Producing jazz trio out of the box

[dewgong]

One idea I have is to always have one instance of a real instrument. I dont know if this would help or hinder however. Would the presence of say an Elvin Jones sample highlight the missing details in the other instruments or would it bring the overall level of realism up?

[Gonga]

My favorite bass vst is Trillian. You could spend months practicing Trillian. Tons of expression if you can master the keyswitching, or use velocity, etc. to trigger the multisample changes.

Jazz is about playing: improvisation, interaction, elastic rhythm, expressive timbre, inflection and pitch-bending, etc. You can't do jazz if you're not a good player, and forget about programming jazz. You can interact with yourself. One way I've done this is by playing the beginning of a solo before the other parts, then the second part of the solo was played in after the other instruments had a say, etc. It works...I used that in Pink Jam:

https://soundcloud.com/dan-ling/pink-jam

I love the off kilter blues. Everything is very fluid and I really do get that feeling that im listening to a freewheeling jam session.

On the other hand Ive been playing piano for a very long time and the moment I heard the piano I knew it was sampled :-/ Im not really very familiar with the state of the acoustic modelling/sampling field but from what ive heard pianos are very difficult to recreate.

Thanks bro! Yeah, that's an older, yet quite decent, modeled (not sampled) piano that came with SONAR. Garritan's new sampled Yamaha is amazing. You can try the demo. I use whatever gives me a good musical result. I really don't care whether it's a great fake or not, just whether it does the trick musically. I actually prefer the weird sound of that modeled piano to a real one for certain things, like louder playing within a group for example. it doesn't sound harsh when played loudly.

[Gonga]

https://soundcloud.com/heliope/golden-sun-plane/s-3UQuI

How is this in terms of realism?

I love the snare - and it has a weird very short delay thing happening - not realistic, but beautiful, organic and acoustic. Actually, it sounds like a real snare put through a delay. I also love the Rhodes...not so much the sound per se (I used to be a Rhodes tech) but your playing. The sound is OK too. I really like what you played! The bass sounds like a keyboard to me. I think it's a lack of dynamics maybe?

One idea I have is to always have one instance of a real instrument. I dont know if this would help or hinder however. Would the presence of say an Elvin Jones sample highlight the missing details in the other instruments or would it bring the overall level of realism up?

This is a cool idea - I've read about people doing this to add realism. I've done it, not to add realism but because I often play percussion or something. I think it can go either way. If you have a really great, dynamic acoustic performance, it could be tough to compete with a midi instrument. On the other hand, if you keep every track to a high enough standard of playing nuance, articulation, dynamics, etc., then the real track should add to the overall realism a lot. I think

[dewgong]

I love the snare - and it has a weird very short delay thing happening - not realistic, but beautiful, organic and acoustic. Actually, it sounds like a real snare put through a delay. I also love the Rhodes...not so much the sound per se (I used to be a Rhodes tech) but your playing. The sound is OK too. I really like what you played! The bass sounds like a keyboard to me. I think it's a lack of dynamics maybe?

Thanks I dont remember placing delay on the snare actually. In fact I reckon it might have something to do with the fact that I layered multiple snares and some may not begin at exactly 0. It does really add thickness and depth to the sound.

This is a cool idea - I've read about people doing this to add realism. I've done it, not to add realism but because I often play percussion or something. I think it can go either way. If you have a really great, dynamic acoustic performance, it could be tough to compete with a midi instrument. On the other hand, if you keep every track to a high enough standard of playing nuance, articulation, dynamics, etc., then the real track should add to the overall realism a lot. I think

That makes alot of sense. I guess the acoustic track would work as a reference track. At the moment im using Badbadnotgood (Hedron) as a reference track. Thankfully I have the flac and it's very very helpful. I dont like chopping samples up because generally you end up destroying the phrasing and by sticking lots of unrelated passages together you end up with a drum track which sounds as if its been chopped. Admittedly this is a sound that bands like Hiatus Kaiyote try to replicate (very well!) but its being played by real drummers lol



I think Badbadnotgood's sampled piano is actually very serviceable here, mainly because its being played on a keyboard.

It seems that instruments like trumpets flutes and violins are incredibly difficult to recreate because of the fact that most of us play the parts on a keyboard as opposed to a midi guitar. I wonder how much a midi guitar would add to the realism.

[dredd i knight]

Great music from both of you and BBNG! Some interesting points too.

[dewgong]

Great music from both of you and BBNG! Some interesting points too.

Thanks the bass seems to be hardest to get right but for some reason panning the high end hard left and right and leaving the low end in the centre really makes the bass seem alive. Its almost like natural reverb. I think this works especially well with synths like tension which model string impulses because that resonance is preserved instead of being swallowed up by the low end frequencies

[Gonga]

It's very tough to use a sampled instrument as the highlighted solo instrument in a track. I have certainly done it effectively, but only when the quality of the instrument is really high. Here's an example using Kontakt's stock Shakuhachi:

https://soundcloud.com/dan-ling/bali2

In this track, the closer you listen, the more subtleties you will hear in the flute (that hopefully sound right!), which is how you want it to come out. There are two other basic requirements, and usually others as well, but the player needs to be intimately familiar with the instrument, and the player has to be good at controlling the synth in new ways to express that instrument's articulations properly. For example, it usually pays to practice the instrument using the key switches. And I hope it goes without saying, you don't use an LFO for vibrato! By the way, I created the wind and surf from scratch using Reaktor (Space Drone).

[Doug1978]

@dewgong - before laying down serious cash on Scarbee (and there's no reason not to, if you prefer them over everything else - I've got a few of the Scarbee libraries), check out these three Kontakt developers:

Soniccouture for keys,
Orange Tree Samples for bass (upright and electric, plus some excellent guitars too),
Gospel Musicians for keys.

Good luck.

[qa2pir]

subtle modulation enhanced by slight distortion

subtle envelope settings

fiddle around looking for sweet spots

then reverb would probably be helpful

something like a formant filter is an idea too (just a light touch on a mellow sound)

a micro-delay (just one repeat at somewhere about 0-10 ms) may achieve a presence of attack for some sounds