Combining sound libraries

[Surfwhammy]

So, why tweak a trumpet to make it sound like a French horn? Just curious.

The primary reason for using a Solo Trumpet was inexperience on my part, since in the non-standalone flavor of Mirosolav Philharmonik there is no French Horn option . . .

There is a Horn option, but I continue to have no idea what "Horn" might be, and at the time Solo Trumpet appeared to be the best option . . .

However, since then I discovered that if I switch to the standalone user interface for Miroslav Philharmonik there are quite a few flavors of both French Horn and Flugelhorn, although I had no idea what a Flugelhorn was until this week . . .

I like French Horn, but I was not able to find one for quite a while, which was a bit annoying, really . . .

Really!

I did another experimental version of the piece, and I added a French Horn and replaced the Solo Trumpet with a different flavor of Solo Trumpet, so in this version there is a French Horn and a Solo Trumpet, with the French Horn to the mid-right and the Solo Trumpet more to the top-center, where the Solo Trumpet is playing the same notes as the French Horn but an octave higher, which also is the case with Violins I at far-left . . .

I also used a different flavor of Harpsichord in an attempt to control the presence of the Harpsichord, which appears to be impossible with the Miroslav Philharmonik flavors, since the Harpsichord tends to be either (a) entirely absent or (b) obviously present, and my general thinking is that it need to be present, although I would prefer it to be present in a smoother way, but controlling the Harpsichord in a very detailed way requires switching to Digital Performer 7, so I settled on it being always present, since I did not want to switch to mixing in Digital Performer 7 . . .

http://www.surfwhammys.com/TROMPETA-VOLUNTARIO-Surfwhammy-Mix-Solo-Trumpet-And-French-Horn.mp3

For reference, the majority of my knowledge of Baroque music is from watching the fascinating motion picture about Mozart ("Amadeus"), which for the most part probably was not Baroque, but so what . . .

So what!

If it were a Mozart piece, the Harpsichord would have more elaborate ornamentation, which is part of the problem I have with it, but it is consistent with what I understand about Baroque music . . .

[NOTE: To be clear, I want to have Mozart playing the Harpsichord, which I might do as an exercise sooner or later, since I think it might be a bit of FUN as well as an interesting way to explore elaborate ornamentation, which is one of my secondary or tertiary projects for lead guitar, where I have been listening to Mozart's "Twelve Variations on 'Ah vous dirai-je, Maman'" every once in a while for a year or so, which is a virtual encyclopedia of different ways to play the same basic song, as well as an outstanding guide to elaborate ornamentation . . . ]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/K265_%28Ah_vous_dirai-je%2C_Maman%29.mid

I moved the instruments to different locations until I could hear the various parts distinctly when listening with headphones, and I used the T-RackS 3 Deluxe recommended "Perceived Loudness" range for Classical music, so this is a softer mix with respect to volume and so forth, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

[Zblogny]

So, why tweak a trumpet to make it sound like a French horn? Just curious.

The primary reason for using a Solo Trumpet was inexperience on my part, since in the non-standalone flavor of Mirosolav Philharmonik there is no French Horn option . . .

There is a Horn option, but I continue to have no idea what "Horn" might be, and at the time Solo Trumpet appeared to be the best option . . .

However, since then I discovered that if I switch to the standalone user interface for Miroslav Philharmonik there are quite a few flavors of both French Horn and Flugelhorn, although I had no idea what a Flugelhorn was until this week . . .

I like French Horn, but I was not able to find one for quite a while, which was a bit annoying, really . . .

Perhaps these few details will enlighten you :

Horn, or French Horn (in french "Cor") :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%28instrument%29

Cornet (in french "Cornet à pistons) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornet

Flugelhorn (in french "Bugle") :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%BCgelhorn

-> Not to be confused with the english Bugle (military non-valved trumpet), whose french name is "Clairon" !

[marcato]

I must say the Surfwhammys version of the Prince of Denmark's March is a match, dB for dB, for the massive victorian rendition delivered by the combined forces of the State Trumpets, the Massed Bands of the Household Regiments and the organist of St.Paul's Cathedral, London. on July 29, 1981... As anybody could hear on Youtube.
Jolly good show!
It gives us a state of the art example of the many avenues one can explore in baroque music.
Surf, a short comment here on harpischord usage. In the Baroque era, the instrument was one of the components of what was known as basso continuo (thorough bass, figured bass or even ciphered bass). And no, Surf, there were no drum kit...
Recently, with my friend Serge, from Longueuil, I reassembled a credible version of Sammartini's Concerto for soprano recorder and I had to rebuild the "low end" of the score from scratch. Of course, we could have engaged in an uphill battle by deriving the bass line from the sketchy cello part, but we went hi-tech instead.
After reading the public domain PDF file into SmartScore X Pro, we sent it to Finale 2009 as an xml file and easily generated a credible "piano reduction" of the work.
The solo flute and orchestral accompaniment were subsequently developed and tweaked in marvelous Notion 3. I say only "marvelous" because "fabulous" appears to be a copyright trademark of Surfwhammys International...
The midified score and the thinned down piano reduction were sent to my Studio One Pro sequencer playing Miroslav samples. As the harpsichord from Philarmonik is not exactly in line for the next Nobel Prize of credibility, I used my favorite Blanchet 1720 instrument, a freeware Soundfont2 downloaded from the web.
Surf, old boy, I really recommend this harpsichord that you can certainly adapt, twist or hammer down to your needs by clever use of multiband EQ...
By the way, if you punch in Prince of Denmark's March into the search window of Youtube, you'll get to hear many many wonderful and not so wonderful versions of the so-called Voluntary.
A plus tard, mes amis...
Dave (aka Marcato)

[Surfwhammy]

So, why tweak a trumpet to make it sound like a French horn? Just curious.

The primary reason for using a Solo Trumpet was inexperience on my part, since in the non-standalone flavor of Mirosolav Philharmonik there is no French Horn option . . .

There is a Horn option, but I continue to have no idea what "Horn" might be, and at the time Solo Trumpet appeared to be the best option . . .

However, since then I discovered that if I switch to the standalone user interface for Miroslav Philharmonik there are quite a few flavors of both French Horn and Flugelhorn, although I had no idea what a Flugelhorn was until this week . . .

I like French Horn, but I was not able to find one for quite a while, which was a bit annoying, really . . .

Perhaps these few details will enlighten you :

Horn, or French Horn (in french "Cor") :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%28instrument%29

Cornet (in french "Cornet à pistons) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornet

Flugelhorn (in french "Bugle") :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%BCgelhorn

-> Not to be confused with the english Bugle (military non-valved trumpet), whose french name is "Clairon" !

I was inclined to guess intuitively that "Horn" probably referred to "French Horn", but I was not certain about it, so after a bit of user manual reading and standalone user interface experimenting with Miroslav Philharmonik I found specific samples for French Horn, Flugelhorn, and so forth, although I have not found a Piccolo Trumpet (a la "Penny Lane" [Beatles]) . . .

The Mirosolav Philharmonic has some very nice photographs of the its various instruments, and I use wikipedia frequently, since it tends to have a good bit of detailed information that appears to be reasonably accurate . . .

I worked on the most recent Surfwhammy remix for a few hours, but I never was able to get the particular sound that made the most sense to me . . .

Specifically, my impression of the way a Baroque ensemble should sound is based on a smaller room with high ceilings that would be suitable for an audience of perhaps 25 to 50 people, with the dimensions being somewhere in the range of 50 feet by 75 feet by 25 feet (length, width, height), where there would be some reverberation but not so much as in a large hall, and the instruments would be more distinct with greater presence but in a small way, which I suppose might map to what is called "Chamber Music" . . .

I have Panorama 5 (Wave Arts), and it has parameters for room dimensions, including parameters for wall, floor, and ceiling characteristics, so I might do some experiments using Panorama 5 rather than Notion Reverb . . .

On the other hand, doing a big production is interesting, and it is nice musical composition for experimenting, although I think it might be interesting to explore additional instrument parts (more counterpoint, harmony, and so forth) . . .

Lots of FUN!

P. S. When I was in a liturgical boys choir, every once in a while we would be accompanied by a small ensemble (strings, woodwinds, and perhaps a trumpet or French horn), so I know how it should sound when one is not so far from the instruments, but the cathedral was so immense that it had the type of reverberation that occurs in a ceramic tiled room with an Olympic swimming pool, so among other unusual techniques we had to use some pretty strange enunciation strategies, where for example we were instructed to sing "ecclesias" as "egg-shell-sea-us", which more than anything tended to make everything a bit surreal, since for the most part what we were singing was more along the lines of jabberwocky (a la "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland"), which at times wandered into the fantastic as the consequence of hats with elaborate fruit arrangements being in vogue among the ladies in those days, which in the grand scheme of everything was a bit much with respect to the ability of 10 and 11 year-old boys being able to avoid giggling when singing jabberwocky and looking at ladies wearing fruit bowls on their heads . . .

Fortunately, we had sheet music in large leather-covered binders, so when one of the ladies was wearing an especially fruity hat, the sheet music binders would raise in unison like the judges scoring an ice skating performance at the Olympics, and there would be a surge of vibrato and trills, which was especially dramatic when the particular fruit arrangement included an abundance of suggestively arranged bananas and plums . . .

And occasionally we were accompanied by a full orchestra, which always was a stellar experience, for sure . . .

For sure!

[Surfwhammy]

I must say the Surfwhammys version of the Prince of Denmark's March is a match, dB for dB, for the massive victorian rendition delivered by the combined forces of the State Trumpets, the Massed Bands of the Household Regiments and the organist of St.Paul's Cathedral, London. on July 29, 1981... As anybody could hear on Youtube.

Jolly good show!

It gives us a state of the art example of the many avenues one can explore in baroque music.

Surf, a short comment here on harpischord usage. In the Baroque era, the instrument was one of the components of what was known as basso continuo (thorough bass, figured bass or even ciphered bass). And no, Surf, there were no drum kit...

As the harpsichord from Philarmonik is not exactly in line for the next Nobel Prize of credibility, I used my favorite Blanchet 1720 instrument, a freeware Soundfont2 downloaded from the web.

Surf, old boy, I really recommend this harpsichord that you can certainly adapt, twist or hammer down to your needs by clever use of multiband EQ...

Glad you enjoyed it!

After pondering everything for a while, I decided to ornament the Harpsichord (Miroslav Philharmonik) and to add a second Solo Trumpet, as well as a Pipe Organ and a Cathedral Organ, although this probably moves it in a different direction from Baroque . . .

http://www.surfwhammys.com/TROMPETA-VOLUNTARIO-Surfwhammy-Mix-Ornamented-Harpsichord.mp3

This is the Notion 3 score and MP3 for the ornamented Harpsichord, which is "Harpsichord 2" in Miroslav Philharmonik, and it only has the Harpsichord part . . .

http://www.surfwhammys.com/Ornamented-Harpsichord2-Miroslav-Philharmonik.notion

http://www.surfwhammys.com/Ornamented-Harpsichord2-Miroslav-Philharmonik.mp3

I used notation trills in a few places for half notes, and they work nicely for some of the half notes but probably can be improved for other half notes, which mostly is a matter of using the correct type of notation trill rather than the same type of trill for all the trilled half notes . . .

And I only ornamented some of the Harpsichord phrases, so approximately half of the Harpsichord is ornamented and the other half is as it was originally, which I think works better, since there is a bit of contrast this way rather than everything going rapidly all the time . . .

However, I changed some of the chords at the start of the song, so it has a different mood at first, and as I recall there was a particularly dissonant note somewhere around the 19th measure in the original score, so I fixed it . . .

The song sounds better to me with ornamented Harpsichord, although it is more fitting for a wedding procession where the bride and groom are rushing to the altar so they can get married before the baby arrives, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!