Blowing Down

Back in the hardware MIDI days I'd spend hours typing patch names into OSC so they would pop up automatically in my sequencer. When I migrated to soft samplers I spent days building and sorting patches. Now I'm window shopping for instruments.

A composer friend of mine selected a set of sounds and once he had them, he stuck with them for years. I wish I could do that. Sampler libraries are bad enough (you are always wanting a better choir, an obscure instrument, a performance technique that isn't in your other library.) Real instruments are worse.

Register is one issue. To simulate, say, a symphony orchestra you need the low instruments as well as the high.

I just did a little experiment in Reaper. I recorded some trumpet and ran it through an octave shifter. With a little bit of additional tweaking it makes an unconvincing but functional French Horn. I could probably fake 'cello the same way, although that's also a tough sell.

But trombone? Less effective (a formant shift plug-in worked somewhat). The problem here is articulation. And that's at the root of why I started playing real instruments instead of samples. There's not just ways notes are attacked, but idioms of play that are intrinsic to the physical construction and standard technique of an instrument. It doesn't matter if the basic sound is right, you can't strum a keyboard.

But what? Learn trombone and french horn and saxophone as well? And that's just the brass section: that way lies madness.



Thinking in terms of ensembles, though, I've almost got the selection to do all the "Bardic Covers" I'd care for. The biggest noticeable holes are low recorder. And the ukulele. I still love ukulele, but it sounds like ukulele. It doesn't do well at being other kinds of chordophone ("lute," by the full Sachs–Hornbostel classification.)

Unfortunately my new Yamaha guitar, as much as I love the tone, isn't a good instrument for me. That 3/4 bridge is too narrow for proper finger-picking. I can use a pick, and I can strum, but that's limiting. Best of all for the Bardic sound would be a lute, but I'll settle for an acoustic guitar at this point.

(Pictured; Rogue soprano, Kala Ubass, Yamaha JR2 folk guitar.)

And as I said, my current recorder collection can't even reach the root note of the harmonies. I need that tenor recorder (pictured; Yamaha alto, Schreiber soprano, Yamaha sopranino, and a garklein I picked up at a street fair in Bad Munster.)

Of course I just thought of another theme that would be cute to do a cover of. But the perfect instrument for one of the emblematic sounds of the original? Bagpipe.

(Another thing? The Bardic Cover is a concept but it requires much higher levels of musicianship than I have or expect to gain in the near future.)




What are other options? Much as I just opined against having a whole set of brass, trumpet isn't enough for jazz or symphonic. I'm going to experiment with how far I can fake it, though. I'd really like to try some jazzy stuff, especially since I've got my bass working again, but I am saddened by having to synthesize the drums. Because I am not going to fit a trap set. I was having trouble even fitting an e-drum set!

Well, I think I'm going to try that new cover anyhow. Maybe I can fake a bagpipe with crumhorn and a lot of mix magic...