And may we also need some adaptions for the Synchron Player?
0:03
I don't know...
0:05
We'll have to experiment?
0:10
Then we won't see a release this year definitely.
0:18
Is this our first conversation for a video Martin? Face to face, I can't remember anymore so long ago
0:26
I guess so, maybe 20 or 23 years ago maybe...
0:31
But it's definitely a first that we want to talk about things that we're currently developing
0:40
and products, and what you have in mind, what you're working on
0:44
what the team is working on. So this is definitely a first.
0:47
Yeah, I was always a little afraid to do this because you never know if a product is ready in a certain time frame
0:57
or are there problems which lead to the decision to drop a product development completely and therefore
1:04
when a product is done we announce it. This was our mantra the past years and now, yeah, we like to
1:12
change this a little bit, right?
1:14
Yeah... I mean we talked a lot about improving things, what we can do to help our users better
1:21
and to help them better create music and also
1:26
we often hear from users that they want to plan ahead and want to know what's coming, and so
1:33
Yeah, as part of the new year we thought let's talk about this!
1:37
Every year I think we have less work to do than the past years
1:42
and when I prepare the plan for the actual year I'm always baffled now
1:48
how much we have to do now and this was very transparent now preparing now for this interview or
1:54
this conversation. And yeah, I think we should start with things which are pretty close for a release
2:02
I think this makes sense. It's just one thing or maybe two, all the others we really don't know now
2:08
when we are ready for it to release it, yeah
2:12
And I guess we also should mention that the order of the products that we're talking about is no indication about
2:19
when they are going to be released, in which order.
2:23
I need a little freedom for developing things. Especially when software development is involved
2:30
then you never know now when you are really done.
2:34
First things first... Yeah, the expansions of our woodwinds, articulation-wise. It's not that big
2:44
surprise because we have released already for the Synchron Smart Orchestra some stuff
2:51
for the woodwinds, the named lyrical legato which is simply a legato where no crossfades between
2:58
intervals and sustain notes are mapped, they're all performed by the players. Of course this is
3:05
very exhausting and very demanding and needs a lot of time because you have to play really long
3:11
notes for each interval which are loopable and, yeah, therefore three woodwinds are prepared
3:20
for this and further we also took the chance the new developed fast legato technology we
3:31
realized for the Duality Strings is also done for these woodwinds, so there will be a lyrical legato patch
3:39
and a new fast legato patch. I don't know exactly the naming of the patch in the
3:46
preset, maybe you have...
3:47
Yeah, it's virtuosic legato
3:49
That's a good name! Yeah, and this will come for
3:54
for flute, oboe and the clarinet and maybe it's the time to mention that our oboe in the
4:05
in the woodwinds package - Synchron Woodwinds - the second oboe is initially the first oboe. It was just a labeling
4:12
error and we decided not to correct it after the release because we just realized it after
4:17
the release that we mixed it up, to keep the presets of our users intact.
4:24
Nobody should be surprised that the oboe 2 has now the lyrical legato and the virtuosic legato.
4:32
But flute 1 and the clarinet 1... Yeah, they are, they are correct.
4:38
Okay, great, what else?
4:42
This is not coming that soon but hopefully also this year, other woodwinds of course
4:49
with this new technology. We already have recorded this stuff for the alto flute, for the English horn,
4:56
for the bass clarinet and for the bassoon.
4:58
More free expansions for Synchron Woodwinds?
5:00
I thought it would be cool to keep it free. The first three definitely, the other ones it's the decision of
5:07
the marketing. But I'm the good guy. If you want to ask for money then you are the bad guy.
5:13
I think we keep it for free now the updates.
5:16
I think it would be great, yeah
5:18
The next project I know there will be users who will say "not again"... Yeah, it's a new piano - I'm sorry... and
5:28
there's a little background story because Mick Baumeister a good friend of Paul Kopf had to move to Asia I think and
5:39
could not take his pianos to Asia and asked for a good place to store them. Normal storage
5:46
places are not very good for instruments because of temperatures and - humidity - humidity yeah
5:55
and unfortunately I was informed just a few few weeks after we have ordered our own Fazioli,
6:02
the 308, and it's like, okay, yeah, but we will take it anyway, even if I know that maybe this piano will
6:08
go back in a few years. And so we put it in our storage and our piano guys told me that it's
6:15
really a wonderful sounding piano and therefore I thought okay, it's not that big like the 308
6:22
it's a 212 Fazioli model and I thought it might be a perfect piano for our Stage B for a dry
6:32
recording, and therefore we decided, okay, we do now the second Fazioli in the Stage B.
6:38
I think that's a great match for the large Fazioli, recorded on Stage A here, just a few meters here behind me,
6:47
and here in this room where we're sitting, Stage B, for the little smaller Fazioli, so it's...
6:54
I know that a lot of people want a more intimate sound for a piano and not have everything in that
7:01
large beautifully sounding room but sometimes it's just too much.
7:05
On the other side the 308 in this room would be a little bit overwhelming I think. So it was the right order.
7:12
It's perfect! What's interesting for people who don't know Mick Baumeister, maybe he's also known for...
7:19
He's the creator or co-creator of the Hornberg breath controller, so he's quite an interesting person
7:27
and great musician and great guy yeah... Okay so, what else is cooking?
7:35
Yeah, one thing I had hoped that I had not to do is new solo strings but I of course read all the forums
7:48
or a lot of postings there and regularly I hear there the demand, we want all the
7:55
solo strings recorded at the Synchron Stage and yeah, and so we decided last year that
8:01
we start this project. We took the challenge and did two instruments side by side, a violin
8:11
and a violoncello. Yeah and I'm afraid because I know solo strings are very very difficult
8:19
to do, there are high demands from the user side, how they should sound and therefore
8:26
it's of course a lot of work and you have to sample them completely different compared to
8:33
string sections. A solo instrument needs completely different mapping and technology behind
8:39
it to sound right, and that it's usable. So I did also some research how we should
8:47
sample it that we get really good solo string instruments with more reverb.
8:55
It's easier to do it of course with dry recording but we already have dry recorded solo strings now.
9:02
And yeah, so this is a a running project. It's not completely recorded at the moment and
9:11
of course we will need several months to edit all this stuff. What we did care about is the
9:18
miking, we did a lot of close and mid miking so that users have a lot of options and
9:26
choices of the final sound of the instrument. I think the most important thing, especially
9:33
when you do solo instruments, that you have an artist in the stage who really likes to be
9:40
sampled. It sounds a little absurd maybe but if you love this kind of challenge
9:48
then of course you get brilliant results and therefore it was good to know that we have two
9:55
musicians who really like to do it.
9:59
Another big project is moving the VI Series instruments to the new...
10:07
well it's not so new anymore, but to the newer Synchron Player.
10:11
So what can we expect here from VI Series instruments that are going to be ported over to the Synchron Player?
10:18
The biggest missing part are of course the brass instruments and we are definitely working on
10:25
the conversion to the Synchron Player. Especially the "timbre adjust" feature we have developed for
10:32
the Synchron Brass also works of course perfectly for the Silent Stage recorded brass which will
10:39
give them more flexibility and more realistic approach when you program brass phrases
10:45
And, yeah, it's a funny thing because we started with brass instruments more than 20 years ago.
10:52
It's a different thing if you just use them for music programming or you go inside the
11:00
original mapping and look at it what you have done 20 years ago. So it's a journey into
11:06
the past a little bit and you get very close to the material and, yeah, it was good to see
11:14
and to hear that the quality especially from the musicians was such on a high level, even in
11:22
the beginning of our sampling business. So it's also a lot of work of course but it's
11:31
also a very nice experience to hear them again in this detailed analysis you have
11:40
to do when you convert the material.
11:43
So you're really going back to the original recordings and not just take the material that's in the VI Series player.
11:52
No, every patch has to be approved and some things have to be changed for Synchron Player and of course
12:00
after 20 years there are small things I had to change a little bit so that the instrument
12:06
sounds even better. So we don't change the overall sound of the instruments. It's just that the legato
12:13
is smother, that the dynamic range is working better between different articulations, all this stuff.
12:18
You have to adjust a little bit so that the instruments get simply more playable out of the box.
12:26
We've had great success with Duality Strings in the last months and of course we have
12:33
three volumes out now so people are asking, what's coming next?
12:38
Yeah, I'm very happy that the Duality concept works that well. In my opinion it's the best approach we ever developed
12:48
for strings sampling and of course I want to go ahead and beyond the possibilities
12:57
we did reach with these products. And the really nice thing is now we have done all the
13:06
basic stuff, I would say, which everybody expects when you release a string library. So now we have
13:12
the chance to get into more, yeah, new territory at least for us. What I can tell at the moment
13:20
about the upcoming new volume for the Duality Strings is that we already have recorded it,
13:29
editing is starting now and the working title of the product will be Virtuoso
13:37
Duality Virtuoso Strings or Duality Strings Virtuoso - it's up to you, the order of the words. And yeah, and of course the
13:44
the label is not just a label, it's the program of the library. So we did really
13:52
virtuosic stuff with all the sections and it was also something which the musicians
13:59
really love to do. It now it was of course more difficult than basic samples.
14:10
So they could show what they are able to do on the instruments.
14:14
I really will enjoy to present the first mapped stuff hopefully not so far in the future.
14:23
Do you have any hints what's in there, what kind of virtuosic phrases or...
14:29
I don't want to describe the details but there are some labels which are known
14:35
like ricochet, saltando, arpeggios, effect glissandos and this kind of stuff.
14:43
And for all the people who say, okay, I don't want to buy another volume I have also
14:49
good news. What we did in these recording sessions are also some patches to expand the volume 1
14:57
the Regular Duality Strings volume with new additional recordings which will be
15:05
free or not, you decide - hopefully... hopefully - they will be free!
15:11
I think this will be released parallel with the Virtuoso volume.
15:16
Awesome! Okay, so, yeah, that's Duality Strings. And....
15:21
now to something completely different. I heard something about world percussion...
15:27
Everybody was so happy about the percussion at Synchron Stage. A lot of feedback from users said that the
15:34
stage is really sounding perfectly for percussion instruments. This was of course one reason to
15:40
go ahead with new percussion stuff and the other one is because of our recordings here
15:46
with clients which love to record with with our in-house percussion. They always had
15:54
some demands on more exotic percussion stuff. For any drums and effect percussion from
16:02
all over the world which was not part of the percussion we had in-house. I didn't want to
16:10
rent just the instruments for the recording so every time we needed a special instrument we
16:16
decided to buy it. So over the past years we collected a lot of new percussion instruments and
16:23
this was the second reason. Yeah, percussion sounds cool at Synchron Stage and we have a lot
16:28
of new instruments, so yeah, we said okay, we do another percussion volume, the World Percussion.
16:34
And what's also important is of course that you have performers who are familiar playing these
16:41
instruments. And, yeah, we of course researched and hired musicians for the client recordings
16:49
where we use these drums so we did know we have really good percussion players who can deliver.
16:56
And what was also important for me is that I said I don't want to make a loop library because
17:03
they are so fast overused when you have a couple of loops there and everybody is using them
17:10
but of course these instruments have very distinct grooves and sounds and I tried to
17:18
make a a concept where we can deliver this without recording loops. So we... in the first
17:26
step we invited the musicians to perform here in this room, typical phrases on the instruments.
17:33
We recorded them, we also took videos, how they play, to see what we hear, also where do
17:42
they work on the instruments with which hand positions and so on, so this was the basis
17:50
for the concept what we will record. And what I said to the percussion team, to Andi Olszewski,
17:57
what I would like to see is that we have then all the needed single samples which
18:05
can be then reprogrammed and should be as close as possible to the originally played phrases and
18:11
loops the musicians did. So what's also planned is that we deliver these samples with these
18:17
MIDI loops and this is then, I think, the perfect starting point for everybody. That you
18:24
can alter these loops not only speed-wise but also if you want to leave out a note or
18:31
add something which is not there, it's very easy to adapt it and to get a perfect fit to
18:38
the score you are working on.
18:40
That sounds great!
18:43
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and to be so open about
18:48
what you're working on and what our team is working on.
18:52
I think it's great for a lot of users who want to plan ahead and just to know what's in the pipeline
18:58
and what's... what they can expect. Not exactly in a given time frame, but in principle. So...
19:08
Thank you so much, I guess I'm looking forward to our next conversation in a few months.
19:13
In a few months? Oh my God...
19:17
Or maybe next year.
19:19
I really hope we can deliver everything we have talked about in an adequate time frame and, yeah, let's see.
19:28
And we hope for the best! Yeah.
19:31
Okay, thank you!
