How do you setup your orchestra?

sjc · April 23

I've tried a couple types of controllers with sliders to get more realistic articulations and dynamics. My favorite though, by far, is the Expressive E Touche. Just the physical way of using it makes the it very intuitive to get a good musical result. Initial set up was a bit to digest, but once I got going, nothing else has compared.

Any others to recommend?

Kaiwan_NI · April 23

Hi everyone, just a quick friendly reminder: only constructive comments count towards winning, and repeating comments won't boost your chances. Let's keep the discussion positive and helpful 🙂

Milos · April 23

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/149061#Comment_149061

Thank you, miss!

We will! :)

JesterMgee · April 23

95% of the answers look to be fake accounts to me, happens every time there is a giveaway.

Milos · April 24

Probably...who knows...

noisyvagabond · April 24

Actually, i did just that. I think everything is just from the standard kontakt library. I looked up a standard orchestra instrumentation and then loaded a slot for each instrument in Maschine separated by category with groups. I saved that as a template. It does take a while to load but seems to work pretty well with just 16gb of mem. Here's the results of one of my attempts with it

https://youtu.be/dEjoQdO3UCE?si=v5lYrGF0c-Xcha_Z

Mistaricc · April 24

Much love. Wishing everyone peace and love.

BIF · April 25

I'm going to throw down on the raid issue. We don't need the hassle and complexity of running RAID on our local drives and/or for our music libraries. All it takes is for one slip-up from your RAID controller (on your motherboard, probably), or some foofah problem in Windows or Mac, and your RAID is down for the count until you can rebuild your array. No thank you!

Having said that, I will admit that I do use a RAID configuration (mirroring) on my NAS, which is a Synology with two physical hard drives inside. But I do NOT run any music libraries off of those drives. And mirroring alone really doesn't improve performance anyhow; you need striping for that.

Danix78 · April 25

Setup:

Orchestral sections in folders with specific colour;

Tracks / Instrument with specific Color or consistent with the Section / Folder they belong to;

Order of the Sections, therefore of the Tracks / Instrument as per the Score;

Consistent and understandable Track/Instrument and Section/Folder names;

Expression Maps on each Track / Instrument (one Instrument, one musical staff, all available Articulations);

Score on the right screen, Project and Key Editor on the left screen, Mixer console with 16 physical faders, expression control, dynamics, etc., transport and Macro keys in the centre;

88-key master keyboard on central carriage;

So much passion

Electromusicproject · April 25

I use sequis and arkhis, and all the komete ultimate symphonic libraries, and time macro.
and the solo strings, strad violin etc.

have several templates and just freeze or bounce in place as I go.

Re composition, I lay down a Piano track and then copy each of 3 or 4 parts into strings/winds as I see fit, and add movement especially in the inner parts as I go.

If what Im writing suits the use of action strings, action strikes I use these where possible.

I take all effects off everything as by default, snapshots often use a whole mix of included effects. and add at the end sorting out mic placement first. Then add parallel compression and reverb.
I experiment with freak and bite, re NI fx, sometimes on cellos/basses only and very subtly, but as Im mangling orchestral sounds fir various jobs with synthesised sometimes, experimentation is key.

komthusr · April 26

First of all, templates. This saves time as you only need to do it once.

I load Session Strings along with Symphony Essentials, each on its own track and routed to their own mixer tracks.

I make sure none of them have reverb switched on. If they start taking up too much RAM I purge the samples in Kontakt or simply bounce to wav. Once I have the idea down, it's time to apply effects, mix, etc.

SSD is a must nowadays.

Oliveros · April 28

I don't know if Live has a similar feature, but in Reaper there is an option to freeze/unfreeze a track. It puts tall VST-s/VSTi-s on that track in offline mode, and renders an audio track of what you had on it for preview, or final mix if you will. Indispensable for a large orchestral template, as one can begin with everything offline, and slowly add instruments as you go. No large loading times at the beginning, because you add as you go. RAM will also be progressively occupied, CPU will be greatfull too. Happy composing!