Originally Posted by
Max Hamburg
Hi Kjell,
Thanks for the compliment, but I consider it quite normal that forum members help each other. In other forums that is often a painful point: expecting praise but never leaving any word to others' work...
As to your piece here: many congratulations. It is really a wonderful composition in many ways. It has a nice build-up towards the full orchestral section and on that path the solos get their meaningful parts to complete the composition. Technically I notice a lot of improvement in playing techniques and variation. The GPO library has the advantage that all the samples have a start (attack sample) and a tail (release sample). That makes it easier to use them in every position for all playing techniques. (E.g. a sustain can play almost every passage, even the fastest ones, where in other libraries that would be a huge problem.) But variation in techniques can make the difference between a good and an excellent performance (detailed). The first part of your piece has some unbalances. The piano is ways too strong for the other solo instruments. That has partly to do with the lack of depth in the virtual placement of the orchestra. You said that you've made your performance in Finale with GPO. A notation program seldom has the means to realise a good performance (one of the best for that purpose is Overture). To have a live spacial seating you need some natural audition means such as convolution (reflections from the instruments within the space), reverb (sonic tail originating in that space and fading out in a certain amount of time) and a divided sound pattern in dry and wet. I'm sure you're aware of all this, but applying them properly is another matter. If you don't have an application to realise all this, you can limit yourself to just working with dry/wet balance to create a sort of spacial impression. Simply put it is like this: the more wet, the further; the more dry, the closer to the listener. Adding more wet signal is dangerous, it can end up in a muddy sonic situation, where you miss all the details and subtleties of the composition. So it is more interesting to reduce the dry signal to move some instruments to the back. However, don't exaggerate. Play with the fader or knob until you find the ideal situation for each section/instrument. In your present piece, the solos should be in the front, the piano a little mote backwards and then the string ensemble (which sounds good here, in the right place). It's not a great effort to correct these things. Of course don't forget the left-right balance, but that isn't a problem here. An advice: don't use the built-in reverb of GPO, it's only instrument-bound and doesn't contribute to the spacial feel of the whole ensemble. Simply put it out.
Another interesting program is 'Audacity'. It's free and very effective to finalise the master channel of your composition. Once finished, you can add a little sweetening overal reverb (tail only) to create a certain room atmosphere.
Since it is a fine piece, it deserves a decent approach to let it shine even more. And yes, we're all composers and mostly not sound engineers. But working with virtual instruments has two sides: it's a very helpful means to compose and create an orchestral sound, but it's also a means to present the result of our efforts to the outside world without the cost of a real orchestra and recording! It's entirely up to us how far we are prepared to go that path...
Thanks for sharing your beautiful piece!
Jos
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