Hi all, I bought EW Symphonic Orchestra Strings ages ago, and let it collect dust until now. I'm now finally attempting to learn some virtual orchestra composition with it, and struggling to get my strings to sound realistic. It sounds like legato strings are notoriously hard, but I'm hoping there is still something I'm missing as a beginner? Here's my journey so far:
I started with the Qlegato cellos, and they just sound...awful. Am I doing something wrong here? What is this articulation even useful for? Have a listen to the attachment `cellos_qleg.mp3`
I moved on to the butter legato articulation, much better, but is still missing something. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_opus.mp3`.
I read that the notes in some of the legato articulations need to actually overlap to work right, so I tried overlapping them. Opus can't seem to handle this and starts behaving very oddly. Dropping notes, shortening some others. Very weird. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_overlap_opus.mp3`.
I wondered since Symphonic Orchestra is quite old, if I should try using the older Play engine and not Opus. I ran the overlapping version through Play and it did indeed work better. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_overlap_play.mp3`. Is this a known issue with Opus and Symphonic? Is there something I need to do to get the butter legato patch working right in Opus?
Overall, things are still sounding too smooth and uniform. I wanted to have some notes sort of leave gaps or transition more sharply. It sounded like mixing different articulations would be the key here, and that maybe some of the Portato articulations would be appropriate. I tried mixing these with the butter legato articulations at the right times, and it straight up sounds like these two articulation sets are different recordings. They don't seem to work together at all. Have a listen to `cellos_butterleg_portleg.mp3`. Am I not supposed to mix these?
Bottom line is I'm struggling to understand how to use this library. I can't find many examples for it online, despite its age. What can I do to make this work? Is slapping the butter legato articulation on and riding CC11 a bit as good as it gets? Should I just think about upgrading to Hollywood/using composer cloud?
I started with the Qlegato cellos, and they just sound...awful. Am I doing something wrong here? What is this articulation even useful for? Have a listen to the attachment `cellos_qleg.mp3`
I moved on to the butter legato articulation, much better, but is still missing something. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_opus.mp3`.
I read that the notes in some of the legato articulations need to actually overlap to work right, so I tried overlapping them. Opus can't seem to handle this and starts behaving very oddly. Dropping notes, shortening some others. Very weird. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_overlap_opus.mp3`.
I wondered since Symphonic Orchestra is quite old, if I should try using the older Play engine and not Opus. I ran the overlapping version through Play and it did indeed work better. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_overlap_play.mp3`. Is this a known issue with Opus and Symphonic? Is there something I need to do to get the butter legato patch working right in Opus?
Overall, things are still sounding too smooth and uniform. I wanted to have some notes sort of leave gaps or transition more sharply. It sounded like mixing different articulations would be the key here, and that maybe some of the Portato articulations would be appropriate. I tried mixing these with the butter legato articulations at the right times, and it straight up sounds like these two articulation sets are different recordings. They don't seem to work together at all. Have a listen to `cellos_butterleg_portleg.mp3`. Am I not supposed to mix these?
Bottom line is I'm struggling to understand how to use this library. I can't find many examples for it online, despite its age. What can I do to make this work? Is slapping the butter legato articulation on and riding CC11 a bit as good as it gets? Should I just think about upgrading to Hollywood/using composer cloud?