Am I the only one who'd pay for a Spitfire Notation Guide?

jbm

I think having a book of notation examples for Spitfire's libraries, indexed by patch, would be an amazing resource. As a composer primarily working in concert music I'm loathe to use some of the more complex patches—like the Evos, for example—simply because I'm not clear on what exactly has been put in front of the players (and I say this despite the fact that many of the effects are close to things I've tried to use in the past).

Of course, I realize there are known ways of notating many of these effects, and I could figure out ways of notating others, but that can be tricky, as you can waste time (and therefore money) in rehearsal if your notations don't translate for players like you'd hoped. At least having examples that have been vetted by players in this kind of context could reduce the margin of error. I think this kind of resource would be pretty valuable—I'd be willing to pay a decent price for it.

Angus

Hi @jbm

Particularly with the Evo Grids, in some cases these are individually recorded and then layered together to form the undulating pads- so on some occasions, it's actually quite difficult to pick out the exact notation used. What we do provide is the ensemble size, so provided your live session matches that (or you double track to up the amount of players) it is relatively straight forward to use the library as a reference point for your musicians.

We cannot discuss the finer details of how our products are created and mixed, but I will certainly pass your feedback onto the team.

DCPImages

I have a similar problem. I really like the Kepler Orchestra and the good people at Spitfire repeatedly emphasise the importance of using live musicians. Yet despite Kepler (and other Spitfire libraries) being called ‘scoring’ libraries, I cannot see anyway of creating a notated score to match the mockup in case you want to ask musicians to do a live rendition? Any advice?

Edward

assuming you can edit notation, this works -

https://www.lunaverus.com/

you might want to isolate your tracks.

jbm

Always interesting to hear about new F0 estimation models getting out there...

But this is a different case, of course. I was really just thinking about notation recommendations for some of the techniques they're using. I suppose it falls under trade secrets or IP, which I understand. But that's why I mentioned the option of paying for it as a separate product.

Anyway, in many cases the general idea can often be approached using the "standard" (if you can reasonably say that) aleatoric notations, and/or by adding written indications/descriptions. From there, you could tweak the details with live musicians during rehearsal.

Nic

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/comment/4639#Comment_4639

My advice for trying to recreate Kepler would be to hire people who've played funk/rnb/pop sessions, and are as much in that world as the 'orchestral/symphonic/conservatoire' world, because rhythm, groove and tempo really honestly aren't a big focus in the latter world, and drifting off grid with the tempo (and, honestly, playing completely out of time) is considered normal in the classical world.

I think the orchestration would be simple though, no? Pulsing quarter notes/quavers are notated the same regardless of libraries.

People are individuals, and might react to stuff in ways that are hard to predict, so it's hard to give concise and pragmatic advice here, but, if it's just "I need these musicians to do this weird effect" - Why not just try playing them the weird effect and asking "Do you think you could give me something along those lines?" and then maybe highlighting "Yeah, you're doing the slide great, but, I'm more fixated on the throatyness that the demo has as the pitch lowers, don't worry so much about intonation, let it be dirty" or whatever.

Below I've linked a great video about musical score. It might not solve your problem in time for next weeks session, but, it might give you some new ideas about how you want to write your music down on paper.

Good luck! :)

https://youtu.be/KA6mkg0KNco