'THE INVISIBLE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA & CHOIR'
Hardware
/ Software currently used
for playbacks, performances and recordings
Performances - not just playbacks
I have transformed the computer playbacks into actual performances, albeit not in real time, by inserting into the sequencer files of the works masses of MIDI data to produce expression. This typically doubles, and in one or two cases even trebles, the filesize.Please note that only by listening directly to my audio CDs with good equipment would you hear the full quality of sound that this system produces. And only very good quality hi-fi speakers (sorry, not computer speakers) will reproduce the powerful depthof the organ and bass drum sound in these recordings.
A Warning to anyone wanting to emulate my sounds
Happy I'd be if you were able to do so, but please do not imagine that you can simply go out and obtain the devices and samples that I'm using, and straightaway get instrumental sounds as realistic or flexible as what I use; in fact you'd be tremendously disappointed. Some time ago somebody e-mailed me to say that this had happened to him.I have had to put an enormous amount of time (and sometimes hair-tearing!) into customizing and debugging the samples to make them usable for my purposes. You can read more here about the various measures I had to take to achieve such relatively realistic results.
The Equipment
- Computer,
custom built by Brian
Fowler Computers in Exeter, with AMD 2.6 GHz
processor, 512 MB main memory, 120 GB hard disk, and system silencing,
making it the quietest PC I've had since my old non-hard-disk Amstrad
PC1512 in 1987. Operating system is Windows XP Pro.
- Soundblaster Live soundcard with some 68 MB of instrument samples (77 MB now for new recordings), mostly from the Sonido Soundfont CDs, but also including a cut-down customized version of the freeware pipe organ soundfont called 'Jeux', and I have a quality choir sound adapted from the sample CD entitled 'Peter Siedlaczeks' Classical Choir'. For specifications of my virtual organ, click here.
- Yamaha MU10XG sound
module (the DB50XG daughterboard in a box)
(please note that, contrary to the enthusiastic claims made by many for this device, all the orchestral sustaining instrument sounds in this module proved to be of too low a standard for me to use; it is now used only for certain tuned percussion, and certain synth sounds in Ascending.) - E-mu Proteus 2 orchestral sound module, using custom presets only
- Midiman Flying Calf D/A converter, to minimize computer-induced interference in the Soundblaster's output
- Zoom Studio 1202 reverb unit
- Mackie 1202 VLZ mixer
- Digital Orchestrator Pro sequencer program (Voyetra)
- Sibelius for Windows score-writing program
- Philips CDR 870 CD recorder
- Home playback through Arcam Alpha 8R amplifier and Castle Harlech speakers.
For specifications of my virtual pipe organs, click here.
Look what one concert organizer in the U.S.A. has to say about the Composer's recordings:
...your MIDI realization techniques are superb. I have never heard PC realizations of works done so well (and in the course of my work I hear hundreds of MIDI tapes from composers.) As music director of the Invisible Philharmonic Orchestra, you do a fabulous job. What impresses me incredibly is that you have created all of these very major works without a notation package and just with a MIDI sequencer. -- Carson P. Cooman (Concert organizer, Composer, Pianist, Organist), Rochester, NY