PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production QUESTIONS BOUT ORCHESTRA LIBS.

Mario.
thats so grreat. 54 years ! congratulations.
buy her a nice present.

best
oldmuso

**laughing** oldmuso, I think I like your wife a lot!

Here are two suggestions for slide guitar soft synths, both by the same developer:

+++ Delta Blues Acoustic Slide Guitar +++ and +++ The Resonator +++. Both are $59 US, require the FULL version of Kontakt 5 or higher and developed by Idiginus.

This is just release and its FREE. You either need the full Kontack 5 or you need to install the FREE Decent Sampler Player. It is a 1Gig collection of Orchestral Swells.

Pianobook's First Orchestral Library

There are several demos just hitting youtube today. This is from the author.

Thanx Dan, this looks very interesting. DLing it now.

I am pretty happy with this. After about 10 minutes of playing around I determined the sounds are very nice. So I decided to go find the operational manual or an instruction video to figure out how to use it.

I have a major love/hate relationship with orchestra libraries. This illustrates the 'hate' side.

On one hand, it's faster and easier to use a "Vienna" sample at my computer than the real Bösendorfer in my front room with my wife playing. On the other hand, that real Viennese piano always sounds way, way better than the most expensive VI – enough so that we had the action completely rebuilt during lockdown (thank goodness it came out of her budget and not mine!).

I always hope that a project budget is big enough for a live orchestra and that I'm using my VI libraries to demonstrate ideas only. I can do a lot more tone shaping with a baton in an hour than a computer in a month. If wishes were horses… Anyway, all of the good VIs allow extensive tweaking but that takes loads and loads of time — and I'm always on deadline.

I had hoped that taking retirement from my music industry day job would give me time — then lockdown happened and making music online became a 50–80 hour a week "part time" job.

Well, my churches are meeting in person beginning September. We'll see…

Lament over.

Mike, what you said is absolutely true; a real instrument will always sound better than an emulated one. And yes you will need to not only spend a lot of time learning an emulation you have to know the nuances of said instrument.

Or you can use my approach, i.e. "that is close enough for me"

I want to get into this orchestral thing, but I'm not sure where to start... I'm using Cakewalk by BL as my daw. Should I start with something like the free Kontact player or something else?

Look for an orchestral sound library that takes the free Kontakt player. It will work with Cakewalk. Be aware, the better sound libraries will require the full paid Kontakt player.

That's not the only possible solution, though. There is a ton of research you could do. Or, if you have a Sweetwater rep, they can assess your needs and help.

thanks Matt... your suggestions seem like the best place to start.

one other thing... what's up with the text wrap with this thread..? especially page 2?
Very hard to read on my laptop... anyone? Thanks

I would start with one of these free orchestras:

https://thehomerecordings.com/free-orchestral-vst/#:~:text=Best%20Free%20Full%20Orchestra%20VSTs%201%20Layers%20by,orchestral%20sample%20VST%20plugin.%20...%20More%20items...%20

Download a couple of these and layering them will make them sound more realistic. Also note that some are VSTls and require no addition software to run.

Once you learn about orchestration, there are a lot of books on this, you can advance to better but more expensive sounds.

YMMV

Thanks Mario... I just did a quick format on one of my old BiaB usb hard drives and will start downloading...

Huh? That's not correct at all—ok because it is confusing. Let's see if I can clarify:

All Native Instruments licensed Kontakt libraries use Kontakt Player (free) including the ones from Native Instruments—doesn't matter the developer. Not only that, they have a Kontakt serial number and show up in the Kontakt browser. Any libraries that can use Kontakt Player are also available within Kontakt.


All Kontakt compatible libraries not licensed by Native Instruments require Kontakt which is paid. They do not appear in the Kontakt browser and must be selected manually.

A case in point: The Mercury Piano (as in Freddie's Fazioli) from WavesFactory is available in two versions, Mercury @ $149.99 uses Kontakt Player or Kontakt but MercuryLite @ $59.99 requires Kontakt.

WavesFactory Mercury & MercuryLite

BTW, before I bought Mercury, I didn't understand this either and it was WavesFactory Tech Support who generously took the time to explain these facts of life to me when I couldn't figure out how to run MercuryLite on the laptop I had at the time. (it's a great piano library and a license for Mercury entitles you to a free license for MercuryLite in case you have a laptop or such that can't handle the full resources of Mercury).

Thanks for clarifying. I should have said 'some' better sound libraries.

From what you wrote, it seems the financial model for at least one company is to encourage you to try a lite version if you already have the full Kontakt player? I suppose then they know they are dealing with potentially more serious buyers?

Besides being a VI host, Kontakt is also a sampler and has a great deal of additional functionality. Kontakt Player is only a host for compatible libraries.

At first, it's counterintuitive as in the Mercury example but makes sense when you know that 3rd party developers must pay a license to NI for a library to be compatible with the free Kontakt Player. I have some other libraries where the $29 or freebie requires Kontakt but the $99 works in Player.

NI offers teaser libraries that work in Kontakt Player. Their expensive libraries come either with Kontakt/Komplete or as an add-on but they also work with the free Kontakt Player—you don't get the sampling and other functionality if you use the Player.


UVI offers something similar but they give the sampler/synth a different name: Falcon. UVI Player is free. They and 3rd party developers let you know if VIs work in UVI or if Falcon is required. Two different names ends a lot of confusion.


I like the way IK does it. SampleTank is a very powerful player. It can be downloaded as CS for free. All paid versions use the same free player. I didn't realise this last year when my SampleTank3 libraries were giving me grief over MacOS Mojave and now I'm looking at a pricy upgrades. So I downloaded SampleTank4 CS for free to evaluate. Oh wait… now all my ST3, Miroslav, TotalStudio libraries open up in ST4 with more functionality than before and nothing is asking for new licenses — just like UVI, the actual player is free. Got it!

There are many advantages to spending the money on the full Kontakt version. The ability to add simple scripts to create needs (but you will need to do some learning). For example, even the trumpet in the Factory Selection can be made to sound fairly good by adding the pre written script to make the trumpet monophonic setting the portamento suitably thus creating a simulated legato. There are many things one can do with the full version of Kontakt not possible with the Player version.

Within no time the full version pays for itself when you include the free and cheaper patches.

Also a lot of the Orchestral Synths have there own players. For example, Vienna Instruments Synchron Player for the various VI libraries, Spitfire just to name a couple. Spitfire Labs even has free stuff not requiring Kontakt.

My thoughts
Tony

For a pop song, you typically don't need a full orchestra. Strings, flute, oboe, english horn, french horn - you're mostly looking to add color to a song, not write a extended flute and string trio. Large number of articulations are generally overkill.

Don't worry about uniqueness. These are orchestral instruments, and you're not writing for sample library connoisseurs, are you?

GPO 5 is rather dated, but it's fairly complete. I'm rather fond of the flute and double reeds.

Amadeus will also get you a full collection of instruments. I find the english horn a bit underwhelming, and in general it lacks detail, but it'll get the job done. The "Symphony" patches will give you that "full blown" orchestral sound without having to work

BBCSO isn't complete, but it's got some nice sounds, especially the strings. No solo instruments - they're all recorded in pairs. But the price (free) for the student edition is perfect.

The Miroslav CE edition is has some lovely sounds in it. The sound is more "detailed" than some of the other libraries.

Having the full version of Kontakt will get you access to non-Player versions of Kontakt libraries, which is a good deal in the long run. NI's got a Summer sale coming up.

The full version of Kontakt comes with the Kontakt Factory Library, which includes - among other things - a fairly complete collection of orchestral instruments. That might be sufficient for your needs.

There are a lot of things that these sample libraries can't do. The Golden Rule of writing with sample libraries: write to the library's strengths.

Once you've got a core library, you can then focus on getting single instruments to fill the gap of what's missing.

For example, Embertone has a lovely Chapman Trumpet, for $30. They also have the Popelka Bassoon, also $30. There are plenty of libraries out there to check out, so you can find exactly the sound you're missing.

If you focus on getting a smaller collection of sounds that you like, you'll be less likely to go trawling through your collection looking for something that fits.

Well... lots of good suggestions in the previous comments.

I'd start with Native Instruments Kontakt. If you want a good starting point, and money isn't really an issue, I'd suggest the Komplete package from NI. Last time I looked, it had Kontakt and somewhere close to 10+ other synths. All with different characteristics and a ton of virtual instruments and sounds. In addition, there are easily hundreds of third party vendors who make unique sound libraries that only work with Kontakt. You not only get the basic orchestral and band instruments but you get a bunch of soundscapes, and other sounds that go into what it sounds like you're wanting to do.

In my humble opinion, you can not go wrong using NI as a starting point. They have a huge and ever expanding library of sounds, it is relatively affordable compared to other synths and libraries on the market, and the most important thing is that everything they have sounds good.

Many years ago, I picked up Komplete and have never regretted it. Huge bass synths, drums and percussion synths, soundscapes..... my only regret is that I don't write music that can use it to it's fullest.

I have a few other synth libraries.... East West, Miroslav, and a few other ones but the Komplete package is my go to synth when I need something unique.

As far as something sounding dated.... I think it's more a factor of how it's used vs the actual sound.