Another clickbait title.... Everyone who has been in the field for a while already knows about this. at least he didnt do one of thumbnails with a stupid expression on his face like just ate his own sht and is happy about it.
Absolutely! It really is why I put that disclaimer, even after using them for several months I still find it’s very challenging to make yourself play 100% accurately to how a real instrument would! But that’s been a fun challenge!
Wow 😃 What a Fantastic Video 👌 Swam is Incredible 💯 Amazing Sounds and what a Demo at the end 🎶 Absolute game changer, also one of the highlights of the video has to be you playing the Violin 🎻😅 🤩 🙌
@@MilesAwayOfficialAbsolute pleasure always 😊 🙏🏼 well I honestly thought they all sounded so realistic and true to the instrument in every way, if I had to pick a favourite it would be the Chello 👌 closely followed by the Violin 🎻 😅 The Double Bass was pretty awesome too 😎 This was a Fabulous Demo 👌 have a fantastic weekend 🙏🏼 🤩 🙌
It’s so funny, when I was watching the beginning, I was about to comment, “have you ever heard the SWAM strings?” Haha. This is the future of synthesized facsimiles of real instruments for sure I think, particularly played with MPE keyboards. And you are using the Roli which I personally find difficult to play compared to Osmose or the Haken Continuum. If you get a chance, try those and see how they compare. It’s such an exciting time to be a synthesist. Thank you for sharing this!
Haha thank you! Yea I 100% agree, that’s why I mention at the very start the caveat to all of these instruments is that they actually require practice to play them well, especially on a seaboard. I would love to give a continuum or linnstrument a try! Thanks for watching!
While I'm not a fan of plug-in that perfectly emulate violin for the price of good violin itself, I can say that the music in this video was top notch, touching, melodic, and would be an honor to any good movie. Bro, that's some serious talent. Every piece was perfect.
This is a great explainer video! I'm liking your recent video format language expansion. Continue your journey, I'm hear for it!! (..and I suppose that there is the lame Dad joke, "You'll be Miles Away from where you are today", but whatever )
Very interesting, but judging by the quality of the sounds of the instruments shown in this video, this technology still has a long way to go to be convincing. They sound far from realistic.
The MPE controllers are really tricky to use. A little goes a long ways meaning too much wobble, vibrato, pitch shift, filter changes, slides...can cause sea sickness. A lot of the most realistic string parts are had with the massive sampled string libraries out there coupled with room ambiances, control of various mix positions, and careful expression programming. Intonation comes in play very quickly. Compare Piano Teq (Modeled pianos) to say VSL Synchron Sampled Pianos. Modeled sounds have a ways to go but they are improving.
I totally agree about them requiring practice, it was really surprising how easily you can give it away, cause just like a real instrument they require skill to play well . As for room , check out 12:15! It’s incredible, they added room emulation
I think the synthesizer should be praised for what it is. It can do things no other instrument can do, and I praise synths for the things they do the best instead of trying to spend too much time to imitate other instruments, because it doesn’t sound too convincing in my opinion (at least what I hear here). The MPE controllers nevertheless add a lot of expression, it should become better and better and for sure it is interesting to have better control over the instrument, but I think that needs to come with sound quality as well, that’s why I wouldn’t replace my sound libraries for the moment. It seems interesting to play tho.
@@Donetur great comment! That’s why we all fell in love with synths, because of how they can sound like nothing else. If you check out the end of the video I talk about that, physical modeling is such a cool style of synthesis I want to see more companies trying out non-emulation physical modeling synths (that are more approachable for the average sound designer)
I can see a future where you pull up a violin plugin and record a track, and the plugin uses AI to listen to all the other tracks, calculates things like vibrato and bowing, and delivers a real time result that can fool people into thinking it's a real violin. The issue would be that the AI would be doing the expressive work in the playing, which means you're just providing the note and AI is doing the playing. That sounds horrifying. A real violinist would think that a dude with a plugin doing violin sounds is horrifying. Is physical modeling, which has been around for a while but is getting better and better, going to be the future? I do think that as it improves, it'll have a bigger role.
You have to make love to every note no matter how brief the affair. A finger on a midi keyboard can not compare to an instrumentalist that has spent 10000 hours mastering expression on an instrument. But after 20 hours focused practice on that individual skill; It will get you 69% there. The potential of this software is amazing and I'm so excited about the future of the human interface and expressive performance in synthesis. Some of your pieces had a suggestion of Erik Satie's Gymnopédie. Have a listen if you've never heard it.
I love Satie! Huge compliment :) I totally agree. It’s a lifelong journey to learn an instrument! That’s the thing that will make acoustic instruments never go out of fashion. We crave the nuances between the notes
These strings sound worse than normal sampling, for now. But the future of synths is the physical sound modeling. I mean, real modeling, with physical simulations of sound waves propagating through any virtual spaces and interaction with materials. Neural Networks have some place there too, I'm not sure what exactly though. Perhaps, there will be offline physical audio simulations which will be recorded and fed to the neural network, which then will create endless variations of that sound.
@@MilesAwayOfficial It's not what I mean, that was the simple convolution-based space simulation, what I mean is a complete physical matter simulation, atomic/molecular interaction simulation with waves moving through the matter, and so on. This stuff is extremely difficult to compute with our current technology (impossible even, it is still not fully solved)
I would suggest trying midi guitar (the software). I think the transitions sound a little more natural than keyboard mpe devices. It also seems to “resonate”in a more natural way. But it is tricky stuff.
@@aquaticborealis4877 I tried it a while back but that was 5 years ago, was not impressed. Has it improved since then? I probably have my old license somewhere
I own everything Audiomodeling makes, and have also paid to upgrade everything from v2 versions. It’s a bummer that they’re still asking the full $500 for the string sections, with no discount for existing customers.
@@MilesAwayOfficial if you have an osmose (which we both do) you cap map the expression to use without an expression pedal. This is for recording though not live play, but wow if you live play it even sounds good, Pacific strings ensemble when I played it the first time I wanted to cry. Feels like you're in a soundtrack! Mpe wouldn't make much sense by default as these are used for orchestral and film scoring, plus it wouldn't sound very good except for the solo instruments. And to sample that would be quite difficult. Performance samples is the only true raw classical vsts on the market. I've compared most of the big brand stuff, it's all made by one guy though so things take while to release. He's on another level for sure though. His upcoming libraries are absolutely bleeding edge! Sounds 1-1 with real recordings from lord of the rings and star wars (real instruments), I've compared the Pacific ensemble strings to a ryuichi Sakamoto "exception" album recording, the treble is slightly different as to be expected, but the bass and mid notes are IDENTICAL, while playing live! When layed out in a daw and edited of course it sounds even better. I'd recommend the entire pacific series, vista II, and marshland choir when it releases. Pacific woodwinds and drums are releasing soon supposedly by the end of 2024.
@@MilesAwayOfficial If I may interject a smidge of criticism, your vibrato technique using pitch and the left/right "wiggle" is too random and also a bit severe at times. You'd be better off, particularly with strings, to use tempo synced vibrato under mod wheel control. Professional orchestral instrument performers use very controlled vibrato. I use a Keith McMillan K-Board Pro - often with a breath controller - so that I can access even more expressive attributes. I have a different K-Board setup for each SWAM instrument so that I can use different CC response curves and min/max constraints. It also doesn't hurt to mix and match different virtual instruments such as a sample library with a SWAM instrument. Bohemian Cello and Violin are my recommendation.
I'm not the original commenter. Personally, I made better vibrato immediately with a Continuum than with a Seaboard, but that could be down to personal quirks. What gave it away, as not being a string quartet, in the video, for me, was a pitch slide that you did. Something wasn't right about the tuning, and also I'm used to slight timbral changes with string pitch slides... even with synth sounds and a Continuum... and also with acoustic strings players. Having said all that, I'm not personally interested in recreating exactly a string instrument. I know media composers do want to sound like a real orchestra, but I kinda like synths for being synths, and I like the uncanny valley of synths acting ALMOST like acoustic instruments, but being played in ways acoustic instruments can't be. The little bit of strangeness when you showed the string quartet caught my attention, rather than put me off. For example, later in your video, I like the extreme vibrato on the synth flute example... and I also like the realistic tremolo or whatever it was, was cool too. Another thing about realism - be careful with note attack. I've learned that even subtle searching for pitch will be noticed by others. That goes along with maybe slightly exuberant note attacks. I notice when it happens because I'm working on that, personally, so I'm primed to listen for it. You don't want to be too soft with the note attacks, OTOH... unless you're going for either effect. That's another reason I like not trying to emulate acoustic instrument behavior exactly.... because I have a dodge when I don't get it right, which I'm not up for yet🤣. Also, distortion can help hide inconsistencies, and orchestra instrumentalists don't seem to use distortion as an effect😮. Well, too bad - I like distortion!🤣
@@garyphillips725excellent feedback thank you! A big realization for me, is how much practice is required to get physical modeling performances out of the uncanny valley.
@@GizzyDillespeevery interesting! I will definitely try to apply that and work on note attack, and I agree I actually really enjoy sometimes the strange non-accurate performances, like adding bends and slides to wind instruments. Very cool stuff
Pretty sure the future of synthesizers is where you put on a metal colander and wire it up to certain parts of your orifices, then exude noises whilst amplifying the signal by playing the spoons. Pretty sure this is accurate 100%.
Thank you!! You made me want that violin! From SWAM 🔥
@@busyworksbeats dude! Much love for watching. I love your channel. 🔥 thanks for the support!
I really did not see that coming 🤯
pretty cool eh 😀
Another clickbait title.... Everyone who has been in the field for a while already knows about this. at least he didnt do one of thumbnails with a stupid expression on his face like just ate his own sht and is happy about it.
The SWAM instruments are great, but require a lot of practice to get the most out of them especially with a MPE controller.
Absolutely! It really is why I put that disclaimer, even after using them for several months I still find it’s very challenging to make yourself play 100% accurately to how a real instrument would! But that’s been a fun challenge!
Wow 😃 What a Fantastic Video 👌 Swam is Incredible 💯 Amazing Sounds and what a Demo at the end 🎶 Absolute game changer, also one of the highlights of the video has to be you playing the Violin 🎻😅 🤩 🙌
Thanks Jason! Had a feeling you would dig this :) which instrument do you think felt the most real?
@@MilesAwayOfficialAbsolute pleasure always 😊 🙏🏼 well I honestly thought they all sounded so realistic and true to the instrument in every way, if I had to pick a favourite it would be the Chello 👌 closely followed by the Violin 🎻 😅 The Double Bass was pretty awesome too 😎 This was a Fabulous Demo 👌 have a fantastic weekend 🙏🏼 🤩 🙌
@@Jason_Drums_ very good choices! The cello is my fave too :)
It’s so funny, when I was watching the beginning, I was about to comment, “have you ever heard the SWAM strings?” Haha. This is the future of synthesized facsimiles of real instruments for sure I think, particularly played with MPE keyboards. And you are using the Roli which I personally find difficult to play compared to Osmose or the Haken Continuum. If you get a chance, try those and see how they compare. It’s such an exciting time to be a synthesist. Thank you for sharing this!
Haha thank you! Yea I 100% agree, that’s why I mention at the very start the caveat to all of these instruments is that they actually require practice to play them well, especially on a seaboard. I would love to give a continuum or linnstrument a try! Thanks for watching!
From the first note I heard they were not real strings. The modelling isn't completely there yet.
@@wietzejohanneskrikke1910 you have good ears! But could you tell if it was a professional Seaboard player?
While I'm not a fan of plug-in that perfectly emulate violin for the price of good violin itself, I can say that the music in this video was top notch, touching, melodic, and would be an honor to any good movie. Bro, that's some serious talent. Every piece was perfect.
@@djkanyon thank you so much! That’s the best compliment of all, I really do try to make these RUclips videos more musical than your average
@@MilesAwayOfficial it shows! keep it up
always great stuff!
Thanks!
This is a great explainer video! I'm liking your recent video format language expansion. Continue your journey, I'm hear for it!!
(..and I suppose that there is the lame Dad joke, "You'll be Miles Away from where you are today", but whatever )
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it, as I've been having a lot of fun trying different things for the channel and just having fun
wow, that was really impressive, never heard of this before
@@Livguava thank you!!
Very interesting, but judging by the quality of the sounds of the instruments shown in this video, this technology still has a long way to go to be convincing. They sound far from realistic.
Thanks for watching and sharing! Remember also a better player could get them more realistic, they take a solid amount of practice
The MPE controllers are really tricky to use. A little goes a long ways meaning too much wobble, vibrato, pitch shift, filter changes, slides...can cause sea sickness. A lot of the most realistic string parts are had with the massive sampled string libraries out there coupled with room ambiances, control of various mix positions, and careful expression programming. Intonation comes in play very quickly. Compare Piano Teq (Modeled pianos) to say VSL Synchron Sampled Pianos. Modeled sounds have a ways to go but they are improving.
I totally agree about them requiring practice, it was really surprising how easily you can give it away, cause just like a real instrument they require skill to play well . As for room , check out 12:15! It’s incredible, they added room emulation
Awesome 🙌 thanks for sharing
My pleasure!
I think the synthesizer should be praised for what it is. It can do things no other instrument can do, and I praise synths for the things they do the best instead of trying to spend too much time to imitate other instruments, because it doesn’t sound too convincing in my opinion (at least what I hear here). The MPE controllers nevertheless add a lot of expression, it should become better and better and for sure it is interesting to have better control over the instrument, but I think that needs to come with sound quality as well, that’s why I wouldn’t replace my sound libraries for the moment. It seems interesting to play tho.
@@Donetur great comment! That’s why we all fell in love with synths, because of how they can sound like nothing else. If you check out the end of the video I talk about that, physical modeling is such a cool style of synthesis I want to see more companies trying out non-emulation physical modeling synths (that are more approachable for the average sound designer)
Those trailer hits sound very familiar ;) loved the vid
My man! Thanks for letting me use those percussion hits ☺️ and thanks for watching
I can see a future where you pull up a violin plugin and record a track, and the plugin uses AI to listen to all the other tracks, calculates things like vibrato and bowing, and delivers a real time result that can fool people into thinking it's a real violin. The issue would be that the AI would be doing the expressive work in the playing, which means you're just providing the note and AI is doing the playing. That sounds horrifying. A real violinist would think that a dude with a plugin doing violin sounds is horrifying. Is physical modeling, which has been around for a while but is getting better and better, going to be the future? I do think that as it improves, it'll have a bigger role.
Well said! I agree your first ai example sounds really off putting. I really like being the one adding in the expression and emotion myself
You have to make love to every note no matter how brief the affair. A finger on a midi keyboard can not compare to an instrumentalist that has spent 10000 hours mastering expression on an instrument. But after 20 hours focused practice on that individual skill; It will get you 69% there. The potential of this software is amazing and I'm so excited about the future of the human interface and expressive performance in synthesis. Some of your pieces had a suggestion of Erik Satie's Gymnopédie. Have a listen if you've never heard it.
I love Satie! Huge compliment :) I totally agree. It’s a lifelong journey to learn an instrument! That’s the thing that will make acoustic instruments never go out of fashion. We crave the nuances between the notes
These strings sound worse than normal sampling, for now. But the future of synths is the physical sound modeling. I mean, real modeling, with physical simulations of sound waves propagating through any virtual spaces and interaction with materials. Neural Networks have some place there too, I'm not sure what exactly though. Perhaps, there will be offline physical audio simulations which will be recorded and fed to the neural network, which then will create endless variations of that sound.
SWAM literally does what you just mentioned. It does modeling in various spaces
Check out 12:15 in the video! They have the real time room emulation with tons of parameters you talk about!
@@MilesAwayOfficial It's not what I mean, that was the simple convolution-based space simulation, what I mean is a complete physical matter simulation, atomic/molecular interaction simulation with waves moving through the matter, and so on. This stuff is extremely difficult to compute with our current technology (impossible even, it is still not fully solved)
@@FireF1y644 they do that with IR (IMPULSE RESPONSE) baked into the algorithm
I would suggest trying midi guitar (the software). I think the transitions sound a little more natural than keyboard mpe devices. It also seems to “resonate”in a more natural way. But it is tricky stuff.
@@aquaticborealis4877 I tried it a while back but that was 5 years ago, was not impressed. Has it improved since then? I probably have my old license somewhere
I own everything Audiomodeling makes, and have also paid to upgrade everything from v2 versions. It’s a bummer that they’re still asking the full $500 for the string sections, with no discount for existing customers.
Please check out performance samples vsts. They are the best. I promise you, you can compare every string vst on the market, they are the best.
I will totally check them! Do they support MPE?
@@MilesAwayOfficial if you have an osmose (which we both do) you cap map the expression to use without an expression pedal. This is for recording though not live play, but wow if you live play it even sounds good, Pacific strings ensemble when I played it the first time I wanted to cry. Feels like you're in a soundtrack!
Mpe wouldn't make much sense by default as these are used for orchestral and film scoring, plus it wouldn't sound very good except for the solo instruments. And to sample that would be quite difficult.
Performance samples is the only true raw classical vsts on the market. I've compared most of the big brand stuff, it's all made by one guy though so things take while to release. He's on another level for sure though. His upcoming libraries are absolutely bleeding edge! Sounds 1-1 with real recordings from lord of the rings and star wars (real instruments), I've compared the Pacific ensemble strings to a ryuichi Sakamoto "exception" album recording, the treble is slightly different as to be expected, but the bass and mid notes are IDENTICAL, while playing live!
When layed out in a daw and edited of course it sounds even better. I'd recommend the entire pacific series, vista II, and marshland choir when it releases. Pacific woodwinds and drums are releasing soon supposedly by the end of 2024.
hooking synths up to vegetables is the future, like cassette synth lol. make my entire garden an orchestra would be neat
that's a great video idea, don't tempt me
great
Thank you!
Roli vs Osmose vs Linnstrument... what do you think guys and girls?
roli 🥰
Striso Board 😊
I love my osmose. The touch of roli i hated. Haken continuum i played too and it’s amazing. Linnstrument didn’t try yet
Osmose = best if you come from keys
Roli = best if you are willing to put in the practice/work (the freedom of slide is amazing)
I keep waiting for the SWAM instruments to stop sounding so fake. Even played really well, they sound like synthesizers and not real instruments.
Interesting, what gives it away for you?
@@MilesAwayOfficial If I may interject a smidge of criticism, your vibrato technique using pitch and the left/right "wiggle" is too random and also a bit severe at times. You'd be better off, particularly with strings, to use tempo synced vibrato under mod wheel control. Professional orchestral instrument performers use very controlled vibrato. I use a Keith McMillan K-Board Pro - often with a breath controller - so that I can access even more expressive attributes. I have a different K-Board setup for each SWAM instrument so that I can use different CC response curves and min/max constraints. It also doesn't hurt to mix and match different virtual instruments such as a sample library with a SWAM instrument. Bohemian Cello and Violin are my recommendation.
I'm not the original commenter. Personally, I made better vibrato immediately with a Continuum than with a Seaboard, but that could be down to personal quirks.
What gave it away, as not being a string quartet, in the video, for me, was a pitch slide that you did. Something wasn't right about the tuning, and also I'm used to slight timbral changes with string pitch slides... even with synth sounds and a Continuum... and also with acoustic strings players. Having said all that, I'm not personally interested in recreating exactly a string instrument. I know media composers do want to sound like a real orchestra, but I kinda like synths for being synths, and I like the uncanny valley of synths acting ALMOST like acoustic instruments, but being played in ways acoustic instruments can't be. The little bit of strangeness when you showed the string quartet caught my attention, rather than put me off. For example, later in your video, I like the extreme vibrato on the synth flute example... and I also like the realistic tremolo or whatever it was, was cool too. Another thing about realism - be careful with note attack. I've learned that even subtle searching for pitch will be noticed by others. That goes along with maybe slightly exuberant note attacks. I notice when it happens because I'm working on that, personally, so I'm primed to listen for it. You don't want to be too soft with the note attacks, OTOH... unless you're going for either effect. That's another reason I like not trying to emulate acoustic instrument behavior exactly.... because I have a dodge when I don't get it right, which I'm not up for yet🤣. Also, distortion can help hide inconsistencies, and orchestra instrumentalists don't seem to use distortion as an effect😮. Well, too bad - I like distortion!🤣
@@garyphillips725excellent feedback thank you! A big realization for me, is how much practice is required to get physical modeling performances out of the uncanny valley.
@@GizzyDillespeevery interesting! I will definitely try to apply that and work on note attack, and I agree I actually really enjoy sometimes the strange non-accurate performances, like adding bends and slides to wind instruments. Very cool stuff
bro i have a question! what do you prefer mpe model seaboard or osmose
Osmose if you come from playing keyboards, ROLI if you come from playing guitar. Osmose is easier !
What controller is that, if I may ask?
ROLI Seaboard RISE 2
Pretty sure the future of synthesizers is where you put on a metal colander and wire it up to certain parts of your orifices, then exude noises whilst amplifying the signal by playing the spoons.
Pretty sure this is accurate 100%.
LOL
That was dirty
Thanks!