FULL ENSEMBLE
The Trumpet isn’t “just” a trumpet. It’s a trumpet section with three different trumpets, a piccolo trumpet, German trumpet, Flugelhorn and cornet. Five different mutes are also available: straight, cup, harmon, bucket and harmon with stem.

GETTING SAMPLE MODELING TRUMPET TO SOUND CORRECTLY
To get The Trumpet to sound properly initially, you must have CC11 enabled with an external controller. However, in the beginning I got around this in Logic by recording a line, then going into Logic’s Piano Roll Editor, I set CC11 to 90. Once this was engaged, I could then begin my learning.

GETTING THE TRUMPET TO SIT IN THE MIX WELL
At this point I was able to hear what the manual meant when it said that The Trumpet was recorded in an anachoic chamber. It’s a dry lifeless sound. You can hear the potential, but you have to know what to do next, and that’s adding Early Reflections.

Once you begin this process, you begin hearing and understanding that the first step in shaping The Trumpet and getting it to sit in the mix well is starting by adding Early Reflections. To get this “right” you need to have several recordings of trumpets available that reflect the sound you’re trying to achieve. Going back and forth between The Trumpet and the recordings will help you get there faster.

So, in this first audio example, you hear The Trumpet as is. This is followed by five examples with Early Reflections starting at .37s working our way up to 1.0s. The ERs are part of the FORTI/SERTI package that’s an add-on to the Vienna Suite. These ERs range from large concert halls down to smaller studios where TV shows and films are recorded. They organized by room size by seconds by long, medium, and short.

As you listen, there’s a subtle change to The Trumpet as the ERs get longer. And you can hear progressively how The Trumpet’s natural beauty is brought out as longer early reflections are added.

MP3: WATCH VOLUME LEVELS
The TrumpetFS

My next step was in adding a Reverb Tail. I’m repeating the above example but this time I’m adding in a reverb tail unique for each ER.

Example 1 – The Trumpet as is
Example 2 – The Trumpet with a .85s RT60 (similar to Smecky Prague, Cello Studio 1)
Example 3 – The Trumpet with a .98s RT60
Example 4 – The Trumpet with a 1.30s RT60
Example 5 – The Trumpet with a 1.80s RT60
Example 6 – The Trumpet with a 2.40s RT60 (similar to Abbey Road)

MP3: WATCH VOLUME LEVELS
The TrumpetFS-wRTs

Next I added EQ. In FORTI/SERTI, this means I used what’s called a TILT filter. For The Trumpet, to take the edge off, I added a C3 Darker 03. I could have gone to Darker 12, but in the absence of hearing The Trumpet in context with the rest of the ensemble, Darker 03 was the best for this Insights article. Right away you can hear how the brightness is subdued from the previous examples.

Example 1 – The Trumpet as is
Example 2 – The Trumpet with a .85s RT60 and C3 Darker 03
Example 3 – The Trumpet with a .98s RT60 and C3 Darker 03
Example 4 – The Trumpet with a 1.30s RT60 and C3 Darker 03
Example 5 – The Trumpet with a 1.80s RT60 and C3 Darker 03
Example 6 – The Trumpet with a 2.40s RT60 and C3 Darker 03

MP3: WATCH VOLUME LEVELS
The TrumpetFS-wRTs-EQ

With this announcement, now all the major sample library developers are downloading direct-to-customer, while still maintaining, for now, a retail (aka brick and mortar) presence with selected dealers.

With all the majors now downloading, who should they look to as a business model?

It strikes me that IBM is the primary business model to look at followed by Apple and Microsoft.

That’s because IBM makes product, trains on their product, and consults for their product. By comparison, most sample developers just make product, while training is restricted to a few video walk throughs. Outside of NAMM, you also don’t see many developers going into the production community talking up their programs, meeting existing and potential customers, and getting feedback.

This is how you really get wired in. No matter what the product is, you still have to get out, shake hands, and kiss babies.

For selected software, Apple goes the next step by imitating Microsoft with their certified trainer programs. Certification is meaningful. And getting help from a knowledgeable human being for a reasonable hourly fee is worth it when compared to sending emails and placing posts on forums hoping to get a speedy response.

As a former IBM corporate customer, I can tell you that IBM often has basic level instruction that comes for free when you buy. And after that, you can pay for advanced training.

Microsoft has their own publications division, something sample library developers haven’t done, preferring instead to let users help train other users on their forums, while still maintaining support staffing when the company is contacted directly.

But what is true about IBM, which is not true at all in music technology, is that they are actively and openly engaged in both the business and academic communities. Their PR program provides fascinating studies which continue to demonstrate why the system is still the solution, IBM’s mantra for many years.

In short, IBM is wired in. And their share price which has nearly doubled in the past few years, reflects that. To model IBM does require different thinking in the music technology sector, but the long term payout could be extremely profitable for those who do.

Aside from discounts, an area often neglected by developers is higher education particularly at the collegiate level where just in the U.S., an average of 10,000 new sales prospects annually sign up to learn advanced skills. As of today, two, possibly three music technology developers can walk onto a college campus (globally I might add) and declare, “Let me show you how our products can help you teach better and your students succeed more post-graduation.” Those two to three are EastWest, Spitfire Audio, and the Vienna Symphonic Library.

And one potential backdoor to achieving collegiate success will be the company who develops a lite orchestra version for the $49.95 Cubasis iPad, along with a lite version for Finale and Sibelius (which would be a secondary purchase since an orchestral library comes with each program).

By taking on such a long term strategy, and it is long term, developers pave their own roads for creating the next generation of customers. And with downloads, it is a global market that’s reachable.

Though a rosy picture, there are downsides on the near horizon.

All publishers who download (and developers are a type a publisher) face sales tax collection and reporting issues within the United States, and VAT collection and reporting internationally.

Consequently in the very near future, developers will no longer be able to be the artisan in the corner. They will have to choose to think differently, and read differently to effectively globally market their goods and services. And by the way, this is not limited to sample library developers. It’s true for everyone who sells music and graphics as downloads, too.

Two tangible questions to be answered, which are very much in discussion, will be:

The family publishing business has offices all over the world. In most places, we rent our buildings. But when prices turn down in a major way we look for better space. Needless to say, this is especially interesting when we can finance the purchase at giveaway interest rates.

Buying better buildings is not exactly an investment goal. Because we can operate just as well from modern, rented office space as from an elegant old building. Maybe better. But we acquired a taste for architectural gems in Baltimore.

The inner city Baltimore real estate market probably peaked in value in the late 1920s. It has been going down ever since. It appeared to hit what I thought would be an all-time low in the mid-1990s, when you could buy a very nice building in the Mount Vernon area for about one-tenth the replacement cost.

So, rather than move the company to the suburbs, we bought several of these historically important buildings. And we’re still there. Below you see the exterior of one of these buildings, 105 West Monument St., designed by Louis Lang and built by Augustus H. Albert in 1859.

I say this is not an investment goal, because we have no intention of selling. And when we are eventually forced to sell, there is no particular reason to think these places will be worth more than they are now. This is more of a real wealth accumulation program.

Good architecture is like good art. It has a value in itself. If it is also functional (such as providing office space)… profitable… and can be bought at distressed prices… or with money borrowed at little or no real cost… so much the better.

Distressed Deals
I am on the hunt for distressed property in Ireland along with one of the “strategic partners” at Bonner & Partners Private Wealth, Ronan McMahon. (Ronan advises me… and fellow members… on overseas real estate deals.)

The story of the Irish property market is a long one, and a sad one, not for me to tell in these pages. But I will give you a small part of it…

You’ll recall that this is not the first time I tried to buy something in Ireland. I was there with Ronan last year. And I discovered a wonderful building in a good location, crying out for the kind of renovation work we like to do.

Whitfield House it is called, on a lovely piece of parkland in County Waterford — far from the housing developments and shopping malls that grew all over Ireland during the boom years. When Ronan, Chris and I visited Whitfield House last November it was in danger. Thieves had stolen the lead off the roof. It was sunny then. But it was just a matter of time before the rains began.

Once the rain began, it would be a matter of weeks before the Victorian-era plasterwork would be ruined. Worse, the wooden beams, posts, joists and rafter would become waterlogged. Then “dry rot” — a type of fungus that eats away at them even after the leaks are stopped — would set in.

We hastened to the rescue! We offered to cover and protect the property, at once — at our expense — pending closing the sale. Then we would undertake a restoration, providing much-needed jobs in the local building trades. The price we offered was reasonable. It valued the land at the going rate… and the house at zero. We knew it would cost about as much to fix it up as it was worth.

A Really Bad Bank
In November, we made our offer to Ireland’s “bad bank,” the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA); the owner was in bankruptcy. NAMA holds assets that were removed from the “good banks,” so that they might have a fighting chance of staying alive. In June, NAMA replied to our offer. It said no. Then, in July, it informed us that it was placing Whitfield House on the market again. So, we went to look at it last week.

But now the picture is totally different. We had to avert our eyes. It was like coming across a body when strolling through the park. The house had been raped and strangled. In the intervening nine months thieves had continued their work. They tore up the floor to steal lead and copper pipes. They tore off the forged iron balusters… breaking every one of the granite steps.

I recently introduced a new idea to members of Bonner & Partners Private Wealth. I call it “family fracking.” It comes from the recognition that: (1) When your family finances fail it is usually your family that fails, not your finances. (2) You need to put your family under some pressure to toughen it up.

You begin this process by making it clear to your kids and grandkids that family wealth is both an advantage… and a burden.

The advantages are probably self-evident. With a source of private capital available, your family won’t be dependent on the kindness of strangers. Bankers and bureaucrats may have their uses. But you don’t want your kids to have to rely on them for their financial success, let alone their daily bread. Faced with an emergency… or an opportunity… you want to have family funds to draw upon.

The burden grows out of the fact that it is so hard to accumulate and preserve real family wealth. It takes hard work and forbearance. Many people — perhaps most of them — would rather not bother. It is too much trouble. They would prefer to spend their own money… and give away any surplus… as they see fit. Even those who approve of the idea of family money in principle may be unwilling or unable to do what they need to do to hold on to it.

But if you want the advantages of family wealth, you have to accept the burden of it too. “Fracking” your family members can help prepare them for the challenge.

Fracking is probably not the best way to describe it. Fracking is a process of opening up small fissures in rock so that oil and gas can seep out. I use the term to describe the process of challenging the family… in order to get more out of it.

It’s a bit like a boot camp for the marines… or an outward-bound program for adolescents; it puts your family to the test. If they meet the challenge, they are more confident in themselves and more secure in their relationships with the rest of the team. They are stronger… and more ready to meet the even bigger test of preserving family money over several generations.

There are three stages of “fracking” your family.

First, revelations.

Second, confessions.

Third, derelictions.

Revelations
We’re naturally a little furtive about our finances, even with members of our own family. We’re afraid too much information will either spoil our kids… or leak out to the rest of the world, where it can only do us harm.

One reader, for example, recently wrote to tell us that he was reluctant to bring a family member into his confidence about the state of his finances, because he didn’t believe the young man was capable of handling money wisely. Of course, hiding the facts is an even riskier approach. Assuming the young man inherits, eventually circumstances will change, and he will be completely unready for the burden that is suddenly placed upon him.

It’s probably best to reveal the extent of the advantage and the burden to your children. Bring them into the picture. Let them see not only the family wealth that will be theirs one day, but also the problems and challenges that will be theirs too. The way we have it set up in our family, the children are likely to see more downside than upside. None is scheduled to inherit substantial wealth; instead they are expected to act as custodians of it.

But that is not the only burden; there are many different sorts.

Many families have the burden of running a business. In our family, the children have seen their father going to work for almost 40 years. As far as they can tell it has been smooth sailing for four decades. They have no way of knowing how choppy the waters can be.

That’s why you need revelations. If you have a family business, make sure your children see something more than dividends. Introduce them to the complexities and difficulties involved. Make them see the weaknesses as well as the strengths… warn them about the problems that may arise… and encourage them to find solutions.

My eldest son, Will, and I have written a book on preserving family wealth called Family Fortunes. (You can find it here on Amazon, if you’re interested.)

We wrote it to make ourselves think deeper about preserving and growing family wealth. Writing a book is good for that. It forces you to expand on your ideas and organize them in a logical way. When you’re done you often find you have new insights and a fuller understanding of your subject matter.

But writing a book is not the end of the process. It merely plants thoughts that grow and mature over time and bear fruit much later. One of those thoughts is the starting point for today’s update:

Family office investors have an advantage that other investors do not: time. The challenge is how to use it.

Buy Low… Sell High
The simplest way we can benefit from our time advantage is to wait for great buying opportunities. You want to buy at “once-in-a-lifetime” market extremes… times when bearishness reaches a maximum.

Market bottoms occur when selling has been exhausted and the market can go no lower. That’s when you find real bargains. Of course, this is also when buying is highly unpopular… and the herd is stampeding in the other direction.

The Dow has traded lower than 10 times earnings on three separate occasions in the last 100 years. A rather clumsy trading strategy would have been to go long the Dow whenever its P/E ratio sank below 10… and then short whenever it went over 20.

In the 1930s, the payoff was about 200%. In the 1950s and 1960s came another triple. And between 1980 and 1995, it produced a fivefold increase. In other words, this strategy — low risk, because you would have always been buying at low price-to-earnings multiples — could have multiplied your money about 45 times.

This is little more than a way of doing what all investors are supposed to be doing: buying low and selling high.

Julia Guth and her father, Jim Cooke, just interviewed Will and me about our family office project for The Oxford Club. Julia made the point that it was “too easy… you just spend most of your time waiting.”

But waiting is the hardest thing for most investors to do. Besides, they don’t have the time to wait.

For the typical investor, waiting is almost out of the question! The average investor can’t buy low or sell high — at least not following this simple model. He is a prisoner of his own life- and money cycles.

He rarely has any money to speak of until he is in his 40s and 50s. And then he feels he has to take advantage of the opportunity at hand. He can’t wait for the market to tell its story. He has his own narrative to worry about. And that usually involves building up a “retirement nest egg” by a certain time, often only a few years after he begins investing.

If you look at stock markets today, for example, you find P/E ratios well above 10. As the chart below from Multpl.com shows, the S&P 500 trades on a P/E of over 18, based on trailing 12-month earnings. This is way out of our range. But prices could remain high for many, many years.

What is the investor to do? He cannot simply do nothing. He can’t wait. He has to “put his money to work” as soon as possible. Every stockbroker and retirement planner tells him so. Waiting is simply not an option.

That is the advantage of time. As family office investors, we can wait. And we can buy at historically low prices. So low that, barring a genuine Armageddon, you are practically guaranteed capital gains over the following 10 years.

That is precisely what we are doing. We are waiting for ultra-low prices in stocks… and looking around the world to try to find them. We are also looking… and waiting… for ultra-low prices in real estate.

One other major thing we are waiting for: a turn in the bond market. Not that we will take a direct position on it. But we will be “short” bonds in our other investments, particularly by owing (not owning) long-dated mortgages.

Dad is still stuck in the Andes without power on the family ranch. He’s trying to fix the situation. But things move slowly in northern Argentina, where he is. So instead of his regular Diary entry, here is another essay from the Bonner & Partners Private Wealth archives.

If you don’t know about it already, this is the family wealth advisory service my Dad and I set up three years ago to help folks preserve and grow family wealth. You can find out membership opportunities here.

A Lesson From My Grandfather
I got a lesson in the importance of macro thinking again last night. Exploring an old family desk, we came upon a cache of my grandfather’s letters. He had come back from World War I and begun a business supplying coal to the ships that used Baltimore’s harbor.

It was a good business in the 1920s. Less good in the 1930s. And no business at all in the 1940s. His letters are marked by disappointment. “Sales down.” “Too much inventory.” “Sluggish business.” And there are some letters in the 1930s expressing hope that “things will pick up when the country goes back to work.”

The country did go back to work in the 1940s. Every factory in Baltimore turned on the lights and fired up its engines. Ship traffic increased… including hundreds of new ships that took troops and war material overseas.

But it was too late for my grandfather. Ever since Winston Churchill converted the British Navy to oil, the handwriting had been on the wall for coal as a fuel for ships. Oil was denser. And more convenient.

The density of fuel is important, especially for the navy. It gives ships greater range and more power. And it frees up space for guns and transport.

Coal was doomed. And so was my grandfather’s business. He must have seen it too. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either his macro analysis failed…or he was unable to do anything about it.

The big picture in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by war. Now it is dominated by money — specifically by the actions of central banks. Never before have major central bankers embarked on such a bold program of monetary activism. If this succeeds, it will be one for the record books. If it fails, it will be one for the history books. Specifically, it will become another important entry in the History of Financial Disasters.

If it turns into a disaster, it will be traced to President Nixon’s decision to break the link between gold and the dollar in 1971. The new, elastic currency would stretch. And recently, under government pressure to finance deficits and “stimulate” lackluster economies, central bankers have been pulling hard.

Money Printing Goes Global
The first quantitative easing (aka debt monetization) program in the U.S. began in November of 2008. Then it was viewed as an emergency measure to “stabilize” the system.

But the private sector continued to de-leverage. Unemployment stayed high. A second round of monetary easing followed to relieve investors’ fears and otherwise grease the skids. This happened as the eurozone fell into a squabble and a funk about how to handle its own debt problems. Whether it was true or not, analysts concluded that whatever good QE2 might have done, the crisis in Europe overshadowed it.

“Operation Twist” emerged in September 2011. The Fed used the proceeds from sales of shorter-term debt to buy longer-term debt. The idea was to lower yields along the curve and therefore keep borrowing costs in the economy ultra low. The Fed deemed this critical to the housing industry as well as to major capital investments. It was about this point that the European Central Bank, under Italian Mario Draghi, joined the action with its own Long-Term Refinancing Operations (1 and 2).

Then came Draghi’s pledge to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro — promising open-ended bond buying if needed. The danger of a default greatly reduced, European bond yields fell.

QE3 came to the U.S. last month. The Fed extended its purchases of agency mortgage-backed and U.S. Treasury debt to $85 billion per month. Not only that, but also it said it would continue printing money until the unemployment rate falls below 6.5% and as long as inflation remains below 2.5%.

Thomas Jefferson was familiar with debt. He carried a substantial burden of it throughout his adult life.

At the time, there were no bankruptcy protection laws. If you did not pay your debts, your creditors hounded you… could take everything from you… and get you sent to jail.

Jefferson had such a reputation that his creditors were perhaps awed by it… or sympathetic. They did not push him too hard. Otherwise, he might have been ruined. Or even put in prison for non-payment of debt.

There he might have joined his fellow Declaration of Independence signatory James Wilson.

Wilson was put in prison for non-payment while serving as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. There too, in the Walnut Street Debtors’ Prison, in Washington, D.C., he might have encountered his old friend Robert Morris, also a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Morris was once one of the richest men in the colonies and was described as “the most powerful man in America.” From 1781 to 1784, he acted as the new nation’s secretary of the

Treasury — as its “Superintendent of Finance.” But he was bankrupted in the Panic of 1796 and sent to debtors’ prison.

The Great Danger
Another illustrious veteran of debtors’ prison was Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee. He was a hero of the Revolutionary War, but nevertheless busted and sent to prison in 1808. He used his time there to write his Memoirs of the War.

Throughout history, excessive debt has been a great danger — with serious consequences for the unwary. There were heavy penalties for not satisfying your debts. In Ancient Greece, for example, the debtor could be taken into “debt bondage.” He was made a slave.

So many people became enslaved in this way that Athenian statesman Solon enacted a law in about 600 B.C. that banned the practice. Called the seisachtheia, it allowed the debt slaves to return to their farms as free men. But the debt was not erased. The debtor was still at risk of becoming his creditor’s slave if he failed to respect the new credit terms.

The penalty for failure to pay debts in Europe during the Middle Ages was prison. Conditions were appalling, as you might imagine. Typically, the debtor’s family had to continue providing food and clothing. If the prisoner had no family support he would starve. In prison, of course, he had little means to repay the debt, which commonly brought the story to a miserable conclusion.

Going broke was also an abominable disgrace. It was a blemish on a family escutcheon, telling the world that a member of the family — often the head of it — had let down his friends and associates. Read the novels of Thackeray and James; you will find young women of good society who can’t get married — ever — because their fathers defaulted on their financial obligations. Non-payment of debt sullied the family — for generations. To avoid this stain, uncles, cousins and other would come together to discharge the debtor’s obligation.

The penalties of excessive debt also figured heavily in commercial relations — especially in the banking industry. Until the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913… and the later Depression Era reforms that allowed banks to operate behind a corporate shield… bank owners were personally responsible for their bank’s losses. There was no federal deposit insurance and no private banking cartel that could come up with funny money when it was needed.

Money was real — expressed as a unit of gold. Losing it meant real losses. Failed banks went into receivership. The receiver would tally up the losses and send a bill to the owners. Each paid his share of the losses… or he would be judged insolvent too.

As you can imagine, bankers were a lot more prudent back then. So were borrowers. Both shared a keen interest in not overdoing it. Because both were directly exposed to penalties if anything went wrong! There was a direct connection between the debtor and his suffering — whether or not he operated behind the big brass door of a bank or the flimsy wooden door of a tenement apartment.

Thomas Jefferson was opposed to a “national debt.” He thought it was immoral that one generation should spend on credit, forcing the next generation to pay the bill.

Jefferson knew what a burden debt could be — especially when it is debt for spending he didn’t enjoy himself. He had inherited debts from his father-in-law. You’ve heard of “something for nothing”? On the flip side is a second condition as disagreeable as the first is pleasant: nothing for something.

“Nothing for something” describes the financial situation of America’s youth. If things go according to plan, they will pay a large portion of their incomes (if they have incomes) to pay for social welfare “benefits” that they will never enjoy themselves.

Professor Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University puts the total of U.S. government debt and unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities at $222 trillion. The biggest part of that money will be spent on the baby boomer generation… as it heads into retirement homes, nursing homes and hospitals. This is such a huge sum that it cannot be paid. But the burden of trying to pay it (and not succeeding) will fall heavily on younger generations.

Large debts also retard growth. This is the conclusion of professors Rogoff and Reinhart in This Time It’s Different — their study of 800 years of financial folly. Much of current output must be used to pay for past consumption.

That is part of the reason that today’s growth rates are only about half of those in the 1960s and 1970s. Low growth means fewer new job opportunities. Those that do become available are generally at lower salaries. The real growth that doesn’t happen leads to the real jobs that will not be created and to the real careers your children and grandchildren may never have.

High debt levels also mean higher taxes. Taxes tend to be levied on earnings, not on pensions and healthcare consumption. You will see later in this week’s Outlook an estimate for how high taxes on young people would have to go (if it were possible) to finance this debt: about 80%.

Today, I take up the cause of our children and grandchildren. In the modern vernacular: They’re screwed.

Our job — and the job of the family offices we run — is to unscrew them. First, by trying to understand how the system works. And second, by setting up parallel or alternative systems of our own that help them protect themselves.

Nothing for Something
Let’s begin with the big picture. The economies of the U.S. and other modern, developed social welfare nations are based on several conceits and delusions.

Serious observers keep saying that if we continue doing what we’re doing bad things will happen “sooner or later.” We never know when sooner or later will get here. But it’s a fair bet that it will come during our children’s and grandchildren’s lives.

Remember Herb Stein’s law: Things we all know can’t last forever will come to a halt sometime. Most likely, it will be during the working careers of our children and grandchildren.

For example, the credit expansion that began after World War II had to end sooner or later. For the private sector, it ended in 2007. It almost ended, too, for many governments — such as Japan, Greece, Spain, California and others.

But large nations with their own printing presses are still going at it — with public debt-to-GDP ratios reaching up over 200% already. (If you included the aforementioned unfunded pension and health obligations, the ratio for the U.S. is already at nearly 1,400% and growing 20 times faster.)

The system of indirectly funding deficits through money printing (QE), while holding interest rates at the zero bound, will also have to end sooner or later. More alarmingly, the current system of fiat money is one for the record books. None has ever lasted this long. But it, too, will go away sooner or later.

So too will the system of intergenerational wealth transfers to fund health and retirement benefits. This system, developed in the 19th century, and brought into wide service in the 20th, was an illusion from the get-go.

HOW THE DIMENSION STRINGS SOUND IS CREATED
OK. This is a non-technical description. Recording one section at a time, each individual player was recorded. So for the released Dimension Strings Violins, you can have 8 individual violinists up to a section of 8. Sections are built by adding players. As players are added, the section sound is built.

Thus, you can set up for individual violinists, by desks (2 players each), by groups (4 players each), or the full section. When we get to divisi, I’ll show you how impressive this is.

As far as the sound quality is concerned, it’s slightly darker, natural, and unprocessed sound, sounding like you’re standing in front of 8 violinists.

ENSEMBLE SIZE
The graphic I created shows the standard orchestral seating with Dimension Strings placed accordingly. The Quartet’s size on completion is 8 8* 6 4 2. Two players are assigned a desk (music stand). Hence, the four x’s. You’ll notice I have 8* for Violins 2. That’s because similar to LASS, the transposition trick is needed to create Violins 2 (which takes about 10 seconds in the Vienna Instrument player). The extended center line is for panning. To the left of the line is stage left. To the right of the line is stage right. Using the Vienna Power Pan (found in the Vienna Instrument, Vienna Ensemble, and the Vienna Suite), you can position the strings any where you want stage left to stage right.

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This next diagram shows something you can do with Vienna that really gives the writer a number of options as you go to produce score, and that’s the ability to change seating positions. Here I’ve “seated” the ensemble similar to that of the Berlin Philharmonic which as a result, allows me a stereo positioning of the violins. Because of Vienna’s Power Pan feature, it literally takes only seconds to set up stage positioning, e.g., spatial placement.

So, whether I use DS on its own or with another library, spatial placement is a snap. For finessing two or libs together, Virtual Sound Stage is a very handy and necessary tool when using two or more libs.

Existing Ensemble Size Applications
For those who only want to write for the dramatic size Hollywood film orchestra (even if it’s recorded in Prague!), use the transposition trick and you’ll have it: 16.16.12.12.8. However, as bizarre a statement as this may seem to be, sometimes the dramatic size can be too big. For example, many TV shows and vocal sessions use much smaller string ensembles.

Here’s where Vienna’s Dimension Strings are a real problem solver.

This chart lists by instrumentation some typical ensemble sizes that can be created once all of DS is released (violins are now shipping, cellos expected sometime late spring early summer).

In his book The Score, The Orchestra and The Conductor, conductor Gustav Meier recommends for a Baroque work a string section of 64321 and for Haydn/Mozart, 86542. Hot damn! I can do that with DS. And this is important since many a TV show or made-for-TV pic uses this size string section. Factor in woodwinds in 2s, some brass and percussion, and you have a balanced ensemble ready to go.

The Small Symphony – This is the smallest size string ensemble that Rimsky-Korsakov said should play a full symphonic work. Allows for divisi. Doable with DS.

The Small Studio – Many a small budget film or TV presentation has used this size string section. Also the same sized as used for Mozart and other Baroque works, too. Allows for divisi. Doable with DS.

The Smaller Studio – Again, many a small budget film or TV presentation has used this size string section. Also used by Nelson Riddle for many recording dates. Doable with DS.

Henry Brant – Brant orchestrated for film composer Alex North then left Filmland where he pursued a successful second career as a composer and teacher at the academic level. In his experience, Brant said this was the smallest group of Violins 1 he’d write divisi. Doable with DS.

Realivox-The Ladies is another tool in the scoring toolbox

The human voice. In my opinion, the voice is the last frontier of sampling. It’s the most intimate of musical instruments, the one that 5 billion-plus people are most familiar. Instantly the human ear can tell if a voice is genuine or mechanical.

Mike Greene of Realitone took on the human voice as his first major foray into the world of sampling. Does he succeed? In my opinion yes, but within the limits of what the product can do.

Once I received The Ladies I of course wanted to put it to the test. Could it do what I needed it to do?

Loading the library into Kontakt 5 I ran through some of the patches. Mike managed to capture a wealth of articulations. 30 articulated syllables per voice. There are 5 different singers representing various vocal styles from pop to operatic, the coverage is there. Melismatic vocal lines are possible due to extensive “true” legato sampling.

The singers are listed by name: Toni,Teresa, Patty, Julie, and Cheryl. The library already has a reputation as a “pop” vocal library. But, I wanted to see if my “Ladies” could do a little bit more, since I rarely do that style of music. So, I settled in on doing an underscore type cue to see if I could use it in a more film/tv type dramatic setting.

Isolating the proper syllables was easy enough. I cleared out the prearranged keyswitches and loaded up just the syllables I thought I could use. This was rather easy and I was impressed with the graphic interface and the pull down menus that let you chose and arrange your own keyswitch patches.

Cycling through my Ladies I decided to use Patty as a lead vocal and Cheryl as the backup vocal. Ok, all set, ready to make my Ladies sing. Could they perform? The answer to that question is, yes, no and yes.

The First Yes
The singers are excellently recorded. The legato certainly adequate for the job. Switching between syllables, it’s easy to create nice vocal timbres.

The Ladies do sound rather lovely. And I had no problem with the sound quality. The vocals are rather upfront, so I needed to find a way to set them back into a more ambient situation. I realized that the 1k area was a bit hyped up so rolling off a bit around the upper mids pulled the vocals back a bit. Using a delay and a bit of eq also helped create a sense of space around the vocals.

I was grateful for the number of vowel sounds captured. They ready do add a lot of color to the vocal lines and switching mid phrase, though it didn’t simulate the perception of words being sung, it did add timbre changes that were quite pleasing.

The No
In the end, I realized that I was expecting a lot from The Ladies and I was trying to spin complicated phrasing from them that I couldn’t make convincing, so in that sense, I was a little disappointed. But that disappointment soon faded.

Once I realized that my Ladies weren’t going to compete with some real ladies, then I was able to get some quite satisfying results from the library.

The Last Yes
Setting up some cool hums and laying them in a bed of strings and low brass gave a wonderfully dark ominous sound. I was grateful for the upfront recording style of the vocals because it made it really easy to distinguish the vocal lines from dense low deep harmonies.

I realized that this library treated as a “vocal” instrument had many previously unmentioned uses. It could do some really nice ambient yet clear, simple emotionally powerful melodic lines. With deep reverb and EQ, I could do some off stage type vocals with it as well. I had fun doing “siren calls” from an off stage perspective. I’ve only begun to explore the capabilities of a vocal library like this and I’m looking forward to trying some more ideas with it.

The library really shines at adding a vocal instrument as another tool in our scoring toolbox, if treated as such, you’ll make a lot of good music with it.

DEMO BY JOSE HERRING: ONCE AN ANGEL
ONCE AN ANGEL-01