Is it possible to make instruments sound natural through audio editing like this?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, for the info. Sorry for not having trouble understanding yet.

But the composer said that some of the sounds I want in the example tracks I gave him, are from instruments that he needs to have pre-recorded samples of, and that no synthesizer can create those sounds from scratch. Is he right on that, or a synthesizer can sound just like any instrument without any pre-recorded samples at all? He's in his 30s.

[Paul R Johnson]

He is speaking complete and utter rubbish Ryan. I have two locations. Audio I do from an extension to my house, and this is where my audio studio is, and it has Tb's of instruments on it. I use Cubase 11 Pro currently. I keep adding when new ones pop along that appeal to me - which means I'm not interested in drum loops or electronic dance music sounds, but I am very interested in movie and classical style sounds. My video studio and office is a 20 minute walk away and there I have Cubase Elements - a cut down version, and my many of my sounds are able to be used on two computers. Others are only on the studio computer. Occasionally when I'm working on a project in the video studio, I can't find exactly what I want. However, there is always something close - but not right. So I select that and carry on. Then when I load it up back at home, I'll find something else to replace it with. I could record my own samples of a strange instrument into Kotakt and then play them on a keyboard, but I rarely do that any more - I can create exactly what I want in the machine. Let's imagine you are still totally sold on the bass flute. What I do is listen to a few on YouTube and try to determine how it is different from an ordinary flute. Obviously lower, but the airflow is also lower so it has a breather sound and more hollow. So I look at all the flutes I have and transpose them down an octave. Some just don't work. Others work but change tonality in the wrong way, but then I find something closer to what I want. Maybe, the synth/sampler tells me, m this is made up of a transposed flute with a hint of clarinet and an exotic Indian instrument. You tweak and audition and you have made a new and unique sound. often it sounds better than the real thing. Lower woodwind often degenerate to a washy windy noise with no attack - but with the tools available, you can add attack, that a real one simply cannot do. Something like a harmonica patch can sound horrible - but you double it, compress it, and add long reverb to it and it can sound magical. Not remotely real when you compare it. It sounds like your composer just has a rubbish, or incomplete library - or of course he could really be into electronic dance music and his library is huge, but he has few of your instruments. Instruments - as in real ones fall into very specific categories. They will be hit, plucked, blown with a single or double reed, or will use your lip, or they will use an air splitting device. others might be strings or membranes under tension, and can be tuned to a single pitch or tuned to a general non-tuned sound - like a timp in the orchestra or a tom-tom. One has a pitch, one doesn't. The tight string or membrane can be 'excited' with fingers, hair on a bow, hit with the wood on the back of the bow, twanged with a pick, or even excited by sounds in the room. All these things have a physical process that happens. Nowadays we can synthesise this entire process so well, you would swear it was real. For instance Steinway and Bosendorfer two great piano makers have collaborated with the software people and endorsed the sound that comes from the synth as worthy of the name. Equally, some synths are truly dire. I have a saxophone one that sounds like a kazoo. Oddly though, I have even used it!

Does this make sense Ryan.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, but you said that a synth can produce the same sound as sampling and with no difference. If it can do that, why bother to record all the instruments and build a library then? Why not just have the synth to make the sounds for without sampling, if it can do the same things? That's the part I don't understand.

I also don't understand what is wrong with the bass flute, since it keeps being brought up. Is it just a totally inferrior instrument and should never be used? Because out of all the sounds I wanted from example tracks, the flute keeps coming up, so it it just bad sounding, or what's the problem with it?

[Brian Drysdale]

Why don't you look online for these differences?

Pro Tips: Samplers vs Synths - YouTube

.

Meet the Bass Flute - YouTube

[Paul R Johnson]

It's simply because we are talking about nuances, and subtlety Ryan. If I wanted to play my double bass, but do a palm mute, or a slap, that is very difficult to synthesise musically. If I wanted a walking bass sequence, then I'd probably dial up double bass and pick the one that sounded right. This could be a sample or a synthesised sound - I wouldn't bother to even check. There is no rule - whatever sounds best, is best.

Being very frank, with regards to the bass flute, is that in 40 years, I have never had one, let alone played one properly, because they're really not common instruments. If I wanted one in this area I doubt anyone actually has one. It's not remotely a common sound or a common instrument. You would not find one in many orchestras - although a few players of that calibre would probably have one - they just wouldn't need it often. You went on about it so much, it's stuck in my head - but it's like a bass harmonica - have you ever heard one of those? They exist, but few people have one.

You're doing your rule book thing again - you find it difficult to think in the abstract and want maths. If a certain thing happens, you want to be able to produce a conclusion. There are loads of nice instruments out there, but they don't get used very often.

[Josh Bass]

So Paul, not that I'm in the market right now, but is there one package/plugin, maybe a starter something, that has some of all the most common stuff? horns, flutes, strings, etc., maybe quick settings/presets to manipulate them to get common variations on how each of those things can be played, that you would recommend? Something that could be hosted inside Logic? I've especially had trouble with the Logic built-in synths finding 80s cheese keys patches/sounds. Granted, I do not fully understand the synths because they are so complex, so maybe I could make them myself if I knew enough.

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

It's simply because we are talking about nuances, and subtlety Ryan. If I wanted to play my double bass, but do a palm mute, or a slap, that is very difficult to synthesise musically. If I wanted a walking bass sequence, then I'd probably dial up double bass and pick the one that sounded right. This could be a sample or a synthesised sound - I wouldn't bother to even check. There is no rule - whatever sounds best, is best.

Being very frank, with regards to the bass flute, is that in 40 years, I have never had one, let alone played one properly, because they're really not common instruments. If I wanted one in this area I doubt anyone actually has one. It's not remotely a common sound or a common instrument. You would not find one in many orchestras - although a few players of that calibre would probably have one - they just wouldn't need it often. You went on about it so much, it's stuck in my head - but it's like a bass harmonica - have you ever heard one of those? They exist, but few people have one.

You're doing your rule book thing again - you find it difficult to think in the abstract and want maths. If a certain thing happens, you want to be able to produce a conclusion. There are loads of nice instruments out there, but they don't get used very often.

Oh okay, well I understand what the guy says in the video, in the difference between sampling and synthesizing. One is pre-recorded sounds of real instruments, the other is creating from scratch. But the composer said that some of the sounds in the example tracks I want are impossible to create from scratch and he would need to use real samples of real instruments to get those types of sounds.

And like you said, a slap or palm mute would be difficult to create from scratch. So therefore, I didn't think they both sampling and synthesis could achieve the same results therefore.

But as for the bass flute, well in some of the example tracks I wanted the score to sound like there is a flute playing, and the cloest flute me and the composer could find for it was the bass flute. So I was just going for that regardless of the popularity of the instrument. But I figure since a flute sound like that has been used in other movie scores, then it's okay to use that type of sound probably. I can ask the composer if another flute around the same range, would be better though. But I don't have to use the bass flute. Maybe there is a better one I do not know of. Is there? I can ask him.

[Paul R Johnson]

Of course there is a better sound than the bass flute, you and me just haven't found it ....... yet.

Your composer may not known how to do it, or may not have the right software, or may have it and not know it, or a million other reasons. If you want a Vietnamese nose flute - sometimes you just don't have time to create one, so buy one.

Here are some:
https://www.sonixinema.com/products/brute-flute
https://www.alessandrobaticci.com/hyperflute/
https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Special_Woodwinds/Bass_flute
There are deals available on the last one to get the complete bass flute package for 88 dollars.

So if you want the bass flute - that's a start - but then it might sound not remotely like you have in your head, so you could try th e baticci one, and if that too doesn't sound right the brute-flute might work for you. The snag being that even with their samples available until you try it in the mix you won't know if it works, will you?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thank you very much, I am just going to look at those. Well one instrument that I was told cannot be created from scratch is a bass sax, and I would need good samples of those, if that's true? Or can one be created from scratch and still sound like one?

I could ask the composer if I different flute would be best though.

[Paul R Johnson]

Saxophones are probably the worst to create because there are so many ways to play them, and even two saxophones that look the same sound different. Synthesising a sax is hard, but equally samples may not help because saxophones are very expressive and the sound is often the combination of instrument, musical prowess and the construction of your mouth, nasal passages, throat and diaphragm. I have a couple of saxophone synths and they can do some things quite well, but they fall down on recreating what happens when you tighten your embouchure and bite down. To be frank this is most obvious on tenors through to sopranos. Baritiones mainly honk and a bass saxophone is like the bass flute. I have had a baritone but don't currently own one and have no need or desire to spend crazy money on one. I have never played a bass saxophone. They're rare, and rather limited in what you'd do with one. They also cost the price of a rather nice car.

what on earth do you want to use these random instruments for? If I wanted a bass sound - I'd not be looking at a bass sax, that's for definite!

[Josh Bass]

He's obviously taking inspiration from this

The Lost Boys Sax Man Scene HD (2011 Epic Remix) - YouTube

[Ryan Elder]

Oh some of the example tracks have certain sounds I wanted in a similar context to the example track.
One of the sounds I wanted was the bass sax at 0:12 into this example track:

Sin City OST - Marv - YouTube

I wanted that bass sax sound particularly for it.

And the bass flute, is in example tracks like this, at 0:38 in:

The Replacement Killers soundtrack part 3 - YouTube

And at 1:44 into this clip:

The Replacement Killers soundtrack part 4 - YouTube

It may not exactly be a bass flute, but it's some kind of flute, but it was the closest sound the composer could find and I think it's close and good, but maybe there is something better. There are other parts of the movie, where it plays more, that I could not find online though. But I could cut them out of the movie and use them as example tracks.

[Paul R Johnson]

I'm really not hearing named instruments Ryan - sounds to me like a library I have when you pick low woodwinds for the flute - the same kind of synthetic feel - so recreating that would be simple. I doubt it's a bass flute - I mean, it could be, but that is a processed sound, so where it came from is immaterial real bass flutes do NOT sound like that. On my system I can select the broad heading 'flute', then various types - raspy, windy, fluttery, synth and synthetic - sub menus let me refine the search down to atmospheres, layers, SFX, morphing, and lots of others. Then - you might end up with a short list of 60 maybe to go through, one by one. If you don't find it, you change the search terms and start again.

The sax - sounds more like a baritone to me, but again - I'd have dozens to select from.

I have to point something out though - those sounds work because of the other sounds. Change those and the one you like would get lost or stand out like a sore thumb. You cannot take that kind of music - all those clips, and produce a definitive track list. They probably are collections of layered sounds - there could be half a dozen and you hear just one - they're often called combinations. Collections of sounds layered together to produce the patch.Now I realise where you are coming from. You are on a pointless quest. It's like you have a favourite meal, but the essential ingredient is a jar of cooking sauce from the supermarket that doesn't;t have a label on it. You might think it has cumin in it, but maybe it doesn't, and has a few other spices that trick you into thinking it's cumin. You like the style and the feel. You have a low reed instrument, but treat it just as that - do NOT get sidetracked trying to define it further, it's like typing one hand behind your back.

One point - if you have played those clips to your composer and he is clueless, then he will never be able to produce what you want. You are speaking two different languages - he hears you bang on about a bass sax or bass flute and is now locked in on that and doesn't realise you are just misunderstanding what you are hearing. Don;t buy those samples I suggested, they won't produce these sounds I doubt.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. The composer said it was a flute with processing and effects added to it, but he says it was real flute samples originally, and not made from scratch, because of how the flute flowes from one note to the other. Or that is what he said anyway. So I would still need real flute samples to start with he said. There are also two other parts of the soundtrack where you hear the flute from the same movie soundtrack more, but I cannot find any online links to them. Since he said he would need real flute samples to start with, I thought the bass flute was the closest when I listened to examples, but that's just what I thought might be best, based on the sound being the most similar that I could find.

He said it was a bass sax, but yes it could be a baritone, I was just going with what he told me. And yes, he can add similar interests, to create a similar context. I am not saying I want those sounds played in different ways in different contexts. I just wanted those couple of types of sounds in those contexts particularly, for what I wanted.

Like for example the sax has a pizzicato bass and a drum and other things that along with it. The composer can have those play along with them too of course, in order to make it work.

[Paul R Johnson]

Who can tell Ryan? Why does it matter? If he can make the sound somehow - you are happy, if he can't you will spend hundreds trying to find the elusive sound. Composers rarely use anything as it comes out of the box - they always tweak, enhance, modify - they often cannot remember what they even did.

Why don't you just stop involving yourself in things you don't understand - what is the point? If your composer cannot sort it - he's not really very good, is he? You certainly cannot help - apart from saying you like it or not.

Would you not be better putting your effort into your script - something you CAN do as it's your script, and you know it better than anyone else. Leave the other stuff until you have some footage to work to for sound.