Nice! I did not know that 🙂

Ah nice, that is a cool little feature update they've done there. I didn't notice that had changed. Interestingly, they haven't updated their manual, hope they will do that to reflect the change. I do love they continue to update their products to run more efficiently.

No problems, my pleasure!

Really, 20 other KZfaq geniuses sent us up to Logics ‘Audio Settings’ control panel to mess around with buffers and such, or ‘freezing’ tracks, and NOBODY once mentioned turning off unnecessary articulations! Simple genius, Stephen… thanks!

Haha, it was such a head scratching moment figuring out what was up with the keyswitch numbering, glad I wasn't alone. Happy to help!

Nice! Definitely a good workflow to keep them all on the one track. I know logic can do the same, I think most DAWs should have that feature too, as you mentioned.

Whaaaa? I’ve been waiting 15 mins for each flaut and tasto to load when I could just click?? I’ll have to try it on my DAW (currently moving from ableton (stylish) to cubase (pragmatic) Buuut I use a Code 49 for input (vel sense/weighted/aftertouch sense/pads dials and faders AND an XY pad- nice midi input device idk why it disappeared from the world)

No worries! Happy to help.

Indeed you can, great to mention it. I didn't want to get too deep into it in this video, but yes, that's why all the keyswitches are off in this library. Problem is, most libraries (like those built for Kontakt) use the Yamaha C3 standard, so I just keep my Logic Pro settings in default C3 for middle C and remember to offset by an octave for this library. :)

Thanks Steve, this is definitely something I'm checking out at the moment based on people's suggestions. It looks really cool indeed!

Indeed! Managing libraries can be a headache with other companies, I'm glad Spitfire streamlines it.

Awesome, glad to have helped. Just a quick heads up, some of the BBC SO plugin settings actually affect all instances of the plugin across your DAW session. So, if you have 60 instrument tracks loaded with BBCSO, then the voice limit might be capped at 52 across all of them, meaning if they are all playing one note, 8 of them might not play anything. I'd recommend checking the manual just to make sure if the voice limit is one of these "global" settings, but if you've noticed missing notes, that might be the case.

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew I get that. It’s not likely that I will use that many tracks. I will adjust if necessary. Thanks.

Thanks very much, glad you liked it! And yes, I didn't want to make the video longer with a tangent into that issue haha, but I briefly mentioned that the zero based counting of the yamaha standard was the issue. It's just interesting that Spitfire, a company that makes libraries for Kontakt where they use zero based counting and middle C is C3, chose to use the a different system for their own plugin. And both Christian and Paul seem to use Logic Pro too, which makes it an interesting decision given that C3 in Logic is middle C. It's not too much of a work around, I just remember to offset by an octave, but I'm just wondering how that came about lol.

Thanks and welcome!

My pleasure!

Ah that is a shame! I didn't realise that. Glad you enjoyed the video all the same though.

Glad it was helpful!

🙌 Fantastic!

Thanks, and totally feel you there. That can be frustrating at times, especially after a fade out or decrescendo in the legato patch and then jumping straight back into staccato. I usually wiggle both faders before I start recording anything out of habit, just to make sure the CC's are set to the right level before the first note sounds.

Hey John, glad you enjoyed the video! Great questions mate. Unfortunately, the swelling isn't something that can be removed, there isn't an attack knob to my knowledge. The best suggestion I've heard is to use a "pre delay" on the midi track, essentially playing the track like 20 ms early (or a time you find works well), to account for swelling. I think it was maybe Dan Keen or Paul Thompson who showed that in a video I saw once and it works well, though is a little bit of a fiddly way of working I must admit. I am very rusty on Pro Tools Midi and multi timbre I'm afraid, but I think if I'm remembering correctly, you create an Aux track with the Multi BBCSO plugin on it and then send the MIDI tracks to each of the MIDI channels, so you would create up to 16 MIDI tracks with outputs to "BBC SO Multi" or something like that. I remember doing this with Kontakt when I used Pro Tools way back, but it may have updated since then (I think it may have been Pro Tools 8 or 10 haha).

Disabling unused articulations really helps reduce strain doesn't it? Reloads the session so much faster too!

Hey Jim, great question, I don't think you can. You can do that in Kontakt, you could load different libraries into Kontakt and use the 16 MIDI channels and multi timbral tracks to control each one, but I think Spitfire's own app only does this for articulations, as it can't load more than one "instrument section" at a time.

Hey, I'm not sure you can do that with the labs plugin I'm afraid. I don't think it can load multiple articulations at once, only one at a time. (sorry for the delayed reply)

Hey, great question, I haven't looked through their templates myself, but from what I've heard I think they just have each instrument on a separate track with Key Switches being used to change articulations. I'm not going to lie, setting it up how I have here takes quite a while, but once you have it and save it as a template, man it speeds things up for me!

Totally understand. It took me months to do what Spitfire then went and did for me! They also set up all of the routing and stem groups, etc. I downloaded the BBCSO Core "full articulation" template, and then it was easy to go in and just duplicate tracks to add the other library sounds that I often prefer; I get the close mics and better legatos from the Symphonic Woods and Brass, for example and I can just sit those right next to the Beeb instrument articulations, keeping all of the same routing, etc. Thanks again for the great content. @@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew

Ah, I'm afraid at the moment I can't see a way to do that, though I'd love that too. I miss that from Kontakt when using SA's own plugins.

Hey Bart, great point. I have run into that issue in the past with Kontakt, loading multi's or multiple libraries into the one instance, but I haven't found that with BBC. I think it's because I'm running several articulations in one instance, but its all the same "instrument", so the load on the CPU is no different to keyswitch them (I'm just using MIDI Channels instead). I'm happy to report, no dreaded oversampling alert yet!

Ah yes, there are often trade offs to everything we do in the DAW haha, this is one for me. I find that I simply trim the start and end of the regions to the first and last note and that usually does the trick,, but it catches me out some times when I've faded CC11 down on a legato and forgot to set it back to the top before the staccato section 🤦‍♂️

Hey, thanks for checking out the video. I do want to make some videos on how to work with orchestral samples, so stay tuned, hopefully I can do those soon.

Hey, great question (sorry for the delay, been a bit busy currently). Yes, that's correct essentially. The MIDI channel changes are triggered by clicking on the different tracks (as each track is sending out midi data on a different channel). So, as long as the MIDI is on the staccato track, it will switch to the staccato articulation as soon as it hits the first note. I find it quite handy, as I've never liked using key switches (creates some unusual, bottom of the keyboard notes in the MIDI region that I'm always forgetting about haha).

Ah I'm glad to hear it works, but yes, BBCSO Pro is a beast when it comes to computer power. I wish that was sort of listed somewhere on their site.

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew forgot to say, I have to have the low latency option on to work with it

Hmm, that is a really great question. I haven't come up against that before, though I rarely use more than one of the mix combinations of mics, so I'm probably not loading up as many samples as you are. It could well be a limitation, I'd advise reaching out to SA's tech support to find out. If this is the case though, it should roll off the oldest notes first, so if you are seeing newer note get muted, maybe that's not it. I'm not sure what it could be though, sorry I'm not of more help here.

Hey, glad you enjoyed the video! I haven't found a way to do that I'm afraid. I know you can easily do that within Kontakt, for example, as you can load separate libraries within a single Kontakt instance and purge unused samples. However, as the BBC plugin kind of IS the library, I don't think it's set up to run multiple "libraries" (like a violin and a cello for example) at once.

Indeed you can and I use this sometimes to get a little extra bit at the start of a note, using legato and staccato together for example.

Hey, great question. I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I don't think it provides the option to customise the articulations in that way. :(

Hey, great question. I don't have a physical example at hand, however, I am essentially splitting the MIDI track up over the different articulations, and I use the expression slider to really balance the different articulations together, controlling the overall volume.

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew ahhh - ok, that sounds like a good workaround, because the expression slider is essentially another volume control, correct? it doesn't actually change the articulation, say if you had a hard stacatto but just wanted it quieter? thank you

Ah no! I remember when I first loaded it on my computer, I put it onto an old spinning hard drive and my computer just crawled. If you have an SSD, you could try relocating the library there if you haven't already.

Yes /: the Spitfire team and forums have made it clear that’s the only solution. I am surprised it was totally a-ok with core and the Albions but then it’s minimum 15 mins to let it load with the pro version even with 4GHZ and 32GB. I guess I thought the SSD advice was just “must always have the newest” mindset not an actual REALITY! It’s gorgeous enough to wait for however I’ll HAVE to get an ssd after I pay for everything else!

Very good point, at the moment in those situations I load up a seperate instance in Keyswitching mode and use that for that brief passage, but it isn't ideal. I've been experimenting with Articulation Sets recently, thanks to a few suggestions here, which seem like another great way to combine the convenience of this method and the flexibility of keyswitching.

Hey Ronny, no problems, you can do that. The quickest way is to use an if statement and say when the first button is on, assign the value 0 to all the other buttons. You can do that easily with a $btn_2 := 0 for example in the if statement (hope that looks ok, KZfaq doesn't like code in its comments or descriptions). If you have a lot of buttons, that will create a lot of lines of text, so you could put all of your button variables into an array and then go through the array and use a while loop. This is honestly hard to talk through youtube comments about haha, so I think I should make a video soon and demo that while loop and array idea, but the if statement will be a quick way to do it. Hope that helps.

I should mention as well that all of this is in an "on ui_control" callback for the button you are switching on.

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew thanx Stephen,i found a solution,i simply put an $buttonname1 :=0 in all the other button groups,now if you click one all the others are de-selected,love the tutorials you give,very comprehensive,even for an oldtimer like me 😁 if every teacher would give lessons like you do there would be more people passing school,thanx again for your contribution to the music community,see you in the next one,cheers

Awesome, glad to hear you found a solution and thanks so much for your kind comments!

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew you're very welcome Stephen

Hey, you are right, this is something that has been around for a long time, but not everyone starting music production today is going to know about it or necessarily use Reaper, so my hope is this video helps new composers find out what's possible for their own workflow.

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew Well, try it then. Reaper has a 30-day demo and OTR 2 is free. It will change your life.

Thanks so much, a few people have mentioned that to me recently and it is something I am definitely checking out! I had no idea about it when doing this video, so I should probably do an update when I can.

It does, it has something called articulations which is similar to expression maps.

@SayokadiStorme thats for sure,i'm very happy with what the guys at presonus have done with their sound variations,have not upgraded yet to version 6,but as soon as i can i will do so,again,a lot of new usable and powerful features,inclusing a multiband EQ and compressor,a great piece of music software to have indeed

Ooo, that sounds great. Studio One really has become an amazing DAW, I hear a lot about it from other composers. For me, I've always loved the separate tracks for each articulation though, something about it makes it easier for me to navigate and quickly see which sections are which, though that can create a lot of tracks and for a quick musical line that uses multiple articulations I often use keyswitches. I like this idea of "sound variations" though, lining up the note with the start note of that articulation is a way smarter way for this to work.

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew lining up the notes is not needed in SO Stephen,they have their respected track,and what is also super is that thekeyswitch notes dont show in your score or midi event track 😃

Ah, that sounds like I really need to check out Studio One some time!

@@StephenOConnellCmdShiftNew Logic has a similar feature called Articulation Sets. A company called Babylonwaves has Art Conductor, a pre-made database of Articulation Sets for Logic (and the similar features in other DAWs, like Expression Maps in Cubase, Sound Variations in Studio One, and Articulation Maps in Digital Performer and Cakewalk) for just about every commonly-used libraries. It makes articulation management almost effortless. Every supported library will function exactly the same for articulation switching - it doesn't matter if it is a Spitfire, OT, or whatever library.

I do agree on that one, I definitely love the fact that Kontakt for example can load a range of different instruments and have them trigger multi-timbrally. I don't think their app design lends well to that layout though, so I don't think we will see that feature any time soon.