Orchestral - Template

You'd need to bus them and solo their buses.

Have a look at the Garritan web site forum... 

hmm, well for one thing, so far this thread is reminding me of why I don't use folders.  Give me all my tracks visible at once, I don't care how much I have to vertically scroll, I can tell what I'm doing!

Randy B.

I am the opposite, I think I would pull my hair out without track folders.  I find it helpful in organizing Rock and Orchestra projects, what a mess my screen would be it would be without them.

I frequently solo an entire folder -string section- for example and have no issues, maybe I'm not understanding what problem your having in doing so.  But in any event, routing them all to a bus and soloing that bus would work, providing everything in that folder is going to that bus. 

Some of my "Vox" folders contain multiple vocal tracks and they are not all routed to the same bus, so in my case I would have to solo multiple busses.  I find the track folder 'solo/mute/" route very easy and organized. 

It is especially easy to then make a mix without vocals with them all controlled by 1 "solo/mute"

-Mike

Hiding tracks is a scary thing to me.  I mean, I throw in 5 pairs of socks in the dryer and I'm lucky to find one match when they are done, I don't want that kind of luck to follow me.  Different strokes for different folks as they say

These are all great points! I have never recorded more that a typical rock band (8 trks or so) but I am really wanting to compose with many tracks. Right now I'm not so concerned with the organization, but rather a TEMPLATE

Didn't older versions of SONAR have an orchestral template, string quartet etc?
I'm not seeing that in 8.5 (perhaps a bad install?)

I just get lost with all the busing, KONTAKT sampler  in out set up, and why it needs to be that way. If anyone cares to elaborate on that, something I could reverse engineer a Template (not a full set of 100 tracks but a basic: "this is how you set it up for this reason"

interesting thread on different work flows for people, thanks!

Hey Sadicus,

To give you another take, this is my current Orchestral Template:

http://www.screencast.com/users/Jose7822/folders/Jing/media/42ade498-c084-413e-b5b6-1e99e48c4b0a


I use EWQLSO Gold Plus (PLAY version) and I insert it as a Simple Instrument Track in Sonar.  Actually, I have 27 instances of PLAY in my template as seen on the screenshot above.  Each Instrument Track hosts all the articulations (up to 16) for that particular instrument, and I organize them all in folders based on their instrumental family.  This way everything is kept clean, with the least amount of tracks possible.  Otherwise, I would end up with over 100 tracks per project, which would be a nightmare to handle. 

To trigger each articulation, I load them up into separate MIDI channels in PLAY and then use the Event Inspector in Sonar (it's a Tool Bar, btw) to change my MIDI note channels.  For example, say for the "Violin I" instance I only need 3 articulations; Legato, Spiccato and Tremolo.  Each of these would have their own MIDI channel in sequence; Legato (MIDI ch1), Spiccato (MIDI ch2) and Tremolo (MIDI ch3).  Then on my project, I select the Legato notes and, via the Event Inspector, I change their MIDI channels to correspond with the articulation needed.  This gives me the ability to work with one track per orchestral instrument and see all their notes from one MIDI track.  The Multi-out method would use 1 Audio and 3 MIDI tracks, for a total of 4 tracks, just for one instrument.

There are many more benefits to working this way, including not having to use keyswitch notes to change articulations, which potentially clutter your PRV as well as your score if you need to print your work.  It spreads up the CPU load more evenly than housing all your articulations into 4 or 5 instances of PLAY/Kontakt.  It's easy to mix your project since each instrument has its own track, so any effects or automation used will only apply to that instrument and not several of them.

So that's my workflow in a nutshell.  I'm sure you could adapt this to Kontakt if you desired.


HTH

@ Jose7822
hey this seems to be going well so far.
1) is this how you have your in/outs for every midi track?
Sonar MIDI Track 1
O: Kontakt 4
I: All Inputs Omni
CH: None

2) you do all your MIDI recording to 1 Track, then Drag the midi clip to the appropriate track?
* for some reason I can only hear a track playback if it's selected and soloed.

Hey Sadicus,

I apologize for not being able to answer sooner (busy day).

The way Randy explained it is what I call the "traditional way", and it's how most people work with sample libraries.  However, the way I work is very different from the Multi-Out method.  Basically, this is how I set up my template:

1) I insert an instance of PLAY (Kontakt in your case) as a Simple Instrument Track for each instrument of the orchestra (as seen on my screenshot).  IOW, when inserting Kontakt, make sure nothing but "Simple Instrument Track" and perhaps "Synth Property Page" are selected.  This should give you a single track when you press "OK'.  This track is both Audio and MIDI combined into one, which is what I like about it as it makes things flexible.  For now, lets just work with one instance of Kontakt until you get the concept.

2) Say this instance is used to host all the Violin I articulations, and that we only need 3 of them (i.e. Legato, Staccato, Tremolo).  Proceed by load these articulations into Kontakt and make sure each one of them has it's own MIDI channel (i.e. Legato ch1, Staccato ch2 and Tremolo ch3).  We do NOT need to change the default I/O assignments or MIDI channels in Sonar since those should be fine as they are.  Step 2 is all done inside of Kontakt.

3) If you have a MIDI keyboard, try recording a little melody that would require the three articulations we've got loaded so far.  The Legato patch should be the only one being heard right now though.

4) Now that we've recorded our melody, let's start by modifying some MIDI info so that the other articulations are also being triggered at the desired spots.  Begin by calling up the "Even t Inspector" tool bar.  With it we can change the MIDI channel of ONLY the notes we select.  Highlight a few notes and change the MIDI channel to ch3 (Tremolo).  Try switching to the Staccato patch and back to Legato.  This should give you a better contrast to compare to.  So far you should be hearing legato, for the most part, and staccato playing.

I'll explain more tomorrow since I'm very tired right now.  But the above steps should give you more than enough to get started.


HTH

Bristol,

There are two ways to do what you ask using the workflow I describe, and the method used will be based on how the "layered" articulations are being handled.  For example, if you want to always use the supporting or "layered" articulation in conjunction with another, then all you do is assign it the same MIDI channel.  IOW, artic 1 and artic 2 will be triggered simultaneously every time a MIDI note that was assigned that MIDI channel is played.  As an example, you could use this technique on 'Staccato Trumpets' and 'Cresc. Trumpets', assigning both to MIDI channel 3, to get a sforzando effect before the crescendo comes in.  If you have room in your sampler, you could even load the Staccato articulation twice, on separate MIDI channels of course, so that one is being triggered with the crescendo notes and the other when you need regular staccato (no crescendo).

The other method is used when you don't want to have the same MIDI channel for both articulations, and/or when you have two parts using different articulations simultaneously on the same instrument.  In this case, I use track layers, each with its own MIDI channel(s).  For example, you have a Horn playing a melodic line while the other Horns are playing a staccato part in the background.  With the use of track layers you can easily separate the two distinct parts in conjunction with the Mute button ("Q") as well as the option to hide muted clips in PRV.  This way you only see the part you want to work with at a time without having a mess of notes, which would make editing their MIDI channel a nightmare.

And that's basically how I go about these situations, which I think works great.  Let me know if you have any more questions.


Take care!

Good stuff Jose - thanks very much!

Yeah, no problem guys!

I've been very happy with this workflow and haven't looked back the multi-out way ever since, except when working with drums.  The latter is about the only time I use multi-out.  For everything else I use Simple Instrument Tracks.  You have no idea how glad I am that a lot of people begged for this feature, as I was oblivious to it until it was included in Sonar. 

Just love it :-)

Cool Ed! 

Let me know if you have any questions, I'll gladly help.

How is EWQLSO not working for you?  Did you try the latest PLAY update 2.0.25?

Ah, I see.  That sucks. 

I also got one Seagate going bad on me some months ago, but I was lucky to spot it before it died and was able to back things up in time.  But Seagate replaced my HDD within days and I was back in business.  That was the first one ever going bad on me (I currently own 6).  In any case, I definitely don't mind being copied and don't feel like anyone is copying me either.  I'm just glad to help others and share my template with them.  I could even send it to you, if you'd like that of course, since we use the same product.  Just let me know and I'll post a link.  I won't get offended if you're not interested, so it's cool if you don't need it.

Take care!