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.

From: Hendrik Jan Veenstra <h@...>

>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.

Right, it doesn't exist yet. But I think there  are some ways the 
interface could be set up to work.

>  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...

Maybe it would have to look at the MIDI performance and substitute 
articulations later.

><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>

Maybe, but right now I don't know that any company is working on 
taking physical modeling in that direction. As I said, the Yamaha VL1 
does some emulations amazingly well, and it responds like an acoustic 
instrument. But you're right- the reason it didn't sell all that well 
is that you have to learn how to play it. It's not all that difficult 
to add that kind of control to your keyboard technique, but as Avery 
Burdette from Yamaha put it, "it sounds broken" until you do learn.
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434