String Quartet, Op. 1

[krummholz]

Understood. Love the piece! Congrats!

Thanks much, Karl!

[lunar22]

Thanks for your comments, @relm1! There are a bunch of redundant and otherwise unnecessary details in the score that I just haven't cleaned up yet - someone else mentioned the extraneous treble clef and I just haven't gotten to it.

have you upgraded to Dorico 6 yet? You know there's a proofing tool which will sort out all the stuff like duplicate clefs for you. I've already found it quite useful (and probably the only major new feature I'll use as there's virtually nothing playback related). I'll have another listen to your new version at some point soon, once I've got all this NotePerfomer stuff out of my system.

[krummholz]

have you upgraded to Dorico 6 yet? You know there's a proofing tool which will sort out all the stuff like duplicate clefs for you. I've already found it quite useful (and probably the only major new feature I'll use as there's virtually nothing playback related). I'll have another listen to your new version at some point soon, once I've got all this NotePerfomer stuff out of my system.

I haven't, because of discussion on the Steinberg forum saying that there was no urgency to it as there were few new features. A proofing tool sounds nice though, so I will probably do so in the near future - before they release a newer version with a steeper upgrade price. Thanks for the tip.

[Karl Henning]

I haven't, because of discussion on the Steinberg forum saying that there was no urgency to it as there were few new features. A proofing tool sounds nice though, so I will probably do so in the near future - before they release a newer version with a steeper upgrade price. Thanks for the tip.

If I migrate, I may reach out to you with the odd q.

[lunar22]

there are a few of us Doricians here, I think, who would be glad to help. The forum is pretty good at responding to queries as well and developers usually sort out issues pretty quickly.

[Karl Henning]

there are a few of us Doricians here, I think, who would be glad to help. The forum is pretty good at responding to queries as well and developers usually sort out issues pretty quickly.

Appreciate it, thanks. On one hand, I don't foresee migrating. On t'other, one never knows, do one?

[lunar22]

from my memory, the dynamism and passion in this music has improved with the Dorico version though. as you know, for me the tonal qualities of the NotePerformer strings continue to grate. Perhaps when VSL complete their new solo strings at some point this year, that will become a viable alternative for stuff like this. As they provide Expression Maps for Dorico for those who don't want to write their own, it makes things relatively straightforward (though I'd still probably prefer the NP performance Engine which now looks like a forlorn hope)

[krummholz]

from my memory, the dynamism and passion in this music has improved with the Dorico version though. as you know, for me the tonal qualities of the NotePerformer strings continue to grate. Perhaps when VSL complete their new solo strings at some point this year, that will become a viable alternative for stuff like this. As they provide Expression Maps for Dorico for those who don't want to write their own, it makes things relatively straightforward (though I'd still probably prefer the NP performance Engine which now looks like a forlorn hope)

The NP solo strings grate for me as well, as I think I've said. But of course VSL's solo strings package is just that, solo strings. How does one integrate other instruments, such as winds, into a chamber ensemble in Dorico? For example, how was your Quintet for cl, bcl, string trio rendered? I have some ideas for a piece that I think could be a clarinet trio, with two stringed instruments that could end up being any two of violin, viola, or cello, depending on the registers and timbres the piece requires. I don't think it's possible to integrate a NP clarinet with VSL solo strings, or is it?

[lunar22]

In Dorico you can separately assign different vst libraries to every instrument if you desire so there's no issue in mixing and matching. However if you include NotePerformer, that requires to use its own playback template as a starting point. This is what I did for the Cinematic Studio strings in my clarinet quintet but then the two clarinets from VSL were added. They can co-exist quite happily -- you just assign the relevant Expression Map for every channel (all under the PLAY tab in Dorico)

[krummholz]

In Dorico you can separately assign different vst libraries to every instrument if you desire so there's no issue in mixing and matching. However if you include NotePerformer, that requires to use its own playback template as a starting point. This is what I did for the Cinematic Studio strings in my clarinet quintet but then the two clarinets from VSL were added. They can co-exist quite happily -- you just assign the relevant Expression Map for every channel (all under the PLAY tab in Dorico)

So the clarinets were from the symphonic package? Or do they sell chamber versions of wind instruments separately, like with solo strings? That could wind up being very expensive!

[lunar22]

well my clarinets were just from the full orchestra Special Edition -- the whole orchestra is currently a reasonable €299. it's also possible to get the full versions (the Special Edition has fewer articulations) of all Studio woodwinds for slightly less. You can also buy the newest Synchron instruments individually but then you're talking €99 for a single clarinet. VSL are far from the cheapest on the market but the programming is quite reliable.

[Rons_talking]

I'm a little late here but your quartet is a really nice, interesting work. I don't find it to be late Romantic, rather, it sounds atonal to me. I hear a lot of semitone to tritone (016, etc) motives. Glad you stuck with the piece.

[krummholz]

I'm a little late here but your quartet is a really nice, interesting work. I don't find it to be late Romantic, rather, it sounds atonal to me. I hear a lot of semitone to tritone (016, etc) motives. Glad you stuck with the piece.

Thanks, Ron. You are correct that the semitone and the tritone are the most important intervals in the piece. It's interesting how different people's ears can hear this piece totally differently. I mean, in the strictest sense, sure, most of the piece really IS atonal because it is rarely in any definite key. But that's not what I mean when I say I hear it as basically tonal: it's more that there are harmonic progressions everywhere that seem to suggest the Common Practice era. Maybe I'm the only one who hears them, but that would surprise me.

I think I wrote somewhere before that the Coda is the viola groping for a solid tonal footing, and eventually landing, with regret and resignation, on A minor.

[krummholz]

A couple of weeks ago I bought a copy of the VSL Studio Solo Strings sample library, with the intent of porting this quartet to it, and then using it for mock-ups of any future works for chamber strings (i.e. trios, quartets, etc.)... but I was quickly sidetracked by ideas for four new short works for various instrumental combinations. Hopefully at least one of those will sustain my interest long enough to finish it, but in the meantime, I returned to my VSL port and finished it last night, with a couple of minor tweaks this morning. And by G_d, I really like this version! Thought I'd share it here, in case anyone is interested - just the audio file this time, as the score hasn't changed in any meaningful way.

String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 1

P.S. All the renderings I've posted here previously have been made with NotePerformer, which is musically excellent but sonically poor when it comes to solo strings. I have to admit that there are some flaws in this VSL version as well, especially occasional "whooping" effects, where in a legato line the previous note is repeated and then what sounds like a very quick glissando to the next note is heard - not quite a portamento, more like a literal slurring together of the notes. The realistic and much more distinctive timbres of the four instruments outweighs that, to me anyway.

[Karl Henning]

but I was quickly sidetracked by ideas for four new short works for various instrumental combinations.

Very good. Embrace the sidetracking!

[krummholz]

Very good. Embrace the sidetracking!

Oh, I tried... and will continue to try. I'm just having a lot of difficulty at the moment with what I'm trying to write. Inability to hear the pitches I want clearly enough, and getting distracted by notation software's insistence on playing for you the note on the staff, even while you are dragging it to what you think is the proper pitch, which is incredibly distracting. What I really need is a MIDI keyboard, or *some* kind of keyboard instrument. Failing that, I need to mute my sound output except when playing a passage back. I wrote the second half of this quartet, in its original version, in Musescore, which as I recall, didn't sound the pitches for you except on playback. That sort-of worked, most of the time, even if the playback was awful quality.

Seems there's always a tradeoff...