For Symphonic Orchestra users: Which sequencer do you use?

[Paladin]

Hi,

I've owned Symphonic Orchestra Gold Edition for a year now and still haven't found a sequencer that works for me. To be honest, I've only used the sequencer reaper, but everything I make in it has bad transitions between notes and overall sounds very incoherent. I would like to know which sequencer other people use, and if it works well for them. All I really wanted was a program that I could use to stick symphonic orchestra sounds into a premade midi file, and according to other users Reaper should have been good enough, but it is not.


Thanks.

[Pietro]

I don't think sequencer is the problem here.

EWQL products, although known to be relatively easy to use, need to be learned. You cannot expect the premade midi files to play with EWQLSO like the demos on products page. You have to learn how to use it - practice and discover many aspects of midi programming - expression, velocity, modwheel - before you can write good midi mockups with EWQLSO.

That's true for all virtual instruments, actually.

- Piotr

[riaosorio]

If you want the orchestral virtual instruments to sound as close as possible to the real thing, you need to play each of them as if you were the instrumentalist.. and then become a conductor at the mixing stage. This means little or no quantizing, unlike with using a pre-existing MIDI file where everything is quantized and therefore very unreal. The process also takes an awful lot of time.

If you must really go that route (use a pre-existing MIDI file and skip all the performing/sequencing/mixing), I suggest just import the MIDI file into Finale and use Finale's GPO instruments to play the file. Those are more tailored for that purpose. Although the output would not serve as a final product, it can be used as a study guide.

[boulifb]

I have EWQLSO for the last 2 months, while I'm not a professional, I do incredible things with it.
As riaosorio mentionned, you have to become the instrumentalist first. As Piotr said, you need to practice EWQLSO too.
The trick is that you need to become the instrumentalist for each part of the piece you try to recreate (or write).
Once all part sound ok according to the articulations (at this moment all notes, dynamics, and articulations are ok), I usually humanize each parts by slightly moving the notes (it's the Humanize transformation in Logic). Then, I humanize the tempo by changing it every beats and draw a pseudo cosines curve. This will recreate a humanize execution. If you don't play with these parameters too the execution will be computerized and very strict which won't be good.
Concerning the articulations you have options in the Play interface to pump up or down the output volume of the articulation. Try to play with. You have to keep in mind that when playing an instrument, in reality, you don't hear the changing of the articulations. So, the up or down output volume of each articulation is important too. Playing with this will give a fluent execution of the musical phrases.

View the DAW as the instrumentalist learning his/her part at home. Use raw sounds here. Don't put effects in the DAW.

When all is done, export each parts as wav file in high resolution, and mix them together in a post-production tool. View the post production tool as the conductor's job. Put all effects in this tool. That is compressors, exciters, limiters and so on.

Here are two example of what I have done with EWQLSO with these techniques and I'm not a professional:
- This is my current project: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=22473
- This is an attempt to recreate "Viktor's tale" by John Williams: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=21992

As you'll hear, it sounds almost human.

I hope this will help you.

Fred.

[interpolate]

The first thing you should probably check is that D.A.W. software is of professional standard - capable of multiple VST outputs, supports Rewire, has fairly decent MIDI support and if it displays music score it's bonus. The major notation software companies use rewire to bridge their scoring applications.

Generally speaking, Cubase, Cakewalk Sonar, Reaper 3.x and Logic or Digital Performer 6 if you are on a Mac, should suffice. You can always RTFM also.:D