JD OF ICE NINE KILLS: Orchestral Arranging, Realistic Samples, and Mixing Symphonic Metal

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by STA Audio. Sta Audio creates zero compromise recording gear. That is light on the wallet only. The best components are used and each one goes through a rigorous testing process with one thing in mind, getting the best sound possible. Go to audio do com for more info. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:28):

Hey everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. I am your guest host JD. Today we're going to be doing a dear JD episode, and I know everyone's used to hearing Eyal, Joey and Joel talk about it, but they'd like me to give it a shot today. So before we get started, I'd like to give you some background info on myself. I play in a band called Ice nine Kills and we've been a band for almost a decade now. I joined the band about 2009. Since then, we've released five records, a handful of covers and some in-between tracks. My first attempt at Orchestral arrangement was on one of our songs called The People Under the Stairs. It was off a record called Safe is Just the Shadow in 2010, and it was my first try at bringing strings into our sound. So I came up with this four or five piece arrangement that didn't really follow most of the traditional rules, so to speak, for bringing those instruments together, but it actually added a lot to the song and it started to open up a new direction for me to explore down the road.

(01:38):

So every record after that, I added a little bit more of the string arrangements to our music as well as various other samples, whether they're electronic or some type of orchestral arrangement or some type of pad arrangement or synth stuff. And over time, our direction as a band started to evolve a little bit and so did my tastes for the accompaniments. So through listening to various other metal acts that have orchestra in their music, it sparked my interest in finding out if that was something that I could do myself for our band. So a friend of mine introduced me to this band called Flesh God Apocalypse, which at the stage in our career we found people can be gotten in touch with. So I had our manager talk to someone else who either knew their manager or worked for them of some kind. And I got in touch with Francesco Farini, who does most or all of their orchestration in their band and he's unbelievably talented and I hired him to do one of our songs, me, myself, and Hyde, off of Every Trick in the book.

(02:48):

At the time, it was a song between albums and he did the whole score for that. And I had asked if he wanted to do the whole record. And due to scheduling, we couldn't line up our schedules. He was doing his own record while I was doing hours instead, he basically taught me how to do it. He was mentoring me through the process and I took on the whole project. So that's where the learning curve started for me, just kind of getting thrown into the pit, got to figure it out. So what I'd like to do today is answer some questions that some people asked in regards to our previous podcast. If you have not heard it yet, it'll be in the show notes below. So if you'd like some perspective on the topic, check out the podcast with Joey aal and myself talking about production and the orchestration of our music and my whole process and how I do things and what I use to do it.

(03:41):

Without further ado, I'd like to get into our first question. Adolfo asks, have you ever considered using a slave PC to host and play your sample libraries and using your main PC for your DAW so that when your session is already full of active virtual instruments, it still could perform fast? Yes, I actually have considered that and I went the route that I did after actually researching how to do this for quite a while. I mean, I mentioned in the podcast that I spent about a year kind of figuring out what kind of computer I want or what I need and what other people are using. And there's so many different ways to do it. You can have one pc, like you said, has your software on it like your cubase. It's got all your operating software and your operating system and everything you do is on one computer.

(04:37):

But you can, for those of you who don't know, you can connect a separate computer called the Slave Computer. And what it does is it separates the processing of say maybe your programs versus your samples or other software that you have on a separate computer. It basically puts this bridge between two computers, allowing them to operate simultaneously, processing things completely independent of each other. And what he's basically asking me is if I ever considered doing it that way where Cubase is running on one computer, my main computer, and then on the second computer I have all of my virtual instruments and a separate setup. There's multiple ways to do it. There's Vienna Symphonic Library, I believe VSL, and what you can do is you can have that program run on a slave computer and it basically processes and runs all of your samples on a separate computer.

(05:43):

So I did consider doing this, but the main reason I didn't, one of them was because of money, because I would've to buy two computers, which was a little bit out of the budget. Secondly, with all the computers these days and all the hardware you can put in your computer, I found that I can get away with what I need to at least right now with the current build that I did. And for those who haven't heard the previously, I had this computer built for me by a DK Pro Audio, which great people, and they make great stuff. They built this computer into a four space rack. It has a skylight processor, which is an I seven. It has 64 gigabytes of ram, which is crucial for sampling, especially if you are loading your samples like your different orchestra samples into your ram, you need a lot of that in order to process that instead of having everything run directly from a hard drive streaming because there's a balance that needs to be figured out.

(06:45):

So in addition to that, I have a few different solid state drives. I think I actually have four or five that are just samples. The operating system hard drives is a solid state drive and there's a project drive that's just a big regular spinning desk, hard drive for tons of files and various things, documents, what have you. So the computer was built to process things fast, have a lot of ram, and have a lot of space on separate hard drives, and they crammed it into the four space rack, which fits nicely in the studio setup. And I came to this conclusion by basically doing the research. I had about a year before I made my final call, I was looking on YouTube, I was doing research on websites, and I was talking to professionals that built these computers for these specific types of things for doing film scores and writing orchestra for various different production elements.

(07:43):

And there's people that really know what they're talking about. And they guided me through the process of figuring out what I could get away with without spending five to 10 grand on a computer. So I shelled out about 24, 2500 bucks, got a really smoking machine that could take care of everything I needed to and all in one. So to answer your question, yes, I did consider it and for a few different reasons, I decided to go with one computer. And since then I haven't had any hiccups. I just recently did two songs for Einstein Kills. One of 'em was a cover and one of 'em was a song that goes between the albums. This one's going to be a bridge track, which they call it, and it's the final chapter of the previous record, every trick in the book, which was about individual books per song from classic literature like Animal Farm, Dracula Exorcist, and various different ones.

(08:45):

But this one we did another story, which I can't tell you yet, you'll find out soon enough. But that song had probably, probably the most orchestra that I've had in any of our songs, and I didn't have any hiccups whatsoever watching my processing on my cubase. You can look at your real-time processing and how much Ram is used. I actually was only using about a third of my 64 gigabytes of Ram with tons of enabled sample libraries. So there's a million ways to do it, but this way seems to work great. So far. I haven't had any hiccups along the way, but when I do, I might consider the slave setup. The last part of Adolfo's question is what do you know about the power metal symphonic metal genre? They've been using orchestral arrangements since the nineties. For example, the Italian band Rhapsody, I'm actually quite a big power metal nerd myself.

(09:45):

The band that got me into doing samples in general, even before orchestra, was a band called Camelot. And to this day, they're still one of my favorite bands that I listen to very frequently. I've always loved their arrangements and the compositions within their music. They've hired out before for other composers, and I know that they now start to do it in-house, but they've gotten to do what I wish to be able to do at some point, which is actually record a real orchestra playing your stuff and putting it into your mix. It just gives it that real warmth and something that you can try to achieve with sample libraries, but you just quite can't get that real, real organic orchestra sound that you get by actually miking up a full real orchestra. Another couple bands in that world that I really liked were Symphony X.

(10:39):

They've been around for a while and they did a really cool album, or I guess I should say concept album. I can't remember if it was its own album or if it was the song on an album, but the song was called The Odyssey, and it was this really long epic song. Most of their stuff or all their stuff was about Greek mythology, and it was cool. It was a lot of fun to listen to and they went off the handles with it. Another band that was really cool was Epica. I found them to be a bit more interesting because their female vocalist was trained in the opera singing style, and they had that orchestral themed, their music and the power metal, but they also embraced the vocal side of it as well with the traditional opera type singing. And that was pretty sweet. Another band that a little less power metal like, but more Prague rock or Prague metal.

(11:40):

It was Dream Theater and they've been around forever, but their album, six Degrees of Inner Turbulence had a second disc, which each song was connected to the previous and it was part of this big concept album, epic storyline, and every song connected throughout and had themes going between each one that connected them together. And they had a lot of orchestra throughout that part of the album. That was really, really exciting to hear them do as they would vary their sound a little bit from album to album. So yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the genre and it definitely has sent me down a path of pursuing orchestra in my music. Next question up comes from wanker. I've studied classical music and orchestration and have a very good knowledge of orchestral instruments, but I always struggled to get a really good sound out of samples, especially strings.

(12:41):

I have the contact factory library and cine samples, solo legato, cello library. Should I focus more on myself doing more of the EQ and reverb and layering articulations or do you think I need to invest in other libraries? Is it possible to get an amazing sound with just the contact library and some good mixing, or do you really need to get Spitfire LA scoring strings, Hollywood strings, et cetera? Well, there's a few different ways to answer these questions. The first thing I'd like to say is that your library will be the one thing that holds you back other than your ability to manipulate it. So if you have, say the contact factory library and you are comparing that to something like Spitfire, you'll hear the difference just in the actual playing of it. And having those to compare will make a big difference. So I'll actually show you those right now and give you an example of the difference. So the first one would be the contact factory library. And for me, I believe the session strings fall under that category. I'm not too sure, but I would consider the session strings from native instruments to be similar to what you're talking about if not the same thing. So here's an example of that.

(14:11):

So to me that sounds a little processed kind of fake. It sounds a little synthy almost, and it could be for a few reasons. One of them is that it doesn't have any reverb on it right now. It's very dry and there's no real control of the dynamic or the vibrato and stuff like that. So in comparison, I'll show you the same thing with a Spitfire library. This is the Sable strings of Spitfire,

(14:53):

So that sounds a bit more realistic. There's multiple controls you have over the instrument. I was riding the faders with my left hand while I was playing with my right, and I could control the dynamic in and out of each note. I could control how much vibrato was happening with another fader. So just that alone gives you an advantage with a library like Spitfire over a factory library through contact. But another part of your question about layering articulations is that yes, you can make some of these sound a bit more realistic when you have a sustained patch that you're playing a chord section on, or you would just want to get a nice long violin sound, but you don't have that attack on the front end that you want. Yeah, you can layer in a staccato or a staccato of some kind to give it that initial front end attack. You can blend in a marketto patch with it as well.

(15:53):

When you say getting good sounds out of the samples, sometimes it does take that amount of work. Even with a library like Spitfire, you tend to need to make those transitions right by making use of all of your articulations. Rarely is it just good enough to put in one string section, especially when you have parts that are exposed. So if you're making stuff for advertisement or film that has just orchestra, then yeah, there's a lot more attention to the detail that needs to come in where you do have to layer in those articulations. But the other side is maybe when you're doing stuff for metal or for music that's really aggressive and really thick and has punchy drums and really aggressive sounding guitars, you can get away with not having to do stuff like that. You can layer in a real string player with the same line on a sampled patch, but don't always need to because sometimes it's just the atmosphere behind the band or if it actually is a big accompaniment.

(16:57):

A lot of our stuff, it just has to be mixed, right, and you have to know where the transitions are going to be exposed in your mix. For us, a lot of the time there's just the band playing and the orchestra, so everything has to have its place, but at the same time, the transitions still need to be right. So would I say invest in other libraries? You never know until you try stuff. And a lot of these companies, there's ways to demo them or if you know people that have them, you can try it out on there. Or you can see lots of reviews online. You just got to really do the research and listen to these libraries from people that are actually doing it in the flesh. It's hard to count on going to a company's website and hearing the samples played to you through their advertisements because you never know how much went into that or how many layers there are.

(17:51):

But if you see somebody on YouTube maybe using cubase and just programming something from start to finish, you can kind of get an idea of what that stuff sounds like. The other part of the question being the EQ and the reverb as well as the layering of articulations, yes, EQ and reverb can help, but again, it depends on what you're using the strings for or the orchestra. For us in a metal band, we have to definitely carve out everything. Everything has to have its place in order to be heard. So things like reverb tend to soften those attacks and soften the actual strings and make 'em a little bit more pad. So the reverb is very delicate and you can't have too much, you can't have it too long, or else it just gets lost. And next thing you know, you just have this kind of soaring pad of sorts, which can be cool, but if you're going for that more organic sound, then too much reverb can really do the opposite of what you want to do.

(18:51):

Sometimes having those drier sounds helps cut through the dynamic of the band as well. And EQ makes a huge difference when you have a string section and a brass section and a percussion section. These strings don't necessarily have to take up all the low end that say the double bases and the cellos do. You can carve some of that out to make room for some of that lower brass, and especially the percussion. I mean, a lot of those percussion libraries, they have a lot of really great low end content, but they also range up through the higher content as well. With the attack. Like a ani, you want to get that attack from the mallet hitting the head, but you want that low mid kind of rumble and something like a Tyco drum. Those have a lot of really great powerful low end content, but they also have a great smack on the top.

(19:41):

So you're carving out that middle section to make more room for say something like a viola or a base trombone or anything of that matter to fit in that pocket, because when you're doing even just an orchestra arrangement, the EQ is going to make a big difference in how much you can fit into the sound. So the reverb will help when you have more exposed stuff and when you have less exposed stuff, dialing it back is okay too. Next question up comes from Don. It's quite a task to find information on things you don't know yet that you need to know. My question to you is, is there at any point in time when you find that you use a sample library that is maybe not quite as well made, but because it has a particular vibe you are looking for? And if so, which ones would you recommend?

(20:33):

I'm not entirely sure by the question, by the phrasing, but I think what you're asking me is which libraries I find to be useful and which ones I recommend if So, there are a ton of different libraries, and in the previous podcast I mentioned that I made a 5,000 track template of every articulation of every library that I have, all the way from brass to strings to percussion to drum kits, to string and plucked instruments, pianos, everything across the board that I can think of. So for me, what I like to do with this template is whenever I have a project, I try not to use the same thing every time because I'm still exploring libraries in which ones are best. It also depends on what type of sound you're going for. I find that the Hollywood Orchestra stuff sounds really brilliant and bright sounding, and it's very sharp, very, very polished sounding.

(21:41):

I find that the LA scoring strings are kind of in that direction as well. The Spitfire stuff tends to sound a bit more organic and a little bit more natural. You have a few different mic options. You have your close mics, your surround mics, your tree mics, and with the Hollywood stuff you have that as well, depending on which bundle you get, whether it's the gold bundle, the diamond bundle or the platinum bundle. But the LA scoring stuff, I find to be kind of between that Spitfire organic sound and the Hollywood Orchestra, Hollywood Strings polished sound. Now there's other ones like CNA Samples, which is a great library that has a lot of organic material in there as well with multiple mic options. Just like Spitfire, I kind of put Spitfire and CNA samples pretty close together. The CNA samples tends to cover a lot of bases within their libraries, whereas Spitfire comes out with multiple packages, it seems like.

(22:49):

Then you kind of piece 'em together to make the full arrangement. I find that the CNA samples company makes a lot of really cool brass. The CINA brass is really, really excellent. And the brass from Hollywood Brass, east West Hollywood Brass is really polished as well, just like the strings. And there's a few other ones that I really like. The Adagio Library is made by eight do, and that library has that kind of polish sound, but it's not quite as film-like as the Hollywood East EastWest stuff. That stuff's pretty good though. Eight Deal makes a lot of various different contact library packs for different things. There's cage brass. Cage brass is pretty good. A lot of recommendations depending on what you're trying to do. So it comes down to, once again, what your goal is with your library and your project. If you want that organic sound, maybe Spitfire or CTA samples is a good one for you.

(24:02):

CNA Strings or CINA Brass. And if you're looking for that really polished trailer film sound, you can get really great results out of the Hollywood stuff. Now, there's different price points. Things aren't cheap, but you can try things out or you can hear demos of these things on YouTube and kind of decide what you'd like to do. I find that the Spitfire stuff more recently has been a go-to for a lot of my projects. And the reason being because you can customize the controls of the articulations, like your dynamic, your expression, your vibrato, and your speed. The speed usually applies to things like the legato patches where you can go from OneNote to another seamlessly and you can control how fast the transition is. So these things are controlled and you can customize what midi function. You want to control that. So if you have something like I do, which is the Corg Nano Control two, it's a little eight fader kind of mini board of sorts with knobs and mute buttons and record buttons and stuff.

(25:18):

It's pretty cheap, and it actually does a great job When I program the faders for the dynamic and the expression when I play, I can have the vibrato come in on a fader. So I'll actually give you an example. When I play this note, it's pretty flat sounding just normal, and when I pull up my fader, you can hear the vibrato very gently coming in. I pull it out, now it's back to flat, and then my dynamic is on a fader as well. So I can fade that in. And when I do one note to another, you hear how the notes connect.

(26:11):

If I pull my speed knob down, notice the change in speed of which it goes from one note to another. It's a little more reactive. So that's what I like about the Spitfire stuff, is it gives me that customizable control right off the bat. The Hollywood stuff is really, really awesome sounding and really, really bright and really polished as I said before. But the one thing that's difficult is that between libraries, the functions of controlling the articulations changes slightly. So sometimes it's not always the same fader, and you can't always customize either. You can't change the MIDI function to be on maybe the dynamic fader. So wherever I have things patched in for spitfire, I can't necessarily match it with Hollywood stuff. So it kind of changes the workflow. Sometimes I have to go back into the manual and look at what each patch has for MIDI functions and what the control is.

(27:33):

Sometimes, depending on how hard you hit the notes changes maybe the speed of the legato like I had on my fader. Sometimes I have to do a different programming in the MIDI piano roll, I have to open up the lane for velocity and adjust it a totally different way than I'm used to doing with Spitfire. So each one has its advantages, just depends on how much control you have over each articulation and different envelope filter for these libraries and which ones you like best. And again, it comes down to what your song needs. So I would recommend Spitfire. I think Hollywood stuff is great if you got the funds to get either the big composer package or you can do the composer cloud. I know that they have that subscription setup thing and the CI brass and CNA strings are good. I think those three are my main setups that I go to and jump around between projects currently.

(28:38):

If I have more, I'll have to update you. Next question up comes from Michael. What are some good resources to start learning music theory for orchestration, and what are the top five resources, videos or lessons online that you learn the most from? Well, I would say to start off with the first part of your question for learning music theory, I wouldn't necessarily say that learning music theory for orchestration specifically is a lot different than really just learning music theory in general. I mean, music theory is tough. It's basically a language, just like math is a language, and in this language there are guidelines and rules per se. And people say, well, why are there musical rules? Why can't I just do whatever I want? Well, you can do whatever you want. Doesn't mean it's going to sound good. But there are guidelines. It's almost like a manual or how to do things.

(29:34):

You can build a car according to the specs, or you can kind of change it up and build a custom pipe for your exhaust or something that sounds a certain way that you like and maybe your neighbors hate. Kind of the same thing with music. You can create a song that sounds cool to you and deviates from maybe the standard structure that maybe a pop song has on the radio that people generally flock towards. And it might sound awesome to you, but maybe your neighbor hates it and doesn't like hearing it blasting through your walls into their apartment next door. So same idea, but for music theory, there's so many places to study, whether it's a school or the internet, I wouldn't necessarily say there's one good resource over another or that there really is a set of good resources over others. But music theory is, like I said, it's a language and there are certain sections of it that are really easy to digest and some that are really difficult.

(30:45):

It takes a lot of time to understand music theory to its fullest extent because you start to get into cultural music theories. But music theory being like a language, you have to start at the beginning. You can't really just jump into the middle of it. You have to understand how chord structures work and the order of notes. You have to understand what an octave is and everything in between, and knowing how many notes are in a scale and the different modes of the scales. So I mean these things, if they sound foreign to you, it means that you got to go back and start from the beginning or start from an earlier place from where you remember. So it's a progression. You have to start at a basic place and move your way up, and there's so many different ways to go about that. But the main basic structure of just learning music theory from either a textbook or an instruction book of some kind or some basic tutorial that guides you through the basic steps and moves you on piece by piece.

(31:47):

YouTube, I've mentioned a few times now, it's an amazing thing. People put up so much content on there. And just knowing where to start and where your goal is in your learning process will be your best resource. I hope that answers the first part of your question, Michael. The second part of your question about the top five resources, videos, and lessons that I learned the most from, well, it's kind of hard to categorize what I specifically learned from, but when I went to FLCC for college, which is Finger Lakes Community College in upstate New York, the program I took was music recording technology, and part of my major was that I was required to take four semesters of music theory. Now, do I remember all of it? Absolutely not. But I took piano when I was a kid and I learned the basic stuff, how to structure a chord or different scales and playing with two hands and understanding basic rhythms.

(32:52):

So from there, that was my gateway into other instruments. And getting into college, I had some basic knowledge of music theory. So I had a little bit of a jump on maybe a few of the kids who had never even really read a note on a piece of staff paper before in their life. And that can be challenging for people. But for music theory, I learned more in college about it than I ever did anywhere else, and it was unfortunately uninteresting for me. I just kind of wanted to play my instrument. I was a college kid. All I wanted to do was just play. I didn't really care about reading and learning that stuff, but now I'm kicking myself because I'm wondering how much more of my creative process could be opened up if I knew where I could go. The guy that we record our records with, Steve Ek at the Square Studio is very well versed in music theory, and at times he's just written circles around me with the creative process just knowing what chords could be played instead of others or catching wrong notes in a lead line that's put on top of a guitar part, a rhythm guitar part rather.

(34:07):

And just having that instinctual knowledge changes your whole game. And it's a learning process for me forever, and it always will be, especially since I didn't soak it all up when I was a kid, I kind of regret it, but at the same time, it still kind of gives some excitement to learning new things along the writing process. So what are my top five resources? I don't really have any. I mean, it's out there, it's everywhere. You just have to find it and be willing to focus on the starting point and having a goal and meeting that goal and then creating new goals after that. I think that's most important. Use YouTube, use the internet, and if you want to get a full education from it, go to a music school because they'll teach you all the stuff you need to know. Hope that answers your question, Michael.

(35:03):

Next on the list is a question from Steven. Steven asks, how would you go reverb wise on the EastWest samples? Do you apply it to each instrument or on the whole orchestral bus? So for me, actually, what I do is I start writing with all the reverb off. I take it off of each channel that sometimes by default with the EastWest stuff has the East West Reverb Hall or the Hollywood Hall or various different ones by default set to on. So what I do is I turn those off and if I choose to add reverb later on, I will use the bus. Because adding reverb to each channel, it kind of clutters it up and makes it a little too soft, especially for our style of music where it has to cut through. So if I do end up using reverb at all in our mix, I'll put it on a bus and just do it to the entire string section rather than each individual articulation or each type of string.

(36:08):

And that way what I do through Cubase is I'll create the bus to send all the tracks to, and then I'll add a reverb to that bus, and then I'll adjust how much of each instrument I send to the reverb bus. That way I have individual control of each sections amount of reverb applied to each violin, violin, two viola cello and double bass, et cetera. You can do that across the board with brass and whatnot as well. But yes, I definitely do not put it on each individual string patch or articulation or instance of contact or play for that matter. Next question from Steven is how do you manage to switch articulations in a natural way? Let's say I go from a legato patch to staccato, then back to Legatos again in East West, I'm having a hard time making the transitions smooth. Sounds like different players come in to do their staccato part for one bar and then leave.

(37:15):

Yeah, so that's always a challenge and it can be done. The thing about going from patch to patch, it depends on how you lay out your works. For me, I kind of don't go for the key switch patches. The ones where you can have all your articulations in one and you just press a certain key on the piano and it switches to the other one. I find that sometimes you can have what seems to be something you're describing as an issue on your end. I veer away from the key switches. So what I do is I'll have all the articulations laid out in my template, and then I'll create midi parts and then drop them on each articulation that I like. So if there's a spot where it has to go from along to a short or for example, a sustained patch to a staccato patch, what I'll do is I'll write it on one and then I'll take out the pieces that need to be like the short hits and I'll put 'em on the staccato line.

(38:22):

And then what I'll do is I'll play 'em together and find the way to transition between the two of them. Sometimes you have to be really detailed with the velocities or the dynamics. You have to sometimes drag the sustain a little bit further over the note or you have to drag it back a little bit. You have to really play with it because each library is a little bit different and they have different control functions for each. But my way of doing it, like I said, is that I'll just have 'em on separate articulation instances, whether that's through play or through the contact libraries. And then I'll just fine tune those transitions through the envelope curves of either the dynamic, the expression or the vibrato, and always check the velocities because sometimes the velocities make a huge difference in how you control your transitions between those.

(39:20):

That's the way I would go about it. Another question from Steven is I find that even the higher velocities, higher modulation and expression, the legato strings in Hollywood strings lack some attack to cut through a dense metal mix. Is it a fatality with this library, or is there any magic trick? Well, I think the first thing you have to acknowledge is that when using a legato patch, you tend to have that smoother transition between notes. So when picking a patch to use in something like a metal mix, the legato patch might not be the one to choose because legato is connecting notes through seamless transitions, and you won't necessarily get that bite of the bow hitting it right away unless you have some type of legato, staccato blended patch or you blend a staccato patch on top of your legato. But then even when you blend those two together, sometimes you can still run into some weird artifacts of your two parts being put together.

(40:29):

But I would say the bite that you're looking for wouldn't come necessarily from a legato patch. I would say you should probably look more towards a sustained patch or use a sustained patch with a mercado patch on top of it, or staccato, staccato, stati, any of those on top of those to layer them in to give that little bit of bite on the front of the bow attack and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of different ones you can blend together. Sometimes you get lucky and find the right one that just has that attack you need. But I would say legato is not the one that you should rely on if you're trying to have that front end attack into your mix. Last but not least, the final question from Steve says, any good video tutorial literature on MIDI orchestral programming kind of goes back to what we were saying before.

(41:25):

Honestly, YouTube is the best thing right now for unanswered questions I didn't actually have of answers throughout this process. My only source was Francesco at the start. And then exploring further by watching other composers using virtual software on their daws through YouTube. There's a handful of great channels that you can find just by searching basic things like MIDI orchestral programming or big orchestral templates, cubase, stuff like that. There's guys that are very well versed in the software and know how to do pretty much anything. They need to have the specs of their computers in the show notes. A lot of great tutorials out there. I basically learned how to put my template together by watching a guy show me that you didn't necessarily have to have multiple computers and all this extra software if you could just figure out a way to load everything in your template, have it disabled so it's not using your computer ram, and then just pull up what you need as you need it.

(42:33):

And that honestly has streamlined my entire workflow. I can just sit down at my desk and I can start working with a template that has everything in it. I just have to enable it when I want it and slide it around until I find one that works well for my mix. So thanks for tuning in today to the URM Academy Podcast. Dear jd. If anybody has any further questions or would like me to expand on any more of the topics that we discussed today and in the previous podcast, feel free to send an email with the subject line Dear JD, to al at M Academy. That's spelled EYAL at M Academy. And until then, the

Speaker 1 (43:17):

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