Dedicated "performances" for woodwinds / flutes

Internets, (as one man said) is full of all kinds of midi dedicated to bass, synth, piano and strummed instruments. Scaler “performances” are somewhere in line with general. I struggle when I need some woodwind riffs, because performances for the piano or other non-wind instruments, just sound strange with wind sounds such as recorder, flute, etc.
Perhaps “performances” can have a section with dedicated lines for winds?
Thank you for considering.

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Hi Mike

Actually, you can use any Scaler patterns, with or without other tricks, to drive any winds

Scaler for winds and brass

BTW, the new MMO feature should be very suitable, due to the option to extract single notes from chords

Let your imagination fly, this the best rule in Scaler :grinning:

And another trick for brass

Well… Those are “tricks”. Yes, I can tweak some stuff to make it “fit” but it’s not quite what I am looking for. It is easier sometimes to just play it on keyboard. I am talking about performances made specifically for woodwinds. By somebody who is familiar with instrument and who can play these for performances bearing the “instrument” in mind.

There are many instruments, most in the orchestral realm, that performances out of the box in Scaler are not truly aimed nor suited for. The biggest problem is lack of legato phrasing. This needs overlapping notes. I don’t expect Scaler to address this really as it’s not a part of Scaler design. It will never do soaring string lines for instance or flute solos. But the progressions can indeed be used for anything.

As someone who knows more or less zilch about orchestration, I’ve found the videos of David Bruce (a professional composer with a pretty good CV) informative.

This short vid emphasises the point made by @jamie above, and ‘Mistake 1’ makes that point pretty well

Yes, I agree
BTW, plugins build for winds and the so, like my Eastwest Pop Brass, are also not so cool for other reasons, and generally speaking I read that winds and brass are particularly difficult to tame with plugins (and keyboards)

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“Scaler are not truly aimed nor suited for” What can I say…? I can say this about any “performance” in Scaler and point to some VST that does is “better”. There is always room for improvement. This is my request. Doesn’t have to be yours :slight_smile:

OK, let’s not start this. I honor your request however the basic structure of Scaler with no legato is going to limit what performances can do with certain instruments. Staccatos and short note phrasing works fine. I use Scaler for winds, strings, brass doing ostinato and repeating short motifs just fine. It can drive certain pop brass instruments just great.
True I don’t know what you want you winds to do. Imagination and creativity is the key to any musical endeavor. The Devs might figure out legato in some future up date. There is always room for improvement indeed. I’m all for it. Keep requesting what you want. I’m not saying not to.
Cheers.

That’s the key :slight_smile:

P.S. I think do do a few rhythmical phrases oriented specifically for flute / recorder is very doable and a good start for something that might evolve into something bigger in the future.

Have you heard the legato which was just added to Soundpaint, and the amazing new instruments that dropped with it? I was truly floored, having been a sax and flute player since the age of six!

They have an alto flute, and soprano and tenor saxes. The technology has taken them years to develop and they’ve pretty much nailed it:

Yes, Soundpaint has brought some new stuff to the game. Great stuff!

Not really sure about this. I thought Legato means plaing the notes smoothly, one after the other: if the notes overlap they become chords. To me Legato means “not quite slurring” i.e. not quite running the notes into the next note.

Capturing midi from a short phrase (e.g. Performance Tranquillo) shows each note in the arpeggiated harmony immediately following the previous note - legato. Where there are no rests for the other parts again the notes immediately following the previous notes.

I suspect that the issue is around the instruments that are being used for the audio output.

Would this need several “dedicated lines”: one for each of the woodwind instruments as they have different pitch ranges (e.g. piccolo vs contrabassoon)? And what about the brass, string and pitched percussion sections?

May I suggest an alternative approach of having a set of solo performances that can then be transposed by the user to the appropriate pitch?

It may still need some intervention by the user to select the pitch, but if these can be saved by the user…?

I think, for the sake of testing waters a few lines - performances for flute / recorder would perfectly do. If it catches interest, then perhaps developers should see if they want to kick the ball further.

I agree that it would be useful to test the waters. I just feel that an approach focussing on a given instrument may not be the way to go as other instrumentalists may feel left out: which is why I suggested a few solo lines whcih the user can then transpose for their particular instrument may be preferable as a starting point.

Anyway lets see what the Dev Team think of this, it is their call and will have to fit into their roadmap for the development.

thanks for the tip
I am downloading it
BTW, devs are 8dio

I only hope it will not be another snake eyes like my Eastwest Pop Brass

I explain it better: most brass VSTs I tried so far have realistic sounds and articulations, due to a lot of gigabytes of samples, but playing them requires highly skilled keyboard players, and I am not, nor I have willing and time to become one

So, what seems to be lacking is a wind plugin with its own AI, so able to put down articulations automatically, more or less like my AAS Strum-GS for the guitar

I hope that this Soundpaint VST has a strong AI, otherwise I’ll have another paperweight in my bad (pun intended :grin:)-room studio :grinning:

The only comfort in that case is the cheap price :grinning:

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I am downloading the Tenor Saxophone. :smiley: It seemed good and the new Akai MPK 249 midi keyboard has been ordered so I will be able to play soon.

The eastwest seemed also cool
The problem is when you start playing, and you understand that it’s hard to play like the guy that demoed it on YT or elsewhere

This evening I’ll try to play also my hardware descant recorder (and possibly my harmonica) with a little help of Melodyne and Bitwig Key Filter

I’ll let you know :grinning:

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Sorry @ed66 its clear you do not know how legato libraries work. For them to perform correctly notes must connect, overlapping by just a few ticks so they trigger the scripting that functions within the Kontakt instrument. They are usually mono unless they use polyphonic legato but only a few libraries do. Don’t confuse connected notes with chords.
Legato means in a smooth flowing manner, without breaks between notes. None of the notes performed by Scalers Expressions (Performances) are using smoothly connected notes.