Philharmonik tips and tricks!

Official support for: sonicreality.com and esoundz.com
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

Squids wrote:I like Overture a lot and they really go the extra mile with VST support and some cool articulation features too. A nice match for Philharmonik.
No kidding on that... just acquired a copy and am impressed with the VST integration it provides!
"In the rhythm of music a secret is hidden;
If I were to divulge it, it would overturn the world."
-- Jelaleddin Rumi

Post

Made this thread sticky so it's easier to find. ;)

-Kim.

Post

oh yeah, what a useful thread! nice one! :love:

Post

Kim or anybody else willing to help.

I bought Miro when it first came out. Admittedly, I've only the occasion to need orchestral stuff 5 or 6 times a year maybe, so I haven't spent years tweaking, just days at a time. In every case, I've given up trying to suss Miro's string articulations, and ended up using Sampletank 2 or some other strings samplesets which are obviously not of the same quality.

Can somebody suggest an easy-to-moderate way to acheive the arco family of string articulations, more specifically marcato and spiccato? Setting the attack to 0 and screwing around with different velocities, delays, etc.,on various articulations gets me nowhere. I cannot acheive the degree of immediacy and sharpness of attack that I expect. Pizzicato is the only Miro string articulation that seems to come in right on the beat.

An audio example of what I'm going for would be the way the cascading strings come in during the beginning of Jupiter by Holst. Maybe the main theme from Copland's Hoedown would be another good example.

Maybe it's just me, but I challenged an IK clinician who was demoing Miro a few mos after I bought it to pull off these types of sounds, and he was flummoxed. Promised to get back to me on what he said "must be a bug", but naturally I never heard from him again. Yet another IK rep that I spoke with tried to give me earnest assistance, but the best thing he could come up with was just to move or program all my MIDI notes slighly ahead of the beat.????? :shock:

Something this easy with other Orchestral samplesets that I've demoed should not be this hard for me in Miro. Although I am indeed first and foremost a drummer and there are plenty of obivous things well above my head, I'm not often this perplexed by VSTs. :wink:

Any advice or suggestions?

Steve

Post

Try loading one of the regular (legato) string articulations, and setting the Velocity->SampleStart macro knob (can't remember the exact name). If then play with low velocity, you should get an attack about as immediate as you'll ever get. You might also need to adjust the Velocity->Amp response as well.

Another approach (though not strictly kosher) is to layer the staccato articulation with a longer-attack legato articulation.

Try that, let us know how it goes.

-Kim.

Post

My sincerest thanks Kim. I'm afraid I'm in the middle of another project now, but have an orchestral piece that I'll start in October and I'll have a good chance to give this method a try. Also, I actually tried method no. 2 some time back but this sounds rather fonky and unnatural - I can see why it's not "kosher."

I guess I'm also wondering why marcato would be left out of Miro in the first place - it's such a commonly used articulation. I mean it's fine to tweak and find workarounds, but in this case, it seems so unnecessary.

Anyway, not your fault and again, thanks so much for your suggestions - if anyone has any additional suggestions or comments, I would be very appreciative.

Steve

Post

algodon wrote:My sincerest thanks Kim. I'm afraid I'm in the middle of another project now, but have an orchestral piece that I'll start in October and I'll have a good chance to give this method a try. Also, I actually tried method no. 2 some time back but this sounds rather fonky and unnatural - I can see why it's not "kosher."

I guess I'm also wondering why marcato would be left out of Miro in the first place - it's such a commonly used articulation. I mean it's fine to tweak and find workarounds, but in this case, it seems so unnecessary.

Anyway, not your fault and again, thanks so much for your suggestions - if anyone has any additional suggestions or comments, I would be very appreciative.

Steve
This is a missing articulation not just in strings but brass as well (though obviously marcato trombones doesn't mean they should sound like strings!).

The type of string writing you refer to in the Holst piece is VERY hard to pull off with any library I've heard so far, though the VSL can approximate it quite well. I would try using the longest staccato in the Miro and the legato with the start point moved ahead slightly, adjusting the attack to prevent a click and placing the sounds on SEPARATE tracks in your sequencer., not on the same midi channel. This will give you a way to adjust the start of the hard bow against the legato by moving the track forward or back. Also keep the volume of the staccato quite low. This will be different depending on which section your working with (vlns, vcs, etc.)

With some old libs I used to use a tremolo string section with a straightforward string section sound. Haven't tried that with the Miro yet.

The reason why Vitous left out that particular articulation you need probably has more to do with his personal compositional style than some other arcane reason. Unless you can afford the mega libs like VSL, you just have to content yourself with workarounds.

The rep for Ik should have come clean with you about the libraries' short comings rather than make like it was a bug in the software or something. The Miro is what it is and it has never been better than this, as I once owned the original library and I can tell you, it was a bugger to work with. I re-programmed a bunch of instruments to work in the K-2000 but this VSTi is excellent! Not for all types of orchestral music but really good for much of it.
"..What is simple, is simply seen.."

Post

Thanks very much nex - I will definitely give your suggestions a try. I never noticed the same problem with the horns, but then again, since I usually do strings first, I've pretty much thrown in the towel by the time I'd get around to them.

I don't think the IK rep was trying to deceive me - I really just don't think he knew that much about what he was doing - either that or he was outstanding at playing dumb. :lol: As far as the second IK guy, he was at least willing to see if someone would consider turning some of these workarounds into a useable patch for future releases. Funny thing, he asked if I had any other suggestions for improvements - I told him keyswitching would be an nice feature as well, and he really didn't know what I was talking about. :shock: Since I haven't heard back from him either, I can only assume they've lost interest in improving the thing, which is rather sad, seeing that the samples are of such nice quality.

Anyway, come October, I'm attacking this thing with a vengeance. I just can't bear having such an expensive plug gathering dust - even though I did get the pretty sweet crossgrade price. I definetly would have chosen something different had I been aware of some of these shortcomings. I'm afraid my knowledge of Vitous is limited to his Weather Report days, so I'm not familiar with his orchestral work. Live and learn.

Thanks again so much for the advice.

Steve

Post

I have been following the suggestions about using modwheel, velocity, etc.
They work nicely, but I am having problems with the modwheel.

I'd like to layer 4 version of the instruments and switch among thm the same way I would with velocity, but using either the Modwheel or some other control I activate with my foot or my spare hand.

The Modwheel seems a natural, but I have been unable to make it work. What am I missing?

The velocity switching works well, but not when I am playing (recording) in real time. it's just too hard to hit the right velocity.

My Midi Controller also has a spring loaded ModWheel which makes it harder to control and it's combines with the pitch.

Ideally, if I could override the pitch control (which I never use) with the modwheel to control the patch I am playing at any given time it would be better.

Another option, would be to use a modifier Key, the way Kontakt uses. It's that even possible in Miroslav?

Sorry for my incredible ignorance and thank you for your help.
Marco Conti

Post

Modwheel is a good way to crossfade between two layers, but I don't think there's an way way to integrate four layer switching on the same MIDI channel. Perhaps your MIDI sequencer has a method for changing the MIDI channel of incoming notes? Cubase has the MIDI function editor, which could probably do something like this. Logic and Sonar should have similar tools.

-Kim.

Post

the miro was conceived in the days of akai s1000 hardware samplers. miroslav vitous intended different articulations to be rendered on different tracks within the same phrase. this is not exactly conducive to realtime performance but that was not really what he intended back in the early ninties.

it's certainly a different way of working than most people are used to nowadays but it is valid for the miro and does work well. you just have to get used to it!
"..What is simple, is simply seen.."

Post

I actually don't mind using several tracks for different articulations. Cubase SX can open multiple MIDI clips in the same editor window so it makes editing really easy. I know it's not realtime, but I usually play in each articulation separately anyway (which is pretty close to realtime, I guess).

-Kim .

Post

Hi, thank you for the responses.
I am not sure my DAW allows me to switch midi channels on the fly. I am sure I can do it somewhere in post, but that I know of I can't control the MIDI channel as easily or intuitevly as I would velocity and/or modwheel.

I use Sonar 7 producer.
Marco Conti

Post

Kim (esoundz) wrote:Modwheel is a good way to crossfade between two layers, but I don't think there's an way way to integrate four layer switching on the same MIDI channel. Perhaps your MIDI sequencer has a method for changing the MIDI channel of incoming notes? Cubase has the MIDI function editor, which could probably do something like this. Logic and Sonar should have similar tools.

-Kim.
How do you go about doing this?

1. Crossfade between multiple layers
2. using Cubase:changing the midi channel of incoming notes

Post

Kim (esoundz) wrote:
Caleb wrote:Some sequencers allow you to change midi channels by note or clip which will make it easier to sequence multiple articulations in a single track.
Indeed - this is a good way to manage many articulations of a single instrument without your project timeline becoming (more) massive. It's a partiularly good idea to take this approach when you have an instrument that will be changing articulations very frequently (as much as note-by-note!).

I weas originally going to post this tip in regards to managing the choir syllables. You could load up eight or twelve syllables, and use the MIDI channel associated with each individual note to choose which syllable that note will be "sung" with. This is a much cleaner (and faster!) approach than having twelve separate MIDI tracks in your sequencer, and having to switch between them on a note-by-note basis!

One thing to remember though - most sequencers have a MIDI channel setting for the whole MIDI track. This usually forces every note on that track to be played through that MIDI channel. To use this tip, you'll need to deactivate that feature for the track you're working on. In Cubase, I can set the MIDI channel for a track to "Any" (instead of a specific channel 1-16). This is probably a similar setting for other hosts such as Logic and Sonar.

-Kim.
Sorry about the huge repost, but wondering if my question above is similar to this? Basically, I'm looking for a way to integrate more articulations without having to do them individually...sort of like key switching, but I guess it would be more of a side-route since Miro doesn't "technically" have key-switching. A work-around?

cheers!

Post Reply

Return to “Sonic Reality / eSoundz.com”