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Virtual Instruments: How do I make them sound more realistic? (example included)

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tpedraja

Member
Hey guys, I've been working hard on an arrangement on a piece of music from Frozen. I wrote the sheet music, imported it into Cubase, and started fussing with the midi data to try and get it to sound as real as possible. Unfortunately, it still sounds pretty fake to my ears.

Do you have any recommendations for making my mockup sound more like it was performed by a live orchestra? I apologize if I'm posting this in the wrong thread.

Track I'm trying to make a mockup of:


my mockup (attached to this post):

Thanks in advance! I'd appreciate of any tips!
Click to read more...
 

Attachments

  • Anna and Elsa.mp3
    1.4 MB
Last edited:
tpedraja said:
Hey guys, I've been working hard on an arrangement on a piece of music from Frozen. I wrote the sheet music, imported it into Cubase, and started fussing with the midi data to try and get it to sound as real as possible. Unfortunately, it still sounds pretty fake to my ears.

Do you have any recommendations for making my mockup sound more like it was performed by a live orchestra? I apologize if I'm posting this in the wrong thread.

Track I'm trying to make a mockup of:


my mockup (attached to this post):

Thanks in advance! I'd appreciate of any tips!
Click to expand...

There are hundreds of videos on Youtube about it !
 
Your mockup actually sounds pretty good to me. I'd recommend more variety in the short velocities for your strings, introducing a few softer and a few harder ones just so that it sounds less robotic.

For the initial string part, I would suggest layering a closer and dryer sound on top, gradually lowering the volume of that so that it goes back when the other instruments go in.

At the very end, I think you could also beef up the brass section a little bit more. In your mock up, I hear some low brass combined with some shrill woodwinds, but in the reference track I hear less of the woodwinds due to the powerful low brass.

There's probably a lot you can improve about your mix here, but I personally can't suggest anything helpful beyond what I've said above. Perhaps your mockup sounds a little bit brighter than the reference? Mixing is not my area of expertise.
 
I thought your mock up sounded pretty convincing. If I didn’t know better, I would think it was live.

Tho one thing you might want to add is more reverb. The original recording has more ring to it

Unless you’re mocking up a Sousa march, avoid sticking with the exact tempo all throughout. Say the tempo is 120 bpm. A human conductor isn’t able to realistically conduct at that exact tempo all throughout. Sometimes it becomes 122, 118, 124, etc. You can dance around the marked tempo by having every measure or two be slightly different. Especially on slow and lyrical lines, don’t hesitate to play around the tempo and speed up and slow down as needed.

Speaking of tempo, a staccato in a 132 bpm passage isn’t the same as a staccato in a 72 bpm passage. Make sure to adjust accordingly. There’s a reason VSL has slow and fast variants for legato and staccato.

Dynamics are also important to add realism. I learned this from a previous mock up, but a sustained note especially on the winds isn’t going to stay on the same dynamic the longer it’s held. There tends to be some natural decay because winds can only blow so much at a time. You ideally want dynamics to be more like a rollercoaster than a flat ride.
 
I actually think differently. It is already a good product but you can hear it is a midi reproduction. To my ears, first of all because of internal dynamics. You should try to make it breathe more, give directions (close those little phrases at the beginning for example), and take care of the tails. Most of the longer sounds end too neatly. Add internal dynamics to the sustained sound (middle part and flute solo).

Yes, reverb would help but you can achieve it better without it, in the first place.

The flute solo is a great example: hear how the sound fluctuates in the original. Played music is never static. Even if you already did a certain amount of this, I think it still not enough. I guess this is why some users like dirtier sampled instruments (or a lot of reverb). It gives this without too much work.

I would also work on the balance, since sometimes certain sounds stick out too much.

In one advice: try thinking it from the perspective of the conductor and the performer more than the composer.

I think you can improve it already before the mixing. Then a good mix, like said before, can make the whole thing sound even better!

Well done and keep working on it!
 
InsomniaEmperor said:
I thought your mock up sounded pretty convincing. If I didn’t know better, I would think it was live.

Tho one thing you might want to add is more reverb. The original recording has more ring to it

Unless you’re mocking up a Sousa march, avoid sticking with the exact tempo all throughout. Say the tempo is 120 bpm. A human conductor isn’t able to realistically conduct at that exact tempo all throughout. Sometimes it becomes 122, 118, 124, etc. You can dance around the marked tempo by having every measure or two be slightly different. Especially on slow and lyrical lines, don’t hesitate to play around the tempo and speed up and slow down as needed.

Speaking of tempo, a staccato in a 132 bpm passage isn’t the same as a staccato in a 72 bpm passage. Make sure to adjust accordingly. There’s a reason VSL has slow and fast variants for legato and staccato.

Dynamics are also important to add realism. I learned this from a previous mock up, but a sustained note especially on the winds isn’t going to stay on the same dynamic the longer it’s held. There tends to be some natural decay because winds can only blow so much at a time. You ideally want dynamics to be more like a rollercoaster than a flat ride.
Click to expand...
What I do with the tempo is increasing it and decreasing it slightly together with phrasing. In the middle of the phrase, the tempo is slightly faster than in the extremes. Also, some parts of a piece tend to have faster or slower tempos. For instance, the ending of a piece, or of a section, may be slower.
 
Thanks, everybody, for the feedback. I went ahead and implemented some of the advice here to try to improve the dynamics and balance. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to get a natural sounding tempo variation, however I did humanize the MIDI somewhat which I thinks helps it not sound as quantized. Here it is. :)
 

Attachments

  • Anna and Elsa.mp3
    1.4 MB
Your mix sounds very distant/roomy compared to the original recording. Adding in close mics and toning down your ambient mics and/or reverb should help.
 
Sean Linge said:
Your mix sounds very distant/roomy compared to the original recording. Adding in close mics and toning down your ambient mics and/or reverb should help.
Click to expand...
I think this is just a limitation of my library. It is recorded in Teldex Berlin. I can only feed in so much of the close mic before it sounds weird. Maybe something like spitfires studio strings would’ve been better suited to this mock-up.
 
tpedraja said:
I think this is just a limitation of my library. It is recorded in Teldex Berlin. I can only feed in so much of the close mic before it sounds weird. Maybe something like spitfires studio strings would’ve been better suited to this mock-up.
Click to expand...
You don’t exactly need a specific library just for a mock up to sound good. If you’re already using Berlin Strings, then I see little reason to get Spitfire Studio Strings, unless you want a specifically dry library, in which case the Vienna Symphonic Library VI Series is a much better choice due to it having much more articulations and variations in crescendos/decrescendos (and it’s on sale now).

tpedraja said:
I couldn't find a way to get a natural sounding tempo variation
Click to expand...
You don’t really need to overthink tempo variation. While it helps to humanize it by my example of going 120, 122, 118, etc, the listener wouldn’t really notice whether it sounds natural or not. The thing you mainly want to avoid is having the entire piece be just one tempo marking so make sure to use slow downs and speed boosts as needed.
 
InsomniaEmperor said:
You don’t exactly need a specific library just for a mock up to sound good. If you’re already using Berlin Strings, then I see little reason to get Spitfire Studio Strings, unless you want a specifically dry library, in which case the Vienna Symphonic Library VI Series is a much better choice due to it having much more articulations and variations in crescendos/decrescendos (and it’s on sale now).


You don’t really need to overthink tempo variation. While it helps to humanize it by my example of going 120, 122, 118, etc, the listener wouldn’t really notice whether it sounds natural or not. The thing you mainly want to avoid is having the entire piece be just one tempo marking so make sure to use slow downs and speed boosts as needed.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the feedback. I was just responding to the previous commenter who said the original recording was more dry. If I were to try to recreate the recording more closely, I think I would use a library like the one you recommended.

I don’t think I could make berlin strings sound like the recording because the rooms are so different.
 
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