Orchestral Samples - Why you MUST use Articulations

Want to know more? Then download our free Orchestral Programming Guide
thinkspaceeduc...
Day 1 of our 5 day FREE KZbin course in Orchestral Programming! How do you make orchestral samples sound more realistic? Can an orchestral sample library give real emotion to the music? In the first of a five part series, composer Guy Michelmlore gives you a quick insight into the essential orchestral programming secrets with this FREE 5 day course.
Day 1: Articulations and Keyswitches
Day 2: Dynamics and Controllers
Day 3: Legato
Day 4: Section Size
Day 5: Rooms, Ambience and Reverb

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Want to know more? Then download our free Orchestral Programming Guide thinkspaceeducation.com/signup/orchestral-programming/

[@bran4588]

Dear Guy, So you wake up in the morning and think "today I'm going to be working very hard on my videos again, because they should be the best quality and well organised, so that people can really learn". And then day after day, you invest time, effort and money into this project, providing a complete learning experience. Thus creating musicians who are well rounded and ready to even make a living from this. For free. So my point is: Santa... Is it you? 😧 Hehe... Anyways, just wanted to say thank you. You're immensely kind and we're so lucky to have you

[@hughhlatshwayo5442]

the sound quality is very poor. it makes a person not to watch at all.

[@NashMakado]

Passionate about scoring and happy to have found this channel! (:

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Great!

[@nerfytheclown]

Hahaha; Guy is also passionate about scoring and happy to have FOUNDED this channel!

[@uhlersoth99]

You have an amazing skill of communicating that is so valuable. You don't sound pompus when you speak. I'm ready to learn more from you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@RobertRodriguezMusic]

Can’t wait for the next few days!

[@V-A]

learned more from you than most lecturers on my bsc music composition lol! cheers guy 👍

[@deepspacemusicofficial9671]

Really love the way you teach sir, keep teaching students like me with your videos, it means alot.... Thank you sir.

[@lesliemakin]

Thanks I'm a BBCSO Core user so this will be useful 👍

[@matthewbushkes420]

My absolute favourite music tech teacher. Wonderful thanks Guy.

[@prodsgbeatz]

WHEN I HAD THIS WHEN I WAS MAYBE 13, I PROBLABLY WOULD BE A BILLINAIRE RIGHT NOW... I'm getting this ad soooooo many times but on youre tutorials, its just the truth

[@TemmeSikkema]

Looking forward to all 5. Thanks Guy!

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Should keep you busy I hope

[@High-Tech-Geek]

To compare, check 3:46 (no articulation) vs 9:20 (articulation)

[@javierestevez9680]

Your channel is a lot of inspiration and energy for new composers like me. I live in cuba and i cant pay for courses so thanks u.

[@loganhayes]

As someone with a smaller section, I want to proudly say it's not about the size of the section but how you use it.

[@matthewbrown1637]

Love all of Guy’s content, doesn’t make me fall asleep and it’s all to the point and insightful 💪💪 the theory course for £40 I think it was is the best £40 I’ve spent, so thanks for not being greedy with it 😂

[@yusrikarim5511]

Guys always knows how to put a big smile. Wish I could meet you someday.

[@rodgerpalmer8950]

Oh boy, Oh boy...5 days of articulation tutorials, AWESOME! Just can't get enough of your brilliant presentations Guy. Thank you so much for sharing.

[@mortenkalland]

Ja, jeg innrømmer at metronom er fornuftig. Takk for inspirasjons video, Guy!

[@kutchutozov]

Just want to say thank you so much for all the everything Guy! Your energy and enthusiasm have been so inspiring and genuinely helped me push thru some really tough times. I've changed my entire creative outlook in the last year or so, and since I found this channel my life feels like it makes more sense. From things I knew but forgot the importance of, to things I would never have tried,,,, you are a truly magical combination of things in an educator / human and I am just grateful for your existence (which I guess you had a limited part in but well done Mr and Mrs Michlemore). Anyone still reading this has probably been to thinkspace by now but if not, let them help you to help yourself! I even got the most helpful response and support from an email query I could have imagined. A little more hope in gloomy times means the world... Thanks again Jake if you read these.

[@Rzn8B58]

Always enjoy your videos. I'm a firm believer that those sun glasses instantly add years of experience when you begin to think like a musician.

[@emigiaquinta]

You're the best. Really.

[@danielleohallisey4218]

“It’s absolute pants!” 😂🤣

[@kentaccordionist]

I use notion to compose on the iPad. It allows you to write articulations onto the score in the same way they appear on a normal printed orchestral score. All the samples it uses are by the london symphony orchestra, and will let me output in all the standard audio formats, midi and also as a pdf of the score. So I can take the midi across to my laptop if I need to and use with spitfire. As for penny whistles I used to play professionally, and now have an app on my iPad that will convert audio to midi so I can use the penny whistle to play any instrumental sound I desire. Great for doing brass or woodwind, especially when using audio modellings swam instruments which are now available for iPad.

[@MatthewPolack]

I really appreciate this down to earth, easy to understand approach - thank you....so often in this field...(or indeed many others) - the éxperts'teach a bit like they are teaching themselves...with a whole bunch of assumed knowledge and experience....it is a true gift to actually place yourself in the position of a beginner...and start truly with the blank canvas..helping us understand from the ground up..thank you Guy...anyone making 'Tutorial'videos would do well to learn from this. Thanks so much!

[@DJKennethA]

this is great. I've been trying to learn more about using articulations, so thank you for this series of videos.

[@dilzaaaa]

I bloody love you ! Your content is consistently amazing and engaging.

[@miltonex]

Nice video!!! New subscriber!!! Greetings from La Paz Bolivia!!

[@davmar9923]

I take your point about how placing different articulations on different tracks allows micro-editing after the fact. Even where everything is on a single track it is still possible to change velocities or any other MIDI CC for a note or notes after the fact. For a single track where one doesn't want to both play/record the key switches and the notes during the same take one strategy would be to use the piano roll to enter the key switch notes ahead of time in the necessary location and then play the notes later as an overdub to that track. You would hear the desired articulations as you play due to the pre-entered key switch notes. Looking forward to the rest of the series. I have recently purchased several orchestral libraries and am looking forward to using them. I wish I knew more about key switching before I purchased them. Different vendors implement that feature in various ways, some better than others. I am particularly impressed with the approach Spitfire Audio uses. One of the products I acquired was Spitfire Audio Abby Road One Orchestral Foundations, which I bought on the last day of the introductory price offer. I would have purchased the full orchestra except I had already bought EastWest Hollywood Orchestra Gold. A good library but I prefer the Spitfire interface after using both.

[@timwilliams126]

Guy, your really good at what you do and I appreciate the effort you put into teaching us how to make a good sound

[@navysararmygrunt4037]

I was watching Christian Henson from Spitfire Audio and he even assigned some of the different articulations into the key velocity where you would get different articulations depending on how quickly or hard a key was pressed.

[@rdpatterson2682]

Perfect timing. You’re the best.

[@AndreasDormannMusic]

After a year of watching your videos, I now dare myself to the world public of KZbin with my orchestral works ;-) Thank you, thank you, thank you, Guy!

[@life-x476]

Thanks a lot Guy! I could really use this lessons right now

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Timing is everything!

[@alantorr4761]

Perfect timing Guy, I've just downloaded the Spitfire BBC and I really needed something like this. Thank you

[@greatmodernmyths]

I've only recently started to properly learn about this subject matter. For a good 9 months after purchasing BBC Core I was pretty much sticking to just longs and staccatos. The music sounded fine, nothing inherently wrong, but it wasn't until I played around with the other articulations that I realised how big of a difference to the music it makes to have these different textures. Really looking forward to your video on Dynamics and Expression. Only recently started to learn how to work with these so excited to learn more.

[@testohtoby]

Last saturday I've started a little orchestral track (using the Spitfire BBC SO free kit) It came out pretty nice and "full" I love your tutorials !!!

[@sprkymrt]

Always ready for a new video with new ideas and inspiration and ,of course, your entertaining style.. Thank you, Guy.

[@joegrint6280]

Great stuff Guy!

[@ryanknaggs]

Thanks Guy for that really good tip! I was always wondering why my music was sounding artificial at times, even when I purchased a really expensive library. This is really great to know! I'm looking forward to the next lectures that you are going to present. :)

[@MrJoel9679]

There are a lot of music programs trying to siphon off Guys’s work. Especially that mixing course and now some orchestral writing course.

[@drmorqWarrenProject]

Great series... I record each instrument separately when I am doing an orchestra arrangement.. Sometimes it sounds a mess but comes out pretty cool in the end..

[@martynfletcher2054]

Thank you Thinkspace

[@Thesilentwitness82]

Thanks for doing this. Will see all of the videos.

[@christiaantinga]

Playful and inspiring as always. Guy, thank you so much!

[@woozyjoe4703]

Good job, Guy. Glad the woffle is reducing a lot these days. I really liked this video.

[@biotechgeeks]

Wow great great great One of the best titles possible for your videos I think 200k subs is really few for you I know that nobody offers his or her great techniques to other composers in the world thank you really Guy hope you will get 1M subs about 1 or 2 years later...

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Thank you - tell you friends :)

[@biotechgeeks]

@@ThinkSpaceEducation Ok sure😀

[@DThompson55]

BRILLIANT!!! I had gone ahead and deleted Orchestral Tools because they rely on Key Switches but they never explain what those are, So I could only get one sound out per instance / track. But this... this is game changing information. I just went into Spitfire Audio's BBC Discover and vastly simplified my setup using the Reaper DAW with the information you provided here. Maybe I'll get back to Orchestral Tools sometime this month.

[@DThompson55]

I am finding it devilishly time consuming and difficult to set up individual tracks for Orchestral Tools SINE player, and I haven't quite gotten their key switches to do what I want. But at least there's hope. I like the idea of using one track along with key switches. I should be able to control volume with a volume envelope automation well enough.

[@smithc9698]

Guy you are marvelous!

[@richardburnett8595]

Thanks guy for a positive full week

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Lets go!

[@Chilajuana]

Very cool tutorial!!!!!!!!!!!

[@mohamedsaliem7899]

U r an amazing, talented, brilliant musician... really I appreciate your efforts ❤️

[@uhlersoth99]

You have totally motivated me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want to know more, You are amazing, thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@kramsnotes9624]

Thank you, Guy, I was wracking my brains sitting at the computer for hours before I saw your clear-minded (and entertaining) guidelines.

[@menacerisamir198]

thanks a lot for this explanation , this is really very helpful

[@staratmidnight7]

I always put different articulations on different tracks; it makes mixing so much easier!

[@paulmarriott7683]

Looking forward to the midi cc session. About to invest in an Icon Platform M+. Those lovely long faders......hmmmmmm. Happy weekend everyone!

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

M+ is a great choice

[@davidsalinas3869]

If i had this when I had just started, I would be a billionaire by now

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

as the guy says on the Output ad!

[@davidsalinas3869]

@@ThinkSpaceEducation I’d take your content over output any day

[@oibruv3889]

@@ThinkSpaceEducation truly a famous person who is just like us

[@LindaMissad]

Thank you, Guy!! I'm working on the Cinematic Orchestration course and getting the articulations right are definately a challenge; also, finding the best way to enter them in. Looking forward to your incites on this.

[@francissreckofabian01]

As some who (FINALLY) is learning to play piano I can assure you that anyone who can use two hands to play can multi task. I am pleased that my typing has improved since I began my lessons (shame that am still struggling with Old MacDonald).

[@rdru2ner82]

Excellent

[@patrickschilcher9386]

Thanks So MUCH for this Guy!!

[@Renaxelo]

additionally, the 2nd way will require us a lot of RAM than the 1st one. correct me if I'm wrong :D

[@ambientdave]

A good interesting video Using articulations is one thing to bring a piece to life,when to place them is another,he,he

[@Kevhuman]

I inow thrre are many ways of switching articulations , however i think it would have been helpful to soeak about using velocity ranges to switch between articulations.

[@TheGuitarWorkshop]

I like that Can’t wait for the rest

[@VoidloniXaarii]

You're such an awesome guy!

[@ItsTheRealTove]

Brilliant lesson as always Guy! Your approach to teaching always brings me back for more! Have you tried some of the Aaron Venture libraries? I'm really interested in the idea of controlling the instrument via dynamics and no key-switches

[@KE010101]

Great video.

[@pjdahmen]

firstly, thank you for the great helpful tutorial and you give us so much input today .keep up, and well done, sir.

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

My pleasure Paul

[@vincents1261]

Yes already loving this

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

great

[@floydkellogg4689]

This guy is my therapist

[@EvansAudio]

Nice Sir Thanks

[@ronnyb5890]

yep,youre right Guy,when you use keyswitches at the same time as your melody,those keyswitchnotes are also on the score,very anoying,i dont have cubase but i have studio one,and theyve upgraded their keyswitch lane,very intuitive,cheers Guy,have a great weekend

[@GergelyHunable]

3:25 Laughing my pants off... That one came out hilariously great. : DDD Thank you Mr. Guy!

[@TechbugProduction]

Unless you have mpe controller like Roli or Bitwig studio where you have mpe expressions in a box 📦 as a parameter modulator on any device, internal or vst

[@sunnyschramm9650]

great as always guy! but at 2:08 I thought more in the direction of round robin first ;-)

[@yousefyaqub661]

Hey Guy could you do a video making a piece with Olafur Arnold’s stuff please. Thank you!!!

[@abelgeorge4953]

The video looks beautiful... Any changes to the camera/ lighting setup?

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Thank tyou - always tweaking! Just got an Atem Extreme and WOW...you'll see the difference next week

[@Limbiclesion]

That was really useful and I’m looking forward to the rest of the tutorials in this series 👏👏👏🙏🦄🎩 I think the pdf download link is faulty...I have used it using both my email accounts and neither received an email response.

[@chrismcluvn6138]

thank you so much.

[@MarkBennett007]

Thank you Guy…….

[@AndreasvanHaren]

Lovely video as alway, Guy! However what you forgot to mention was; what is that little cool looking flashing device at your left?!

[@project1265ffo]

great

[@96ivanina]

Yeah! Nice days ahead

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Hope so :)

[@davidreece6193]

Great video. i have Philharmonik Orchestra 2 sorry bank balance doesn't go as far as some of the more expert recordings. I was trying articulations last night and for some reason sustain went to staccatto as i requested it to do. However the voice changed to solo violin? I had selected 23 Multi V1. It seems that all VSTs are not made equally. Do toy know if that in Cubase that if you assign an accent does it activate properly in Cubase or is it purely down the sound bits recorded. There seems to be no accents in Violin, Viola, VC and DB but some obscured Detache 0.3, 0.6, 1.9, 2.0 and 3.5. they seem to work as detached notes but this superfluous if you wrote a detached note. I know different orchestras but i di have a look at BBC today and the articulations are limited to I assume as it was free. can you add further articulations to this would that work? PS I tried to download the document but nothing turned up in my inbox. regards great video on how strings work and add some oomph to the score.

[@uhlersoth99]

My God, you are amazing, I feell ike I want to get a Keyboard now, please tell me what a new person with no music experience?

[@BinarySounds]

This is very interesting and what I have been looking for. I am still having some problems figuring out how a real musician would play a given passage. Would they really play it legato or detache? Would they really go staccato or marcato? How would I know which articulation is appropriate for the passage? For example, I can't have the violins play pizzicato as if the violing is a guitar and surely a real person wouldn't be able to switch between col legno, pizz and flautando very quickly between 1/32 notes at 140bmp. Same goes for things like mutes in brass or sordine on strings. I mean, how quickly would they be able to remove the mute from the instrument? I am also having trouble understanding things like the sustain samples. I can make them sound detache which is what they are supposed to do but if you overlap the midi notes, you can get them to sound legato also. And oftentimes in some of these articulations you end up losing control of dynamics so it becomes a question of do I use an actual crescendo articulation for the note or do it myself with the modwheel? The transitions between different articulations sometimes sound very out of place and can have the opposite effect, making the whole thing sound like it was stitched up after the fact. Could you help with some of the basics, like explaining what the articulations actually mean (what's the difference between expressive and lyrical on the violin?) and when they would be used in a real orchestral setting?

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

No such thing as a free lunch

[@tomhick5372]

First comment! Thanks so much for this course Guy!

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

You're welcome Tom

[@tomhick5372]

@@ThinkSpaceEducation Honestly though, you're amazing, Guy. I think my finding your channel last year was life making up for the rest of 2020. By the way, can we expect any live streams any time soon?

[@BarrieT]

I get it Guy and can see the differences, however, I dont have room for an 88 key controller and my controller is only 61keys. Some of the software sources have articulations in the lower register keys and some are in the higher register keys. If you take the juggling of the Octave transposer and the use of the 'Mod Wheel' for expression I need more hands!!! Any hints on that problem please? :)

[@olivergardner3519]

Hi Guy, thanks for this great short vid! This may be an impossible question to answer but how do you know when to use each articulation if you're not a player? Is it just a question of mixing up your passages of short notes with random variations of short articulations (or using a random mix of legato and other long articulations for passages of long notes) or are there some hard and fast rules to follow?

[@webycool7869]

Fabulous vidéo Sir MICHELMORE but what about articulation from daw to score automaticaly ?

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

There are no shortcuts to making the sampkles sound really great. If you are going to the score then a/ delete any keyswitches b/ merge them onto a single track c/ qualitze the starts and the note lengths then export the MIDI file

[@skeller61]

Thanks so much! I mean, I'm from the US, but was thinking, "Brilliant!"

[@MartinJG100]

Good stuff, Guy. The real frustration with articulations is obviously flow interruption on the fly. I am gradually getting to grips with this and the penny has finally dropped that the other half of this tricky equation is good sound management/production. So yes, point taken. PS - 6:43. Tell me about it. Out of interest, on the matter of multi tasking, did you know the Brontosaurus got round this problem by having two brains. One between the ears for the front legs and one between the buttocks for the rear legs. PPS - Apparently, the two brain theory is a complete myth but it is a fun idea nevertheless...

[@nutsosix7930]

you can't import like Halion symphony?

[@Markrspooner]

With individual tracks you can us track pre-delay if it is needed. Something that is not really possible with key switches or articulation maps

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

True - I know there are lots of reasons to go for sep tracks

[@domlavender]

Hi Guy, I love your videos :) I have BBCSO discover and I wanted to ask can you record using keyswitches as when recording a part, using multiple articulates, the track only saves the last one so when I play the part back it only one articulation can be heard. It doesn't use the different articulations for the notes I assigned. I am using Cubase btw. Thanks

[@shinodaprime9182]

does one way of adding those articulations lower the RAM usage for Kontakt? Is it better to have separate Kontakt player for each of the articulations, or just have them in 1 Kontakt instance, and then separate channels? :)

[@homeofcreation]

Studio One has just released an updat with the best articulations system ever. If you use VSL synchronized SE you don’t even need anything else. Articulations are loaded instantly into the daw en midi editor as soon as you lied an instrument. Other library manufacturers can achieve this too by using the Studio One API. I think this will be the future. No more expression maps needed.

[@ThinkSpaceEducation]

Thats very good. Ive got the babylon waves stuff and it works but Ive found it quite clunky

[@homeofcreation]

@@ThinkSpaceEducation tried to send a link but youtube won't let me. Just search for studio one sound variations vsl and pick the one with Paul Kopf

[@homeofcreation]

or Studio One 5.2 - Sound Variations with Vienna Symphonic Library for a more technical overview.

[@lightst33l]

İ need to know final side of composing. And it is "mastering"... It is very difficult to master orchestral composition. Because of every intrument has its own panning and loudness it is very organic&dynamic. So i think most difficult thing is final mastering... I never succeded that for headphones or speakers mixing always changes. Is it a optimized way to master of all?

[@jamescuttsmusicjcm5013]

Let's not forget that there are also lots of techniques you can use in the production side to turn your selection of articulations into exponentially more articulations. Don't just settle for what you are handed on a silver platter. ;).

[@Ryanez93]

Thank you