Tchaikovsky Dance of The Little Swans — Sample Mockup

My attempt at a Virtual Instrument recreation of the piece, because this type of thing is one of the hardest things to do with samples and I wanted to torture myself for some reason.

I also tried to give it an old vinyl recording sort of vibe. Let me know what you think.

sounds super realistic

18 hours ago, Left Unexplained said:

sounds super realistic

 

Thanks bro, I tried

what samples did you use?

This is nice! I'm also curious what samples you used. Do they have true legatos or are they simulated?

A couple of thoughts:

• This is possibly a limitation of the samples, but when the flutes come in at 0:12 the articulation is not as staccato as the oboes were in the preceding phrase. You might try shortening the note length in your DAW and see if that makes it sound more uniform? It also sounds like the clarinets are playing much shorter than the flutes. You may try bringing the clarinets forward in the mix - I think this would help the balance, and also might mask the longer articulation of the flutes. Just my opinion.
• It kind of sounds like the tempo in the middle section is moving around a little bit (speeding up and slowing down), I'm not sure if this was intentional? I don't know if that's in the score, but it sounds a little unnatural to me. If it's what you want though I say go for it.
• At 1:14 it gets quieter very suddenly. Maybe there is a sudden "pp" in the score, but it sounds unnatural to me. Check out the linked video as an example, there isn't nearly as much of a drop off in volume at that part.

Nice work! It's good to see other people attempting to make realistic mockups with samples!

Nice job!  I just thought I'd mention (especially in direct comparison to the video @gmm posted up above) that there are some wrong-sounding notes or (maybe?) mistakes in your mock-up.  At 0:28 the strings land on a note that seems to be a half-step higher than the intended target.  I wish I had the score so I could more clearly articulate which note this is.  The same thing happens when the flutes get that melody at 0:36.  And again at 0:53.  I don't know if I caught all of them - some of the scalar passages also sounded a bit funky somewhere in there.  I think it's great that you're interested in arranging the music of a known master like Tchaikovsky - he's one of my favorites!  Thanks for sharing!

4 hours ago, gmm said:

This is nice! I'm also curious what samples you used. Do they have true legatos or are they simulated?

A couple of thoughts:

• This is possibly a limitation of the samples, but when the flutes come in at 0:12 the articulation is not as staccato as the oboes were in the preceding phrase. You might try shortening the note length in your DAW and see if that makes it sound more uniform? It also sounds like the clarinets are playing much shorter than the flutes. You may try bringing the clarinets forward in the mix - I think this would help the balance, and also might mask the longer articulation of the flutes. Just my opinion.
• It kind of sounds like the tempo in the middle section is moving around a little bit (speeding up and slowing down), I'm not sure if this was intentional? I don't know if that's in the score, but it sounds a little unnatural to me. If it's what you want though I say go for it.
• At 1:14 it gets quieter very suddenly. Maybe there is a sudden "pp" in the score, but it sounds unnatural to me. Check out the linked video as an example, there isn't nearly as much of a drop off in volume at that part.

Nice work! It's good to see other people attempting to make realistic mockups with samples!

Yeah, I'd heard some different recordings in which there was a much stronger drop off and some other performances had a lot more varied tempo.

Though to be honest I kinda didn't limit my reference to specific recordings and more just tried to make it sound like a new-old one, if that makes sense.

The clarinet articulations are a massive pain in the a$$ and difficult to get the short ones under control.

3 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Nice job!  I just thought I'd mention (especially in direct comparison to the video @gmm posted up above) that there are some wrong-sounding notes or (maybe?) mistakes in your mock-up.  At 0:28 the strings land on a note that seems to be a half-step higher than the intended target.  I wish I had the score so I could more clearly articulate which note this is.  The same thing happens when the flutes get that melody at 0:36.  And again at 0:53.  I don't know if I caught all of them - some of the scalar passages also sounded a bit funky somewhere in there.  I think it's great that you're interested in arranging the music of a known master like Tchaikovsky - he's one of my favorites!  Thanks for sharing!

One of the scores I was looking at I definitely think probably had wrong notes so that's one thing, but another thing can be that the vinyl plugin it's all being run through does modulate and distort the pitch 

5 hours ago, Left Unexplained said:

what samples did you use?

Cinematic Strings 2 for the strings

Orchestral Essentials for the brass

Cinewinds for the bassoon

and ye olde East West Symphonic Orchestra for the rest.

5 hours ago, gmm said:

Do they have true legatos or are they simulated?

Some of them do, most of them don't.

True legato is IMO a greatly over-rated feature of libraries for full-ensembles and it's waaay overused by composers because I guess they think if you can hear every little transition it automatically sounds "real", but most of the time, the players aren't playing everything legato. Usually, there is clear separation between notes, and in lines that are legato, at least where there are multiple instruments playing the same line, it's tough to make out the sounds in-between anyway.

It's also never clear what the developer means by "true legato". Sometimes they just have transition sounds like fingers hitting keys, sometimes it's slurs, etc.

I wish more developers would focus on a variety of articulations and homogeneity between them rather than focusing so much on legato.

15 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Some of them do, most of them don't.

True legato is IMO a greatly over-rated feature of libraries for full-ensembles and it's waaay overused by composers because I guess they think if you can hear every little transition it automatically sounds "real", but most of the time, the players aren't playing everything legato. Usually, there is clear separation between notes, and in lines that are legato, at least where there are multiple instruments playing the same line, it's tough to make out the sounds in-between anyway.

It's also never clear what the developer means by "true legato". Sometimes they just have transition sounds like fingers hitting keys, sometimes it's slurs, etc.

I wish more developers would focus on a variety of articulations and homogeneity between them rather than focusing so much on legato.

Yeah I know what you mean. In my experience their usability is very context-dependent - you just have to try and see if they work and adjust as needed.

For example, I use Spitfire Symphonic Orchestra for most of the stuff I make. They tend to be pretty good for simpler stuff and passages that are scalar in nature, but as soon as you try to use them for arpeggio's and lines with alot of skips, they quickly start to get a little messy - the solo trumpet and some of the woodwinds are particularly bad. I honestly find myself using the "long" patches on the woodwinds more often than not, since they tend to sound more legato than the actual "legato" patches lol.

FWIW, I recently picked up VSL's Synchron Strings and Synchron Brass. It seems to me like they took kind of a hybrid approach with these libraries, where they have lyrical legato patches that use real samples, while they also have "fast" legato patches that seem to be more simulated. It may not be a "true" legato, but since you're using it for fast scales or arpeggio's you can't really tell anyway.

It is quiet close to original (https://musescore.com/user/3887781/scores/3737981)! Good work!

Nelly! I guess this one is more correct- https://musescore.com/tromboneryan/dance-of-the-little-swans-tchaikovsky