Thanks a lot for this episode, it was a very informative video, amazingly produced (all these super clear and legible animations must have taken an insane time to create them) and also tremendously fun to watch and re-watch! It's a really enlightening and merry journey with this series, I like a lot its concise, clear and entertaining style and I've been making a lot of progress thanks to these videos, kudos to everyone for producing them :-)
Educational stuff, thank you! I've been pondering the exact question of why one should even bother with CC11, thinking it was just a glorified volume knob. AND IT IS! But the neat thing I've learned is that adding dynamics to your dynamics makes things more... DYNAMIC. I'll see myself out.
Thanks for the information and for the treat at the end, The cellist is tremendous, and shows that there is nothing like the human feel. But what you showed us about the Midi CC,s really helps.
The one giveaway at the end versus the beginning... you can hear Clara's fingers tapping the fingerboard and you can hear her breathing :-) That was missing from the opening section that used samples. I love using CC11, it really helps to shape the phrasing independent of the note dynamics.
The bowing was the giveaway for me yeah, but I didn’t want it to be 100% either, it was really weird editing it 😂 It got into the uncanny valley quite quickly, and we even tried to match the room sound up a bit as well
@@alexlamymusic I bet! Fantastic job on the sound. I had it on in the background and didn’t think twice about that first tremolo, thought it was a real instrument playing. Is that an OT solo strings library?
Thank you for this detailed episode! I'm still learning to find that balance between my expr. and dynamics, but this video should make it easier to get there. Also, will you make a video regarding the different EQ's on samples? For example what to listen to when equalizing strings to eliminate unwanted frequencies that build up in your final mix ect.
That’s not a bad idea, maybe down the line a general mixing tips video could be good. I can give you a bit of advice in meantime though! With sampled strings (or any samples actually) don’t make the mistake of assuming you always need to cut things out. They’re recordings at the end of the day, and they may have been processed, they may have lots of mics on offer, or they may be very raw and unprocessed. Listen first, look with a spectrum analyser too. Assuming your dealing with an unprocessed (as it was recorded) library, like Berlin Strings for example. The first thing is to get the sound you want with the mic mix. The second is, if you’re using reverb, is that causing muddiness or harshness? And if so, eq the reverb send (before the reverb plugin) instead of the strings - don’t take away frequencies for the sake of it. Then lastly, eq the strings. The most common thing that makes string samples sound a bit fake is when lots of notes are playing at once, the noise and the room tone is being multiplied as well, mostly the noise around the bowing of the strings, around 2-3kHz. Pulling a little bit of that out can help. Muddiness for our ears tends to build up a lot between 150-220hz. I’m constantly taming resonance at 190-200hz, even in live string recordings, where lots of the resonance of a room can come out. Listen to cellos and basses in that area, and a good practice is to use a dynamic eq there, rather than pull them all out completely. Overall sound can be helped a bit by scooping or boosting the low mids around 400-900hz too. I find some libraries can sound already too scooped out, and adding a couple of dB here adds a bit of richness in, or sometimes a smaller room, or ribbon/vintage mics can overemphasise this area, and little reduction can help a library blend with another set of samples. Hope that’s a useful start! 👍🏻
@@alexlamymusic this is an entire episode's worth of content in one comment! Thank you! This is all going into my study / practice notes. In the meantime I'll quantize everything to fu-
Yeah, Swam and SampleModelling both have to receive CC11 before they can trigger, unless you tell them otherwise. It's also tone as well as volume. It doesn't sound the same as CC7 which is just volume. On an an analogue synth I may send it to envelope depth, so it could be effecting an amp and a filter envelope.
Thanks for this creative lessen! I have a question as to programming the MC-8 in Garageband. Can’t seem to assign the CC 1 and CC11 to adjacent faders in GB. Anyone who can answer this question?
Hi Martijn, have you done the fader assignment via the browser configuration page? I'm using the MC-8 in Logic with the two CCs on adjacant faders. But as the assignment is done within the hardware it should be independent from the DAW.
Your sustained notes all look like they overlap in the piano roll slightly. Can you please explain the reasoning and how much should we overlap them by?
Hi Steven. The reasoning is different depending on the patch. Legato patches need the notes to overlap to trigger the transition between two notes, and it doesn’t matter how long they overlap, unless you want to extend them beyond the next note so that you go back and forth between two notes (which is easier when playing things in live). With sustains, a very small overlap means you’re disguising the release of one sample into the attack of the next, and gets you a more natural transition. With the expressive samples, it’s about where you need the sample to actually stop. Some you can allow to play the whole sample - in this case, finish the whole bowing. But some might have conflicting harmony, and so you end them more intentionally. There’s no specific amount for the overlap, it’s just whatever works for that patch.
It’s a nakedboards MC-8. Didn’t measure the throw, but it’s quite good. Doesn’t take up much space on the desk either! At home mine is a bit more bulky 😅
The maker and developer of the MC-8 (MC: MIDI Controller with 8 faders hebben this name) is Nikolay Ershov from Moscow. A very nice controllers that’s not overpriced.
This video has a lot of problems. In many, many libraries CC11 controls expression and CC1 controls things like vibrato, In other it's used for patches. Libraries like VSL allow you to customize what they do, with CC2 for expression for example. Since this is an educational video, a side note should've been mentioned.
Most libraries work the way we describe in the video, with East West being the only exception I know of beyond much more complicated patches. Not sure we can do the manuals for all of those in the video though! 😅 What were the other problems?
