I was on the Garritan website and was frankly amazed at the quality of the orchestra mixes. However, there are a few advantages these guys had that most will not have.
First of all, they are working off a copy of an existing orchestra recording, for the most part. That means that questions of timbre, volume, balance, phrasing, etc., can be tweaked according to the highest professional standards (maybe they don't ATTAIN those standards, but they have the standard in their ear as they work.) For your average composer, they might not understand balance and phrasing to the same degree that professional orchestras do, so you probably won't get the same results on your own piece, simply because you understand the composition of it better than you understand the performance of it. I am the same, and so was Leonard Bernstein, and so are most composers, so don't feel like I am attacking you without knowing you. In a professional orchestra situation, you would have a professional mixer at work, who understands the requirements so much better than I do, also a professional conductor who is not second-guessing the composition aspect, and professional musicians who all understand their instruments better than I do. One man wearing ALL the hats is never the ideal configuration. They are most certainly not working off of step-entered lines. Each part would be entered separately in real time, with the controllers and tweaking that it requires to sound musical. There is a certain amount of rhythmic inaccuracy in even the best orchestra performances, but this inaccuracy is far from random, and it is very hard to reproduce with a keyboard. Just the balance and dynamics alone would take a long time to get right. Any sample-based playback system has a different dynamic range than real instruments do, which is why a flute marked "forte" sounds so much louder in Garritan than it does in real life, and the trumpets sounds so much softer. If you already understand how balance works in an orchestra, chances are you don't need the playback to inform you. But if you don't understand the balance, then the playback won't help you. In real orchestras, this kind of thing is adjusted in real time with all the other musicians playing, but you won't get that opportunity alone with your volume sliders on your computer. I'm sure some of these guys spent a week getting it right, and even at that, there are some pieces that don't end up fit for human consumption, so they stay secret. You can be sure that they only post the most successful mixes, whereas you, with your piece, have to get it right THIS time, otherwise why bother? I have been soured by clients on the idea of MIDI mockups. I understand that most of us just want a demo that a prospective buyer might be able to listen to and fill in the blanks with his imagination, because isn't it obvious that a real orchestra would sound ever so much better? but in reality, clients don't have much imagination. The slippery slope here is that the better the demo sounds, the closer he expects the acoustic sound to match it, so you get clients who refuse your work based on a quickly-mounted demo because it doesn't sound "real" enough, and other clients who are shocked and angered by the acoustic sound because they wanted the sound of the demo. I have tried to manage this effect by playing a really cheesy MIDI mockup first, then saying, "And THIS is how it actually sounded in concert" and playing a terrific recording of a performance. That seems to encourage them to listen in "demo" mode, but even so, the lack of imagination is discouraging. Sorry if I was on a bit of a downer. To answer your original question, yes, you can export a MIDI file from Finale that you can open in Logic. I don't suggest exporting the AUDIO from Finale, which is what you are trying to avoid. Christopher On Mon Oct 31, at MondayOct 31 9:09 AM, Richard Huggins wrote: > FINMAC 12 > > I wan't to take baby steps to the next level of mixing down a Finale > piece. I hear these examples of lifelike orchestral writing, or pop > writing, and wonder how these guys and gals do the finesse mixes of > their pieces. What are some tips about creating a well-finessed > mixdown of a piece that's otherwise ready for it? ANy books or web > resources on the subject>? > > I've just bought Logic Express 9. I was wondering if there was a way > that each Finale stave can become a separate audio track in LE9? Or is > there some automated-mix solution that's better. > > Richard > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
