Berlin Studio Quick Test #2

[@michaellaumusic]

Alex, this is great. Do you plan on doing something like a tutorial to best utilize the plugin?

[@expressivoarts]

Excellent!

[@t1rrr0n]

Thank you for this test videos. Sounds great!

[@andrewb2700]

Great composition and it does need some mixing skill here. To me , all the instruments are masking each other, they sound bright and therefore lack of that deep darker orchestral background. That BStd reverb tend to smear the instruments if not carefully EQed and un-necessarily too wide taking up spaces in the mix.

[@composerdoh]

Nice! Very nice final product too, I thought. There were only some subtle things that gave away that it was not real players, otherwise I might not even have known! I noticed that the tempo was pretty mechanical- that's one thing DAWs seem to not do very well... it's something I have real trouble with since my tempi tend to be very fluid, and my music changes tempi and meters very frequently. I tend to use the mock-ups from finale/Noteperformer as it's just easier w/my process, but once I put them in Logic it creates all kids of problems. Idk if you have any pointers for dealing with that, but....either way, thanks again for your videos!

[@shawn-singh]

For me personally, the way to do this is combination of three things: (1) record actual MIDI performances and don't try to quantize too much - might not be applicable for a notation software workflow, but the other two parts still work ... (2) post-edit MIDI to add more natural timing, (3) micro-details with tempo track automation. In Cubase, meter changes are done by a "time signature track", don't know if Logic has something similar? Yes, the editing can be painstaking, but I think it's really the only way to do it. There's also a learning curve to figure out what kind of micro tempo or micro note-timing edits would be natural and when certain tricks would fit. One technique I've found very useful to learn those things is to record actual MIDI piano tracks with natural timing and see how note timings look when they sound natural. Then with Cubase (not sure about Logic) you can also do some tricks to derive a tempo track and "straighten out" a track that has a lot of tempo variation - then you can also see how the tempo track itself looks to learn how to edit it manually later. Then the final thing is to gradually learn how different instruments may have different ways that timing variation would sound natural - breathing or bowing or finger positions or embouchure jumps - for that, I've tried to learn by looking up KZbin videos of real instrumental performers as needed.