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convincing. A simple example would be attempting to play
a loud note played with excitement, using a sample where
the note was played softly and without excitement. You may
play the note and make it loud in the mix, but it still just isn’t
going to sound quite right. While this example is extreme
and might seem obvious to you in theory, you’d be surprised how often you will be running into this exact scenario, and more importantly, you will also be running into
situations where the mismatch is not as obvious, and it is
important to develop an ear for that.
As an editor you have to work with the material you’ve got.
In this case it’s the recordings included in the sample libraries
and virtual instruments you are using. Those samples are
notes that had already been performed. You are merely playing those recordings back. Work with what’s there. Don’t
force those recordings to be what they are not. In that sense,
using multi-sample libraries (and multi-sample based virtual
instruments) is just like putting together a puzzle. Each sample
is a piece in the puzzle, and you decide what picture you are
going to compose using those pieces. If you use pieces that
don’t belong, the mismatch is going to be noticeable.
Know the Real Thing
You must be familiar with the real thing before you try to
emulate it! This principle is more important than any mockup technique out there. It might seem obvious to some of you,
but shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, it is an important
principle, whether your music is going to be played by live
musicians or played by you using virtual instruments.
You must know what the instrument you are emulating sounds
like when played by live musicians, preferably you would have
seen and heard the instrument played live in person, not only
through recordings, and could have noticed what the instrument

player was doing. Think about it: if you are not extremely familiar with the
instrument you are emulating, how can you emulate it?
Being familiar with the real instrument includes a lot more than just
knowing how it sounds. It includes being familiar with how it is played,
what are its technical limitations. For example, a baritone saxophone,
being a huge instrument, when played in the low registers in fortissimo,
cannot prolong notes or legato phrases, as the player uses an enormous
amount of air very quickly. If you play a long legato phrase with no
breathing breaks, it would be a dead giveaway that it’s fake.
Being familiar with an instrument also includes being familiar with typical playing styles of musicians playing that instrument, which will guide
you in the choices of articulations and other performance nuances, and
will help you artificially recreate typical imperfections of performance
that, in turn, will help you achieve a more realistic mock-up.
If you don’t have much experience working with live musicians and
you don’t feel very comfortably familiar with the instruments you are
trying to emulate, make yourself familiar with them by both listening to
recordings in the relevant genre, and go listen to live music in concerts,
or even in rehearsals if you have access to them. If you have access to
the multi-track recorded material of music played by high caliber musicians, or even just the relevant stems, listen to those. Listening to the relevant instrument isolated from the rest of the arrangement can be very
helpful in the quest of training your ear to replicate the nuances of a
live performance when using sample libraries and virtual instruments.
Also realize instruments sound different when heard from a seat in a
concert hall vs. when captured by a nearby microphone.
Real legato samples
Legato sampling, initially introduced by Vienna Symphonic Library and
now slowly becoming the new standard in high-end sample libraries and
virtual instruments, is a clever way to improve realism, because it includes
actual recordings of the transitions between notes. This is significant for several reasons. First, because when playing a legato phrase (most melodic

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Recording - June 2013

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