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Comments
I really liked all the tracks on this page and of the ones I have heard to date I have been very impressed by Cinebient's compositions, I do however think sometimes people are inclined to become a bit too obsessive and listen to the sound instead of listening to the music.
At one time in my life I found myself almost wanting to hear faults clicks etc on expensive Hifi equipment until I realised my behaviour was preventing me from enjoying the actual music. I am not suggesting for a second that app developers should not try to achieve the perfect instrument emulation but even as it currently stands most people would never know that they were listening to a software instrument.
@Cinebient I use the SSO samples in Thumbjam (and now Auria too) and some of those have decent solo instruments, but often for one articulation (sustain) only. The SSO samples however do have sections in sustain, staccato and pizzicato.
None of these standalone instruments - including TJ - which I think is excellent - have other articulations, but, in Notion you can for example write all of the following and have all of them articulated properly from Notion's own samples. (Here I've just shown some of the possible articulations for horn and violin).
iSymphonic doesn't yet have the breadth for me.
Nice tip, @MusicInclusive! Thank you!
You are welcome @theconnactic The simple fact of the matter is that outside of Notion there is nothing yet on iOS that has the breadth of articulation - and ease of accessing that articulation - that one can find in desktop libraries.
It's also not something I foresee being widely invested in - even by the folks at Crudebyte. Apart from anything else, there is no easy way to select among various articulations from a notation source like you can with Notion.
Imagine if you had a piece even scored like that totally contrived example above. I wrote that up in about 2 mins - and all of the articulations sound. Now imagine taking that piece and pulling it apart (if you could) into different MIDI channels to drive even the more limited variety of articulations in, say, iSymphonic or Thumbjam. You would be forever having only a few notes on each channel, and the amount of manual work involved to do that is enormous, especially over a larger piece. Enormous!
It is not at all uncommon practice to have articulations change multiple times in a bar, and although my example is definitely and purposefully contrived, such changes do happen (even if not altogether!!!
) What one would have to do - to do it manually, without any consistent MIDI mapping is indeed to break those individual bars apart into different single notes on different MIDI channels. Ugly. Very.
If one had a multi-instrument with key-switching - like some desktop libraries do, where a set of unused lower notes typically in the C0 octave are used to change articulations - even then one would have to write those additional key switch mappings either as a mapping rule set to insert the notes into the MIDI stream or as actual MIDI note in the original score.
Again, nothing on iOS approaches doing any of this - I would say consistently, but in fact it's at all - again, apart from Notion.
Now, although I like Notion a great deal, and use it a lot, even its instruments - LSO samples though they be - stand some adjustment / replacement sometimes, and although I have rendered complete scores in Notion on the iPad using those samples, there are still better libraries out there (at least on the desktop). Even if those libraries existed on iOS, there's no way to drive them from Notion!
We are in a small corner here currently on iOS... Oh, yes, still able to achieve a great deal within that limitation, but still only a small corner compared to the desktop for this kind of work.
While, as I say, I have rendered complete scores on iOS in Notion, with very pleasing results that I am very happy with, if I want more expressive instruments, my current approach is to score in Notion on iOS, export seamlessly to Notion on the desktop, then use a desktop library with a mapping for Notion to better instrument and orchestrate. If Notion does not provide the appropriate ease of use, (which it usually does BTW
), export notation to Sibelius or MIDI to a DAW and work there.
Hmmmm. Having said all that
(typically for me at length 
), it has given me an idea 
!
I'll beaver on something a bit and see what I can come up with - would pertain to an orchestration I'm currently working on too, so might prove of wider use.
For individual stringed instruments, I would think that the GeoShred developers could come up with an app that could emulated the resonate bodies, and other various characteristics of stringed instruments. It will also be very interesting to see how their expressive MIDI apps turn out.
May be possible, but, that's a long way from full articulation though I think @Paul
- and is still a feat to perform across a full orchestra. Sure, it's a niche that someone may be able to fill but it's a tall order to emulate all resonant bodies accurately. Bucket-loads of development time. Even on the desktop that's not something that's taken - samples still rule there by and large. OTOH, emulation - when done properly - can take up a lot less room; witness Pianoteq.
Or something like Synful on the desktop:
http://www.synful.com
Because it is a form of modelled instruments, it only takes up 32 mb of space on a hard drive.
Technical background:
http://www.synful.com/RPM.htm
Interesting @bsantoro - thanks - had not come across that before. Yes, something like that might work well on iOS in terms of size. It's still significantly short of a full orchestra though, and I'm not sure I completely like the idea of the articulations being chosen for you (if I understood the description properly which I may not have
) - seems like it would take away the control from the score - but I can see how it could be useful for purely MIDI driven pieces.
Seems like perhaps the development on it has stalled some from the web page - last news was 2011. Also, it's reasonably expensive at $479 when compared to the full Platinum plus symphonic orchestra from East-West for example which is only ("only"
) $625.
Still - yes - it shows such things are possible in a small space. An intriguing and different approach with its reconstructive phrase modeling technology to Pianoteq which I believe is more pure physical modeling.
The sound samples there are quite good - listening to some of them. I'd have to listen along with some score reading to see how it compared though more thoroughly.
Edit: Just found a new web page - might be updated here.
https://synfulauth.com/
Ha! Someone has created custom rules for using Synful and Wivi (together I think) in Notion 4 for the desktop. Not sure if those will translate to Notion 5 - they might. I'll have a look at that perhaps and try with the demo - see how that sounds with some pieces I've composed in Notion. I'll LYAK if it works out. If so, I might contact the Synful folks and see if they are interested in an iOS port. Would be interesting
(Although - it would likely need some work to convince them to charge a reasonable price on iOS - whatever that is!)
http://forum.notionmusic.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2446
That would be great but we all know that this will not happen for such a pricey plug-in!
Thank´s for your suggestions about Notion. I saw there is an iPhone version also. I think i might have a look.
I sent an email to the author @bsantoro to inquire about a possible iOS port.
As violin was my first instrument, I have to say that the fretless interface in GarageBand is nicer than a keyboard, but I find Thumbjam much more intuitive. Is there a way to do a vibrato in GB? If so, I've never found it. When I use Thumbjam I hold it like a violin and create vibrato by wiggling my finger. It doesn't always work the way I want it to, but it's still a very natural way for me to play.
Another thing I have been experimenting with is using MIDI Guitar as a controller for strings.
What would be awesome on iOS would be something like Geoshred for concert strings, or apps with more of Garritan's controller features. (It would be great to be able to turn a knob and change the vibrato speed, etc.)
For ensemble sounds--and obviously this is personal--I prefer the Miroslav Philharmonik Edition for SampleTank strings over the GarageBand strings. I find them richer and they provide more choices: there are 5 different varieties of full orchestra sounds and it also has a lot of options for the various instruments, including Trill, Trem, Staccato, Pizzicato, Mute, Soft, etc. There are also different groups, like 11 violins, 23 violins.
Also, I think the quality of the reverb is very important for selling all synth string ensembles. I turn off the SampleTank reverb when I use my Miroslav Philharmonik sounds, and then put a nice hall sound from AD 480 in the Audiobus chain. The ability to use any reverb you want as well as the ability to use it as a source in AudioBus is an advantage for all non-GarageBand string sounds.
On Reverb: agreed @Reid - I almost never use the stock reverbs - in TJ, Notion or anything else. I turn them off and run through Altispace.
I agree too, reverb is the most important thing. There is still a lack on iOS too. I like them large and hungry as black holes
B2 is maybe my favourite ever plug-in from everything i used.
I find AudioReverb the best on iOS at the moment. I'm more a friend of algorithmic reverbs since they are more flexible and less static.
Not solo cello or violin but related to the topic.
OK. So, I've been working on using Notion + Auria Pro + the SSO samples together. I've been arranging Mozart's Symphony in A major No. 29 K.201 in Notion from a MIDI file. Needed quite a bit of work renotating various sections. I won't rehearse the issues here but if anyone's interested I can elaborate later.
Then I've exported the MIDI into Auria Pro and orchestrated with the SSO samples inside Auria Pro.
Here's the current rendition up to the first repeat using the SSO instruments in Lyra in Auria Pro. It's far from perfect yet - and there are some interesting attack issues (likely the SSO samples I think) that mean that some notes sound a teensy tad misplaced.
This is not mapping any articulation - that's a step I want to try and tackle next by the "Aha!" method I thought of the other day
above, so it's relying solely on exported MIDI note length and velocity per Notion's assignment of it as notated to simulate that for the moment, and that isn't really correct since there are staccato and spiccato articulations in the original score. Here all instruments are set to use sustained samples.
I've also identified some issues with Notion as a result of doing this. Nothing major that can't be worked around, but it means renotating some things a little. (Grace notes are the primary concern).
But - still - it is what it is. Enjoy
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tvq2vqwybz1o47c/SSO Mozart KV201_bk3 3.wav?dl=0
Wow that sounds really good! Thanks @MusicInclusive !
Glad you liked it @TGiG
Still a loooooong way to go yet. Need to look at the attacks as I mentioned and also figure out a repeatable method of being able to drive the articulations. Still mulling that.
Also, the bass part is a divisi cello/bass combination in the MIDI and there's no easy way to split that in Notion - so I'm cheating for the moment with some doubling up of cellos and using some cuts with EQ instead in Auria Pro to take out the high end. I tried the SSO bass but was getting quite a lot of click on it because it was also playing the cello part of course as well.
Back on the subject of solo cello
- this is something I did a little while back using the excellent Ruckers 1628 Harpsichord app and solo cello from Thumbjam.
doing something similar my own. Haven't the midi file for the piece, just a crappily scanned pdf(you really can't distinguish crochets from minims). So I'm writing it down from scratch. Having quite lot of fun but I'm way far from finishing it. It took me 4 days to get done percussion, the trombone(but I"ll have to do some proper voicing sometime in the future) and most of the woodwinds.
If I'll very get to the finish line of this I'll share
@MusicInclusive great version of the Mozart, I suspect for most people other than real purists, this is as close as it needs to be. I did notice a strange tremolo effect around 40 secs though. Great work in exploring the possibilitues of IOS orchestrations!
You can get a fair amount of expressiveness using the SSO (which, as previously mentioned, has solo instruments) in MusicStudio. Certainly nothing elegant like Notion, but if your handier with a Piano Roll than scoring ... This little bit is all MusicStudio plus a choir drone from SampleTank and some sparkles from Crystalline:
Like to hear it. Your effort is a sobering inspiration
Nice @eustressor
Thank you, sir. That was my first orchestral composition