Choosing orchestra samples for use in musical theatre

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jw1

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Hello,

I supplement the pit orchestra at a community musical theatre, primarily covering missing parts, and I am interested in buying an orchestral sample library to cover string ensembles. I'd like to read people's opinions and experiences on the various choices out there. I could spend up to a couple of grand on the library.

I've made a conscious decision to stick with hardware modules, and would expect to load the samples in to an E-mu 4XT Ultra. I use a Roland A-90EX and a Roland A-80 as my keyboard controllers.

Some random thoughts about the situation...
  • it's live theatre, so the audience is typically paying extremely close attention to the sounds and singing, so I don't want to try to cheat on quality;
  • I can do some amount of layering, but can't get "48-track" crazy ... everything has to be able to be done live with two hands ... e.g., If I need to be able to move between articulations, it needs to be real-time controllable;
  • I'm worried about having to spend too much time on set up ... of course it'd be great if it Just Worked out-of-the-box but realize that might be a bit unrealistic;

I appreciate any pointers you could make.

Thanks,
jw
 
I've done quite a bit of this sort of thing.

Out of the pit there is a fair loss of detail, so the precision won't be as necessary live as in a studio setting. You're looking for warmth.

I've used string sounds on an old Korg Poly-61 for Sondheim - sounded great -because there's really only a pad which peeks through.

I've used Roland XV-3080 with Orch 1 & Orch 2 JV cards (great)

There's an old Roland SE-1 module which is also like the above card sounds.

I've used Roland SRX-04 Strings Cards and SRX-10 Brass cards (both excellent) in a XV-5050.

I've used Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas module (good General midi sounds)

Don't use DX-7s live - they disappear in the mix. Digital gets thin.

Use one person on keys to do strings, another to do tuned percussion (timps / glock / vibraphone etc), another to do piano. You can get away with some reeds (oboe and flute) on keys, but saxes and brass are better with authentic instruments.

Always use good speakers (15" and horn) for your keys - the depth is necessary - practice amps with smaller speakers sound awful.
 
Thank you!

Hello,

Thank you all very much for your responses. The comment about pushing for warmth above all is insightful. Not hearing myself out of the pit, it was a perspective I didn't have.

Thanks again!

Sincerely,
jw
 
I do this quite a bit, actually, I pretty much make a living at it. Here's what I use:

Roland XV-5080 with the SRX-04 Symphonique strings and SRX-06 Orchestral boards. I also have the SRX-02 piano board, and am planning on adding the SRX-brass board soon.

I've done a lot of programming on the sounds though, and I don't use any of the presets. I mix samples from the various boards and sometimes the internal waveforms. So string patches will be basically built from the SRX-04 board, but I will also layer in samples from the SRX-06. I'll also use different sounds from different boards on the left and right. It has worked out really well, and I do get hired sometimes especially for my string sounds.

I also have a bunch of Emu Ultra samplers, and a stack of Akai S5000's as well. I prefer to take the 5080 because the samples are on hardware boards, so there's a low load time. And if the power goes out there isn't a long wait while the machine loads again.

However, the Roland also has the capability of being installed with 128 megs of RAM, same as the Emu Ultra series. So I frequently will use some or all of that as well. Having the strings taken care of by the SRX boards allows me to use the sample RAM entirely for other sounds. Which could be woodwinds, accordian, harp, or whatever.

However, an EMu Ultra with an internal hard drive would also be a viable solution, although I think you'd run out of sample RAM pretty quickly since you'd be building the strings out of the same RAM as everything else.

That said, the string library I still like best is by Kirk Hunter and is called Virtuoso Strings. That's what I use in my studio for my scoring gigs (layered with other libs as well, often the Roland SRX-04). However, in my studio I have the Kirk Hunter lib spread out over five Emu Ultra samplers, so I can use all the big versions of each instrument, with the various articulations. On one sampler you can't really do that.

I do find the Roland 5080 with the expansion boards to be a great solution for live work.
 
Thank you [SA] for your comments on how you use the XV-5080 (with expansion boards), your EMu Ultras, and Hunter's Virtuoso Strings.

You write

>> I do find the Roland 5080 with the expansion boards to be a great solution for live work.

If you don't mind me asking ... Since you have both, do you write that because you feel that the Virtuoso Strings on the Ultras are too unwieldy (from a technique perspective) for live performance; because the 5080 can -- in one package -- do enough that you save yourself the trouble of carting around a stack of Ultras?; or something else.

Since I don't have a 5080, and I have the investment in the Ultra, I feel I should pursue the string library on the Ultra (easier to justify to myself). But not if playing it live would be too much overhead ... for example, moving between acro and pizz, etc.

And I have no experience with the string libraries (like V.S.), so have no idea what programmatics I'm signing myself up for if I go down the path.

I appreciate any responses,
Sincerely,
jw
 
Moving between arco and pizz is easy, just a program change away if you have those sounds loaded.

Both boxes would work for what you want to do. It's just that you can have a *lot* more sounds loaded in the 5080 than in the Emu Ultra. Put in the piano, Symphonique Strings, and Brass boards, and you have all those instruments covered very well. Now your 128 megs of sample RAM can be devoted to other sounds. In the Ultras you only have the 128 megs, so if you need a lot of sounds you easily get into the situation of having to use cut down sounds, or loading between acts or even during acts. I try to avoid loads during acts, myself.

This said, I do find the Emu ultras *much* nicer to work with as far as dealing with sample libraries. The Roland will load Roland and Akai libraries reliably, but the operating system is more cumbersome to deal with. It's also sometimes haard to balance imported sample library sounds with the internal synth/expansion board sounds. For some reason, Akai samples tend to get imported soft. There are some tricks around this, but it still can be a bit of a pain.

However, my own personal choice is to use the Roland XV-5080 for live gigs. It has worked out really well. As I mentioned in a previous post, I use the SRX-04 Symphonique strings, SRX-06 Orchestral, and SRX-02 Piano boards. I'm planning on getting the SRX-10 brass board soon. It really does cover the bases nicely.

The other factor is one you alluded to: that of portability. I used to drag around a large rack to gigs. Big, heavy, loaded with synths, a mixer, midi processor, rack power supply, the whole deal. Load ins and load outs were a pain (literally). What I do now is carry my 5080 to gigs in a two space soft rack. Setup is quick and easy, and much lighter on me physically. It sounds better than the older gear, too!

You mentioned that your budget is around $2,000. For that you can get the 5080 at current prices, plus some of those expansion boards. I buy the SRX expansion boards new from a dealer for around $200. The 128 megs of RAM would cost you not even close to $100, and you might even have a little money left over to buy a sample library or two.

Or, you could just put all the money into the libs for the Emu. Either works. I would say though that if you are planning on doing more than just strings, you might want to lean toward the Roland. If you are really doing primarily strings, then certainly the Kirk Hunter lib is very good.
 
Thank you so much.

Hello SonicAlbert ... thank you so much for your additional post. You've given me some solid 'food for thought' and I feel better prepared to decide, given your posts (and the others).

I appreciate your time and sharing your experience!

Sincerely,
jw
 
Follow-up

Hello,

For what it's worth, here's what I ended up doing: I purchased a 5080 and SRX-04. Our latest show opened last Friday and I'm using the new gear ... it fits in great. Between the time the gear arrived and I had to load in at the theatre, there wasn't time to learn the sampling, so the SFX I needed I sampled into my Ultra.

Thanks for the help,
Sincerely,
jw
 
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