Krisp

I suggest you listen to the piano part alone, with a comparison between my two best VSTi pianos: Pianoteq 8 Shigeru Kawai vs Garritan CFX Concert Grand

Hey, thanks ! I didn't know this channel. I'm going to take a look. In any case, I advise you to train in these tools. A small miniature master keyboard can be very suitable. It is absolutely not a question of composing on it (I sometimes compose on the piano In a kind of routine, in the evening, but sometimes also simply on the train by noting a piece of stuff on a notebook, or on a block of music paper. But I didn't get used to composing directly on the computer, neither on the DAW nor on a score noter. (my old school)... So the master keyboard is only used to "enter" the partitions in the DAW and access the varieties of controls. And this is the moment that is both very long and exhilarating. The moment when you play your little puppets of musicians on the virtual stage. We activate the metronome and we manage to make them play what we noted, what we had in mind by noting on score. From this point of view, we are finally very close to the real work of developing a musical project. A rehearsal, or better yet a recording session. 4 measures of double bass spiccato, with a progression from P to FF, a crescendo timbale rolling, followed by a bright cymbal to punctuate the climax, tubas lining in staccato, or even trombones. Come on, let's try again. We resume. Each in turn. You see the idea... In any case, if I had been told that this science fiction, to have a symphony orchestra in his office, available, would one day be within my reach, when I was still a student and we spent 2 days trying to generate bell sounds with a Yamaha DX7 on our commodores 64... And yes, I'm not very young anymore... (But there are still many other things that I could not have imagined at the time, much more unpleasant for our world)...

Yes, it's compatible. Unfortunately I don't think the result is satisfactory. Music editing software does not have (to my knowledge) the advanced midi programming functions that DAWs have. For my part, I use Reaper and when I enter an orchestration, I have to play all the parts of my orchestration on the master keyboard then I have to turn the CC midi control faders for each sentence or each pattern in order to record the automation curves. This is the only condition to have a sound that lives, and does not remain in a fixed nuance. It is often necessary to do it several times to get the desired effect. For BBCSO for example, there may be 3 main faders to move: Expression, dynamic, vibrato, and possibly others, plus mixing elements with choices of microphone modifications, reverb or other elements. It is an ultimately much more dynamic approach than a score that remains quite fixed on its indications. For example, a realistic crescendo is not played continuously and linearly. A series of pizzicati must be a little chaotic and not strictly identical. A legato can be slow or abrupt, or even dripping, which is only possible by modulating the pressing force of each note on the midi master keyboard While playing on the expression and vibrato fader or other. I also add that a tempo should not remain the same and what's more, attacks are never strictly together. I also sometimes voluntarily leave false notes. And even "duncks" (you know, the "couac")... What might seem to us to be flaws, in reality participates in the realistic impression. It is therefore true that it is considerable work to enter each passage in the DAW (and to get used to the midi view system that does not look like a score). Sometimes, even more than for an orchestral score, you have to navigate in 200 or 250 tracks. It's pretty strong! But terribly addictive: I almost feel like I'm making a real orchestra work: such a flute solo is not successful the first time, so I do it again. I politely ask the flutist who is under my fingers to better succeed in her staccato, the melodic design of a curve, a swell. She tries to do it (my hand tries to play properly)... but it doesn't work. So I do it again by taking a tempo below, and this time she succeeds. For piano playing, it's easier. The VSTs react more or less like numeric keypads, but with a sound that is often more beautiful than the samples embedded in the clavinovas for example. I have an old clavinova next to my desk. Its touch is correct (much better than my master keyboard Komplete Kontrol). So it's easier for me to play everything on the piano directly on this keyboard. That said, you need a power machine because the samples can cause significant latency. (for example, Garritan CFX weighs 150 GB, BBCSO pro weighs 1 TB on an SSD, and the RAM of my MacBook is occupied at more than 20 GB when I work on orchestration under reaper. So, to summarize, using BBCSO samples will not be a great advantage with a score editor, even if the sounds are better. Those of Muse score are not bad by the way. But it is all the realism of the executions that will be missing, despite the deepest possible precision of notation.

I also really like the pianoteq 8 which is of a completely different nature. We can also get very nice things with it, but it only serves me as a piano test when I want to go fast and not overload the machine (even if Garritan already works well with my Mac without slowing down. It is installed on a Thunderbolt 4 disk and does not cause much latency or cracking. You need a powerful computer, that's for sure. BBCSO pro consumes between 15 and 20 GB of RAM and occupies 1 TB on an SSD.

Haha ! I'll let them turn a little longer, but I'll do allegiance to them one day by trying something much less audible... Thank you for your comment! I really appreciate it. Indeed, I had Liszt in mind, and necessarily, there are some reminiscences (but this relationship is also linked to the number and the choice of theme, as well as the principle of variation). And then, my piano is much easier to play! (At least at a more moderate speed). Initially, I didn't want it to be anything other than a musical beach in support of my slideshow. I got carried away a little and the music here overflows with its role as an accompanying person. To return to the samples used, these are several mixed libraries: The piano is Garritan Yamaha CFX (which alone weighs more than 150 GB, which is considerable, but I must say that since I got this VST instrument, it has really opened up new horizons for the use of the piano in my small jobs, because I find it sublime. The orchestra, globally is the BBCSO pro of Spitfire Audio. It was basically the BBC orchestra that was sampled. This program is now a few years old but remains in my opinion a very good option under the 1000 euro mark for a complete and very well sampled orchestra. Some blame him for having a sound that is too "concert", with a natural reverb of the recording location (their London rehearsal room, I think) but that's what I appreciate precisely because I find it quite convincing and lively. It's a very beautiful starting point that sounds very good. Note that Garritan and BBCSO have their own interface and do not depend on Kontakt, which in my opinion is a big advantage! I also use here a trumpet sample (The Trumpet V2) which is pretty bad at the interface level (it's on Kontakt). So sometimes painful interface to use, some strange conflicts, and a rooting of midi instructions really not clear sometimes causing bugs and conflicts. But in return, the sound of their different trumpets is absolutely splendid. He for the time being remains very neutral and malleable. It is a modeling and therefore it does not have the heaviness of a sample. This also allows extreme virtuosity that is not always possible with samples. On top of these elements, I use studio equipment that helps me give more character to these samples (compressors, EQ...). The fact that all this goes through hardware adds a certain amplitude that is not necessarily present in the sounds at the base. In any case, thank you for listening. (Ah, yes, the score... For the moment nothing is clean at home. Here for example, I only wrote a reduction for 2 pianos, and frankly, it's a draft. One day, in my next life, I may put all this clean, but my goal is always to go fast now and I really don't have time to make efforts on this point...) I often use my manuscripts as visual supports for my Youtube shares, with the idea of leaving the eye wandering, so that the music is not upset by the image. And the modified macro photos of my scores are finally frames that I sometimes want very abstract. But I understand your request. If I can, (on my return because I am traveling) I will post some photos of my music papers... Haha.

Good morning! Nice to see you again. Here is my fourth scarecrow based on a well-known theme (and rehashed hahaà). I indulge in the poncifs of the genre and I hope you will forgive me my retrograde side. But it's very fun as I often said here, on my almost old days, to have a virtual orchestra and a high-flying piano on hand! My teachers, peace to their souls, must certainly turn in their graves, they who swore only by the French avant-garde... By dint of writing these pastiches, they, turning around each time in their tomb, will end up resting on the right side ! The photos were taken during recent walks in the Parisian streets.

You're right, I wanted here a French song spirit, maybe the beginning of the century.And musically, I wanted to try to install this contemplative climate. The means are therefore very scarce on purpose. It's really nice that you talk about Rachmaninov because I recently had the immense privilege of singing again with the choir for whom I work the fabulous vespers. It's so beautiful, inevitably it leaves its borrowing...

Oh, thank you again, Yes, it's a disillusioned love song. The poet regrets that the loved one is ultimately not attentive to him other than by frivolous play. He generalizes and his words might seem bitter to us towards women if he did not mock himself. It's all the art of Jules Laforgues, to know how to tell us both the sublime and the ridiculous, the irony and the metaphysical aspiration... He is a great poet too unknown in France, who died at the age of 27 of tuberculosis in 1887.

Thank you very much! The female rhyme in French poetry is a verse that ends with a silent E, that is to say that we do not pronounce and therefore a foot that is not counted in the metric. In singing we can pronounce it because the sung declamation is of a different nature, but it necessarily implies a particular (désinence) treatment of the tonic accent in ending.

Little bittersweet song in E major (I'm not exaggerating) (text in French subtitled)

Good morning, Henry, First of all, thank you very much for your insightful comment. This text by Jules Laforgue is indeed fascinating. While it may appear abstruse at first glance, it invites the reader to join the poetic “dance” in order to uncover its deeper meanings. To begin with, like much of Laforgue’s work, this text is relatively unknown here in France. As a reminder, Jules Laforgue died in 1886 of pulmonary phthisis, a disease that defined the end of the 19th century and persisted into the next. Frequently referenced in art, it reached its literary zenith in works such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. In this poem, although Laforgue uses certain thematic elements drawn from medical vocabulary, he is not addressing the tuberculosis that would claim his life less than a year later. Instead, he revisits a theme he had explored before: an invocation to the moon, treating it as a silent witness. I previously set another of his poems, Complaint of the Moon in the Provinces, to music, which also centered on this motif. Here, the moon, once confided in for sorrows and heartbreaks in the earlier lament, becomes something much more unsettling: still silent, but now mocking, like stained glass in a church at night—soulless, dead, or languid in the chloroform haze of the clouds. It remains indifferent, even as the poet suffocates—perhaps from illness, love, or solitude. The absurdity of the poet’s situation is stark. His bad romances (béquinades—a now-obsolete French word) provoke derisive laughter, highlighting how his “platonic” (idealized) loves are reduced to nothing more than the trivial musings of an ordinary man. His imagined grandeur is deflated, exposing the ridiculousness of his human condition. This obsession builds into a chant-like rhythm, escalating into a true nightmare. The enigmatic phrase, “I want to gently caress your sad paten, widowed dish of the chef of Saint John the Baptist”, takes center stage. This is where the poem becomes almost proto-expressionist. Mystical imagery permeates the poem, but here it becomes unnerving. The paten refers to the dish that holds the Eucharistic host. In this vision, the moon is transformed into a dish—a plate in the sky—that once received the severed head of Saint John the Baptist. Now, it is an empty vessel, once an instrument of horror, reduced to a pale, lifeless object. At first, I hesitated to set this part of the poem to music due to its strangeness. Similarly, the inclusion of Salve Regina seemed too overtly religious. Yet, it is precisely this disorientation that defines the poem. The saint being invoked is none other than the moon—the “white lady” of folklore, queen of the night, whom he wishes to pierce with his phalènes. This, as you noted, is where the carnal implications are most evident. The phalènes, or moths, symbolize his poetic verses, which he uses to pierce the sanctified face of the moon. Yet, the phonetic similarity to phallus cannot be ignored. This could suggest a symbolic act of violation—taboo and transgressive. In the closing lines, “I want to find a Lied that touches you to make you emigrate to my mouth”, the poet seeks words powerful enough to draw the moon, his beloved, saint, or muse, to him. He desires a Lied—a song, popular or stylized—to achieve this connection. Laforgue, who lived in Germany as a reader for a countess, was undoubtedly familiar with Schubert’s Lieder. For me, the theme resonates with Der Lindenbaum from Winterreise, the epitome of Romanticism. That Lied inspired the musical motif I used here, after de climax. Both poems share a similar springboard: an invocation to nature (the lime tree in one, the moon in the other) as a confidant and source of solace. Laforgue’s melancholy mirrors Schubert’s: the consolation sought is ultimately unattainable. By the poem’s end, the observation is bitter. No rhymes remain, no words suffice—everything has been tried, all in vain. Yet, it is neither tragic nor pathetic, for tragedy is too sublime. Instead, it is simply futile, almost absurd. In my musical setting, I chose to reflect this futility by paring down the music after the preceding deluge of sound. Finally, a word on the poem’s rhythm, which I sought to capture musically. It is a decasyllable—a ten-syllable meter with a feminine rhyme at the end of each line. This form is rare, as more regular, symmetrical meters are usually preferred for their balance, particularly with clear caesurae. Here, however, the rhythm feels obsessive, deliberately strange. Notably, Laforgue’s earlier moon poem (Complaint of the Moon in the Provinces) used strict seven-syllable lines—a metric that hints at unreason. For this setting, I used a 6/4 (or 12/8) time signature to accommodate the ten-syllable lines while emphasizing the rhythmic punctuation of each verse with two beats. The entire piece is driven by an ostinato of eight eighth notes and two quarter notes. This is what I can add to your reading of the poem. Congratulations again on your astute insights and perceptive listening!

Hello dear friends young composers. Little music scribbled at the beginning of the year always on my dear and dear Jules Laforgue, too soon died of phtisia at the age of 25 it seems to me. Always his biting irony. Again, he takes as a witness the moon that never responds, remains cold, like a Rose of the basilica of silence that is the night. In French, the hidden games of meaning are absolutely fascinating, and the metric of the poem itself gives me a feeling of incantation or at least of scansion. I would even say that we touch on certain expressionist images when Laforgue evokes the head of Jean-Baptiste absent from the dish that is the moon! This poet has not been set to music to my knowledge. So I have dared for several years my little experiments by trying to serve him sincerely. I added an English translation in subtitles, but I'm not sure it can be totally respectful of the black magic of this text. Good listening and do not hesitate to criticize!

Oh thanks! Yes, it was a tender break. Thank you very much!

You're absolutely right. I left aside all irony and the squeaks that are familiar to me for this evocation of my father's work. He is a very sweet person, very quiet, who tirelessly travels his country paths with his camera on his shoulder. When he was young, he took a lot of street photos, in Montparnasse, in Paris, in the suburbs, scenes of daily life near where we lived. It was the 50s, 60s, 70s, a time today very distant so much the cities have changed here in France. In the 1970s, in France, the physiognomy of some suburbs was still almost rural, often working-class neighbourhoods, a very popular France, immortalised by the great post-war photographers, humanist and realistic. My father, some of whose photos were used for press publications because he was in an agency, belongs to a generation younger than this current, but his expression was still impregnated with it. Today, of more fragile health, his approach is calm, as I said. Paths, nature, and this small plant world has become the theatre of its colourist, impressionist expression, and its portraits are no longer humans but flowers, leaves, trees. With this in mind when writing my notes, I could not imagine anything other than a lullaby. The Lydian is very soft, very posed to my ears, despite the attraction towards the fifth that adds like a sensitive second in the scale. A doubly sensitive to express sensitive things... That's it, in any case thank you and thank you again for your beautiful comment!

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well. This simple lullaby on a single chord to illustrate my father's photos. This little thing comes from an improvisation at the beginning. Don't look for more than a contemplative moment in the service of images.