If you need some decent strings in your song you better pay for a fully equipped studio (Abbey Road is a few blocks from here!) and an 80 person orchestra (at least) to get a decent sound. Then you need a top notch producer and an engineer (the guy who’s in charge of the microphones, pushes the buttons and turns the little knobs on a mixing console). And even then you can end up with the famous, or should I say infamous Naxos sound… So, better not have any strings, just go for that eighties saw sound (retro is always good).
Since I have trouble taking other people’s advice, I sometimes venture into the funny (not haha, but peculiar) world of symphonic instruments. Since my allowance never allowed me to buy any real musicians (food and heating doesn’t come cheap these days), I always had to revert to software to do the trick. In the next three weeks I will play three pieces I wrote, each about a year apart and each for orchestra. All three pieces were produced with different software and it clearly shows the amazing developments software orchestras have been going through in the past couple of years.
Software orchestras
But first it’s time to explain to you what a software orchestra is and how it works. A software orchestra works the same as any synthesizer. You start with a softsampler. This is nothing more than a big hard disc that contains thousands of notes of all instruments possible in an orchestra. Each note can be played with a key on a keyboard, which makes the keyboard the second thing you need. Once you’ve hooked up the keyboard to the softsampler, you can select which part you want to play (violins, clarinet, timpani, you name it). Once this part is loaded, each note on your keyboard will represent a note played by the instrument. So, if you hit C4 on your keyboard, it will sound like a C on a violin / violin section (or any other instrument you selected).
Next you need a recording device. This is a so-called sequencer. Another software program that let’s you record music and subsequently layer it (ProTools, Cubase, Logic). So, in our example we can first record the first violin section, then the second violins, then the violas, etcetera until you have a full blown orchestra coming out of your speakers.
The major challenge for each software orchestra (usually called a sample library) is to create sounds that are as convincing as possible, so the listener won’t hear the difference between a real orchestra and software version. Especially in recent years various libraries have been very successful in doing this. In fact, most orchestral scores you hear in TV shows is created with software orchestras. Even in movies nowadays, a lot of orchestra music is no longer performed by an orchestra, but by one (wo)man and his/her computers. A trick that is more commonly used dubbing a software performance. The software orchestra is dubbed by only a few multi instrumentalists playing the same violin part several times and then switch instruments and do the same thing until most parts are a hybrid between the software performance and the actual performances.
And the results? Well, you still need deep pockets to pay for a full blown, convincing sounding software orchestra (and several computers to run it properly), but compared to a day in Abbey Road studios, it’s probably not a bad deal. The big changes, however, take place in the bottom end of the market (yup, that’s the part where I dwell). Affordable software orchestras (under a thousand pounds and prices are still dropping) have always sounded like a screeching cat caught in a washing machine. In the past two years or so, several dramatic changes have taken place and the orchestra is now truly for the masses and as anything that ends up in the unwashed hands of the masses, the orchestra will probably go down the drain, so the drain is where I will look forward to meeting you next week! Bring some earplugs, because we’re gonna put that cat in the washing machine. Oh, and don’t forget your wellingtons.
