Recording - September 2011 - 59

Played with a 4-second crescendo, this chord sounds good—too good, in fact. Horn players—classical players in particular—would most likely strain a bit to hear this harmony, and so I’ve selected one of the “Rise Fast” tuning curves and set the Humanize and Tuning buttons to the same MIDI controller. Notice the effect... I’ve pumped it up so that you can clearly hear what’s happening. Fabulous! You can even select different curves for the individual members of an ensemble. Wow, the second trumpeter went on a bender last night! VSL was the first library to introduce true legato into the world of sample playback. Polyphonic legato is another leap forward. If you want to track a section as one pass—for time reasons or simply because it’s easier for you to feel your music if you play multiple parts at once—you no longer have to sacrifice legato. The VSL engine will do its best to make logical voice leading choices, but if you’re tracking a brass quintet and need to make sure that the integrity of your part writing is intact, you’ll record each instrument separately. Applying a MIDI controller to the Start fader can bring about an additional subtle level of realism, so I’d recommend that you study the Polyphonic Legato video in detail. More is better—there is more There are loads more features to the Vienna Instruments Pro sample player that users will immediately glom onto. The ability to create Multi Instrument presets and the new time-stretching capability are two that stick out. The internal reverb is quite serviceable; you’ll most likely end up placing the VSL instruments in a space using another plug-in, but it’s great to be able to work with an ambience in line. As I said at the outset, if you’re a composer who uses VSL you’re going to buy this sample player. What are you waiting for?

VSL Dimension Brass
French-horn samples can be trouble. Many a sample player, in hardware or software, has been known to have a factory patch labeled “really huge French horn section,” or something similar. More than likely that sample was achieved by having three or four French Horns play in unison. MIDI composers fall in love with the large sound and play huge chords with these patches. The resulting mush (24 horns playing a six part harmony, for example) led to the search for auto-divisi, the Holy Grail of voice assignment. We’ll get to VSL’s brilliant execution of the auto-divisi concept presently. If the inner workings of the VSL products are foreign to you, the following may appear to be written in code. Rest assured that my final conclusion is very positive, and if you consider entering into the VSL universe and you need brass as a component of your virtual orchestra, consider Dimension Brass—there is no secret handshake involved! The brass sections Dimension Brass from the Vienna Symphonic Library consists of four sections: Four trumpets, four French horns, four (tenor) trombones, and a mini-section blended from a bass trombone and tuba playing in unison coupled with a pair of tenor ’bones up the octave. This is a classic combination—think the Dragnet theme if you can remember that far back.... The players on these sections are all triple-scale musicians, unless, of course, you instruct them to play with the tuning precision you’d expect to find on a village bandstand! The folks at VSL say that Dimension Brass will work with their older sample player, and they’ve built a few presets for it, but no one in their right mind would purchase this product without also upgrading to the VI Pro interface, so we’ll discuss the two products in conjunction. (You’ve read my writeup on VI Pro just now, so you should be up to speed.)

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Recording - September 2011

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