Orchestral Template Creation & DAWs

[SoundChris]

Hey there folks,

lately i have been trying to setup a large orchestral template again but noticed that there are big differences between the availiable DAWs on the market. Many of you do know that i am a convinced Logic Pro X user. But if you want to write mainly orchestral tracks with minimum 100-200 midi / audio tracks then (at least IMO) logic might not be the best case. I also got Pro Tools 12 but i only use it for editing audio, the midi editors might be strong, too, but to be honest: I just HATE the optic of the program ...

The problem with Logic was as follows:

I created loads of track stacks to get all my tracks in order. Usually i want as many articulations at my fingertips as possible and my go-to String library is Hollywood Strings Diamond, which has got the big disadvantage, that i get tons of tracks in the end. I do know i can also load them into PLAY as multis, but that also becomes ultra confusing and sometimes my midi controllers seem to have malifunctions if i do that.

In the end i am going for an mid-size orchestral template with about 500 - 1.000 tracks... and here come the problems:
- as far as i know logic only allows 256 tracks midi, 256 tracks audio and 256 tracks aux. So if someone wants a larger template seems to be a problem

- if i loaded the instruments i cant just unload the samples/instruments. Logic allows you to deactivate a track. But the samples are stil loaded. Means: If i start a new project everything will be loaded into ram ... and that can take 15 - 20 minutes with all the play stuff (i admit - play isnt resource friendly, even the new version 5 really became better in that matter). Of course you can purge all the single kontakt tracks or unload all the play instruments. But IMO this is just a pain in the a... Its just: Working with Logic is awesome. Its an incredible tool with so many great features, a good workflow and it runs ultra stabile. Also the multicore support seems to work well, too.

- On the other hand if you look at Cubase Pro 9 you will find, that there is no track limitation. You can have as many midi / audio tracks as your machine can take. In my case (12-Core 2.9 GhZ Mac Pro 6.1, 64 Ram, 1 TB PCIe based flash memory) this would quite a lot, and i am thinking of connecting my gaming pc (16 RAM, 4-Core 4 GhZ intel i7) as a slave via ethernet to even imprive the performance of the setup (i stil have to find out if the advantage would be worth doing that, but its an option. Also i am not sure if getting Viena Ensemble Pro would be that helpful - so many people recommended it to me .. but i dont know if that is really necessary). And whats so awesome about Cubase: You can just unload/load the instruments in your preset with one single click. No annoying clicking through dropdown menues etc. The set parameters (effects etc.) are saved. Means: I just open the project and its there. If i want a certain patch i just scroll down to the instrument, activate and boom --> there it is. The third advantage is the Expression Maps function which allows you to see all Keyswitches in an instrument as single tracks in a dropdown menue in the track list. You wont have to fiddle around with any KS nonsense anymore which is a huge timesaver.

Yesterday i ordered Cubase Pro 9 and i am really curious how it will work. It doesnt seem to be an accident that most of the big composers in hollywood (who dont use DigitalPerformer) seem to use Cubase these days (?)

Has anyone here have got experience in setting up a big orchestral template with cubase? What are your impressions so far? Are there things specially in cubase which i should take in consideration when creating my template?

And the other question: Would adding a 4-Core Machine (even its a strong one) really improve the performance in a noticeable way?

[drumdude]

I've had my template in Cubase for a while now. I can't really compare it to other DAWs like Logic or DP as I've never used them, but I'm quite happy with it.

The main things I know of that are unique with Cubase are things you already mentioned: disabled tracks and expression maps. I personally don't use disabled tracks as they don't fit my own workflow that well, but I know of plenty of people whose templates are based around them. I don't think I could survive without expression maps at this point though. They can be a bit tedious to set up at first depending on how many you need, but you only have to do it once.

I don't know the entirety of your set up, but I doubt the slave would be needed, especially if you are using disabled tracks. VEP is a great program that I use myself locally (without a slave), but using it alongside disabled tracks just seems like overkill. If you start running into a CPU or ram bottleneck, or decide not to use disabled tracks and want to cut down on load/save times, then it could be something to look into.

I certainly don't consider myself a Cubase expert, but if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

[EvilRaccoon]

At 1/8/17 06:32 PM, etelik wrote: I think you should consider another approach to writing and creating music, instead of creating a template with 86 billion tracks. Simplicity is key. Take a look at music made for the NES console. They had 4-5 tracks available at max, which also had to be shared with the sound effects. Still the compositions hit the key, they accomplish their task.

I don't agree. Telling SoundChris that he needs to change his approach in writing because DAW's shouldn't be used for complex composition is not the key, at all. NES Music is not the same. NES music was restricted by the tech, bitrate and therefore the number of voices that you could have at once. If you understand the libraries he's uses, you'll understand why he wants to purpose a template for Orchestration. For any digital composer it's the normality that you load massive libraries in with a multitude of articulations at your disposal. To save time you create templates which means you can open a project up and get down to the writing without loading loads of instruments in one by one again. When violin plays a note, it's not like a NES synth instrument. It's not 1 or 0. A single instrument can create a variety of sound, each played with a variety of dynamic range.

Another approach: If you are already using so much orchestral instruments, why not go out of your way and record a live orchestra? You get the desired instruments, you get the timbre, get a live feeling and you get the human factor that samples can hardly achieve. Phrasing, dynamics, positioning of the orchestra ect...

He does already do this but solely doing this isn't the answer. John Powell, Steve Price, Hans Zimmer, Brian Tyler, Harry Gregson Williams, Danny Elfman, etc all use DAW's for orchestration. Sometimes for mock up, sometimes to be used directly. The money that is required to hire an orchestra is not cheap. You'll get a 70 piece right out the box when working with a DAW and at an affordable price which is constantly reusable for all projects and mockups. So the suggestion to hire a hall, a sound technician, several microphones per instrument section, a conductor, recording equipment, mixing technician and then all your musicians price per hour would be astronomical. I've seen prices for a quartet and recording booth for $400 an hour as 'budget', so you can only imagine what it would be like hiring a huge hall and 30 - 70 musicians, easily thousands.

Not only that, it also assumes that SoundChris knows how to write script for full orchestras, and that he can write and annotate both Treble and Bass and would also have to accommodate the printing costs for all the sheet music. There's just too many problems with using live instead of using a DAW. And if you've watched any of the THR Roundtables with composers, you'll know that composers sit at their DAW required to give realistic mockups to directors.

It's really nothing like working with 4 - 5 instruments with a NES Vst, and you really don't need a live orchestra for our requirements, not until he hits high budget anyway. This is a behind the scenes for the Hobbit Trailer by Blakus and will give you a better idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ1gMpxkVY0

As for Cubase, I really like it @Soundchris. I used it a few times, it was quite good when I rewired it to FLStudio. I only tried a trial though.

[Jakey-San]

@SoundChris it's ironic that you're contemplating on leaving Logic, because I've been contemplating on switching to the Mac platform and converting to Logic, haha.

Let me know how your progress goes.

[zybor]

I ran in to the same problem with FL Studio. It doesn't have unlimited track like Cubase or other useful DAW. Considering it quite lame having track/pattern limit and you can't expand them. So my initial temporary solution is to utilize the piano roll's MIDI channel, in each pattern. It's a messy shit and take a few 'acrobatic' eye skill to organize them.

@LucidShadowDreamer is somebody who used Cubase on daily basis, maybe he could help you out. I plan to get Cubase sometime this week.

[SoundChris]

Hey there guys,

sorry for my very late reply - had a lot of stress in the office within the last days and didnt find enough time yet to reply properly.

@drumdude
Great to hear that you like working on cubase. I am still waiting to finally get it (the shipping takes quite long this time - which is a little bit strange). I am already very curious how the work with the expression maps will be. Hm well i need the disable / unload - track - function to free some ram. I mean - in general i can load quite a lot with the 64 GB Ram that i´ve got, but i dont want wait that long until the template has completely loaded at the beginning (which can take 10 - 20 minutes). Thats why in my situation this function is golden!

As for my current setup - here are more details if you scroll down a little bit:
http://soundchris.newgrounds.com/news/post/857522

Well - whats interesting about VE Pro is that you load all the instruments into VE and if you start another project in your daw everything already is loaded because its independent from the daw. Changing from project to project frousually would take quite much loading time. Thats one reason why i was thinking about getting VE Pro, too.

Thanks a lot for your offer to help me out answering questions - i will keep your offer in mind :)

@etelik
I really understand your point that - if you are just looking on creativity - simplicity can show quite well how effective and creative you are. There are many awesome game scores e.g. from hülsbeck´s turrican, jeremy soule´s secret of evermore or rob hubbard´s commando. But what i am aiming for is a full orchestral sound which enables me to write ultra-realistic mockups. I plan to invest in private orchestration and composition lessons to improve in this field and its important for me to have a very clear idea how the orchestration works. Of course a real orchestra always is cooler and i would burn to work more often with real players. But its just so extremely expensive. I mainly write for a large late-romantic orchestral setup (wagner / mahler / tschaikowsky etc) in addition with a large choir. If i would have to pay them the budget for the recording sessions would be ultra heavy. I only do that if a project has got the budget to do this. And that isnt often the case. I mean - i mostly work with indie game developers. The budgets are not that high and the success of the projects hard to predict. What they need is a score as great as possible, but at the beginning of a project they never can afford such huge investments. If - of course - you are lucky like to be able to work on an ultra successful indie game like gareth coker (awesome guy!) with ori and the blind forest and get a real orchestra to work with its the nirvana ... but i guess it will take some time until i get into such a situation :)

Thats an example of my orchestration / writing style which is about 3/4 year old:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALY6dMIG11E

It shows that i am really aiming for complexity. And for that i need loads of articulations, divisi patches, multi mic positions and so on. This is just quite extreme.

Another point is that to achieve a convincing orchestral string sound (same goes for brass aswell) is to layer different sample libraries. Meanwhile i am layering quite a lot of stuff. Also each instrument section is routed to 2 different reverb aux chans (sounds odd, but most of the top mixdown engineers who mix sampled orchestra stuff tend to take to slightly different verbs to create a more realistic result and in the end even glue the whole thing with another very discreet verb for the whole track. I could not believe this until i have tried it myself. Quite interesting material). If you dont have that kind of large templates you have to adjust all the parameters again and again and again for each project. Thats another good reason to make one working large template where every parameter is already adjusted and balanced (of course you have to do little adjustments for every track, but with a strong template you are already almost there).

@EvilRaccoon
I am thinking the same as you peter. Working with a good working template these days is just (almost) a must if you want to be effective in all the competition out there. Most directors want to have a quality mockip before they even would talk about giving you a real orchestra on your side - its really a huge investment. And for most projects the mockup will be totally good enough for them (of course it has to be good :) )

The blakus movie was great btw - really a great and talented guy (and also an awesome kontakt scripter)!

@JacobCadmus
Oh you changed to a mac? I always thought you hated it :) Hm just to clarify: Logic is an awesome tool and i really love it a lot. It also runs very stabile and the midi functions also were great to use. But i am missing the "unload instrument" function, the unlimited track possibility and the expression maps feature in cubase. Beside these things i am totally happy with logic.
I will tell you about my experiences once i got cubase!

@SnowyTeddy
Thanks for letting me know. I know LSD quite well - i think its time to skype again :)

Thanks everyone for leaving your thoughts about this topic. I will keep you updated about my experiences once i finally get cubase!

[Jakey-San]

@SoundChris hehe well not exactly going to mac. I tried to hackintosh my PC; failed miserably, so I just gave up and reinstalled Windows. No Logic for me...

[EZvidz]

Well... if you want something with a low memory use.
You should try: Ediroll HQ Orchestra. Its old but it sound pretty Good

[EZvidz]

At 1/23/17 09:53 PM, EZvidz wrote: Well... if you want something with a low memory use.
You should try: Ediroll HQ Orchestra. Its old but it sound pretty Good

(wrong thread sorry!!)