Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Dominus - Legato, Timing and Volume

The trick in all vocal libraries is to try for some level of realism in the words and phrases. This has only really become possible since the rise of 'real' legato. I actually tried to do a spoken words using vowels and syllables instrument in Kontakt years ago as an experiment. It was horrible. It sort of worked for very short words, but once you got to those pesky two and three syllable words forget about it. When we speak or sing we do not sep-a-rate eve-ry syl-la-ble and give roughly the same emphasis to each.

So the issues for a singing simulator are :

1. Use legato to get most if not all the the syllables after the first one to sound smooth instead of choppy.

2. Get the timing down so it sounds like natural singing and not just rhythmic chanting in the same cadence (unless you are trying for rhythmic chanting of course).

3. To get the volume of each syllable right to add emphasis to the syllables that need it and allow the less emphasized ones to gentle on by.

Now this clever chap can do it in real time, well after using word builder to make the words.




It takes a bit more time than that to get it just so in my DAW, but that is true of every word builder I've tried. Like any VSTi, once you get the hang of Dominus it starts going faster. With a word builder you have the extra learning experience of verbal language  on top of musical language, but I think Dominus makes it relatively easy.

For me it is good to know something of what I want so I might google up Latin Mass or phrases to get a good phrase to start with. Then see if the words are on the pre-built list or use Word-builder to get them into Dominus. Next I hold a single note for the whole word just to hear the pronunciation and the general sound of the word. Next is the tricky bit, I can't sing so I look both ways to make sure there are no innocent victims and then softly sing the Latin word.

Try different tempos and notes. So I'm doing Gloria as my first word on the top line of the wordbuilder. At first I try it kind of fast and each syllable as one note. Not good. Then I try Glo and hold the O as I go up. A quick descent on Re and down to AH. A bit of a hold on Ah. Much better.

Now to translate that into the DAW. I make a long note and let the word play to see where the vowels kick in. Then I break the one long note into three notes, one for each syllable. The first being really long versus a short Re and a slightly longer Ah. Also Re needs a slight volume boost. Now to bust up the O in Glo and move up a note at a time from C to G.

Now it is starting to sound like a real choir! I think the reverb is a bit much and go to the shorter church reverb and drop the verb volume a bit. Wow now I have a church choir singing Gloria right on my computer and I am smiling as I listen to it half a dozen times. Of course you can do it faster, but if you put a little bit into it you can really get a wonderful result.


Fluffy Audio is becoming known for their legato. It is heavily and carefully sampled and sounds really good. Legato is what separates the men from the boys in things like choral and string packages. You can sort of do vowel and Mm choirs without it, but there is no way to do word builders without good legato.

As one of the boys, I'm amazed just at looking at what Fluffy has done here. Take a gander at the various vowel sound groups inside Kontakt. It will blow your mind. There is Sustain, Variable Sustain, Release, After Legato and of course Legato with hundreds of samples all sort of packed tightly in what looks like a microscopic game of Tetris with only flat pieces. And it is repeated for both male and female and for four mic positions. You are getting your money's worth out of this.

Actually it is fun just to watch the different groups trigger and release as you play through a word. Starter sounds trigger and play part way before going into vowels that go into vowel sustains and legatos before playing part of another consonant, another vowel legato combo and seguing into an outro syllable. It is crazy and it all sounds so seamless. Sometimes when you look behind the curtain of a magic show it loses its magic (if you hold the ropes just right they appear to be the same length), but here if anything the magic impresses you more.

If that doesn't do it take a look at the script. Just reading through some of it gave me carpel tunnel syndrome. It is a never ending list of definitions, properties, positions, control settings and case statements. A labor of love folks. Yeah it costs some cash and the guys like to eat and even splurge on some gelato on occasion, but there are easier ways to make a living than this.

And all those samples triggering through hundreds of groups controlled by endless scripts... they sound bloody amazing! Well done Fluffy!

Dominus - Overview

Dominus - The Samples

Dominus - Latin is a Snap

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Dominus - The Samples

It is fairly easy to say that Dominus has over 20,000 samples and they weigh in at 28 gigs compressed (30 gigs disk space). I can tell you that every other note is sampled with two velocity layers for syllables and the vowels have heavily sample legato with 320 samples for each vowel along with groups for after legato and release samples. I can note 4 mic positions and 24/48 samples. All these can be mathed and we generally know that more is better.

What is hard to express is HOW an instrument sounds. What is its tone? Across the years I've come up with two questions about tone. Does the recording sound good? Does the instrument sound good?

Early in the history of sampling the answer to the first was almost always no. Now as we have pushed samples toward very high fidelity the answer tends to be based on the mic setup and the quality of the engineering. Happily Dominus seems to be well miced and well recorded all the way around. I will note that I don't hear quite as much of a difference between the 4 mics as I can in non-vocal instruments.  I've noticed this with other vocal instruments as well. I think this is because of the voice itself and convolution reverb. Turning off the reverb seems to emphasize the difference a bit more. Also the syllables seem a touch crisper on the closer mics.

The answer to the second is more toward personal taste, but often most folks can agree that an instrument just doesn't sound particularly good or that an instruments has a wonderful tone. In this case the instrument(s) is the combined voices of a male and female ensemble and to me they sound lovely. There is a fullness and richness to the choir that I find downright exciting. If I were to go to an Italian cathedral that was known for having a fine choir on a Sunday this is what I might expect to hear.

That leads to a third question I have dared to ask more recently. Could I imagine this to be a real instrument being played live? Are we climbing up the other side of the Uncanny Valley? With convo reverb, somewhat pro level sound interfaces and speakers or headphones along with improved recordings, legato and other developers' tricks it seems like you really can get the illusion of a live performance. Dominus gives me something of that illusion and that is intended as quite a compliment.

In my listening to Fluffy Audio instruments and demos, they seem to be exceptional at tone and legato which is a testament to skill, taste and insanely hard work. I congratulate them on the tone of Dominus as it seems to be as good if not better than any other choir on the market.

Dominus - Overview

Dominus - Legato

Dominus - Latin is a Snap

Dominus Latin is a snap



When you kick up the Word Edit tab of Dominus you will see 50 little 'puzzle pieces' that are flat on the left and have a little connector on the right. These are the word starters. Click on one of these pieces and you are taken a page of connecting pieces based on the vowel in the word starter. So clicking VE takes you to the E page, VI to the I Page and VO can you guess... yup to the O page. You are good!


Once you are on the vowel page you can choose connector pieces on the left or word ending pieces on the right. If you choose a connector piece you are transported to the vowel sound for the new ending vowel. So I chose VO which took me to the O page and now I try the OMA connector and am whisked away to the A vowel page.


Now I pick ANNA, because I knew an adorable lady named Anna, and since this ends in A, I stay on my current page. Now I try ANE because now I'm thinking of the lady. This takes me (R U Ready) to the E page.



Now my word is getting pretty long so I'm going to choose an end piece from the right. ENTUM seems alright. End pieces are special in that the vowel will hold until you release the key and then the final vowel will sound. So here I'll get the Oooo sound until I release for an Mmmm. Now I have my non-sense Latin word Vomannanentum.


Look under the word and you will see lots of little half notes. When I play Vomannanentum, each of the five syllables has exactly the same length. Well expect the last which I can control with my release.

This gets boring so lets change the note length. Click on the note you can go from a sixteenth to a double note or even custom lengths. So my word might have this cadence when I'm done. Note that you can also choose note length when you are picking your syllables in the Word Builder. I just prefer to do it this way as I listen to the whole word. Also when getting cadence I suggest just holding one note.


As you can see from my little picture, Dominus can do real Latin words as well. In fact it comes with a whole list of real words and with a little experimentation you can make many more.


It's a but hard to see in my picture but when you hit presets you get a scroll-able list of tons of words that are ready for use. This is where I got Gloria and Deo from.


Now in trying to do 'Gloria in excelsis deo', I had a problem finding an In, but then I realized I could just attach it to the from of Excelsis. So there in three words is a pretty good version of my phrase.

I find the Word Builder to be quite clever and fairly intuitive. Once you figure out that the vowels are the legato connectors and you are basically jumping between vowel pages, you can get what you want pretty quickly.

The note length is easy and seems to work. I was worried that going too long or short might mess up the sound if the words, but it really doesn't. The only suggestion is for the longer intro and outro words I wouldn't go down to sixteenth notes as you need to give the singers enough time to get in all those vowels.

Varying the note lengths really adds some life to the words. At first I was just using the default half notes and it sounded good enough but a bit digital. When I started messing with the word lengths it started sounding much more like the real choir. Also remember to give yourself space for your ending syllable. You need to hear that last vowel (if you have one) on each word to really sell the word.

Dominus - Overview

Dominus - Legato 

Dominus - The Samples


Thursday, October 5, 2017

Swing More Intro, Outro and Overview

Swing More has a large number of instruments, about 25 depending on how you count, that fill an interesting niche in the Big Band field. The instruments are variable in quality and usually work better together as a band than as solo instruments. Many of the articulations are quirky sometimes in useful ways and sometimes in ways that seem to create more problems than they solve.

Brass
Guitars
Multis
Strings
Percussion


Swing More Woodwinds

This is in many ways the heart of the collection with four Saxophones and a Clarinet.