BASIC TEMPLATE CREATION - SAVE VALUABLE TIME ⏳ - feat. Max Blomgren
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2023
- In this episode of Virtual Orchestration, Max Blomgren, Associate Professor at Berklee Screen Scoring Department, explains why a template is highly useful for an orchestral mockup and which principles to follow when creating one.
Max even shows a practical example of how to make a simple template for the string section of your Virtual Orchestra.
Virtual Orchestration is a collaboration between Berklee College of Music (Boston, USA) and Orchestral Tools (Berlin, Germany).
Credits for assets used:
SFX :
The following sounds provided by freesound.org under
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) - Public Domain Dedication
Whoosh Sound - User: Sheyvan
Additional Music:
"Magnetism" by Kevin Titz
Video creation credits:
Video idea and Script 📜 : Max Blomgren
Script Consultation 🔍 and Director 📣 : Eduard Flemmer
Camera 🎥 and Editing ✂️ : Fabián Barba Hallal
Lighting 💡 and 2nd Camera 🎥 : David Kudell
Motion graphics 🎨 : Michael Logar
![[TH] VCT Masters Shanghai Playoffs DAY 3 // FNC vs FUT | EDG vs PRX](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pw2T5v0ogDI/mqdefault.jpg)
I started writing orchestral music around two and a half years ago and I've been using templates since then. My main template is a constant work in progress. Every time I finish writing a piece, I save a side version, clean all midi, tempo changes and anything that is specific to that piece and save it as a new version of the template when I add new instruments, busses, etc.
My current template has a full orchestra organized by family including sections and soloists, plus other orchestral ensemble tracks for layering. It also includes a band area for drums, basses and guitars, followed by acoustic, ethnic and hybrid instruments and finally vocals and fx.
All these dozens of tracks are routed to the correct channel busses and fx busses and all of these then go to a mix bus that goes into a master bus. Last but not least the master bus goes to an output bus that only has monitoring for mixing and mastering and an headphone bus with frequency response correction for my headphones.
This allows me to quickly write without having to start from scratch everytime and also helps tremendously in mixing and mastering since all the routing and the vast majority of balancing is already done.
Thanks for your insigt
This sounds like a very decent approach.
I've been setting up a template myself and the most difficult part is actually the routing and adding additional tracks to be able to send out a decent mix.
Things like grouping tracks, reverbs, stems, and so on.
Yeah, that's the part they always leave out.
Well, yeah, that's the part they always leave out in an introductory video about templates. But we definitely hear your suggestions for another, more advanced video on templates.
@@virtual.orchestration Agreed. When you're a one person show and don't have people to set up routing and all of the background stuff, it can be a reall creative buzz kill fighting with the technical side.
I saw you using Berlin Orchestra, but I don’t have Berlin Orchestra. Bring new I got libraries that were exciting but didn’t knitter hope to use them and thought they were😎. I just got Hollywood Opus Edition for cheap. I have free libraries, etc, but Joe should I set up a Orchestra template for my needs. Do you have many templates for direct scoring procedures? Thank you. I was at Berklee in the 70s. Old school guy here😅
Thank You Very Much!
🙏
Kudos for a clearly presented video without a lot of extraneous fluff.
Thank you so much, Daniel . We really try to make things clear and get things across in an easily understandable way.
In Reaper it seems more sensible to add several instruments to one instance of Sine, for instance all strings. You can set each instrument to a different midi channel, and have several tracks (one for first violins, one for second violins etc) all set to a different midi channel.
This way you need less instances of Sine, which saves some memory. Also, you can send to mix tracks and busses.
Of course you can't put all of your orchestra on just one Sine instance, as you need to be able to freeze some tracks. But in my experience separating strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion and keys works quite nicely without the need to separate individual instruments per instance of Sine.
I am curious to know how do you balance different publisher libraries together? :)
I love my very big template with almost all instruments I have. After setting up the template, I unloaded (deactivate) all the instruments, but all tracks are still in the template.
When I start a new project, I just activate the instruments that I need. Very easy to work with this way.
Hello!
Thank you for your wonderful video tutorials !
Template is the best virtual workflow optimization !
I have been creating my template for over three months. There are 3500 tracks in it. It's much more convenient to keep track of all the articulations in a project and combine them. But I've arranged them separately into categories and groups. This option is very handy for quick creation of any project.
Regards, Yaroslav Kniazev.
Hey Yaroslov. Thank you for your wonderful comment!
Wow, 3500 tracks! That's quite a few. On what kind of machine are you working on and do you ever reach any limiit with so many tracks ?
@Virtual Orchestration
Hello !
I'm working in Cubase 12, all tracks in the gadget are off. When selecting a certain articulation, I just switch on the track, check if it fits, work, if not, try another one. It's simple )
As I wrote before, when creating a project I prefer to see all articulations separately, if it's an orchestra. If it's a solo instrument, then one track.
Thanks for the feedback !
Regards Yaroslav Kniazev.
I guess this goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) for any kind of music production (Especially orchestral) but you do need a fairly powerful machine. An orchestral template, even for just a chamber orchestra, is going to take quite a few tracks depending on whether you opt to use key switches or a one track per articulation approach (I prefer the latter myself). The bigger the template, the longer it will take to load and the more scarce your resources, the longer it will take to load. In other words, don't skimp on CPU and RAM if you want to increase your productivity even further once you have your template put together.
When you are using Keyswitches - how do you deal with the different Sample start times - i.e. negative Track Delays? Or do you just not quantize anything?
At most libraries just the long and short articulations have different keyswitches. So a lot of composers have 1 instance for short and one for longs.
@@SOUNTH11composingdesign From what I've found, even within short articulations there's a pretty big difference - e.g. Marcato and Staccatissimo, or Staccato and Pizzicato. Especially pronounced in Spitfire libraries, even after playing with the tightness control.
@@nicholasbinder5593 you are right, I've Seen this at the Sheet. Crazy, I've Seen Junkie XL using Expression Maps in Cubase. And they do Not offer different track delays.
@@SOUNTH11composingdesign Yes and from what I know he quantizes everything. But in some videos, he also explains that he re-samples and re-builds all commercial libraries he's buying. And in an NI talk he talkes about having a "Sample Start" fader that cuts way into the sample for playability reasons, and then after playing, he pulls it back again. So maybe he also re-cuts the samples to all have the same "attack time", thus having only one fixed track delay per track. Just speculation though... I wouldn't know how to deal with it otherwise.
@@nicholasbinder5593 I guess he has a lot assistents doing this work.
If compression time of 2 hour movies down to micro seconds then possible parallel universe created on 3 d projector on high refresher rate
Templates templates templates! I have templates but I like studio 6 drag and drop instruments I have previously configured/ routed in combination with a small template of mist used indtrunents.......personally saves me time. Large templates can in my experience be creative limiting as I have too much choice!
Hey Mark. Thank you for the comment. Yes, there is always a burden and a balance between limiting oneself and trying out something new when getting creative. Templates can save you time and gaurantee a consistent sound, but if you have the feeling, that your template is limiting your creaitivity, things have obviously gotten wrong at that end.
Same goes for too many choices.
We are glad that you shared that experience.
5 vowels and 19 sylables can be translated into musics
Thanks Max. How do you avoid the template becoming a "straight-jacket" to creativity and making all your music and cues sounding very similar. Sometimes "consistency" can lead to "boring".
My personal solution is to make rather "lean" templates that have some key instruments I will always need no matter what (like a string ensemble or percussion section) and then add other instruments when needed.
Since this is an orchestral tools sponsored page, I can mention some specific set ups I use.
My "broad strokes" orchestra set up is the Inspire Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, Harp, Timpani, and Percussion, The Layers Brass and Woodwinds, MA1's percussion hits, and MA2's "Boomer" FX (because I like making explosive percussion). Likewise I have another OT template, the "Prototype Orchestra" that's all of Metropolis Ark 0's instruments split across three tracks, and the Inspire timpani and percussion again. Both use Ori River reverb to add some extra shimmer.
Just using the templates alone without anything else is going to put you into mode lock; they're limited and rather minimal compared to some templates I've seen others made. But as I recently did with some tracks I made using my Prototype template, I ended up adding parts based on what I felt was needed. You think this needs a choir? Well I'll add one in... Maybe I want more detail in my woodwinds, so I'll split up my woodwind track across the various instruments... All in all, it's a foundation for me to create stuff from.
Ultimately, as mentioned in this video, where templates truly prove valuable is with larger projects which require a specific sound and setup, often with deadlines or a specific idea in mind.
Meanwhile, my whole aversion to templates is just how big and bloated they can become, to the point I feel overwhelmed by just how many things are there to use.
I am quickly running into RAM issues when dealing with larger sessions/templates. Are there differences between DAWs in terms of memory handling or do I need to switch all unused Instruments off? Using Cubase and Ableton.
Hi Jan, very little difference in RAM usage between DAWs. They do have different CPU usage depending on what you're doing, but it sounds like you need to be economical with RAM usage. Unload or disable unused tracks, purge RAM if the sampler allows it, and remove unused articulations within each patch. And restart the DAW every so often if the load times aren't a pain!
@@alexlamymusic How much RAM do you suggest having if I were to load an entire orchestral template?
I'm not familiar with the memory usage of either Cubase or Abelton but I know from experience that Pro Tools will use about 5 times more resources (RAM and CPU) than Studio One does. RAM alone will not solve all your issues though, make sure you use an SSD to keep your samples in to minimise the read/write times, also make sure each track only loads one voice per instrument, which can be tricky if you're not sure exactly what articulation you'll be using on your piece for any given instrument. Spitfire Audio's BBC Symphony orchestra will by default load all articulations of any given instrument but you can change that to only loading as many as you need for your track depending on how you build your template.
@@joshuanirmal9068 honestly, that’s a difficult one because templates can be economical or so big they need more than one machine. I think if you’re thinking about a template with everything loaded in and nothing purged, without comprises, you need 64GB of RAM to start with.
I’ve set templates up for a lot of people too and they all use more RAM than that. 128GB per machine usually means you have enough headroom to not use all of the ram, and keep some free to actually run things properly. So about 90GB gets loaded.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t have an orchestral template because you don’t have 64GB RAM. You might have something simple work with 32GB, or you might be able to create something with tracks disabled until they’re in use, which means you could have thousands of tracks available but without the RAM footprint.