Pedro, what VSTs do you use for your orchestral work? EastWest, 8Dio, VSL, Spitfire Audio, CineStrings?asked by Voon
TL;DRPedro uses the Kontakt sampler with several libraries and his own sampled orchestra, advises writing only what a library can do, and prefers libraries recorded in one hall.
The VST is Kontakt, the Kontakt sampler. But he was mentioning the libraries that I use inside Kontakt. EastWest has Play, which is another VST. They are all great developers. The thing about samples, and the more you work with samples you'll get to that conclusion, especially orchestral samples, is that there are no best choices. When you work with a real orchestra, you can actually write for what a human can do, which is for me the best thing you can do. When you have a sample orchestra, you have to write for what the library can do. You should never try to make a MIDI mock-up that pushes the library into an area it was never designed or recorded for. It doesn't sound good when you do it. That has happened to me sometimes, also in some of the music that we use in Star Citizen. That's why in the meantime I sampled my own orchestra. I do have all the libraries he mentioned, 8Dio, VSL, Spitfire, EastWest as well. They're all great, but they all have limitations. That's why I sampled my own orchestra about two years ago, to have a bit more freedom. Still, it's not perfect. It's just not like the real orchestra. You really need that to get the full expression, in my opinion. What I want to tell him, because I can tell he probably is a composer, or wants to be a composer, or just enjoys making music with that: just write what is comfortable for the library. Imagine the library is someone that is a little bit handicapped. You should never make handicapped people run a thousand miles. It'll never work. So just limit your composition to what the library can do, which can be a bit frustrating sometimes, but it's better to do that than make a mock-up that sounds really weird and strange with something the library can't do. I do have to say that he should also add Orchestral Tools to that list, which has been doing a great job as well. What I would say is that it's always good to focus on a library that has a complete orchestra recorded in the same hall. That's what I like: orchestras recorded in a certain hall, so you get not only the orchestra but the whole sound. VSL, in that aspect, is all recorded really dry and up close, and you have to use a lot of reverb. It kind of works, but it's never the same thing. At least for me; there are some people that use it and love it. So whatever works better for him. That's what matters.