Orchestra in a box?

[:wave:]

I'm interested in playing around with some orchestra-in-a-box software, if such a thing exists. My vision is something I could feed MIDI (generated from sheet music with Finale) and have it create a reasonably good orchestra sound. Something more tweakable than the built-in MIDI playback already in Finale, but without external pieces.

 

Does such a beast exist? If so, does anyone have any experience/recommendations? Obviously nothing replaces the real thing, but does it sound okay?

 

Thanks much! Let me know if there's a better forum to take this query.

[BlueHeaven]

I've used IK Multimedia Miroslav Philharmonik Orchestra Virtual Instrument Workstation.

 

They exist, but if you really want true life like playing it will involve a lot more than simply feeding it a midi file. While you could, it would sound bland with really no expression. Reason being that this is really just a huge sampler. So if a note is to played staccato, you need to map it to the correct set of staccato samples. If played with vibrato, you need to use the vibrato sample.

So it ends up that a single staff of music could incorporate several different sample sets and would need to be split into several different midi tracks.

 

When done right it does sound very good, but takes work when programming string and wind instruments since their are so many different tonal and timbre varients, unlike say a piano.

 

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/IK-Multimedia-Miroslav-Philharmonik-Orchestra-virtual-instrument-Workstation-?sku=702484

[:wave:]

Thanks for the link. It makes a great deal of sense that it would take extra work past the MIDI itself, although if I understand correctly (and obviously I'm a bit of a neophyte here) MIDI can carry volume information and through note length can communicate things like staccatos, yes?

 

This would be a plug-in that would work within recording software, yes? I'd export the individual parts to separate MIDI tracks in Logic and then use this software?

 

Again, I much appreciate the tips and guidance.

[BlueHeaven]

Thanks for the link. It makes a great deal of sense that it would take extra work past the MIDI itself, although if I understand correctly (and obviously I'm a bit of a neophyte here) MIDI can carry volume information and through note length can communicate things like staccatos, yes? This would be a plug-in that would work within recording software, yes? I'd export the individual parts to separate MIDI tracks in Logic and then use this software? Again, I much appreciate the tips and guidance.

 

Yes, I use this program in Sonar myself.

 

So you would import or create a midi track in your DAW and route it to the plugin. Each instance of the plugin and handle 16 channels of different sample sets as seen in the picture provided from the link.

 

 

I could create a little tid bit when I get home to show you what it can do. I can't really compare this to other software out there, as this is the only one I have every worked with.