EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

On a fine day, 11-03-2004, Nick Batzdorf wrote:

>I'm talking about "anticipating" (i.e. switching very quickly to) the
>right articulation in response to your playing. Do you want a really
>hard, short bow, for example? Then the natural thing would be to
>blast air in and stop blasting it in very quickly.
>
>It's the *rate* of cc change that it has to read, not just the value.
>
>But this is just one example. My point is that today you have to load
>up several violin articulations to program a performance well. Some
>of the switching could be done in response to your playing.

As far as rate of cc change goes: an obvious problem with that is 
that you play a note, the sampler picks a sample based on how hard 
you play/blow, starts playing the sample, registers a certain rate of 
controller change and then decides that, o no, we need another sample 
because this is going to be staccato...  So the sampler has to switch 
samples somewhere midway.  I yet have to see the 1st sample lib that 
will smoothly switch from one sample to another somewhere halfway 
without the sample-switch being completely obvious.  Now if we were 
talking _synths_ here, things would be a lot easier -- a synth is 
just a massive calculator, and so should be able to calculate any 
required smoothness in timbre changes.  But a sampler...

<speculation>
I wonder if samplers are the real future at all btw.  In a sense a 
sampler is the poor man's solution to a complicated problem.  You 
want strings that are as realistic as possible, so... you simply 
record (sample) them and use those recordings...?  Basically that's 
still the 30 year old mellotron approach (ignoring "artistic" uses of 
samplers, but thinking purely about recreation of e.g. orchestral 
sounds).
Isn't it far more likely that instead of some super-sampler with 
1000+ articulations and intelligent smooth-switching, that one day 
we'll have a 20 THz computer with physically modelled instruments and 
orchestras -- i.e. synthetic realtime sounds that closely mimic their 
acoustic counterparts?
The only downside then probably is that you'll actually have to learn 
to play a french horn before being able to correctly play the 
physically modelled electronic instrument :-)).
</speculation>

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra   h @ k n o w a r e . n l
Omega Art: http://www.omega-art.com/