David B What is your left index finger controlling the on the synth, some type of tremolo/vibrato?
Actually no, the ribbon controller is only changing the relative volume. What sounds like vibrato is triggered by aftertouch. The ribbon thing is pretty minor and I could control the volume through a knob too but I wanted finer control, which is why I liked the long ribbon for that. It looks pretty cool in the video though 😀
David B Why don't you believe in using emulations of real acoustic instruments? It is because they don't sound authentic?
I think a real violin would be the best instrument for the solo part, however I have never heard a convincing violin emulation (or similar solo instruments, strings or wind). They always sound cheesy IMO, which is why if it will be a poor attempt at real violin, then better just use something that doesn't attempt anything but is fair in itself: a synth. Some people don't like synth patches though, my wife was not sure she likes the Minimoog patch I used but after I explained to her my thinking she kind of agreed 🙂
navindra The Minimoog comes in a touch too loud I think... I'd fiddle with that on the mixer. It also sounds a touch too delayed, I feel.
Thanks for the comment. This was the most difficult part of the recording, it took me hours and the volume never sounded right, it was either too loud or too quiet, I changed the dynamics, tested with no dynamics at all, volume automation... I was stuck after an hour of fruitless experimentations, so decided to leave as it is. Another particular problem is that the synth patch always sounded too "in your face" and dry even after applying reverb, whereas Garritan CFX is nicely distant. Finally managed to kind of solve that issue with a very weird stuff that is probably not even recommended: I applied double reverb, one on the synth and then another one in Logic Pro X 😀 But to my ears that made the synth sounding more distant, as in the hall along with the piano.
As to the delay and timings, it was another difficulty since I recorded the piano part without a metronome, playing rubato and it turned out pretty difficult to overdub the solo part afterwards, there were always timing differences...
