An open short letter to sample set makers:
I believe the following to be quite obvious:
A singing and speaking human being is also really a wind instrument. Breath is very human with all its fluctuations. A monotone way of speaking and singing would sound very robotic and un-human.
Likewise, an organ is a wind instrument, and naturally it breathes. Its sounds have fluctuations of differing degrees.
Why are harmoniums/reed organs not sampled? Lack of interest? May be (and regretfully so, if the case), but more importantly, how in the world are sample set makers going to incorporate the effect of pumping such reed instruments, whether of the suction or pressure type? Emulate the difference between normal pumping and engaging the “Expression” on pressure wind harmoniums? You would need to have a physical MIDI pumping system device on the floor whereby a sample set would respond fully to its input. Sounds very complicated. No one has attempted this yet, as far as I know.
Modern organs with extremely steady wind systems, in my opinion, do not sound very human. They simply don’t seem to breathe. They sound robotic and stilted. Modern organs sound often cold because their wind is too steady and they have lost their humanity.
And this is exactly the problem with sample sets: their wind behavior needs to be also “sampled” or at least emulated more perfectly, before we can truly say that such sampled organs sound like the original.
Sample set makers, and I am not saying this to offend anyone, are “wasting” precious RAM on 4 or 6 microphone setups, instead on more fantastic and realistic wind modeling. I would rather have my RAM emulate the humane wind behavior in an organ than whether I can have a slider that can bring my ear unrealistically close to the pipes, or too far away from the organ.
Every space has an ideal listening position, and I think the 2 stereo mikes should be at that location, about 7 inches apart to mimic the human ear. I want an organ sample set to sound like the way I hear it at the ideal distance from the instrument.
I know many will disagree with me, but do we ever hear an organ as one person what two people would hear in two locations? No, we are individuals. Being at two locations at once is obviously going beyond reality. Should virtual reality go beyond reality? Have we gone too far?
Right now I cannot play because my organ is in storage until our new (old) apartment’s remodeling is finished. Mid November may be. So, I listen a lot, an awful lot to HW users on CBCH, with my excellent new headphones. I listen really a lot. And I listen also to the new sample sets, and am making the following main observation:
Sample sets in general do not sound as good as CD recordings of the same instrument. Why is that?
Simple: apart from the miking (and this is also still super important) it is because the CD recording catches every nuance of the breathing of that organ, while sample sets do not even come close. Not even close. Subtle nuances in wind behavior cannot be heard in sample sets, but in CD recordings, yes, we can hear them.
We have come a long way since HW1 and non-multiple samples/releases, etc. Great, but….
And this may very well be the final frontier in organ sampling: A vastly improved wind modeling, especially affecting fuller registrations, but even also the more modest registrations. On smaller organs even the effect of a bass pipe on a higher pipe. It’s not there in samples.
Piano sample set producers had to struggle how to emulate the sympathetic string behavior of a real piano. The old trick of holding down a key without playing it and making it com alive by hitting the overtone series, or even by just singing or speaking into the piano, is well known. This natural behavior is being more and more perfectly emulated in piano samples. Way to go!
Wind is everything in an organ. This cannot be stressed enough. When we cannot mimic the wind behavior of an instrument, but are concentrating too much on multiple miking (which requires crazy amounts of RAM), we are still making robot-like sample sets, and probably focusing our attention too much in one direction only. It has become a new rage. A new fad, and fashion.
Let’s put some more realistic virtual wind in these sample sets!
I would prefer that over 6 mikes. In this I am not alone.
This would be energy and time well spent!
Thank you.
I believe the following to be quite obvious:
A singing and speaking human being is also really a wind instrument. Breath is very human with all its fluctuations. A monotone way of speaking and singing would sound very robotic and un-human.
Likewise, an organ is a wind instrument, and naturally it breathes. Its sounds have fluctuations of differing degrees.
Why are harmoniums/reed organs not sampled? Lack of interest? May be (and regretfully so, if the case), but more importantly, how in the world are sample set makers going to incorporate the effect of pumping such reed instruments, whether of the suction or pressure type? Emulate the difference between normal pumping and engaging the “Expression” on pressure wind harmoniums? You would need to have a physical MIDI pumping system device on the floor whereby a sample set would respond fully to its input. Sounds very complicated. No one has attempted this yet, as far as I know.
Modern organs with extremely steady wind systems, in my opinion, do not sound very human. They simply don’t seem to breathe. They sound robotic and stilted. Modern organs sound often cold because their wind is too steady and they have lost their humanity.
And this is exactly the problem with sample sets: their wind behavior needs to be also “sampled” or at least emulated more perfectly, before we can truly say that such sampled organs sound like the original.
Sample set makers, and I am not saying this to offend anyone, are “wasting” precious RAM on 4 or 6 microphone setups, instead on more fantastic and realistic wind modeling. I would rather have my RAM emulate the humane wind behavior in an organ than whether I can have a slider that can bring my ear unrealistically close to the pipes, or too far away from the organ.
Every space has an ideal listening position, and I think the 2 stereo mikes should be at that location, about 7 inches apart to mimic the human ear. I want an organ sample set to sound like the way I hear it at the ideal distance from the instrument.
I know many will disagree with me, but do we ever hear an organ as one person what two people would hear in two locations? No, we are individuals. Being at two locations at once is obviously going beyond reality. Should virtual reality go beyond reality? Have we gone too far?
Right now I cannot play because my organ is in storage until our new (old) apartment’s remodeling is finished. Mid November may be. So, I listen a lot, an awful lot to HW users on CBCH, with my excellent new headphones. I listen really a lot. And I listen also to the new sample sets, and am making the following main observation:
Sample sets in general do not sound as good as CD recordings of the same instrument. Why is that?
Simple: apart from the miking (and this is also still super important) it is because the CD recording catches every nuance of the breathing of that organ, while sample sets do not even come close. Not even close. Subtle nuances in wind behavior cannot be heard in sample sets, but in CD recordings, yes, we can hear them.
We have come a long way since HW1 and non-multiple samples/releases, etc. Great, but….
And this may very well be the final frontier in organ sampling: A vastly improved wind modeling, especially affecting fuller registrations, but even also the more modest registrations. On smaller organs even the effect of a bass pipe on a higher pipe. It’s not there in samples.
Piano sample set producers had to struggle how to emulate the sympathetic string behavior of a real piano. The old trick of holding down a key without playing it and making it com alive by hitting the overtone series, or even by just singing or speaking into the piano, is well known. This natural behavior is being more and more perfectly emulated in piano samples. Way to go!
Wind is everything in an organ. This cannot be stressed enough. When we cannot mimic the wind behavior of an instrument, but are concentrating too much on multiple miking (which requires crazy amounts of RAM), we are still making robot-like sample sets, and probably focusing our attention too much in one direction only. It has become a new rage. A new fad, and fashion.
Let’s put some more realistic virtual wind in these sample sets!
I would prefer that over 6 mikes. In this I am not alone.
This would be energy and time well spent!
Thank you.