Solo string trills

[thorrild]

Fellow trillers:

I just sent another market survey of trills to Notion tech support, along with a playback file. My email is below, and the test file is also attached. Comments are welcome.

Perhaps because of an excess of caffeine this morning, I am obsessively concentrating on trills again, this time the solo strings:

Attached is a test file with a generic trill figure, with a turn at the end, just for added kicks. Because of the turn, I manually adjusted the duration of the trill note, so that it didn't overlap. I also added a hidden bump in dynamics on the final note of the figure, to get a more realistic "arrival."

I have the string expansion sounds installed; I believe that includes sampled trills (instead of MIDI trills).

Violin: No excessive delay before trill. Trill sounds sour and somehow smaller than a half step. It is a modern trill, starting on the base note.
Viola: No excessive delay. Trill sounds good overall, but it is a Baroque trill, starting on the upper trill note.
Cello: No excessive delay. Trill sound good to me, and it is a modern one.
Bass: No excessive delay. As with the Violin sample, it sounds slightly sour, smaller than a half step. Modern trill.

I wish the Violin and Bass trills could be improved so that they provide a clearer half-step trill, and that all trills start on the same trill note. But, of course, my feature request from yesterday, regarding better user control of trills, still stands.

Solo string trills.notion

(48.17 KiB) Downloaded 318 times

Best wishes,
Thorrild

[thorrild]

In my lonely quest to find out how to use trills convincingly with Notion's solo string samples, I made another little test file. It is the beginning of the 4th movement of Saint-Saëns' Septet for trumpet, string quartet, double bass and piano.

The tempi is not overly fast (Allegro non troppo), and yet the trill in measure 15 doesn't speak much, if at all. In addition, the little turn at the end of the bar is not heard. Back in measure 7, the piano has the same trill and turn, and they sound acceptable.

Attached below are Notion score and audio file of the short sample, if anyone cares to look or listen.

Best wishes,
Thorrild

S-S Septuor IV.notion

(217.74 KiB) Downloaded 289 times

S-S Septuor IV.wav

(2.86 MiB) Downloaded 264 times