Need help to make sounds sound good BEFORE I start mixing them.

C

Chrisulrich

Member
Dear Anyone.

I'm a wannabe basic New Age composer. You know - lead sound, pads/strings. Thing IS - I've found a bunch of wonderful threads here about mixing - but not about making the sounds sound good BEFORE you mix them!

That's the bit I cant do. If I write a piano'n'strings track (think Isisip/Kevin Kern/Any Other Piano'n'Synth Strings Guy you Want!) the piano sounds plastic, the strings vary between strangled cat, nails on blackboard, gnat with tuned wings... Yet on the odd occasion someone local's done a remix, the tune's come back sounding a TON better. I can hear they've layered other sounds in with mine to achieve this - but they're Always Too Busy to tell me where they got the sounds from or how they did the layering. I've downloaded a pile of VSTs but can't find any sounds that would 'layer in' with either piano or strings and help with fullness.

I've got a legit'n'paid for Garritan Personal Orchestra - but if I get any of the out-of-the-box string sounds and do a chord with them, they sound awful. I've tried all the knobs and can't make them sound anywhere near as good as the demo tracks I've heard and I don't know why (I've read the manual/watched videos, still don't get it.) And I've no idea where people get background pad sounds from, I'm sure it's presets but on what?

So I was wondering if anyone would have the patience to wince at a track that sounds absolutely awful because I flat don't know how to make it sound better, and talk me through making it sound as good as possible. The idea being that if I can get a simple track sounding OK, I can get more ambitious! I can think of many different pieces, I just can't control the sounds well enough to achieve them and believe me I've been trying for ages.

I'm not putting the track up before I get a response to this because I know only too well it sounds like I spent exactly five minutes on 'mixing' it. I spent a couple of days but just gave up when it was obvious it wasn't going to get better in my hands. Again!

I know it's asking a lot. But I've run out of ideas as to what to try next on anything I do, I just sit looking at the software and wishing I understood it all better.

Yours hopefully

Chris.
 
Hi Chris. Addictive, Ivory, and Vienna are all much better than Garritian. Native instruments and logics stock piano can work in a pinch or on a tight budget. The problem may or may not be the source. Difficult to say without hearing what you're up against.

Your balance of direct room and ambience mics in the software programs matter. Make sure your balances between the EQ and compression on each mic set is correct. If you sum to a subgroup compressor in your daw, you usually need highly transparent compressors to not damage the sound or introduce unpleasant artifacts in the tone. Muti-band compressors such as the Waves C6 and the UAD precision MB are good at providing ultra transparent compression in specific frequency ranges.

Use saturation and imaging plugs to make the piano sound bigger.

Don't expect to get the sounds that we do out of film scoring studios or orchestra halls. You're setting yourself up for disappointment. Try to make the most out of your home rig.
 
Dear jkuehlin and anyone else who replies.

That's exactly what I AM trying to do - make my current setup sound better. The problems I'm having with Garritan Strings are as follows - they've all got this vibrato in that you can't get rid of - or I can't - for love nor money. There's no ADSR anywhere in their player, so there's this ghastly 'jump' between note changes notwithstanding the length of the note. They sound dull and tinny despite whatever setting I use which is very annoying because the demo tracks sound pretty good. And if you high-pass filter them, they very easily become cat's claws on a blackboard! It's an ongoing theme with the other instruments too. There's this indefinable change that comes over them - one moment they sound like they're going to be good - then suddenly they change into parodies of themselves. The brass become a brass band, flutes become pennywhistles, even oboes become vuvuzelas! It's as though something's taken all the gloss off the sounds. I've got zero idea what's doing it. I'd be ecstatic to have them sound like this:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX5GSHJ7eG8

because I'm sure those are sampled strings which is what Garritan claims to be!

But I just can't make them DO it! If you know how to make them do it, please tell me. I'm realistic enough to know software's limitations, but right now Garritan's taking the living ...... outta me.

Yours hopefully

Chris.
 
Chrisulrich said:
Dear jkuehlin and anyone else who replies.

That's exactly what I AM trying to do - make my current setup sound better. The problems I'm having with Garritan Strings are as follows - they've all got this vibrato in that you can't get rid of - or I can't - for love nor money. There's no ADSR anywhere in their player, so there's this ghastly 'jump' between note changes notwithstanding the length of the note. They sound dull and tinny despite whatever setting I use which is very annoying because the demo tracks sound pretty good. And if you high-pass filter them, they very easily become cat's claws on a blackboard! It's an ongoing theme with the other instruments too. There's this indefinable change that comes over them - one moment they sound like they're going to be good - then suddenly they change into parodies of themselves. The brass become a brass band, flutes become pennywhistles, even oboes become vuvuzelas! It's as though something's taken all the gloss off the sounds. I've got zero idea what's doing it. I'd be ecstatic to have them sound like this:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX5GSHJ7eG8

because I'm sure those are sampled strings which is what Garritan claims to be!

But I just can't make them DO it! If you know how to make them do it, please tell me. I'm realistic enough to know software's limitations, but right now Garritan's taking the living ...... outta me.

Yours hopefully

Chris.
Click to expand...

Ah. I thought your main issue was with the piano sounds. I'm kind of at a loss critiquing anything deeper than the piano in Garritian because I don't own the software. For strings I use Lass, Vienna, and EW. I do have trouble getting realistic continuity sometimes even with those, and programming them can be a chore. I will note that ADSR envelopes don't usually control vibrato. On Vienna you have to assign it switch...I use a volume control pedal attached to my keyboard. As you roll the pedal up the vibrato for all strings receiving the CC command increase or decrease the vibrato speed as the daw records the changes as midi automation. For legato to portamento articulations I use a secondary foot pedal to toggle back and forth between heavily slured portamento samples and regular linear runs. I'm a pretty dang proficient pianist and but I still miss a lot of the articulation switches because I'm literally doing a tap-dance trying to control the articulations. Basically at the end of each take I evaluate weather to re-shoot it or to move midi data around to try and get it to sound better. There's no easy solution even with $2k-$7k sample libraries.

It did help me a little bit when I learned to re-calibrate the midi velocity curves of the keyboard controller to better suit the articulation ranges. On a Yamaha motif, for some samples I have normal performance legato patches as the default then tremolo set about 118+ on the velocity curve. So I can play normal stuff lightly, but if I hammer the keys, the patch screams out a fortissimo tremolo. And I set the articulations on some patches to where if I'm playing anything faster than an 8th note for more than 6 notes in a row, it automatically switches from a legato to a detache. Then it reverts back when I relax the tempo. Vienna calls is velocity articulation.

I don't know if this helps much. I guess its just a few pointers on how I tackle the awkward and non sensical jumps between riffs and articulations. And I again I'm a little at a loss with Garritan because I'm not familiar with it. String programing is a total bitch and its gotta be one of the most tedious parts of this profession, even for highly experienced programmers.
 
You'd think they'd have a 'SoundsNiceFromTheBox' setting, strings!

Dear Jkhuelin et al.

You'd think these libraries would have a 'Sounds Nice ALready!' setting (or two!) so you could just go on from there!

I know the 'Sounds Like A Real Orchestra' string setting-up's a total bitch but I'm a new age composer, I'm not that advanced! All I wanna be able to do is play a chord on strings and have it sitting behind the piano, sounding nice. Heck, if you know a nice-but-obviously-fake string-synth and where I can get a nice pad to layer behind it to give it a bit of richness (or a couple of such pads for variety!) I'd take that right now.

There's Kevin Kern all over YouTube - I know his strings are fake but I also have no idea where he's getting them from, or I'd've bought the package long ago. And Maximo Spodek, and loads of others. They're all using fake strings and I'm sure they're just choosing a preset on a real keyboard and using that - thing is, I don't have a real keyboard. I'm all mouse and notation. But the strings are nice enough that nobody seems to mind them - Kevin Kern's solo violin sounds like a harmonious gnat, his piano's about half a mile wide and his backing strings are about as real as the cream in ten-cent buns - but he's world-famous, uses exactly the same sounds on concert tours and nobody seems to be bothered! (And he sells shedloads - though of course, being a new ager, I'm not in this for the money....!) Can you think of anything that, till I get better at programming string samples, just has a noise that says 'Nice String Backing' to the untutored listening ear, so I can actually get a few tracks FINISHED! (And a pad or 2 to layer them with...) And there's a ton of others, but you'll have gotten the idea.

Yours hopefully - I can see your well-trained mind wincing like toothache when you read this -

Chris.
 
Chrisulrich said:
Dear Jkhuelin et al.

You'd think these libraries would have a 'Sounds Nice ALready!' setting (or two!) so you could just go on from there!

I know the 'Sounds Like A Real Orchestra' string setting-up's a total bitch but I'm a new age composer, I'm not that advanced! All I wanna be able to do is play a chord on strings and have it sitting behind the piano, sounding nice. Heck, if you know a nice-but-obviously-fake string-synth and where I can get a nice pad to layer behind it to give it a bit of richness (or a couple of such pads for variety!) I'd take that right now.

There's Kevin Kern all over YouTube - I know his strings are fake but I also have no idea where he's getting them from, or I'd've bought the package long ago. And Maximo Spodek, and loads of others. They're all using fake strings and I'm sure they're just choosing a preset on a real keyboard and using that - thing is, I don't have a real keyboard. I'm all mouse and notation. But the strings are nice enough that nobody seems to mind them - Kevin Kern's solo violin sounds like a harmonious gnat, his piano's about half a mile wide and his backing strings are about as real as the cream in ten-cent buns - but he's world-famous, uses exactly the same sounds on concert tours and nobody seems to be bothered! (And he sells shedloads - though of course, being a new ager, I'm not in this for the money....!) Can you think of anything that, till I get better at programming string samples, just has a noise that says 'Nice String Backing' to the untutored listening ear, so I can actually get a few tracks FINISHED! (And a pad or 2 to layer them with...) And there's a ton of others, but you'll have gotten the idea.

Yours hopefully - I can see your well-trained mind wincing like toothache when you read this -

Chris.
Click to expand...

LASS probably has the best out-of-the-box samples imo. But I've only worked with the higher end packages. Vienna is more known for a complex matrix of articulations. Maybe someone with some experience on sub $2000 packages can chime in.
 
Can you post up a sample of your work?

I don't use strings very often and not in quite a while, but one thing I remember learning is they tend to get mushy quickly. I found that I can only play one or two notes simultaneously, the root and the fifth. Any more than that and it turns to mud. In the Sam Young clip you linked, it appears his string arrangement might be along the same lines; not full chords.

About your abrupt endings, go through the piano roll and ensure the notes are full length and that they stop right as the next one begins.

I would not recommend heavy processing. I believe the most orchestral libraries are already tweaked and doing any more can have a negative affect.

Just my thoughts.....
 
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