August 2019
Interlinking a score and its sounds
27/08/19 12:19 Filed in: Creative Work
I confess: I’m (mostly) a serial composer. Hybridized with a spectral one. With no little influx from ambient and brutal noisemakers. I’m one of those kids who compose not only with notes, but also with everything happening to them. Odd bow movements, overblowing, punching unexpected parts of the skin with unintended tools.
As a consequence, there is this schizophrenia for which there are times when you have to accurately listen to the resulting sound, comparing it to the one you were imagining, and put it to the test of reality. And other times, when you need absolute silence, to prevent the wrong sounds to interfere with your creative process.
A discussion in the forum dedicated to Dorico, the notation program, offered an interesting perspective. You can easily and completely separate the score from the sound generator. Dorico can drive external players, like NI’s Kontakt or VSL’s Vienna Ensemble Pro. It can also switch to a silent player.
Therefore, you can build your orchestral template as accurately as possible. Make all the noise you like. When you need silence, just run Dorico without first running Vienna Ensemble Pro. No waiting time, no wrong sounds. Just you and your inner musical daemon.
As a consequence, there is this schizophrenia for which there are times when you have to accurately listen to the resulting sound, comparing it to the one you were imagining, and put it to the test of reality. And other times, when you need absolute silence, to prevent the wrong sounds to interfere with your creative process.
A discussion in the forum dedicated to Dorico, the notation program, offered an interesting perspective. You can easily and completely separate the score from the sound generator. Dorico can drive external players, like NI’s Kontakt or VSL’s Vienna Ensemble Pro. It can also switch to a silent player.
Therefore, you can build your orchestral template as accurately as possible. Make all the noise you like. When you need silence, just run Dorico without first running Vienna Ensemble Pro. No waiting time, no wrong sounds. Just you and your inner musical daemon.
Outdated pianos – is the new trend loving something old?
19/08/19 16:48 Filed in: Strumenti musicali | Musical Instruments
So, the new trend seems to be loving something old. VSL have just release their antique piano, a magnificent Blüthner Series 6 dated 1895, and perfectly restored without modernizing it. Incidentally, not the oldest new release they had lately, since a reduced version of their Historic Winds was introduced as a Special Edition (SE) volume at the same time.
VSL are not the first one to give us antique pianos. Pianoteq has a whole library of antiques. In that case, however, one can question if you are really listening to a piano, or its synthetic avatar. Native Instruments gave us a rare Bechstein from 1905, with an old modernized sound. Galaxy Instruments has another Blüthner, this time a baby Model 150 from 1929.
From 1895 to 1929 the piano evolves, but it is still technically the same. Older means sounding more aged. Newer means that it can still sound new. But the base technique is the same. The great inventors of the end of the Nineteenth Century have already imagined all. Cast-iron frame, crossed strings. Untile the next step in materials.
Cinesamples has released a Steinway Model D from 1949, found in the Columbia Studios, and Embertone a later Steinway from 1955 owned by John Q. Walker for his Zenph project of revived piano rolls. Two world wars in the middle, and metallurgy has changed. Music-making has changed, with the after-war pianos meant for bigger halls and a less sentimental music.
The Embertone Walker sounds modern, but with a veil of antiquity, or savvy calm. It is not the angular, sharp piano we can listen to in modern recitals, or in newer sample libraries like the Synchron Yamaha and Steinway from VSL, or the aged after-war Steinway from the MGM Scoring Stage at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles produced by Cinesamples with their CinePiano.
Antique is the new new. Traveling in time is a way to find inspiration. Even if you are not after an historically informed virtual performance, there is something disturbing and evoking in worn sounds. They come from some unusual place - if not in the space, at least out of our time.
VSL are not the first one to give us antique pianos. Pianoteq has a whole library of antiques. In that case, however, one can question if you are really listening to a piano, or its synthetic avatar. Native Instruments gave us a rare Bechstein from 1905, with an old modernized sound. Galaxy Instruments has another Blüthner, this time a baby Model 150 from 1929.
From 1895 to 1929 the piano evolves, but it is still technically the same. Older means sounding more aged. Newer means that it can still sound new. But the base technique is the same. The great inventors of the end of the Nineteenth Century have already imagined all. Cast-iron frame, crossed strings. Untile the next step in materials.
Cinesamples has released a Steinway Model D from 1949, found in the Columbia Studios, and Embertone a later Steinway from 1955 owned by John Q. Walker for his Zenph project of revived piano rolls. Two world wars in the middle, and metallurgy has changed. Music-making has changed, with the after-war pianos meant for bigger halls and a less sentimental music.
The Embertone Walker sounds modern, but with a veil of antiquity, or savvy calm. It is not the angular, sharp piano we can listen to in modern recitals, or in newer sample libraries like the Synchron Yamaha and Steinway from VSL, or the aged after-war Steinway from the MGM Scoring Stage at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles produced by Cinesamples with their CinePiano.
Antique is the new new. Traveling in time is a way to find inspiration. Even if you are not after an historically informed virtual performance, there is something disturbing and evoking in worn sounds. They come from some unusual place - if not in the space, at least out of our time.