Getting a realistic cello sound

Ok i started in the instrument forum and no response.  I am at the moment for my masters degree trying to replicate the track Strawberry Fields by The Beatles.  The problem is the cello, its 99.9% there but how do i emulate the bowing, that is when you play two notes that are the same, one note is bowed forward and one is bowed back.  The samples included with dimesnsion pro are all good but this is the only thing i cannot emulate.  Do i need the expansion pack or am i missing somthing.  Please help its driving me insane.  The track is sounding thunderous and i think lennon would have approved just got to fix these damm cello notes.

I'm not an expert on Dim but I guess you'd need a powerful sampler or sample player with a high quality library to get really realistic cellos with different bowings and articulations..

I believe that when Dim pro was designed such detailed emulations/samplings were not within the reach of normal wallets.

Let's hope somebody chimes in and says I'm wrong and that there's a way.

Of course you need realistic sample Library...
Buy Kontakt 4 and you get some of the Vienna Library instruments for free..


http://www.native-instrum...ts/producer/kontakt-4/

dr.hash


Ok i started in the instrument forum and no response.  I am at the moment for my masters degree trying to replicate the track Strawberry Fields by The Beatles.  The problem is the cello, its 99.9% there but how do i emulate the bowing, that is when you play two notes that are the same, one note is bowed forward and one is bowed back.  The samples included with dimesnsion pro are all good but this is the only thing i cannot emulate.  Do i need the expansion pack or am i missing somthing.  Please help its driving me insane.  The track is sounding thunderous and i think lennon would have approved just got to fix these damm cello notes.

If you have more then one cello sound source you can layer them.  Static layering doesn't really help much but if you use automation on one or both you can fake some variation in tone and texture from bow action. For example one smooth and one scratchy track triggered from the same MIDI. Then fade the scratchy one in when you want some extra texture. Just a few spots of that can make the track seem more random and more real.  I'd use the clip gain envelope for this so it's pre effects bin.

vanblah

Short of that, I've had pretty good results with Garritan Personal Orchestra.  It contains upbow and downbow articulations as well as many others.  It's also fairly affordable.


Doug

+1 to this response.

Your post made me want to double check the Garritan Pocket Orchestra available in Dim.  It's a much smaller library than the full GPO, and doesn't have the same keyswitches and articulations available.  In fact it operates very differently, in a more generic way.

But the solo strings in GPO have a setting for automatic alternating of bowing, which is what you want.

I did experiment with changing the Pocket Orchestra's solo cello, making the attack much shorter than what's been programmed, and it gave a variation on the sound, more like down bowing.

What's unfortunate is that one of the best sampled instruments ever created, the Garritan Gofriller Cello was only available for a short period of time.  It's a highly detailed instrument which can be totally convincing if used properly.  It would be ideal for your project.  The semi-good news is that you can sometimes find a copy still on sale.

In other words, if you really want to emulate the original sound of Strawberry Fields with a virtual instrument, you'll probably be needing to spend some money.

Randy B.

Impressive sound with so little effort - good job!
 
And to think... I can get this for just under $1000 ! ()

jsaras


LA Scoring Strings is the game to beat.  Here's something I threw together just using a crummy MIDI file I found on the internet.  I used two articulations (legato and staccato) and I used a first chair cello as well as 3-player ensemble patches.  No other editing to the MIDI was done.
http://www.audiorecordingandservices.com/LASS_Strawberry.mp3

Not bad at all. Just imagine if you had actually put some effort into it!

Sijel


Impressive sound with so little effort - good job!
 
And to think... I can get this for just under $1000 ! ()

[rant]
Exactly[/rant].

For someone in school, working on a masters, with all the related tuition expenses, this is probably not the time for LASS, VSL, etc. 

Even if the OP has the extra funds, the high-end libraries are not really the best place to start unless the person knows he/she wants to do extensive orchestral writing. 

+1 for the comments about GPO.  For a single line for a homework assignment GPO would be perfect. 

The cost is quite small, and GPO is a great starting point for orchestral composition (and with extensive editing can also be used to create very good orchestral mock-ups, though admittedly not on a VSL level).

jsaras


LASS not only has anti machine gun/round-robin programming, it also has a humanizing/slop feature as well.  This really helps when you start stacking patches on top of each other...each channel sounds a tiny bit different.  It saves a lot of programming time.

I agree that the poor grad student won't be helped much by this... unless audiobros/LA has a free demo version!  Nonetheless, it's _very_ cool to know what's on the top of the go-to tool list of the pros around here.

Fun stuff, Jsaras--Excellent!

Randy B.

rbowser


For the fun of it, I did a quick job on a Strawberry Field passage using the Garritan Gofriller:

Strawbery Celli

A quick scratch file using 4 tracks.

Randy B.

 
Excellent Randy!
Quick OT question: I'm guessing that you just "played" it (keys, velocity, maybe some CC)? Or did you have to do any keyswitching or other articulation stuff?  I'm interested in orchestral libraries (or in this case, models)that yield a quick path to realism without having to paint every brushstroke with a toothpick.

losguy

rbowser


For the fun of it, I did a quick job on a Strawberry Field passage using the Garritan Gofriller:

Strawbery Celli

A quick scratch file using 4 tracks.

Randy B.

 
Excellent Randy!
Quick OT question: I'm guessing that you just "played" it (keys, velocity, maybe some CC)? Or did you have to do any keyswitching or other articulation stuff?  I'm interested in orchestral libraries (or in this case, models)that yield a quick path to realism without having to paint every brushstroke with a toothpick.

Thanks, Losguy - That was fun to throw together, imperfect timing and all. 

I'm fortunate to have both the Garritan Gofriller and the Garritan Stradavari, but a very important caveat is, as was mentioned previously, both of these solo instruments haven't been on sale for some time now.  They were only available for a little over a year.  Some unfortunate disagreement between the creators brought that about.

But I've heard of people still finding copies.  A heavy round of Googling, Yahoo and Ebay searching might yield results.

Answering your questions, this clip was done with just the first default articulation.  Volume fluctuations were recorded live using CC11, touches of vibrato were recorded live with CC1, and bow switching with CC64.  This was very quick and dirty.  I used the same MIDI file for the 4 tracks, detuning the instrument a bit for each one, and offsetting the notes slightly each time so they weren't impossibly perfectly together.  AND, one kind of big thing - that line from The Beatles' song takes the cello below its normal range.  I could play the low Bb, so used a pitch shifter on that phrase on the loudest track, left the line doubled an octave higher on the others.

I hear you about "painting every brushstroke with a toothpick," - some libraries yield results faster than others, but they'll all call for a fair amount of MIDI editing to bring out their best.

IMPORTANT NOTE - You mentioned solo instruments in the Pocket Orchestra - Just like in the full GPO, the Strad and Cello in those collections aren't from the same sample pool as these discontinued Garritan instruments.

Randy B.

Thanks for working that up for us!  Good job!
 
The LASS articulations are far more apparent... and I'm on junk PC speakers right now.
Oh no, that means, I'll need to free up that grand so I can finish my version of "I Am the Walrus."
(Ah... but that must wait until the next bull market... see, it never ends. )

Ok guys good talk about this subject.  A couple of things this is not a small pissy subject that i am doing this is my major project and i am trying to see if it is possible to put together a track like strawberry fields together in a daw.  That is with things like slowed down voice and various other tricks im even going so far as to purchase a uad laptop cad to see if the fairchild limiter will add anything.  and by the way rings beat kit contained in session drummer 3 does indeed sound like his ludwig kit esp after detuning it and useing a filter to muffle the sound.  After listening to strawberry fields for the gadzillinith time my cello sounds within reason like the cello.  John lennon once said he hated what george martin had done to his track.  This is an expiriment to see how far a daw has come because as an industry that is studio not live were in some deep ****.  The dimesion pro instrument is amazing i was asking by the way about the expansion pack of orchestrial sounds that you can pick up for 150 bucks and what they were like.  Perhaps the guys at cakewalk would like to donate this expansion pack to me i am after all a very loyal customer.  after 5 years of study and everyday being told that Pro tools is the bomb i would defended sonar to the death Sonar forever protools never.  anyway back to the subject look thanks for your help, the cellos are indeed working and i dont belive that it is necessary to spend a 1000 dollars on a orchestral sample bank but the expansion pack would be suffcient.  what i  have discovered is that it is indeed possible to recreate strawberry fields in a daw sure it doesnt quite sound like the original but it can sound as good if not differnet as the original.  The point being that if you are a producer and a great is a great song the daw has arrived and the studio is indeed dead.  Sonar is the most powerful daw on the market and the most flexible.  I can say this with some authority being a masters student.  I would not even attempt this project on any other product.  if any body can let me know how the orchestral expansion pack sounds for the dim pro this would be apprcieated.  Finally what i am trying to do is not replicate the track as such but make it new and use all the tools avalible to me in a modern daw to try and add a digital flavour.  If we can have tape flavour surley we can have digital flavour.  This is the argument that i am having with my industry at the moment tape is dead and we now have to embrace digital and that means we must understand how to impart and use digital to its fullest just as in 1967 they used tape and the studio to the fullest.  I declare that we are indeed in technological terms back in 1967 with our DAW's and that means the future is bright imagine what we are going to acheive in 6 years with the technology avaliable.  The problem is we must push the technology and we as listeners have to start to listen to digital and instead of saying oh it doesent sound like tape, sure no, but it does sound like digital and WOW did you hear that.  If we can get the punters to start listing to music in that way again once again the future is bright.  Once again for all your help.
 
Peace Love Ben B.CT