Hi GPA,
To answer your questions:
- Is it ok to submit a piano-only track?
Yes, as long as it is musically unique, is well composed/performed and has a quality that customers would find useful (ie. It is commercially viable), it has a good chance of being accepted.
- How do you make a natural sounding orchestra or guitar, without it sounding like a series of one-shots?
I’ve had little success with real sounding guitar samples. For the tracks that I make that need a guitar, I generally always record a real guitar as I am not a terrible guitarist!
High-quality orchestral string libraries are definitely a help when trying to make a string section sound organic and authentic, but they are not the straightforward ‘fix all my woes’ solution. As with most sample libraries of acoustic instruments, there is a lot of midi programming/automation parameter tweaking and articulation switching that you have to do within the midi track to get good results. It helps a lot to learn how an orchestra would play the music and what section of the strings would play which harmony etc. Dynamics play a huge part in making acoustic samples sound real. And with string libraries, this is usually achieved using, the Mod wheel (and/or sometimes the expression cc) when you’re using sustain samples and other long note types, and/or note velocity when using staccato and other short note types.
- Do you guys use multisampled instruments? Even then, l’d have thought you’d get waveforms repeating so that’d give the game away that it was made on a DAW, or are the multisampled instruments like, two octaves x hundreds of samples per note?
There is no perfect solution, it has to be said. You’ll never get a sample library to sound exactly like a real orchestra, which is a good thing really. It would be sad if that room full of humans could be replaced with a single computer with a terabyte of samples! Most orchestral Kontakt libraries nowadays are multi-sampled with both round-robins and velocity layers which help reduce the repeating waveforms (the aptly named ‘machine gun’ effect.) Another key factor of authenticity is the legato samples, and in strings, there are different types. (bowed, fingered, fast, slow etc.) It is really helpful to know where it is appropriate to use each one in a musical context.
- I suppose what l’m really trying to ask is: can you get away with a small set of one-shots or do you think it’s necessary to have a large expensive orchestra library?
In a way, it depends how talented you are at manipulating the sample library with the cc’s and tweaks that I mentioned before. Generally speaking, you will need to invest in professional quality sound libraries in order to sell tracks made with samples here. Some are not altogether prohibitively expensive and quite a few of the ‘built-in’ sounds that come with NI Komplete will be of high enough quality. The key thing though isn’t how much money you spend on sounds, it’s how much time and energy you put into learning how to use them properly to get good results. Without this knowledge, your track sound quality will get stuck in a rut no matter how much money you spend.
- Does anybody here record real guitars / other instruments? Is that normal or is it a minority of folks? I imagine you’d need hella expensive setup to record real.
I do. I record guitars, both electric and acoustic, sometimes I record a violin and in the past, I have recorded vocals both as backing and lead. I don’t have a hugely expensive setup. I do have a selection of awesome microphones, as I’m a location sound recordist and it’s my business to have those tools, but I’ve heard great results from relatively cheap ($200) cardioid small condenser mics placed correctly when recording acoustic instruments, not to mention the amazingly versatile sub-$100 Shure SM57 dynamic mics that are a pro studio staple. Sound damping and room treatment are probably even more important than your choice of microphone I would say, and there are also relatively cheap solutions for this that will work to some degree. Obviously, you can get better results if you spend huge amounts of cash on gear, but there is so much truth in the phrase ‘All the gear, no idea!’, and without learning the theory and techniques involved in sound recording, you’re always going to struggle. Again, the key things are skill and experience, not hard cash spent.
If the two examples that you have posted so far as reference are typical, I can say with some degree of certainty that your production quality level is not of the standard that is required to sell music here yet.
I’ve seen your recent posts in other threads as well as this one and it seems to me that the recurrent theme is that you are looking for advice about how to take shortcuts and what are the easiest ways to get music accepted here on AudioJungle.
In a sense, your questions in the other thread regarding the viability of tracks made solely from audio loops, and also your question here about some kind of automated orchestra app are really asking the question “How can I sell tracks on here without having to learn how to compose/arrange/mix/master music.” And the answer to that question really is, you can’t. You have to spend the time to learn the techniques and knowledge in the subjects that I mentioned in order to produce professional sounding music.
In your previous thread you were given some advice, that I would reiterate, that had a somewhat angry tone. I can sympathise with that because to an author who has probably spent years studying and honing their craft in order to make a living in this industry, to have someone come along and try to find ways to bypass all of that, well, you can forgive them for being a little irked, especially when the platform is already blocked up with copycat authors and cheats who don’t contribute anything that is creatively authentic.
I wish you luck and I hope that soon you’ll be making great music.