Ableton announced that they’d be doing an orchestral sample library — called, logically enough, the Orchestral Instrument Collection — way back when Live Suite came out last year. But Orchestral Instruments actually didn’t ship then. As of this week, it is shipping.

You can buy the whole library for US$599, or you can pick up sections a la carte for $189 (or, oddly, $159 for Orchestral Percussion). Like the Essential Instruments Collection, the samples come from SONiVOX, with high-fidelity and low-fidelity (read: lightweight for performance) versions. There’s also something new called "SmartPriming" for system resources. I haven’t yet gotten my hands on this, so I can’t comment yet; obviously, it comes down to how important Live integration is to you, or whether you’d prefer a third-party orchestral library.

The a la carte sections, though, makes me think of Garrison Keillor’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra skit. (It’s Classical Music humor. My apologies.) One way to choose sections: think about which God would want you to buy. Excerpt:

But for a Lutheran who feels led to play in an orchestra, the first question must be: are you kidding? An orchestra? Are you sure this is what you want? Do you know what you are getting into? Opera. Is that anyplace for a Christian? Don Juan and Mephistopheles and Wagner and all his pagan goddesses hooting and hollering, and the immorality — I mean, is anybody in opera married?

Not to give away the punchline, but not surprisingly harps and percussion (think about the patience required to be an orchestral percussionist) win out, so that could theoretically guide your purchase decision here. Just remember:

The French Horn takes too much of a person’s life. French horn players hardly have time to marry and have children. The French horn is practically a religion all by itself.

Software is different, of course. A Young Lutheran’s Guide to Music Software, anyone?

Audio Impressions had a working demo of their flagship orchestral library, DVZ. Well, ok—just the strings were demoed, but the full package with over 600 instruments is scheduled to de-vaporize and ship in March.

Audio Impressions > Products > Realtime Instruments (DVZ)

DVZ (pronounced “di-vi-zee”) promises a unique experience for those yearning to achieve new realism for that film score sound. The string section emanating from their NAMM booth did indeed seem to hit the nail on the head.

I was particularly impressed that it sounded so good being played straight from a keyboard. Part of the reason is that there is an algorithm that senses how fast notes are being played, so you can get articulations that make more sense without needing to be programmed after the fact through sample switching or tweaking attack and release times.

So what else is innovative about DVZ?

Ready to get in the holiday mood, but feeling Scrooge-like with your money? Here are some free tunes to get your Yuletide festivities underway:

The Garritan Personal Orchestra forum has become more than a place for users of this sampled orchestra library to troubleshoot and ask questions — it really is a community in its own right. From sharing new compositions to assembling an orchestration guide, the GPO users are busy. Their latest creation is an 18-track album of (mostly traditional) holiday music, arranged for the sampled virtual orchestra of GPO. Download the music, or Garritan will even send you a CD. While you’re there, scroll down for a rendering of the Nutcracker in GPO — even if we might start to prefer it on bike parts. Now in its third year:

Garritan Christmas Music Player

That’s all fine and well, of course, but where’s the Reaktor Christmas Album, featuring all your holiday favorites rendered completely unrecognizable on far-out synths? (Finally, “This Christmas” made bearable — by re-arranging it for a microtonal granular synth that completely obliterates the horribly annoying melody? Native Instruments forum users, can you deliver?)

Moving on to a somewhat naughtier Christmas mix, our favorite mash-up DJ has cooked up yet another X-mas music stew:

DJ Riko Christmas Music Mixes

I never feel in a holiday mood until I hear Boris Karloff’s voice. And nothing makes my guests start to chug the Egg Nog like the dulcet tones of The Partridge Family singing Jingle Bells. And, while the Garritan effort is admirable, it doesn’t feature “the best drum-and-bass Christmas song you’ll ever hear and also features what just might be the best use of sleigh bells ever.” All of Riko’s holiday back catalog is there, too, so the insanity never has to run out.

Sorry for the slowdown, incidentally, folks — more “hard news” from CDM next week; we’ve got a lot of stories in the pipeline. Well, and more frivolousness, as always. That can’t only come but once a year.

Quick: you’re building a massively parallel, powerful supercomputer cluster! What computer will you use as a node? Why, the hugely-powerful Commodore 64, of course, silly! And then you’ll write music for your sixteen Commodore machines:

The Vintage Computer Festival has selected Commodore 64 Orchestra to be the first to [sic] the historic Commodore 64 Parallel Super-Computer. The project is slated for completion for exhibition at VCF 6.0, where the 20th anniversary of the Commodore 64 will be celebrated. The first prototype will utilize 16 Commodore 64 machines in sync with a musical application that Commodore 64 Orchestra will program to write its Symphony No 1. series. Founder Nico of the Commodore 64 Orchestra states that “We are pleased to have been chosen to compose on the world’s first Commodore 64 Parallel Super-Computer and would like to thank The Vintage Computer Festival for their support and vision.” The Vintage Computer Festival is an international event that celebrates the history of computing. The mission of the Vintage Computer Festival is to promote the preservation of “obsolete” computers by offering people a chance to experience the technologies, people and stories that embody the remarkable tale of the computer revolution.

Commodore 64 Orchestra [MySpace Page]

My only question: 20th Anniversary of what? (The C64 was released 24 years ago, in 1982.) Update with answer: James from Retro Thing observes this is probably actually old (2003) news. Obviously, I’m familiar with the C64 Orchestra … not sure why they’re commenting on this now. But since 2003 is part of the Age Before CDM, feel free to go check out that MySpace page now and rock out to some happy 8-bit, while I wonder if between this and the pornographic 8-bit image I just posted accidentally, today was the day I got punked. ;)

The music technology blogosophere continues to expand, now with an excellent new site dedicated to film scoring. The site also has a bonus: its name begins with the word “Create”, which means it can join CDM’s unofficial “Create [Stuff]” network!

Create Film Scores

Jerome Leroy, an L.A.-based music systems technician, is editing the new site. Jerome tells CDM he works as a studio technician and technical assistant and had a specific “thirst for film music tech news” that led him to start his own specialized resource. We’re of course always happy to see the community of practical sites for digital musicians growing, so this is great news — welcome, Jerome!

Among the early articles is a great piece on assembling farms of Mac minis to help process samples for Vienna Instruments and their massive Symphonic Cube package. The minis are a little underpowered in the hard drive department, but thanks to a cheap price and fast processor, they can be an economical way of adding necessary sample-processing power. The article also details composer John Frizzell’s setup, which originally, like a lot of film composers, used a Mac as the main machine and PC slaves for GigaStudio; Frizzell has sinced switched to an all-Mac rig of three G5s. Jerome says this is the first of a series; we’ll be watching:

Mac minis as VSL Farms: An Overview

Related: CDM’s resident game composer talked to Tomb Raider’s Troels Brun Folmann, who uses a similarly massive computer farm for his music. His setup: one master computer, eight sample slaves, all PC. (His sample library of choice is East West’s Symphonic Library XP rather than Vienna’s.)

CDM Interview: Tomb Raider: Legend Composer Troels Brun Folmann on Adaptive “Micro-Scoring�

Got a sampler farm of your own? Let us know about it. (Don’t worry, we won’t get into pissing contests over who has the most computers — for those of us who don’t need to use enormous orchestral libraries, one machine often does just fine!)

Rivalries are good: they keep software developers competitive, leapfrogging each other in features. They keep the pressure on, and having seen what happens when one company gets a monopoly (Microsoft Office, I’m looking at you), progress generally slows. Notation users have benefited from the Finale/Sibelius rivalry, and that competition continues to produce better and better notation software. Finale 2007 looks like it will continue that trend.

Now, I’ve gotten in trouble before when I’ve said Finale was blatantly copying its music notation rival Sibelius. But I don’t think anyone can argue with me this time. The major features in Sibelius 4: parts linked to full score, and integrated video support and film scoring features. The major features in Finale 2007, based on a marketing email I just got from Finale:

1. Parts linked to full score
2. Integrated video support and film scoring features
3. Intel Mac native support

Sounds familiar, huh? Now, honestly, these were really features that both packages would inevitably add, so I’m glad to see Finale continuing to level the playing field.

Whether you’re composing for real orchestrations, scoring films or games, teaching, or just learning more about how the orchestra works, there’s never a time when you stop learning about orchestration. That’s why a new free, online version of a classic Russian orchestration guide, complete with new interactive examples, is good news.

Sample designers Garritan Library, the folks behind the popular orchestral library Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), have begun releasing portions of their free guide to orchestration (see my previous story). The full text and examples are straight out of the classic Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration text, the landmark guide to orchestration that has taught many master composers. The Rimsky-Korsakov is a must-read for composers, but it’s still one perspective and hardly perfect, so it’s even better to discover the text has been fully annotated in this version.

The result is a community-driven guide to orchestration that’s really unlike anything I’ve seen before. The whole course is designed for self-study, with plenty of examples and illustrations. The professors who edited and annotated the text are discussing the results, turning the Garritan forums into a kind of interactive classroom. When the whole set of lessons are done, they’re even holding an orchestration contest. (Now that’s something I never got in my orchestration classes — not just grades, but genuine competition.)

When it comes to new musical interfaces, everything has come full circle. Composers and interactive musicians have for years appropriated Nintendo hardware like the wireless PowerGlove. Forward-thinking music designers and music makers have imagined and prototyped hardware that would translate gestures and three-dimensional movement into sound. But there’s never been anything approaching a mass-market device, until now.

Once upon a time, you’d only find wireless multi-axis controllers in experimental academic studios, but now they’re the buzz of the gaming world, thanks to Nintendo. And even a game about conducting classical music can be headlines news. Here’s more on what Nintendo’s cooked up, and, as I’ve said before, why it might inspire musicians to experiment with new ways of making music.

Thumbnail from IGN’s excellent Wii Music coverage; other images from Nintendo Wii site videos.

Virtual ochestra sample libraries usually require serious cash and a high-end computer to run, but CDM’s resident game composer has found something different. US$325 and it’ll run on your existing computer? Chalk it up to another brilliant independent sample developer. W. Brent Latta takes this software orchestra for a compositional test drive. Don’t miss his sample music if you want to understand why he’s raving. -Ed.

Every few years, a small, innovative company comes along and changes the paradigm for high-quality sample libraries. With the power and accessibility of modern computers, this change has followed Moore’s law fairly closely and we’ve seen library upstarts transform from boutique shops to hugely successful producers in no time flat.

If you want an example of complex music technology, look no further than the symphony orchestra. This peculiar blend of instruments from different times and different cultures has to be the most musically complex entity in existence. But that hasn’t stopped the new music-centered American Composers Orchestra from asking how the orchestra could continue to evolve and assimilate new technology.

This weekend in New York and Philadelphia, the American Composers Orchestra presents a concert mixing electronic music tech with the biggest acoustic sound on the planet, the orchestra. They’ve pulled all the stops: electric violin with laptop, laptop and turntablist DJs, drum pads, and even the orchestra reimagined through the filter of DJ and electronica techniques. Involved forces involve everyone from choreographer Bill T. Jones to composer Neil Rolnick to Daniel Bernard Roumain (pictured). I’ll be at the New York show and plan to cover this more, but in the meantime, here’s some reading material. And if you’re local, hope you’ll check this out and let us know what you think.

ACO Orchestra Underground Tech & Techno

Frank Oteri: Future Shock

Composer Neil Rolnick and Violinist Todd Reynolds, Interviewed by Joel Chadabe

A Composer, a Dance Choreographer, a DJ, and Filmmaker (sounds like the opening line from a really exclusive joke . . . so a turntablist, an interactive media artist, and Merce Cunningham walk into a bar . . . especially excited about this one)