In the context of original compositions: Would you (as forum users) prefer to listen to a VST track or an imperfect human performance?
Ollie King-Britton posted a status
Sep 29
Comments
Sadly my own performance skills are rather poor, and I don't even have access to a real instrument at the moment, so I mostly have to settle for imperfect "perfect" computer playback. Which, TBH, grates on the ears after a while.
Apologies for the lack of specifics. This post was regarding solo piano and chamber music, but mainly solo piano. There are many intracacies I would find it difficult to capture using a VST, but I obviously don't play as accurately as a digital performance.
I think you provided your opinion, which is that good samples are ideal for orchestral music. I agree with this, but intimate solo/chamber works have a sort of magic which is hard to recreate digitally. Some minor subtle "imperfections"* (*emphasis on the quotation marks) actually add to the expressiveness in my opinion, which is the humanisation you are describing, but some more noticable mistakes do distract the listener.
I would personally rather hear a reasonably good human performance with a few inaccuracies than a digital work, regarding chamber and solo music, and I was wondering if others shared that view.
Out of interest, what technology do you use?
Thanks for your response David :)
I suspect we're pretty well in agreement here. For me the key to a good performance is humanity rather than technical excellence. I would only often choose a library for orchestral music not so much because a lesser orchestra might make the odd mistake but because amateur players simply often don't have the tonal refinement to sound expressive in the first place. That can even apply to just the piano -- having said that, I thought the performance of your ballade was nice and enjoyed the music as well.
Regarding my technology -- well I compose everything in Dorico. For orchestral music I mostly the the NotePerformer Playback Engine technology together with the library from Cinematic Studio or Spitfire BBC SO. Chamber is more varied and for singing it's nearly always EWQL's Symphonic or Hollywood Choirs, simply as they're the only ones that can sing text despite their limitations.
Thank you for sharing David, and many thanks for listening to the Ballade. I am fortunate enough to have a partner who is an excellent pianist who performed that piece for me, but he is too busy to learn all of my music. My own playing skills fall short of his unfortunately, and were the subject of this thread haha
it's a fallacy that a VST track cannot have human expression. After all, sampled libraries by definition have samples played by human beings and good ones will put a lot of expression into their playing. And the better VST players also have various "humanisations" built in, to say nothing of similar features in notation software or DAW's. With my own orchestral music, I'd rather hear a top virtual orchestra than most amateur ones which, unlike the VST, I probably wouldn't have the skill to conduct to get the sort of interpretation I'm looking for.
On the other hand, at a chamber level, good (not half-hearted average) professionals would be able to get more out of my string quartets than is possible with any existing library, though they get gradually better all the time.
You haven't said anything about what instrumentation your music uses.