Hi Clifford
Sincere thanks and so pleased you like this piece. In answer to your question, I write all my music by notation in Staff View in Sonar Home Studio 7XL. So everything is done in Sonar from beginning to end. The instruments I used for this piece are:
Winter wind - Dimension LE1 - Hypnotica + Triangle (although not seperately audible, I also added Dyad DXi1 with Layer A - Ghostwhisper and Layer B - Ghostpad to add some depth to the sound).
Erhu and Bass Dizi (Chinese violin and flute) - these are free cut-down versions of the full VSTs from Kong Audio. If you are interested, just Goggle "Mini Erhu" and you will find the links.
Solo Alto Flute, Violins, Violas, Cellos - Garritan Personal Orchestra (Second Edition).
Drums and Wind Chimes - free .wav files I found on the web (after much searching - not sure where I found them!).
How do I get the sound quality? The only sound 'enhancers' I use are Sonitus Reverb and Boost11. With Sonitus, I always use presets (usually 'The Venue' or 'Short and Sweet') and with Boost11 I usually set the input to 1 and output to around 0.5. And that is it. The only other component is my soundcard. After trying a number of M-Audio cards and not being happy with the sound, I eventually went for a Marian Marc 4 Midi card. It does give me a beautifully warm sound and perhaps it is this that is making the difference. At the moment I use Windows XP as my operating system and this is fine for the Marian. But when I eventually move on to Windows 7, I suspect I will need to change the sound card.
Hope this helps and I look forward to hearing your guitar and orchestra composition.
Best Regards
Malcolm
PS - for the video I used Windows Movie Maker - came free with XP and very easy to use.
post edited by malcolmb - 2011/01/09 14:40:20