Miroslav Philharmonik Pre-Orders Open!!!

[gareth]

hmmm, fried my brain a little! I am a humble "Pop" singing teacher after all! (Truth is, I'm not all that humble, the results speak for themselves) but in short I teach singers that we create vibrato with our vocal chords and tremolo with our diaphram but that I've yet to meet any singer who could make a pleasant noise of it, without doing both at the same time!
It's more of a case of which muscle the singer "thinks" about moving to create the effect. Watch Whitney wobble her jaw to do it. She's thinking about het vocal chords so, to her, it's vibrato.
I create the same effect when my tummy moves in and out (as do 70% plus of my pupils who do it naturally, not my instruction) so for me it's vibrato. It still adds up to the same result, but in this case, it's only about singers.
Now everyone, feel free to contradict the hell out of me - but not here in this thread about Miroslav pre orders being taken! :-)

[harmony gardens]

Just couldn't resist

... and another to the harmonygardens foundation fund!

Thanks don1thedon!

I've been studying the pictures of the GUI, and have to say it's beautiful!! If we follow our logic tree here, if Philhamonik is based on Sampletank 2.1, and includes the CSR Reverb, then ST2.1 should include it also, correct??

It also leads me to a question,,, what is the difference between Tremelo and Vibrato??

No, for Miro we went beyond SampleTank 2.1 specs which means that the sounds themselves also won't open in ST2.0 or 2.1 and have to be run as its own plug-in for the proprietary features and copy protecion (the sounds have their own copy protection). However, there will be an update beyond ST2.1 that WILL also open it too. You really have to look at that as an extra though. The main thing is that these are their own PLUG-INS (not libraries for your ST... that's a bonus part). So, anyway, I don't think any part of CSR is included with ST2.1 There are limits to what can be added for a free upgrade.

Tremolo and Vibrato differ in that Trem is modulation of amplitude and vib is modulation of pitch. In the case of strings, tremolo strings are also the effect the player(s) bowing up and down quickly and repeatedly which is more than just modulation of the amplitude but also a complex sound (which I happen to like... very dramatic).

When you play on the fretboard of a guitar like was described earlier that is vibrato. The wammy bar is a multi-purpose pitch altering mechanism which can do vibrato and a dive bomb would be considered a glissando I suppose. It may or may not also be affecting amp level as well but even if it did it would not be doing it without afffecting the pitch so it really ISN'T tremolo (despite the name). Some amps have true tremolo though (like the o'd Vox AC30).

Thanks for clearing that up Squids,,,, I've been telling everyone it was like a sound set in the way SS2 is,,, oops,,, I have clear that up with some people,,,

Thanks everyone for your "clarification" of the tremelo/vibrato thing, too. It's amazing how many knowledgable people are gathering around Philharmonik!!! I can't wait until we can actually use this, because I bet we will get some great feedback and discussions, going, if this is any indication.

[Squids]

Thanks for clearing that up Squids,,,, I've been telling everyone it was like a sound set in the way SS2 is,,, oops,,, I have clear that up with some people,,,

Yeah, it is more of a dedicated orchestral plug-in than a sound set for ST2. Sonik Synth 2 is as well but we held back making proprietary features in favor of compatibility for playback within ST2. With Miroslav Philharmonik we decided to give it the extra features that suit it

[DevonB]

Sul ponticello is bowing on or near the bridge, correct. Sul tasto is bowing on or near the fingerboard.

Devon

Now, we're all getting experts on naming articulations.
My dictionary says that sul ponticello can also be called ponticello (without the sun)

Sul in Italian means 'on', which should clear that up for you.

It seems, I also have something about marcato that I don't exactly understand.
I though that marcato would be playing with quite a strong attack, but doing a long note as opposed to staccato where you would keep it short.
But SR Symphony Strings contains Marcato patches that are short, whereas I got marcato patches in other sound libraries and they are long.?!
So, what is the official definition of marcato, then?

tele

Marcato is means emphasized. The note duration doesn't necessarily come into play here.

Devon

[Squids]

A lot of the things you guys like with marcato style on the attack and legato sustains mixed are going to be interactive combis you can play in Philharmonik. For the naming we actually used Miroslav's naming. So, the staccatos are probably what you are used to SR calling marcato and yes you are right in that they are meant to be BOTH staccato AND elements that are emphasized to lay over the legatos. In Philharmonik there are a few parent patches called marcato but those are actually a little different. They have multiple bowing with one of them emphasized more than the other. I will have to check again on that but I will be finishing up riff demos so I'll try to make sure I cover one of those so you can hear what those sounds are like but marcato is a general term as described by Devon and others in this thread and it can apply to a few different types of sustained or staccato sounds.

I am not a classically trained expert by the way and I am always learning myself (have learned a lot from Miroslav actually). But, in patch names for orchestral libraries these are just there to give some aspect of the sound's articulation. There may in fact be more than one aspect to the articulation but you can only fit so much into a patch name! We also have done crescendos that are abbreviated CRS and other types of patches that are in the child patches (yes, the names you see on line aren't even the child patches included!!!! So, there's more!!!!). But, one of the Cres types of patches we did is really a crescendo and decrescendo swell. But it is still abbreviated CRS. More info about the sounds will be in the PDF sound manual though.

Don't worry. I'll be around and I will go over things with you guys when you all get it. I'll be doing a world tour starting in August for about 3-4 months and I might even grab Miroslav to join me on a few dates if they coincide with his touring (as a musician). It'll be fun. More videos and all kinds of stuff. I am thinking about making a bunch of bonus combi sounds just for esoundz pre-order customers too. Something to show appreciate for the support.

[Derek up North]

I'll be doing a world tour starting in August for about 3-4 months ...

Coming to the UK at all? Probably not to my part of it if so, but I could always saddle up the horse and ride over to one of those big city things

Regards,

Derek.

[Squids]

I'll be doing a world tour starting in August for about 3-4 months ...

Coming to the UK at all? Probably not to my part of it if so, but I could always saddle up the horse and ride over to one of those big city things

Regards,

Derek.

Of course! Probably London mainly. Grab a pint and a Ruby.

[Kim Lajoie]

Also where are the Choir demos? I haven't heard any demo with the choir yet.

http://www.esoundz.com/media/mp3/demos/mirocoirs_1.mp3

It's a demo of the original Miroslav Vitous: Classical Choirs for Gigasampler. It's not Philharmonik, but it'll give you an idea of what you can expect. Loving those syllables!

-Kim.

[Rellik]

I still can't access the demo's from this computer but I was able to get them over via the network from another computer in the house.

The new one is the Badinerie, and I really like that one so I'm glad for the new site update.

I have a question about http://www.ikstore.com/Cgi/STSounds.cgi ... ilharmonik, the sounds list. How come it seems like some of these listed are multiples? You see Bass Drum 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, Bass Drum Studio 01-32 are these all really separate patches? And not even child patches - whole different patches! I'm amazed! And they show up in two totally separate parts of the list - that's another reason it confuses me. What's going on with the sounds list?

The Badinerie demo was mentioned to have employed lots and lots of articulation changes - what I want to know is how these changes happened! Is it key-switching after all , or what? It sounds great, anyway - fairly realistic at the least, and the strings are GREAT!

[Caleb]

Is Melbourne Australia too far off-course for your world tour Squids?

Would like to meet you in person.

Caleb

[nexussynth]

More videos and all kinds of stuff. I am thinking about making a bunch of bonus combi sounds just for esoundz pre-order customers too. Something to show appreciate for the support.

I really enjoy the video presentations you do squids. I wish more sound developers would offer those. Looking forward to the little extras, too. But really, the best was giving us this terrific cross-grade price (and CSR built-in! ).

[Squids]

The videos are done quick just to get some things across that way. I look back at them and cringe everytime I say "uh" but none of that stuff really matters. They're not perfect. I could practice a script and do it a lot better but I really just try to push myself to say SOMETHIHG and PLAY so you can get a very real person to person feeling of "hey, check this out, this is what this is", kind of like what I would do if I was hanging out and showing it to you in person. I think a willingness to be real and straight forward allows us to put more of these kind of things out where maybe some other companies think they have to do a whole production that will cost a ton and maybe the developer themselves are shy (and getting an actor to pretend to be a musician who knows what he's talking about is something you could see right through in a second probably). I am of the mind to just get off your butt and do it. That's why we're doing the tour. We did one for Sonik Synth 2 and it was well received all over the world from UK to Germany to Scandinavia to Japan to all over the US. Now we're doing it again for Philharmonik! It'll be fun. I'll be playing "conductor" and having a blast.

Regarding the question about the percussion. I have to check to see if that part of the sound list is exact to the final. This list was exported previous to the final and some name changes will have taken place (not to mention all the child and combi names which aren't listed there).

But, the reason you might see so many bass drums in two spots is because they are made also as elements for combis where one sample is mapped across the keyboard either pitched or constant pitch (and you can have a range control of where you want it triggered across the keyboard too). You can also velocity crossfade them between parts if you want too although that would be a little more esoteric but at least you can do that.

So, you have your percussion is in the following ways.

1. Menu maps - A chromatic map of one perussion type. These are all of the bass drums or triangles or wood blocks etc. mapped chromatically across the keyboard with different hits.

2. Full orchestra or GM maps - these are multiple percussion types in one map. We even put in some regular GM maps and made them "orchestral flavored" with Miroslav orchestral percussion mixed with a few SR sounds as a bonus for anyone playing SMFs.

3. Elements pitched with single samples mapped across the keyboard. I have a feeling there are more sounds listed in this category than are actually in the final. At one point we had ALL of the percussion in here but in the final there isn't all of them, just the ones that sound good pitched up and down the keyboard. A bass drum or timpani does. A bongo maybe doesn't as much. A triangle does though! Anyway, these are meant to layer with other instrumetns in a combi and not meant to really be played on their own like the first 2 types.

4. Elements constant pitch - this is one sample across the keyboard with no key tracking of pitch, meaning that it is the same pitch on every key. Because Miroslav Philharmonik (and ST2.1) now have range control (splits) you can limit where you want that sound to play in a combi. There are some cool tricks that can be done with this but I will show it in a video perhaps at some point or explain it when you guys have it in your hands and can try stuff out. I'll do some free lessons .

With Miroslav Philharmonik you have to remember that Sonic Reality is doing the sounds (the same people who did the sounds for hardware workstations and for Sonik Synth 2). Philharmonik is BOTH a traditional orchestral library (like the original was but better and larger) AND it is a non-conventional creative orchestral workstation that is really new. I mean, I am expanding on techniques that have been used with smaller sounds in roms on things like Kurzweils, Rolands, Yamaha Motifs etc. They too have combis with orchestral instruments doing some of these things. But, they just don't draw from 7 gigs of inspiring sample content to do it!

So, some stuff may puzzle you and even though you might not use a particular thing, you might use our combis and we may have made good use of something in a way you wouldn't have thought. Everything in there has a purpose.

[Rellik]

Thanks for the percussion info, Squids makes more sense now.

By the way, has IK seen this: http://www.kevintweedy.net/K2/info.htm? It's a solution to the machine-gun effect - in essence, it makes programming/playing very fast passages more realistic and inspiring. Unless IK/SR still has something up its sleeve regarding articulation and control, I think it would be really cool for them to look at and implement this

[Squids]

Wow. What a load of pretentious wankchops! (just kidding... I should talk. Me with my "IMap" bollocks. )

Okay, yeah yeah... getting variation by switching between alternate transposed roots is nothing new to me. I've done that in some cases going back to even the old hardware samplers, making special patches that have more animation when that sort of thing works. It can be done with whatever the sampler offers for switching whether it is velocity or "ALT" like in Reason's NNXT or Round Robin/Random in Kontakt. Sometimes that works well and to a particular advantage with the timbre changes too (sounds transposed up tend to get brighter and sounds transposed down tend to be darker) and sometimes the timbre changes or duration changes are not entirely desirable and switching just alternate samples (if you have them) at the same roots is better.

For Philharmonik, the core of it is based on the Orchestral and Choir material released by Miroslav (for up to $4,000 over the years) and then we added some (but not nearly all) of the additional material that SR and IK acquired from him. It's a tremendous value added effort we put in because I think a lot of people would have been happy with just a simple translation of his expensive library being offered all together in ST for this price! But, we went way further than that (as you can even see by the sound list so far). That doesn't mean that there won't be updates in the future or expansion possibilities with more down the road. In fact, if you guys know us well enough we will keep you filled with musically useful options beyond your intitial purchase.

Okay, that's regarding having tons and tons of samples (as opposed to just tons ). There are quite a variety of things that can be done with Philharmonik for variation. We've done some combis this way FOR YOU and then you can go to town doing even more yourself (sometimes to suit the particulat piece of music you are working on). These kinds of combis require taking up multiple parts and this is where a fast CPU helps if you want to go crazy with articulations and variation AND have a full orchestra multi-channel sequence going at the same time. There are techniques people often do to use surrogate patches for composition and then they bounce more complex individual performance combis to audio to conserve CPU power and have a deluxe realistic result. It all depends on how much effort the user wants to put in but we give you the options, its just how you use them.

In Philharmonik there is even more possibility for variation than what is said on that link regarding transposition switching since you also have Stretch to play with and the tempo/duration control and/or harmonic adjustments you can make. Plus, there are some built-in dynamic variation possibilities from patch to patch as well. A lot of times you can animate the accent of bowing for instance with giving what would be your down stroke of a string instrument/ensemble some more emphasis than the upstroke but this is entirely controllable by you via velocity (if you are a good player) or to edit/tweak it in the sequencer (which is what most people need to do after if they want to get this aspect of realism across). There are also other controllers you can set up to do various actions as well.

The good thing about Philharmonik is that there are more midi control sources and destinations than ST already had. It is very flexible. It may not have ALL of the bells and whistles of random/ALT/Round Robin generators built-in (yet anyway) but since it receives midi in practically every place then one can do that and even more with a number of midi performance gadgets either built-in to some sequencers or additional tools.

[telebunke]

In Philharmonik there is even more possibility for variation than what is said on that link regarding transposition switching since you also have Stretch to play with and the tempo/duration control and/or harmonic adjustments you can make. Plus, there are some built-in dynamic variation possibilities from patch to patch as well. A lot of times you can animate the accent of bowing for instance with giving what would be your down stroke of a string instrument/ensemble some more emphasis than the upstroke but this is entirely controllable by you via velocity (if you are a good player) or to edit/tweak it in the sequencer (which is what most people need to do after if they want to get this aspect of realism across). There are also other controllers you can set up to do various actions as well.

The good thing about Philharmonik is that there are more midi control sources and destinations than ST already had. It is very flexible. It may not have ALL of the bells and whistles of random/ALT/Round Robin generators built-in (yet anyway) but since it receives midi in practically every place then one can do that and even more with a number of midi performance gadgets either built-in to some sequencers or additional tools.

Sounds cool to me. You know, something that you could put on top - not that you'd have to do it from a business viewpoint - is a "how to get results that feel alive" tutorial. It would not have to cover any aspect. Maybe just one or 2 examples of a cello and a flute playing together, just 16 or 20 bars. And a detailed description of tweaking that was done. This can really save months of work trying to find things out yourself and trying to understand how to do it. Since that tutorial would be specialised for Philharmonik, it would also increase the value of your product in many customer's eyes.

tele