hi All,
I’m back with a new song, “La Rosa dei Venti” (Rose of the Winds), a contemporary classical song which will be part of the concept album “Il Dolore delle Rondini” together with the previously released “Churches of Umbria” and of course some other songs which are in the making.
the song can be downloaded from here
(12’38", Classical, OGG format)
for those who hate the OGG format, there is also an MP3 version available at my Last.fm’s page
The opus continues…
I’m really liking the delicate passages in this one… A few places see the ‘rigid samples’ unfortunately showing themselves, especially in some of the string hits. But for most of the trip the magical illusion is well kept 
Yeah I listen to a lot of you doing really quiet stuff…
I quite like the quieter part, the first, louder part sounded too much like a boring movie soundtrack (nothing wrong with the music though, just not my thing).
I didn’t like “Churches of Umbria” at all because I thought none of the instruments sounded right in a way, and because I really want to do some more classical sort of stuff too I was wondering if it’s possible to get the instruments sound “right” (to my ears) and this was it.
Might it be possible to get some samples and maybe tips on how to get it sound like there’s an actual person playing the instrument?
Hi oX6
first of all, thanks for your comments. Surely “Churches Of Umbria” has a much less conventional arrangement
than “La Rosa dei Venti”, so I understand how can displease the audience. Also, I’m a completely self-taught musician, with no theory basis, so unusual things are the norm for me
regarding samples:
if you mean you would like to have the actual WAV samples I used to compose the track, I unfortunately cannot
provide them since they are part of East West “Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra XP Gold” (EWQLSO below) and Garritan solo
strings libraries, so they cannot be freely distributed.
if you mean you would like to hear per-instrument dedicated OGG samples of a scale, or something like that,
it would be indeed interesting to provide them; my only problem is the time that such a task would require.
anyway, provided that you have at least one of the libraries above, I can publish the XRNS file, no problem with
that, really. on the contrary, I would be happy if people would learn how to use Renoise at fullest, which is indeed
required to achieve such results, way more than highly requested features such as arranger are.
Both EWQLSO and Garritan libraries need some practice to be mastered; the difference between “Churches of Umbria”
and “La Rosa dei Venti” is also in the experience I grown in between. Summarizing, both libraries provide at least
these controllers:
no realism can be obtained without working on these parameters almost continuosly.
vibrato:
for example, even the vibrato
should not be constant during play of a single note (a little flaw about this is noticeable in “Churches of Umbria”
string solo sections).
expression:
some very good advices have come from NeuRoTiX and his wife, who are both experienced classical music listeners;
they made me understand how much expression is important, and made me notice, during the making of “Churches of Umbria”,
how much my string ensable sections where lacking on that.
basically, a string ensemble should always start with a low expression, reach a maximum, and then fade out not abruptly.
this is of course not a general rule, but improves things most of times.
sustain:
is good to take sustain in consideration too: for example, in some parts where solo strings perform very long notes,
sustain is used to emulate the bow side change.
velocity:
These advanced sound libraries then come in your help by giving you other great goodies such as sample repetitions,
which ciclically (or less frequently randomly) change the played sample with a similar one, giving more humanization
to the sound. however, it is always good to give a picky and continue attention to velocity variation. unfortunately,
Renoise does not currently support MIDI aftertouch (Garritan libraries do support them instead), so this task must
be performed with a bit more work by you.
summarizing, achieving such results using “raw” samples is almost impossible. Renoise’s built-in sampler at the moment does
not provide enough features to achieve this. more features will come on this side, but don’t expect it to overcome
Native Instruments Kontakt 2 scripting, which is at the basement of all the libraries I use.
I strongly suggest you to give a look at these libraries and see if they fullfil your needs.
EWQLSO comes also in a “Silver”, much cheaper flavour
Heh, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra GOLD ~400$ ~273€
and Silver ~200€ ~136€. A tad out of my budget. I haven’t really learned to use Renoise very well yet so I guess I’ll just need to focus on practicing that first. The whole process just seems like a LOT of work, even though to me it seems like a lot easier than the other tracker programs I’ve used.
Thanks for the reply though, much appreciated.
This song is indeed an example that careful planning will overcome such ‘obstacles’.
Everytime I try to download, it doesn’t get past 03:40…
Since those three minutes are stunning, I’m dying to hear the rest!
Once my internetz has succeeded in downloading the rest, I’ll let you
know HOW stunning 
thanks BotB!
maybe there are problems communicating with my server. If you can’t get the whole song, try the MP3 version at last.fm
I hate how the classic music plays a lot with dynamics and how cheapass soundcards are having trouble playing the low dynamic parts with limited quality.
Great track either way.
This is a very interesting track and it totally worth the 12 minutes you are going to spend listening to it. I enjoyed how diversified it is and I think the quieter parts where better than the heaviers, I liked all the subtilities and the various instruments you used.
Good job, I can’t wait to hear more…
ohh and… based on the .xrns I saw from you… I bet these classical songs are amazing to watch.
thanks you all for the comments, as I promised, I will release the XRNS file for those who are interested:
get it here (it is compressed with RAR to avoid that some browsers try to uncompress the XRNS directly)
of course, there will be no sound if you don’t have any of the library used. Maybe it could be interesting to try to liste to it using MIDI instruments, but I’m too lazy to set them up for you
you are a hero
nice work IT-A! i love the part with the NORWEGIAN HALLING FOLK MUSIC inspired violins. GREIG inspired? monumental and very diverse. thank you for good relaxation on the sofa.
too bad you’re not into intense dancemusic, because we would SO work together, whether you’d like it or not! I love your sense of drama and the way you use instrumentation and composition to express emotions (and not “just” melodies). amazing work, very impressive as a musical piece, but also soundwise.
BotB, you should check some of my works from early years (until 99), there was a lot of dance-like stuff, some of which you may like.
using an accurate XM player such as XmPlay, go here and try out some tracks such as:
)weird stuff, I know, and much more basic than what I do now, but I was young and clueless
(PS: newers songs “First Contact”, “Vortex” and “Dislocated” are in similar style and are also available as XRNS files)
I wanted to say something bad to this track. But I don’t know what to say. Everything sounds so “epic” GREAT work.
I…uh…that…I’m…wow. And the xrns is absolutely insane!
Thank you, it’s beautiful.