchestra: https://app.box.com/s/bjgxr5xjjh13ahaeqk6hafs3sps30gu3
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Some things on this thread lead me to reflect, once again on the question:
Why do some people insist the written score is not now obsolete?
Much here seems to suggest that it is, or will be soon, when even those who advocate for the written musical score increasingly rely on what (apparently) will supersede it.
The score window of any computerized composing problem appears now to be the appendix of the musical composition, doomed to irrelevancy, and eventually subject to removal and oblivion.
Why bother paying $15.00 when the pdf can be downloaded from IMSLP?