Is it possible to make instruments sound natural through audio editing like this?

[Paul R Johnson]

The idea I suppose is to stop thinking about the instruments but the sounds that come out of them? I have loads of samples and the VSTi instruments that play them that produce the most weird and wonderful sounds - and the names try to explain what you'll hear bit fail. The funniest to me was a commission to produce two and a half minutes of sound for rainforest visuals. I found one labelled as evolving soundscape - it was number 500 or so in one instrument. I pressed one key and held it down for 150 seconds - it was a great ever changing forest-evoking sound that took absolutely no skill whatsoever apart from the patience to audition the 499 that didn't work. I like to think this is what I was paid for. The client was very happy and it sounded amazing.

The harmonica music was harmonica with three different reverbs, and two harmonicas, slightly different, layered together - and is the intro to a Supertramp song from the 70s!

Realistically - if your composer can play guitar and keys, that's all you need if you have the hardware and software.

[Josh Bass]

withour listening, was the Supertramp song “Take the long way home”?

[Paul R Johnson]

No - good guess though - think about school?

[Josh Bass]

I confess I only know their radio staples. So if its not long way home, goodbye mary, logical song, or the one about kippers for breakfast, Im lost

[John Nantz]

Paul - re Post #13

"Masquerade"
That was really, beautiful!!!

[Paul R Johnson]

Thanks John. It’s a bit odd actually. It’s a project from years ago, mixed with recent. We had a project almost finished to do a Carpenters tribute, and it took months to get the harmony parts finished, so long in fact our lead lady by this time had started a family and touring was totally out, so we gave up and shelved it. While recording some other stuff recently I played the track to a different singer, who is more musical theatre in style, and she wanted to sing it. We did a couple of takes for fun then moved on. Grant the classical pianist played just the solo section for me when my fingers just wouldn’t do it. Again, in the middle of his classical projects. He doesn’t even remember playing it, and has never seen Ellie for twenty years. The beauty of digital is that you can rescue stuff so simply. My recent experience with how music can be heard anywhere in the world by accident just made me dig out unfinished stuff and put it out there. In money terms, video seems to be a product that has sensible money attached. People are willing to pay for video shoots and treat it as a real thing. music is just music, and don’t want to pay for it. Very odd. They pay for Netflix’s, and all the other streaming services, but being asked to pay for playing music in shops here in the UK brings out very bad tempers?

[Ryan Elder]

Well after thinking about, if I use the harmonica the way it was played in Once Upon in the West, that movie plays it so uniquely that if I have a composer whip up the same thing, do you think it would be seen as ripping it off, since it's not often played that way, in that kind of tune?

[Josh Bass]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Thanks John. It’s a bit odd actually. It’s a project from years ago, mixed with recent. We had a project almost finished to do a Carpenters tribute, and it took months to get the harmony parts finished, so long in fact our lead lady by this time had started a family and touring was totally out, so we gave up and shelved it. While recording some other stuff recently I played the track to a different singer, who is more musical theatre in style, and she wanted to sing it. We did a couple of takes for fun then moved on. Grant the classical pianist played just the solo section for me when my fingers just wouldn’t do it. Again, in the middle of his classical projects. He doesn’t even remember playing it, and has never seen Ellie for twenty years. The beauty of digital is that you can rescue stuff so simply. My recent experience with how music can be heard anywhere in the world by accident just made me dig out unfinished stuff and put it out there. In money terms, video seems to be a product that has sensible money attached. People are willing to pay for video shoots and treat it as a real thing. music is just music, and don’t want to pay for it. Very odd. They pay for Netflix’s, and all the other streaming services, but being asked to pay for playing music in shops here in the UK brings out very bad tempers?

It aint just the UK. People like to steal music the world over. All intellectual property, really. Many folks dont think of it as a “real” thing, because it isnt tangible the way say, a car is. Also cause digital can be copied an infinite number of times without depriving anyone of the original—-many people feel nothing has been “stolen.”

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Well after thinking about, if I use the harmonica the way it was played in Once Upon in the West, that movie plays it so uniquely that if I have a composer whip up the same thing, do you think it would be seen as ripping it off, since it's not often played that way, in that kind of tune?

As long as the don't use the same notes in the same order you'll be fine, Many pieces of music are inspired by other pieces and that harmonica sound has been used in other films and commercials, however, it's usually done in a knowing way.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, thanks, that makes sense.

Well when it was said before on here that a sax sounds like a kazoo, when trying to make it sound right with samples, since I was wanting a bass sax for part of the music, will this be a problem, for sounding real?

[Brian Drysdale]

That's not my area, it's something that needs to be worked out with your composer, since all these things will depend on their skills.

Of course, you could use a musician to play the sax if samples are an issue.

[Paul R Johnson]

No - that's not what I said Ryan. Saxophones are an instrument that has a very wide tonal range, and while you can easily sample one and for some songs it would be fine, it would be terrible in others. Only sax players know properly what I mean - It's not that the technology is deficient - how on earth can you cope with an instrument that you blow and also hum, growl and even shout into? At the same time as you play notes on the damn thing. Is there a parameter for recording these things, let alone recording a session? I suspect the closest would be acoustic modelling, but I doubt we're close yet, technology wise.

To be honest hiring a decent sax player is often cheaper. For me personally, it annoys me to not be able to play what I need to play. Having a nice virtual instrument would be great - but we don't have one yet!

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks. What do you mean when you say 'acoustic modelling', in that context?

As for looking for real musicians, they are hard to find in my area. All the musicians I know, choose to either play piano, guitar, or drum set, but cannot find any that know how to play other instruments so far.

[Paul R Johnson]

Blimey Ryan - is your area really this short of creative people? However, your composer should be able to do all this, if he is a real composer and can play keys, has a computer and the right software.

Loads of my old students are musicians and technologists - what we're talking about really is the kind of thing that HUNDREDS of music enthusiasts do - this is not a rare hobby. Home studios and musical people are everywhere.

This probably isn't the place for this, but you have two broad methods of creating sounds in a hardware or software device. You have sampling - where you record every single note an instrument can play, one at a time, in every way imaginable. Quietly, through to loudest, raucus through to gentle, plucked, hit, pressed, blown, mangled - you name it. Then if you do it yourself, you spend hours manipulating these sounds so they blend and respond to your keyboard. Gently press an A2, and you use the quiet sample, hint the ky hard and it uses the loud one - use the expression control and it gradually changes from the quiet gentle sound to the mean and loud ones, an effortless mix. You might set key switches so a press of a non-sounding note selects one type of sound, but another key switch brings up a lovely legato, another gives you spiccato, another pizzicato etc etc. Some sample libraries are 50 or 60 Gb in size. The alternative is synthesis. There are no samples at all, but maths. Let's imagine a piano - we model it's acoustic properties. It's a string (or two or three strings) that get excited by being hit with a hammer - the hammer might be hard felt, or on a knackered piano, old soft felt, or even rock hard felt. This is what excites the string, in it's frame. What does the frame do? Provides resonance, sustain and gives body to the sound. When you press that note and hold it, it gradually dies away - or you release the note and a damper drops onto the string silencing it by stopping vibration. Synthesis does all this stuff with maths. Acoustic modelling can produce some really realistic instruments - sometimes better than sampling. They can also be easily modified. Some instruments use the maths in real life to produce their sound. Clarinets and oboes and flutes for example. Conical, or cylindrical bores. Some produce all the harmonics for each note, but others might emphasise odd numbered harmonics - hence why an oboe and clarinet sound different. Clarinets and saxophones have a single reed that vibrates, oboes have two reeds - they work differently and this can be modelled. You can have different tunings - so an out of tune piano can be created, and the degree of out of tune-ness controlled. Analgue synths used loads of oscillators to create amazing sounds, then Yamaha 'invented' FM synthesis that works totally differently (and was hugely more difficult to edit). So difficult in fact, that whenever Yamaha took one in for repair, it was rare to find anything new in the user banks. In the 80s - this meant with this new MIDI connection, stock sounds were in the charts all the time. These synths had rubbish real pianos, but really good electric simulations. They had good string simulations and pretty horrible brass.

There you go a potted version of synthesis and sampling.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but when you mentioned acoustic modelling before, you said you doubt we are there yet, technology wise. So does that mean acoustic modelling, is do-able or not therefore, is what I don't understand. Sorry, I was just seeing a contradiction there, or so it seemed, and I did not understand if it would work or not.

I can try to keep looking for musicians of the other instruments.