From enemy to musical partner
Classical musicians, with their trained ears, immediately hear the difference between tones played on natural instruments and those produced on keyboards, analogue and digital synthesizers or beatboxes and often do not like them at all. This can tell you a thing or two since the musicians have spent their entire studies learning various articulations, differentiated dynamic progressions, timbre design and a oscillating meter, all of which are playing techniques that can only be implemented extremely unsatisfactorily with synthetic sound generators. In addition, they displace and replace real natural instruments, which drummers in particular can tell a long story about. Finally, the programming of digital simulations following the sampling technique has developed into a real job killer. This type of music production, which for understandable reasons mainly film composers master, has brought symphonic film music to a completely different economic level and is now used for the vast majority of productions, which means that musicians get much less work on studio recordings. So programming digital simulations of classical instruments is the musician's true enemy . Since this development can no longer be stopped anyway, why not use the possibilities to our advantage?

100 % digitally simulated: beginning of the 2nd movement of the

Brahms Serenade in D major in the version for nonet

Meter/Click



There is no uniform, mechanical meter in my recordings of digital simulations. The meter corresponds to the respective time signature and the desired musically natural swing a little differently on each beat and can be made audible with a differentiated click.

The audible click is adapted to the free meter/tempo design for practice and for the interaction by means of in-ear monitoring.

Tempo change

When programming the recordings of digital instruments, the entire oscillating tempo can be changed in any direction in a matter of seconds without any loss of sound, but also only individual passages. Any practice tempi can be changed fluently for studying, as can be heard in the following video with 5 examples.

Ritardandi/Accellerandi

All free tempo transitions and even cadences can be designed absolutely flexibly with digital simulations and can also be changed afterwards or adapted to the wishes of the musician using the accompanying playback, and the tempo of individual passages can always be modified afterwards. The following video consists of 4 examples that describe this topic.



Vivaldi's Seasons

Here is an example from Vivaldi's Seasons for free tempo: a flexible click, adapted to the interpretation of the solo violin, enables thecellist to find the perfect cue for the solo violin, even if both want to make a recording together in completely different places. The violinist thus has an accompanying playback to which he/she can always play music synchronously and always get along precisely when playing tutti.

Tuning/Intonation

Normally, I produce my recordings with (professional orchestra standard) chamber pitch A 443 Hz. But that can also be varied completely and with little effort. Here in the video also a second version with 439 Hz.

Timbre

When programming digital simulations, the different timbres of the individual instruments can also be designed gradually. Here is an example for horn and one for cello, each in two different timbres.

Dynamics

As with any sound recording, the dynamics of the sound tracks can of course be gradually adjusted up and down and also flexibly automated.

But with this form of digital music, it can be programmed even more elegantly and gradually and of course it can always be added later if desired. The video demonstrates different clarinet dynamics.

Changeable balance

Of course, in my recordings, the dynamic balance between the instruments can always be adjusted, corrected or adapted to the respective "sitting/standing" position (if this is changed) in the room, and this can also be done afterwards.

Here you can listen to a passage from the 1st movement of the Brahms Serenade in the original symphonic version, once with emphasis on woodwinds and once on strings.

Articulation/embouchure

In fact, you can teach digital simulations almost anything, just as with a real musician, even after the recording is finished. A legato quickly becomes a staccato, and a sharp attack becomes a soft approach. In the video, the cello changes its articulation from pure staccato to a variant with various legato/staccato forms.

Vibrato in digital simulations

It’s not a problem to edit the stringed instruments with vibrato on individual notes afterwards. However, the computer simulation is not yet fully developed in order to fade in and out with vibrato of the strings, which still causes mainly a synthetic sound.

Here are three vibrato versions of the violin in the Pachelbel canon.

Various rooms

With Vienna MirPro, the VSL Vienna software offers the possibility of inserting both digitally simulated and naturally generated audio recordings into virtual acoustic spaces. For example, there is the acoustic environment of the various halls of the Vienna Konzerthaus, the ORF, the Teldex studios in Berlin and others.

Free positioning in space

VSL's virtual acoustic spaces allow the various instruments/audio recordings to be positioned freely, at any position on the stage, in any direction, in any combination. The recording microphone can also be adjusted freely, as close or as far away from the respective instruments. This opens up the possibility of listening to a recording precisely from your own seat in the chamber music or in the orchestra.

Double bass in Beethoven’s septet

Here is an example of free positioning: the double bass in the Beethoven septet is usually positioned in the middle, which means that the audience can hear and see the violin on their left and the clarinet on their right. Digital accompaniment playbacks can be can be set up so that the bass player hears the recording from his seat, i.e. the violin on his right and clarinet on his left, with the cello correspondingly to his right a little more directly and louder since it is his neighbor.

Position in the orchestra

The perspective arrangement in the orchestra of recordings from digital simulations also offers unimagined possibilities for studying individual orchestral passages, since the playbacks could give a tutti second violinist the impression of sitting in the middle of the group, just like in real musicians' lives.

Own recordings in an unsatisfactory sound environment

The technology of the virtual acoustic space makes it possible to insert a recording originally made in a dry, small studiobox into the acoustics of a famous concert hall, here the Mozart Hall of the Vienna Konzerthaus.

If you would like to have your own audio recording integrated into a beautiful room, please contact me. I would be happy to do this for you for a small fee.

Anyone who listens to this video in stereo will notice that the virtual acoustics have been adapted to the musicians' changed seating position. In the usual seating arrangement of the Beethoven Septet, in contrast to here, the violinist would sit on the left and the horn player somewhere on the right.

At the end of the video you can hear a short excerpt from the original recording of the horn part in a small practice booth.

Variable cast

Once the recording has been made from various purely digital instrument tracks, accompanying playbacks can be created for each instrument involved, even in any conceivable combination:

Example string quartet: 1 real and 3 digital, 2 real and 2 digital, 3 real and 1 digital, in other line-ups accordingly.

This is not so easy to do with traditional music recordings without immense effort, as each instrument track contains background components from the other instruments involved due to the common microphone in the studio. These often cannot be filtered out without loss of sound (keywords: overtones, primes, octaves, coherence tones, sounds with high volume)

Because each instrument track in digital simulations only and cleanly contains the own sounds/tones of the instrument being represented (in contrast to recordings made with several musicians in the same room at the same time), all conceivable line-up combinations can be easily extracted.

Note: There is of course the second option available from well-known playback providers, but this is no less complex and has its own pitfalls. Here the “background sounds” are actually technically filtered out of existing audio recordings.

Practice training template

Digital simulations are ideal as exercise templates for rehearsing the various works, since they can be played with or without a click, at slower or faster tempos, in any mood and with individual instruments switched on or off.

Music at private events

Who does not know that? Often one is booked for weddings or similar in a very small cast and then music requests come that are actually not possible with this line-up. No problem with my playbacks: Here a violin and a viola are playing a passage from the Beethoven Septet.

Musicians on other continents

Since the playbacks from digital simulations enable so many variations of musical design and tempo adjustment, recordings with musicians on the other side of the world can also be produced wonderfully on the basis of these playbacks; here the recording location is Durban/South Africa with the optical trick of a greenroom video recording in Bavaria.

Acoustic space even in outdoor performances and background music

the open-air concerts, which are always so popular with the public, are always difficult for any musician, as the resonance of a room is completely absent. This problem can be solved using the MIR-Pro software, since you can play music live in the virtual acoustic space with a microphone on the instrument and a corresponding loudspeaker system together with the software. Also the frustrating feeling that often arises with background music, that you are throwing "pearls before swine" because the audience is having loud conversations, is not listening consciously and occasionally even complains about the volume being too high, "because then you can no longer talk so well”, all this can be avoided with a listening perspective for the musician that is fundamentally different from that of the audience, as in the example in the following video with 2 different listening positions (first audience, then musicians)



Split screen

Especially during the Corona period, social media was flooded with so-called split-screen videos. Each individual musician could be seen at home in their own environment playing their instrumental part of the work and these recordings were then patched together by a (probably always desperate) sound engineer into an orchestral work/chamber music recording, which rarely worked well. The digital simulation offers the possibility of creating a rhythmically and musically precise template for the production of such split screens in order to make the interaction significantly easier with a digitally simulated accompanying playback. Each track of the original can then ultimately be replaced by a musician's recording.

Advertising

Used for advertising, for example on the Internet or in social media, only your own audio recordings of classical music, combined with digital simulations and placing them in virtual acoustic rooms, you can of course advertise extremely economically, since there are no fees for GEMA, ancillary copyrights of other musicians and even room rental . I am willing to make the accompanying playbacks I produce available to other musicians at fair prices, including all rights.

Green room

The videos that I am adding here to my contributions as a demonstration were all optically produced in a small "makeshift green room" and then most of them were set in concert-like surroundings using film software. This should only be understood to mean that the impression of the virtual acoustics of the digital simulation can be conveyed optically better through the optics of a concert hall. Otherwise, the green room technology is just a nice gimmick for me, as you can clearly see in this video.

Ancillary copyrights

Since I have legally acquired the licenses for the software I use, namely products from the Vienna Symphonic Library, I alone am the author of the simulations and the digital recordings are not registered with GVL. Other musicians appear as protagonists in individual short videos of my little performance, but they kindly gave me the rights to it. Thank you again for that.

Music copyrights

Since these are simulations of classical works by composers who have died more than 70 years ago, my sound recordings are free from copyrights.

My own nonet version

As is well known, Johannes Brahms originally composed his Serenade No. 1 in D major as a nonet (flute, 2 clarinets, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, violoncello, double bass) and only later changed it into a symphonic version. The nonet version has been lost and has been reconstructed several times. For reasons of copyright protection (and because I simply did not like some of the reconstructions), I did not use any of the known reconstructions, but arranged a nonet version myself from the symphonic version, which expressly makes no claim to music-historically correct authenticity, as is particularly evident on the horn part of my version notes. This can be played particularly easily by a modern double horn.

The sheet music for my own nonet version is now available.

Contact via e-mail

Digital technology for the benefit of the musicians

It is by no means my intention to harm musicians with this project because I am copying music from the computer. On the contrary, I am personally of the opinion that artificially generated sounds can never replace the impression of the somewhat irregular playing of a living human being and certainly not the personal expressiveness of an artist. The attentive listener will always hear the difference between real audio recordings and digital simulations and that's just as well.

My recordings want to offer the following:

1) to give the musician the opportunity to rehearse works at home with an accompaniment specially tailored to them or just to play together with the other instruments "just for fun" without having to organize a hall and many colleagues right away.

2) at events where too few musicians are booked to be able to simulate larger casts, but still be able to play them with individualized accompanying playback (musicminusone, musicminustwo, musicminusthree, etc.)

3) to use these playbacks to advertise yourself in a way that conforms to the law and is inexpensive

...so all pro musicians, not contra!

VSL Vienna

The Vienna Symphonic Library GmbH is a research-oriented company based in Vienna, specializing in the development of music software and sample libraries. Since the company was founded in October 2000 by Herbert Tucmandl, a former cellist and substitute with the Vienna Philharmonic (he advanced from cameraman to successful director in the mid-1990s and produced orchestral film music for his multiple award-winning projects with the help of computers and sample libraries), more than 3 million samples recorded and published - including all instrument sounds of the symphonic orchestra including choir. Musicians from the best orchestras in Vienna invested their heart and soul in the recording of these samples, often over a very long period of time. I too fell in love with this software as it reforms my whole musical life and offers me fantastic prospects for a happy occupation with great musical works in the future.

Chamber Music/Symphonic

Siegfried Idyll, Beethoven Septet, Brahms Serenade in nonet version, Souvenir de Florence, Verklärte Nacht from Schönberg, Dvorak wind serenade, Brahms String Sextets and Quintets, all these are examples of larger-manned chamber music works that I have loved all my life and would like to realize digitally in the future. I don't know of any music-minus-one versions of many of these works.

With the incredibly versatile possibilities of digital simulation, I hope to be able to create extremely flexible accompanying playbacks of such works. I have already completed the Beethoven Septet and the Brahms Serenade, along with small exercises such as the Pachelbel canon, the “Air” from Bach and Handel's "Ombra mai fu".

To those who want to do it themselves

You can only do the customization yourself if you have the appropriate hardware and the very expensive software from VSL and can also use it, which is difficult (personally it took me a whole year of practice before I got reasonably good results).

In addition, the programming of digital simulations is extremely time-consuming.

That's why I'm offering to sell backing tracks for any instrument in mp3 or wave format from the works I've already completed for a really reasonable price. If you send me an email withyour customization requests, I'll do it for you until you like it. For this you can get a personal offer from me.

You can also send me recordings that have been made in dry acoustics (living room or practice box) and I will then place them in virtual acoustic room simulations of concert halls.

Advantages for you:

- it is much cheaper than booking a studio, a sound engineer and other musicians

- the recordings can always be changed afterwards

- when used for performances/concerts or publication/advertising, no copyrights whatsoever have to be observed

• you save a lot of time