Sometimes length of staccato sample can be too short for what your piece needs and it will force you to look for better library just to cover that single articulation. It doesn’t have to be necessarily sophisticated writing. You will often find it requires combining multiple sample libraries to fulfill production needs of composition. Once piano sketch is finished, then you start working with samples and you choose best library for certain task. Once writing piano sketch you may have certain instruments in mind or not, and leave that for later consideration. I’d like to mention few ways to make your music production a bit more ambitious. Especially when I know that core sound of a piece I work on is based on traditional instruments.

This may seem like a step backwards to some but I can honestly say I love that approach as well. I know many composers still like to write piano sketch before orchestrating. One of first things You can do especially when writing for classical instruments (strings, woodwinds, brass) is to focus on writing and not so much on sound and samples at first. But that’s easy or rather easier way of producing music. So basically you sacrifice wide range of ideas and maybe even composing skill you may have in favor of having best possible sound / performance quality. Which means you force your writing to use articulations, techniques and sometimes even tempo or dynamics of a sample library you have. Also to achieve most realistic results with a sample library, is to write music to strength of samples. In order to have string ensemble playing soaring beautiful lines for instance, You have no choice but to use some sample library. It is not yet uncommon to have very low budget on music in gamedev. I’m not saying there is something wrong in using samples as they are.

You have no choice but to use some sample.Īs far as big and professionally crafted sample libraries are bread and butter of composer’s life, We all have to put some effort to have control over samples and not let samples to control us. I assume We’ve all been there so don’t worry too much just yet.You have no choice but to use some sample library. So what do you do? You open up your DAW you load your favorite patch from Albion One or Metropolis Ark 1 which you spend all your savings on and… that excitement stops as soon as you realise it all sounds the same as dozen other tracks you did last time. You just got a gig, You feel excited and want to create great music for new game. So you are starting out as a game composer or you have few small projects in your portfolio and you want to raise a bar.

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