Spooky Nope

[@propterhawk3585]

Really nice movement in the arrangement. It sounds like you spent a lot of time with the velocities on the strings, and gave them a a very natural sound. I appreciate the willingness to put the strings right out there. Violins and viola vsts can be very vulnerable, and there is always a tendency to bury them in a mix, or layer over them. The choirs are always going to be difficult it seems, and I think the decision to use them in a synthy manner is a good call. I never met a choir vst I could get to sound great front and center. I know there are sound libraries that do it half decently, but I found they are always packaged in niche genres, so you need a ton of them to really get what you're looking for. Very nice work Ben. You're really coming into your own with music, and the hard work shows. Keep it up man.

[@SpookyDivergent]

Eric Whitacre Choir works pretty well for choral layering in orchestral, but it's laborious to get it sounding right (and even there, it's basically for that and that only). For quick sketching (like this) I throw in Epic Choir and call it good. I'm allergic to the sound of most choir libraries. Thanks!

[@propterhawk3585]

@@SpookyDivergent I'll have to give that choir a shot. I had bad luck with them for decades, and wasn't paying attention to new developments on the market. I had a work around for vst issues I run into with the violin, that I never tell anyone. People see I have a violin and I'm happy to let them think I can play it. I operate on the worst case scenario assumption of "better to let someone think you cannot play the violin, than pick up the instrument and remove all doubt" lol. I am hopeless with it. The cello I can stumble through, but the violin is a no go... so here is a trick, and it works really well should you have the same issue. I live mic the violin into a mixer slot that has a tuner in it, and fumble my way to the chord I want. Once I have it, I hold it, and record many variations of it until I get what I'm looking for. The secret sauce is using a convolution reverb. I am sure you have run into this tool (which is an essential weapon for matching ADR with set audio as well) but if you haven't: You can take a clap board, or anything that makes an abrupt/sharp sound in the room you want to emulate,, and load that recording into the reverb. It basically matches the shape and falloff of a room very accurately. Once you have that, slap it on the violin vst, after an eq, so the real violin and VST match up as closely as possible. Then edit the two together, mix in any room tone from the live recording and you can put a bit of light regular digital reverb on the whole thing to further melt them together. It takes a bit of doing, and experimenting with mic placement, but once you have it, it sounds really slick. Especially for modelling unique playing that the VST can't do. I have tried to record entire pieces this way to mixed results. More complex stuff gets a bit patchy, but simple things turn out okay. You can further detail it with capturing little organic sounds the instrument makes. A bit of bridge noise, string slides etc. Especially for horror, where the instruments less pleasant characteristics can be very desirable. It's a nice touch that adds a lot of latitude to working with vsts. Another trick is tuning the cello to sound like an upright bass, and leaning into the eq a bit. Some good mic placement and some fine tinkering with cabinet emulators, and convolution reverb to emulate the basses larger body and you get two instruments for the price of one. Hopefully those tricks come in handy some time, or opens another door somewhere that you were looking for a solution. Sometimes a seed of one idea leads to a chain of other creative ideas.

[@gailforce]

very spooky that i was just thinking about something you said about another youtuber years ago then this pops