Quesion about Orchestration and Vocals.

[Ashen7]

I was reading an article on Wikipedia about The Dungeon, and this section caught my eye:

"Symphony X spent a sum of money upgrading The Dungeon and buying state of the art orchestration software and tools for the rich symphonic arrangements in their songs."

I always thought they hired a real live Orchestra for use on the albums. I had no idea the orchestrations were all done electronically; They sound so real! So anyways, my questions would be: Does anyone know what kind of software MJR uses to orchestrate? I am particularly shocked that Oculus Ex Inferni isn't a real orchestra...

My second question, regarding vocals, is somewhat related to the last. Is it Russ or the rest of the band singing on the choir and Latin sections of orchestral parts? Or is this also part of the orchestration software?

Thanks in advance for any answers. I'm really hoping someone knows what software MJR uses. Right now I'm using Sibelius myself, and while it sounds good, it doesn't compare to the sounds from Oculus or any other Symph X song.

 

[batera]

This is from an interview on the site:

SOT: How did you handle the orchestral tracks on The Odyssey?

MR: Well, for the last album we had some keyboards and I would get in there and modify some of the sounds but it would always sound like a keyboard. But after that album, I started to get more into it. I kind of just went nuts in buying big sampling packages with real orchestral sound. This thing I'm using now is called Gigastudio and it's a sampling program. I totally invested a lot of money into good sampling libraries and orchestral instruments and all kinds of stuff. And it's really believable if the programming is done good and if you obviously have some kind of knowledge of arranging. You can pull off some pretty ridiculous things. We knew for this album we were going to have some orchestral stuff so I just went nuts with that. And I think the stuff on this new album is pretty good and pretty believable.

Basically, he bought some "real" orchestra samples that are probably much higher quality in terms of sampling. Some of the mainstream composing softwares have midi samples that artificially approximate what a string section would sound like, whereas if you start from the real thing you can mix and match and make a much better blend. I haven't used Gigastudio and don't know much about it, but it sounds like it turned out great. In fact, I have heard many real orchestras sound worse than the computer arrangements in PL...but then again, they are, in a way, "real" orchestra sounds.

As for the vocals, it sounds like oftentimes it's Russell alone (e.g. Champion of Ithaca), but on the older albums (like Damnation Game) there are definitely other voices in the choir parts.

 

[Ashen7]

Thanks so much. I wonder what libraries he bought for PL....

 

[batera]

I was listening some more and I realized that the orchestrations that Romeo cooks up really do beat out a lot of real orchestra recordings that other groups do. Digital sound production has advanced these days that you can get almost the same result with 1/10 the cash.

Two examples of a top-notch real orchestra production in a metal setting would be the following:





Once you factor in all the musician and conductor salaries of a quality group, rental of a hall with good acoustics, rehearsal time, recording time, etc., we're probably talking in the tens of thousands, at least for the Nightwish album I posted above.

In fact, a benefit of what Romeo did with the digital samples is that he has the sound quality of a real orchestra, but the fact that it's all partitioned, sampled, spliced and mixed piece-by-piece makes it sound a little tighter. Natural orchestras and choirs have a little bit more spill-over and bleeding, and for the PL mix, a bit tighter and more shiny-sounding orchestra sound was a great way to go. I really don't think the PL mix could sound any better and there was no reason to drop big coin on a real orchestra even if that was an option. Maybe would have been nice for the Odyssey, though, but I'm not complaining.

 

[OfSinsAndShred]

Doesn't Romeo use Gigastudio? I thought I remembered reading that.

And as for the choral parts - some of them are samples, and most of them are Russ.

 

[batera]

From the amazon description of Gigastudio:

allowing users to access up to 128 gigabytes of RAM for loading massive sample libraries and compositional templates

That's gonna be the big difference right there, in being able to make those big orchestral arrangements with such high-quality samples, something that any midi-based platform won't be able to touch.

 

[Marwen]

Well yes, MJR did say he used Tascam's Gigastudio running VSL (vienna symphonic library) samples in the The Odyssey.

The samples he had were rather old though and he had to invest in newer stuff when it was time to record PL (for instance, the brass sounds sucked in The Odyssey imo, pretty old stuff).

I don't know much about the VSL stuff, MRJ seems to be a fan of theirs, but I'm betting that he also used a lot of EastWest/Quantum Leap stuff. Personally I use those, the Gold Pro and Silver editions, which are over 40gb, they simply rock.
MJR probably has the Platinum version, which is almost 200gb. I'm saying so because that's the one that has all the mic positions especially the close mic settings which I hear him often using in PL.

For the choirs, I have no doubt that what he uses is East West's Symphonic Choirs, which are simply great (almost 40gb), the best in the market. That big choir stuff you here isn't Russ nor any of the guys, it's this library. This is what's used in Oculus, the choir parts in The Serpent's Kiss, Walls of Babylon, Revelation, etc.

Jeff is right though, Russ did sing the choir parts in songs like DWOT, and the stuff in V, but not in PL.

 

[Ashen7]

Great info here.

It's too bad Tascam has discontinued Gigastudio. I was going to look into getting it. I currently have Kontakt 3, which is now the industry standard apparently. I don't care much for the libraries that it came with, but after reading Marwen's post as well as others, it seems that the quality is all in the samples and not the sampler.

 

[SyXified]

For orchestral sampling I recommend Kontakt by NI. It's reasonably priced and yet can sound just like the real thing if you know what you are doing. The program allows a TON of flexibility in terms of sound manipulation and control - and it integrates seamlessly with most DAWs (I've used it with Sonar and Pro Tools with ease). Prior to that I had used Reason which now seems horrible by comparison.

 

[fravius]

I know this can sound off-topic, but a comment above made me think about those choruses in PL. What do say the latin parts? For example, in Domination when the keyboard enters with the previous guitar riff?

 

[Wander]

For the choirs, I have no doubt that what he uses is East West's Symphonic Choirs, which are simply great (almost 40gb), the best in the market. That big choir stuff you here isn't Russ nor any of the guys, it's this library. This is what's used in Oculus, the choir parts in The Serpent's Kiss, Walls of Babylon, Revelation, etc.

Jeff is right though, Russ did sing the choir parts in songs like DWOT, and the stuff in V, but not in PL.

I'm quite sure that in an interview Michael said that Russ would still do some add-ons with his voice to certain choir parts to give them more life or something.

 

[Dimaension X]

I actually use the old Edirol Orchestral HQ DXi. You can't buy it anymore, so you have to dig through the BitTorrent sites to see if it is still being seeded anywhere. It works pretty well (for an amateur like myself), only takes up 120 Megabytes (!) and has a lot of options that keep the instruments pretty realistic sounding.

Whatever they did on "Odyssey" sounds pretty incredible and realistic. I also agree that it might not have sounded as good with a real orchestra. Though Fred Nordstrom seems to do pretty good on Dimmu Borgir and Spetic Flesh albums.

Speaking of VSTi's - anyone know of a good, cheap, low memory distorted guitar simulator?

 

[Phanto]

Speaking of VSTi's - anyone know of a good, cheap, low memory distorted guitar simulator?

I think you're more likely to find the cure for cancer. Free.

 

[ArtDecade]

I still use the ROMs from the old Roland JV-series... I guess it is time to upgrade. Ha.

 

[CantoX]

Wow pretty cool info in this thread.

BTW Welcome ArtDecade! Post up in the Official Off Topic Thread and give us a little bio of yourself .

 

[Kenneth R.]

I think you're more likely to find the cure for cancer. Free.

You'd be surprised. There are some excellent simulators out there (granted you have to give them an input signal so it's not a PURE sample based solution).

Most of those are based on circuit topology, logic, and electrical engineering. I've had to design a few FX this way, and they can sound very convincing.