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Extension Woodwind bundle

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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby wilhoit » Sun Jun 15, 2014 9:32 am

WOW, thorrild. Thank you! I'll check my dynamics. I had the impression that I'd heard the problem at louder levels, but there may be hairpins involved, etc.

(btw I rejoice in your best wishes, which I presume will endure exactly until I miss the point.)

Thanks,
Frank Wilhoit
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Bundled sounds + Woodwind extensions
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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby Surfwhammy » Sun Jun 15, 2014 9:53 am

thorrild wrote:There is a bug in the Bassoon Duo sample: The bottom notes play a half step too high only when the dynamic is between mp and p.


Fabulous! :D
The Surf Whammys

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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby Johnny » Sun Jun 15, 2014 12:49 pm

Szurcio1 wrote:
robsogge wrote:At times I wonder if you're a human or a super sophisticated bot :D

Ha, ha... I've been wondering the same thing about Surfwhammy. I mean, what human would have enough time and patience to produce such lengthy posts so often?


I remember these replies back in 2012.


P.s.
"Surf" do you have the "Woodwinds Section Bundle for Notion" on your system?
I was just curious.

,Johnny

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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby wilhoit » Sun Jun 15, 2014 2:15 pm

Based upon thorrild's bug report and surfwhammy's examples of the embedded XML at the end of the .prox files, I think I may have found the bug. I am looking at byte offset 0x0B8318C9 in "Bassoon Duo Expansion.prox" . This is the sample set for {some type of articulation, not sure which yet} at dynamics of either p or mp. The suspect line of XML reads

<sample codec="1" data-start="123412992" data-size="1079344" sample-channels="2" sample-frames="269836" frame-size="4" tone-marker="0" release-marker="0" loop-begin="88712" loop-end="190263" nso-key="0" base-pitch="Bb1" lower-pitch="A1" upper-pitch="C2"/>

and the discrepancy is that all the other samplesets in the file use "B1" as the base pitch for that range, not "Bb1".

However, I changed it to

<sample codec="1" data-start="123412992" data-size="1079344" sample-channels="2" sample-frames="269836" frame-size="4" tone-marker="0" release-marker="0" loop-begin="88712" loop-end="190263" nso-key="0" base-pitch="B1" lower-pitch="A1" upper-pitch="C2"/>

...but that didn't change the behavior :( . Anyhow, my guess at the semantics of the base-pitch attribute would, if this were the cause, have made the affected pitches sound a half-step low instead of a half-step high. (These attributes look like they mean "if the pitch I'm asking you to render is between lower-pitch and upper-pitch, then go get the sample at data-start for data-size, interpret it as representing a snippet of base-pitch, and transpose it accordingly if necessary." But this doesn't seem to be quite right, else my change would have had an audible effect, possibly raising the problem notes yet a further half-step.)

You may imagine how delighted I would have been to be able to present a fix along with the diagnosis! But something else is going on. It may be that the samples themselves are wrong. I'm not going to start mucking about trying to find a different block of sample data. Come to think, the change of the base pitch to Bb1 may have been someone's unsuccessful attempt to correct the problem at the metadata level.

Thanks,
Frank Wilhoit
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Bundled sounds + Woodwind extensions
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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby wilhoit » Sun Jun 15, 2014 3:10 pm

The problem sampleset (one of sixteen in the file) is for the vibrato technique, which is apparently the default. So another very possible workaround is to add the "non-vib." technique text -- which can of course also be hidden. This does not require the dynamics to be fudged and the technique difference will not be noticed except in a very exposed passage. For most orchestral contexts, this will probably be my first choice workaround.

Staccato is also immune.

If you're insatiably curtious, like the Elephant's Child, the sixteen samplesets, in the order in which they appear in the XML, are:

half-step trill f -- fffff
half-step trill ppppp -- mf

non-vibrato f -- fffff
non-vibrato mf
non-vibrato mp
non-vibrato ppppp -- p

vibrato (default) f -- fffff
vibrato mf
vibrato p -- mp (this is the one with the bad sample)
vibrato ppppp -- pp

staccato f -- fffff
staccato mf
staccato mp
staccato ppppp -- p

whole-step trill f -- fffff
whole-step trill ppppp -- mf

Thanks very much to everyone here for their help and ideas.
Frank Wilhoit
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Bundled sounds + Woodwind extensions
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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby Johnny » Sun Jun 15, 2014 4:50 pm

Frank, I have to hand it to you. That is very clever thinking. Awesome! This is very helpful. Thank you very much for sharing.

wilhoit wrote:The problem sampleset (one of sixteen in the file) is for the vibrato technique, which is apparently the default. So another very possible workaround is to add the "non-vib." technique text -- which can of course also be hidden.


AND!!!!

Thank you thorrild for responding to Frank's post with such good information. I was just out from a scary hospital stay last year when you posted about this issue.
I purchased the expansion sound set I think in Nov. 2013.
I've got poor memory but thought I might have recalled something about this. Kind of foggy. As soon as you posted to this topic it kind of came back a little.
Anyway! Thank you very much for your input and the example file which "revealed" the problem.


thorrild wrote:There is a bug in the Bassoon Duo sample: The bottom notes play a half step too high only when the dynamic is between mp and p. The attached file illustrates the problem, for those who have bought the expansion sound. I reported the bug some months ago and it has been logged but not fixed yet. I don't know when Notion plans to update/correct their sample library, but when they do, it'll be fixed, I assume.

The workaround: If a Bassoon Duo passage must be marked mp or p, double-click on the dynamic and change its playback volume: On an mp, type +1 (making it play mf) — on a p, type -1 (making it play pp). Unfortunately, this doesn't work if the mismapped pitches occur over a hairpin going from, say, ff to ppp.

With best wishes,
Thorrild


=================================================================================================

Thank you both very! much.

,Johnny

P.s. I've been using Sample Modeling Woodwinds almost exclusively and didn't no there was an issue with the expansion sounds until your good ears found the problem "Frank" and "Thorrild".

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Last edited by Johnny on Sun Jun 15, 2014 7:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby thorrild » Sun Jun 15, 2014 5:22 pm

Johnny wrote:Did you post this issue on the forum before?
I purchased the expansion sound set I think in Nov. 2013.
I've got poor memory but thought I might have recalled something about this a long time ago. Can't quite remember.
Anyway thank you very much for your input and the example file which "revealed" the problem.


Johnny and Frank,

Happy to be able to help, although I am deeply impressed with Frank's hacking into the .prox file itself to do further sleuthing. Thank you both!!

I just looked at my files and see that I discovered the bug when working up a Notion version of the overture to Tannhäuser (which is on SoundCloud). The creation date of that file is July 26, 2013, so it's almost a year ago now that I reported the bug.

I don't think I posted anything to the forum at the time — my mistake. I just emailed Brian, got a reply that it had been logged, and forgot about it. When I post something to the forum (which is not really a bug report vehicle), I never quite know if the issue eventually makes it into Notion's to-do list, even though I am fairly certain someone on staff reads everything posted there at some point.

Come to think of it, I should probably go over my emails to Brian and see if there's anything that might be useful for the forum — stay tuned…

Best,
Thorrild
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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby Johnny » Sun Jun 15, 2014 5:35 pm

I was out from a scary hospital stay for a week-long last year in July 2013 and wasn't sure if I had missed something important. I like following the news here.
I purchased the expansion sound set I think in Nov. 2013.
I've got poor memory but thought I might have recalled something about this. Kind of foggy. I guess I hadn't though.

Anyway! Thank you very much Thorrild for your input and the example file which "revealed" the problem.

And again! Thanks Frank for your clever approach at finding a way around this.

,Johnny

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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby wilhoit » Sun Jun 15, 2014 5:57 pm

At least we now know why the problem appeared to be an intermittent one. It turned out to be context-dependent in more than one way.

For fun, here is Norman Del Mar, The Anatomy of the Orchestra (1981), page 164:

Where...the low bassoon A is required but is not followed by the Bb it is common practice for the player (amidst a certain amount of hilarity) to extend the bell by sticking in at the top a roll of cardboard whose origin is only too obvious....


Del Mar, to his credit, does not allege that this makeshift goes all the way back to the first Bayreuth Ring. That allegation is found elsewhere (though I can't name a source on the spur of the moment), but cannot be true: why?
Frank Wilhoit
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Re: Extension Woodwind bundle

Postby thorrild » Sun Jun 15, 2014 6:39 pm

Hi Frank,

I was taught in high school (in Denmark) that when Carl Nielsen wrote his Woodwind Quintet in 1922, the bassoonist, Knud Lassen, would ceremoniously and very seriously insert the cardboard tube from a spent roll of kitchen towels into his instrument in order to produce the low A in the final movement. Since I had little reason to doubt anything my music teacher told me at the time, I just assumed that kitchen towels sold in Denmark in 1922 were already standardized for use as range extenders for bassoonists. Now I'm not so sure anymore… Anybody around with insights into the kitchen towel industry in Wagner's Germany?

Best,
Thorrild
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