How Can You Sound Original If Everone Uses The Same Virtual Instruments & Synths??

[Mike Freze]

How Can You Sound Original If Everone Uses The Same Virtual Instruments & Synths??

Hey! I was just reading all this wonderful advice on one thread about miking amps vs. the sim alternative.

The problem I have with any virtual instrument, softsynth, simulators, etc. is this: how can any of these synthesized/digitalized sounds or instruments capture as unique of sound as a real guitar, real amp, a good mic, and that all-important variable called room ambience?? If everyone used all the great sims and virtual instruments out there, pretty soon hundreds of people's recordings will sound very much the same. Why? Because you can't duplicate the room ambience on a computer exactly like your own recording environment: every room, every building, every acoustical setup will vary from place to place when recording live. Not to mention the fact that every guitar, amp, and mic (if they are good quality) has it's own tonal sounds, responses, depth, and dynamic range unique to those instruments COMBINED with the uniquness of the room you record in.

It's difficult getting tracks of real instruments, amps, hardware effects pedals, etc. to blend naturally with midi tracksw in the same project made up of virtual instruments, softsynths, sims, direct recording, and so on. If you listen closely, it's easy to hear which tracks are "synthesized" and which ones are the real deal (audio instruments and hardware effects). This is true especially when there is an inconistent sound with the software stuff and the consistency of all the audio tracks you recorded using the same room ambience. The midi tracks tend to sound flat, thin, mechanical, too dry compared to the all audio tracks.

If the virtual instruments, amp sims, and software effects truly duplicate the live, audio sound, then why do people still like to hear live bands with real instruments and amps? Why do commercial recording studios still use studio musicians and real hardware equipment to record with? Why haven't all the amp manufacturers, guitar manufacturers, and hardware effects companies gone out of business??

Does this make sense to anyone?

Mike Freze

 

[diggy_dude]

Many producers put an enormous amount of effort into removing the natural room ambience from tracks and then adding artificial ambience. In fact, they try to eliminate as much of the natural ambience in the room as possible before they even record an instrument. Digital instruments save them at least part of that effort. If a MIDI track sounds thin or flat, it's probably because the producer used it as-is rather than doing things in mix-down to make it sit well in the mix. No synthesizer, hardware or software, sounds as good out of the box as it does on a well-made record.

 

[itaughttremonti]

It's all in the details. The nuances. How many guitrists do you know that have plugged a Les Paul into a Marshall stack and went at it? Do they sound relatively the same? Sure, but Slash sounds nothing like Mark Tremonti (he used LP's and Marshalls early in his career). Thats where all the mixing, EQ, etc comes into play. I haven't been recording long, about a month in fact. But the one thing I've learned is that every little detail can have a huge impact on your sound. Just my $0.02.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

It's all about arrangement. There's lots of music made with a mix of synthesized, sampled and custom recorded sounds. They are just combined and individually adjusted by people with good ideas and good production skills. Just because you can't make it work doesn't mean other people aren't doing it all the time.

Regarding live music, it also frequently combines synthesized, sampled and real instruments. The excitement of live music comes from the risk of failure, not just the sound itself. When you see someone crash in person the pain is real. Anticipating that possibility makes a live performance more dramatic.

 

[grimtraveller]

This isn't a new occurrence although with the covenience factor and the number of people recording today, it has probably become more pronounced. This has been a criticism levelled at new moves forward in musical technology at least as far back as the advent of multitracking and the electric bass guitar. And at every step along the way, artists, engineers and producers have overcome it. Indeed, in the thread you speak of, Supercreep puts up three songs and challenges listeners to tell which of the songs uses a 'real' amp and which doesn't. I know the album well and I couldn't tell. Nothing sounds 'fake' to me. Why ? Because the album in question is chock full of great varied songs. In the same thread, Greg L makes the often overlooked but no less important point that you don't just plug in and wahay ! No, there's still alot of tweaking involved. In point of fact, with VSTis, it's often more involved and labourious than walking around a room listening as mics are put in different positions........
And contrary to popular opinion, it is not always easy to tell which is which. A couple of examples. Recently I was listening an album by a band called Ad Astra and all the way through, I loved the snare sound on the drums but they just didn't sound real. I went through quite a bit of consternation because I liked something so much that wasn't the bona fide deal. Anyway, when I got home, I looked up the band and album and discovered that the drummer didn't use triggers and samples. It was a real acoustic kit. And the other day, I was working on a song with my friend and we had laid down simultaneous guitar and vocals. When she'd gone, I put on bass, congas, tambourine and more acoustic guitar......and a flute. I happen to know three flute players but one's in Zimbabwe and though the other two are close by and I'd usually ask them, I just couldn't be bothered and have to wait for a time when either was free so I used a flute sample from the Miroslav philharmonik VSTi. There's enough in there !
Anyway, when I played it for my friend, she was keen to know what the flute player thought of her song ! She kept pressing me for details. In the end, I told her I'd done it and she absolutely would not believe me. We've been great buddies for 21 years and I'm always kidding around. She wouldn't believe it was me. Now maybe some experts could tell, but I'm not so sure. I don't know if you ever find yourself doing this, but when I hear music recorded after 2000, I wonder if some bits are samples/VSTis. But at the end of the day, I don't care, if I like the song.
I think there are many ways to breathe life and ambience into virtual instruments. I think it may even have been you that suggested playing the said instrument through an amp and miking that for some room grit. I thought that was a good idea.

 

[diggy_dude]

And contrary to popular opinion, it is not always easy to tell which is which. A couple of examples. Recently I was listening an album by a band called Ad Astra and all the way through, I loved the snare sound on the drums but they just didn't sound real. I went through quite a bit of consternation because I liked something so much that wasn't the bona fide deal. Anyway, when I got home, I looked up the band and album and discovered that the drummer didn't use triggers and samples. It was a real acoustic kit.

That's it in a nutshell. You can't tell because every commercial record has been heavily processed. There are very few exceptions. All dynamic range processors color a sound. The attack and release settings on a gate, compressor, or expander actually change the timbre of an instrument sound by reshaping its envelope. Quite often, natural instruments are intentionally made to sound unrealistic in order to make them sit better in the mix. Studio processing gear does a lot more than what it says on the box. I recommend that the OP read Izhaki's Mixing Audio to get an idea of how many different effects are possible with an innocent-looking compressor or gate.

 

[guitaristic]

How Can You Sound Original If Everone Uses The Same Virtual Instruments & Synths??

In the same way that Eddie van Halen and I are both using the same notes (i.e. D-minor scale), yet one of us sounds way better than the other. And it ain't me

 

[grimtraveller]

The problem I have with any virtual instrument, softsynth, simulators, etc. is this: how can any of these synthesized/digitalized sounds or instruments capture as unique of sound as a real guitar, real amp, a good mic, and that all-important variable called room ambience??

Does it matter ? The mellotron was probably the first ever sampler. It contained real tapings of real instruments that were then played back on 8 second long strips of tape. It had brasses, strings, flutes, organs, bassoons, all kinds of instruments on them. For some reason they never really took off bigtime in the States, even though it was an American invention. But in England it was like an LSD enhanced psychedelic voice from heaven. It was decried and lambasted by orchestras, the musicians union tried to get it banned and even many bands passed on it. But despite the jibes levelled against this thing hailed pretty much as the death of music, lots of artists latched onto it, it liberated their guitar/bass/drums line ups and catapaulted them into new sonic territories. For some, it was a way to engage orchestral sounds. For others it was whatever it was. But the telling point is that the musicians of the day overcame the instrument's limitations and came up with exciting new ways to express it and as a result, we have close to 50 years of fantastic mellotron songs, be it Bowie's "Space odditty", the Beatles' "Flying", Pavlov's Dogs' "Of Once and Future Kings", Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Blessed Wild Apple Girl" and a zillion others. Sometimes, it did such a good job of portraying the instrument it was meant to portray, you couldn't tell it was the 'tron. Other times, it became something else altogether. Either way, it was inventively used.
The same can and does and dare I say it, must happen with VSTis or you won't have to worry about all stuff sounding the same. You'll have to worry about stuff sounding like total shit.

If everyone used all the great sims and virtual instruments out there, pretty soon hundreds of people's recordings will sound very much the same.

But there's the rub ~ not everybody does. Different musicians of different musical persuasions use different combinations of instruments and there are lots that simply aren't interested in VSTis and their ilk.
But even if "everyone" did, they would no more be the same than all those instrumentalists over a 50 year+ period have been with guitars, organs, trumpets, pianos, violins, saxophones and on and on and on.....
I may well maintain till I'm 77 that inventive use of VSTis and clever mixing is the answer to your dilema ~ and a huge leap of imagination.