10 tips for using orchestral samples
Posted Under: Music technology articles
If you use orchestral sample libraries in your music and wish you could make them sound more realistic, here are some tested-and-proven methods you can try in your next production.
1. An orchestra is an orchestra. You don’t have to be a drummer to use drum samples realistically, but a solid knowledge of basic drumming techniques will certainly help. The same is true for orchestration. The more you learn about orchestration techniques, the better your orchestrations will become. Although this may seem intimidating, you’ll find that learning even the most basic orchestrating techniques will improve your orchestrations at an exponential rate. There are several on-line resources that could get you started, and most of them are free. Think of this as a long-term investment in the quality of your music.
2. Articulate. A violin player can play a note in hundreds of different ways, and each of these will trigger a different emotion. The same is true for all the other instruments in an orchestra. Most orchestral sample libraries feature a good collection of these articulations and offer you different ways of including them in your virtual performances. Good use of articulations will take a dull, robotic performance and make it sound much more realistic.
3. Nothing fancy. A human performer can push the limits of a real instrument, but it is not generally a good idea to push the limits of sampled instrument sounds, unless you’re doing it for a special effect. Stay within the normal ranges of instruments and don’t try to make a virtuoso out of your sequencer by employing exotic playing techniques.
4. The attack and the machine gun. One of the most common tell-tale signs that give away your orchestra’s sampled nature is the so-called machine-gun effect: If your music has short, repeated notes played by a certain instrument, the listener’s ear will quickly recognize that it’s being served the same sample over and over again. Another common sign is the attack of a note being heard although you actually want a passage to be played legato. Most sample collections offer tools to cope with these and other problems, with varying degrees of success. Familiarize yourself with these tools and use them whenever they are needed.
5. Mix’n match. The producers of orchestral sample libraries tell you not to do this, for understandable reasons, but I’ve found that mixing samples from different collections can yield excellent results. You need to be careful about balancing the differences in miking, color, warmth and general attitude, but that should not stop you from using that beautiful oboe sample just because it’s in your “other” sample collection.
And why limit yourself to sample collections? Used cleverly, a patch on your aging hardware synthesizer can give you that fullness you’ve been looking for in your string section. I have an old Roland synth with an Orchestral Expansion Card, and the pizzicato double basses on that thing are my first choice whenever I need a little more punch than what my libraries can offer.
6. Get help from other humans. Whenever possible, enlist the help of real musicians by recording them and mixing them with your samples. A human performance will add articulation, randomness and other details that could break the all-too-homogeneous texture of an entirely sampled performance. Record multiple takes and mix them all to create an even more realistic sounding ensemble.
7. Divide and conquer. Most orchestral sample libraries include samples of instrument groups (or ensembles): first violins, four trumpets, the cello section, etc. While these are great for arranging a quick sketch for a composition, they are generally not suitable for “broadcast quality” production. They lack the level of detail and variation you’d find in a real ensemble. If you have the time, patience and inclination, instead of using a sample of 8 violins, use 8 different solo violin samples triggered from 8 different MIDI channels with slight differences in performance. Or even better, as an extension of Tip # 6, if you can get your hands on a real violin player, record 4 takes of his/her performance and mix that with 4 sampled solo violins. It is a lot of work, but you will be rewarded with a full sounding performance, rich in detail and variation.
(If you don’t have the time to do this and decide to go with section samples, at least keep their performances monophonic- don’t give them more than one note to play at any given moment. If you’re using a sample of 8 violins and if you try to have that sample play 2 simultaneous notes, it will not sound like 16 violins, it will sound funny. If you want 8 violins to play divisi, see Tips # 6 & 7. If you don’t know what divisi is, see Tip # 1.)
8. Mix with a reference. When you’re mixing your orchestral production, find a recording of a similar work played by a real orchestra of a similar size. Try to make your mix sound as close to that recording as possible. This will help you sort out any psycho-acoustic problems that would otherwise go unnoticed (blaring instruments, use of reverb, panning, perception of depth, etc.).
9. Noise can be good. Try adding a dash of real concert hall noise (audience coughing, chairs squekaing, a bow hitting a note stand, whatever). You need to take extra care that the noise and your music have the same ambience, that they are in the same perceived space. If done correctly, this convinces the unsuspecting listener beyond doubt that the performance is real.
10. Reverb. A concert hall treats all instruments of an orchestra together in the same acoustic environment, and your mix should reflect that. Keep all your instrument samples and audio channels dry, and add reverb to them through a single reverb unit or plugin fed through a send/return configuration. This way, reverb from all your instruments will blend together as in a real concert hall, and you can adjust the level of reverb applied to each instrument by using the send or return level on that instrument’s channel. In a concert hall, although every instrument is in the same acoustic space, some will have a higher level of perceived reverb than others. For guidance on how to set the reverb levels right, refer to Tip # 8.
