Some work with the Spitfire libraries

recent orchestral work

Spitfire bbcso, spitfire solo violin and… my voice…

here is a new orchestration of a piece composed when I was 20 years old, for voice and piano.

I give you here the original version first (with piano) and then the orchestrated version.

Here I use the BBCSO pro, Appassionnata str, solo string libraries.

I was once again delighted to be able to give free rein to my sonic imagination thanks to the magnificent creations of Spit! It's very inspiring.

For the moment I haven't really tried to leave massively the original proposed mix although I use some extra microphones on certain solo instruments, according to the needs. (with more than 110 tracks, it's quite difficult to find a solution to change the mix as a whole, at least with Reaper, so I haven't solved this question perfectly yet). Moreover, not using a Keyswitch function, I often find myself having to multiply the instances of the same desk, to vary the game modes, which increases the number of tracks...

Finally, as you can guess, I am extremely satisfied with the result!

De profundis , song and piano

de profundis, orchestral version :

here is now an instrumentation of a piece for piano and voice by Jules Massenet.

I've always liked the very interior and pensive first part, melancholy, a bit haunting with this perpetual movement of the accompaniment on which a suspended vocal line is placed.

In short, I wanted to look for a color a little like Gabriel Fauré (so very French...) by using an adapted force: harp, choir and string orchestra.

It was also an opportunity to test my new acquisition "Epic choir". On this subject, I am a little divided. The color of the high voices is beautiful, the low voices a little weak, especially on the tenor side. The principle of mixing does not necessarily help to have a good dissociation of the consoles, but it is obviously the goal of such a library that can be used quickly.

So, the vocal result is pretty good with the closed mouth effect, and very acceptable with the "aaah", if you don't push the dynamics too much... (otherwise it can bring out some oddities, I think).

Moreover, the "turning" patch lacks a bit of homogeneity, giving too much presence to certain individualities with a somewhat approximate accuracy.

On the whole it is therefore usable with precautions.

I especially regret two things: the absence of a legato patch, because you have to cheat as much as possible to avoid the artificial side of the sequences. And also the limitation in the treble at G for female voices, which is a tone below the LABS choir. So I had to use Labs choir as a complement for some notes. And I find that LABS choir gives a better result on the (only) rotating patch.

in short, I nitpick, especially for the very affordable price and quite usable for accompanying atmospheres (it seems to me that it is its role). However, we should not try to entrust this choir with a central role and it would certainly be appropriate in this case to opt for the very fine production of Eric Whitacre's choir, but which is worth its price!

Merci pour vos commentaires ;-)

Oh thank you for your nice comment.

It's a French melody of which I especially appreciate the first part with this strange lullaby. I find that Massenet is a little too academic in the second part, but the times demand that and it sometimes happens that the 19th century in France is a little mannered.

We have to accept it. It is probably a little later that the genre for piano and voice will find its apogee in France, with impressionism, and the works for Piano and voice of Debussy, Ravel then the modern era of Poulenc and a few others.

I don't know the English repertoire of the 19th century well, and I don't know if we have the same characteristics as on our side of the Channel...

in any case, the instrumentation exercise in period style was interesting and the opportunity to test what the choir had in its guts...

I also wanted to try to deploy a great lyrical flight of the cellos for the second part, but I think I didn't find enough hook, maybe my mix, maybe a bad choice of microphones in the mix of the Spitfire plug-in. I find that the result lacks a bit of density, precisely to envelop the voice more and avoid leaving it too bare in its slightly caricatural lyricism... (sometimes orchestration is a good way to hide dust under the rug!)...

In any case, thank you, the comments are a pleasure to read!

Oh ! Thank you very much for listening!

I too love the music of Penderecki and Tavener and I have had the chance to interpret it many times. (choral music).

Another great pleasure with the tools of Spitfire, is really the impression of being in front of a real musical instrument, whose possibilities are absolutely infinite; also the impression that nothing is frozen, as in "real" music on stage: as long as we take up a solo, a small element, a small musical twist, it will never be exactly the same thing, because we will have varied the dynamics a little, or the timing or the vibrato. So the possibilities are endless and I find that very inspiring.

At the moment, I'm always busy (when I have free time and when I neglect my personal work), orchestrating a few pieces composed in my youth. The dissonances are quite numerous there (and yet at the time, in my circle of studies, I was always too tonal for my peers... Our time is much more permissive with the use of tonality (or at least a form of tonality) than what I knew 30 years ago. In France, the revival of neo-tonal composers made it possible to no longer be qualified as retrograde when using these resources. When I was a student, we were here again under the influence of god Father Boulez, and the deviations towards tonal music were frowned upon. Of course, I may be exaggerating a little, because we already saw these currents dawning but in the very academic classes, it had to flee the tonality like cholera...

But since I'm not a composer, I'm also lucky to have the right to make the music I like, without constraint!

Hi there,

Here is a piece that I called "adieu vendanges" (in French).

For orchestra, several motifs of which are taken from a previous piece for voice and piano (l'hiver qui vient).

I use here the BBCSO orchestra (pro) as well as the Appassionnata library for the beginning of the strings.

The character is not strictly minimalist but not far, neither quite tonal nor really atonal.... I probably should have developed several elements more, but I'm sticking with this "miniature" for the moment. My wife thinks it lacks a strong theme, I can only agree with him unfortunately ! It's a bit like hearing here the accompaniment of something missing, and I can't find what... The voice maybe...

What I can say is that the photo was taken about a year ago, maybe, not far from my house, with my old film camera and an Ilford HP5 plus film (you are very good, English friends, with all these good things that you know how to do so well, photo film, wonderful samples)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJC7D__z90k

Hi there,

I had fun, following a little challenge with friends, to take up the theme of an exercise method for singers.

The "practical method of learning Italian singing" by Vaccaj is a kind of old bible that does not fail to attract sarcasm because it really symbolizes the dusty singing lessons, in very classic salon and bourgeois styles.

So I didn't change a note or Lyrics of the sung part but totally arranged with my greasy French sauce, thanks to the BBCSO pro.

It's a form of stylistic shift for those who know the original piece which is originally a very nice bluette and here takes more the form of a funer al march.

good listening !

Ciao!

Hello.

this message unrelated to my compositions, just to let you know that I was the candid victim of a basic scam!

I had posted a small comment under a SpitfireAudio video, concerning the AbbeyRoad studios. This was followed by a notification that my comment had been selected for a surprise gift, as promised by Spitfire. I stupidly followed the telegram link, which seemed to have the logo.

The person to whom I spoke (laboriously because my telephone is in French and corrects English unfortunately), the person was therefore made pass by Paul Thomson in person!!! I should have been more wary all the same... It was quite late and as I'm a Spitfire fan, I was the person dedicated to being easy prey.

So this nickname Paul Thomson asked me to pay shipping costs (70 dollars) to receive this beautiful gift worth 1400 in France. And I... I paid.

he then asked me to repay to unblock the initial transaction, which according to him did not work... I refused.

When I hung up, I was well aware of my mistakes, even if the initial hook seemed credible to me. (at the moment...)

And then last night, again, and late, I was revived by this so-called Paul, who asks me this time to pay again because he supposedly needs to unblock the sending that he has already financed... I hangs around and no longer responds.

I will still try to report to Spitfire that a usurper is acting on their behalf, then turn to the police and probably Paypal, although with little hope.

And yes, yet suspicious, I was fooled like a naive!

good new year friends composers from england and elsewhere.

K.

PS. I think I deserved to be scammed because I'm really stupid!

Hello, je retente de poster sur ce fil ma dernière compo

BBCSO pro

Appassionnata

EWhitacre Choir

Solo Strings