# A waltz for dreamers



## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

Hi everyone

I wrote another waltz (quelle surprise!). This one is themed around 2 dreamers. I hope you enjoy it, any feedback or criticism would be gratefully received.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

adrien said:


> Hi everyone
> 
> I wrote another waltz (quelle surprise!). This one is themed around 2 dreamers. I hope you enjoy it, any feedback or criticism would be gratefully received.


Did the lovers are in trouble...I did expect something happier.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

Rogerx said:


> Did the lovers are in trouble...I did expect something happier.


It is a turbulent telationship


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

adrien said:


> It is a turbulent telationship


Fair enough. :angel:


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## lminiero (Feb 12, 2020)

Wow, it's an amazing coincidence that we both just composed and published a waltz, and called it pretty much the same way! I get some Beethoven vibe from yours, especially in the beginning, where it reminds me a bit of the 7th symphony (which is a good thing, in my book!). The change of pace and the new theme at 1:50 is truly beautiful... but I find the whole piece very well orchestrated, with instruments joining and leaving at the right times to double or harmonize whatever is happening at any time. An excellent work!

As I was mentioning, I worked on a short waltz as well, last month, which I called "Daydreaming Waltz":


__
https://soundcloud.com/lminiero%2Fdaydreaming-waltz
https://musescore.com/lminiero/daydreaming-waltz

It's objectively shorter and poorer than yours, but I found it quite helpful to start experimenting more with orchestral orchestration, and to get some practice with MuseScore too which I had never used before.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

lminiero said:


> Wow, it's an amazing coincidence that we both just composed and published a waltz, and called it pretty much the same way! I get some Beethoven vibe from yours, especially in the beginning, where it reminds me a bit of the 7th symphony (which is a good thing, in my book!). The change of pace and the new theme at 1:50 is truly beautiful... but I find the whole piece very well orchestrated, with instruments joining and leaving at the right times to double or harmonize whatever is happening at any time. An excellent work!
> 
> As I was mentioning, I worked on a short waltz as well, last month, which I called "Daydreaming Waltz":
> 
> ...


nice spotting on the 7th, yes there's a bit of a hint of his chord progression from the allegretto for a short while. I love that piece.

Thanks very much for your comment. If you want to start making better sounds, NotePerformer is very well priced compared to any other sample library. I wonder if it works with the free version of Dorico or Sibelius. I think they are looking to get NotePerformer working with MuseScore as well at some stage.


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

lminiero said:


> Wow, it's an amazing coincidence that we both just composed and published a waltz, and called it pretty much the same way! I get some Beethoven vibe from yours, especially in the beginning, where it reminds me a bit of the 7th symphony (which is a good thing, in my book!). The change of pace and the new theme at 1:50 is truly beautiful... but I find the whole piece very well orchestrated, with instruments joining and leaving at the right times to double or harmonize whatever is happening at any time. An excellent work!
> 
> As I was mentioning, I worked on a short waltz as well, last month, which I called "Daydreaming Waltz":
> 
> ...


p.s. I really like your waltz. It is full of character. I wouldn't say it was poorer than mine at all.


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## lminiero (Feb 12, 2020)

adrien said:


> nice spotting on the 7th, yes there's a bit of a hint of his chord progression from the allegretto for a short while. I love that piece.
> 
> Thanks very much for your comment. If you want to start making better sounds, NotePerformer is very well priced compared to any other sample library. I wonder if it works with the free version of Dorico or Sibelius. I think they are looking to get NotePerformer working with MuseScore as well at some stage.


The main issue here is that I've been a Linux user for a long time, and so I'm experimenting with software available on Linux in my journey as well. While this may seem limiting, I've actually discovered a lot of excellent tools in that space, not only in terms of scoring but in audio production in general (be it DAWs, guitar processors, drum machines, etc.). As such, this has become a nice extension to this hobby of mine, that is, trying to find open solutions or alternatives to commercial software: not really a matter of principle, just a nice challenge!

I'm not familiar with NotePerformer, but from a quick glance it seems to be available as a VSTi: I do know of many that work in Linux with the help of some tools (e.g., dssi-vst, fst, and others), as I used some myself occasionally (I'm particularly fond of some free VST by Spitfire Audio Labs), but it's usually a hit or miss. Anything involving Kontact, for instance, is usually much more trouble than the rest, which closes the door to a lot of free options there. I couldn't find any mention of NotePerformer on LinuxMusicians (another forum I'm part of), so I suspect that either it's known not to work, or no one has dared to take the challenge yet :lol:

I did find a post on the MuseScore community forum about whether or not they'll add support for NotePerformer, and apparently it's not going to happen, or at least not for a while. Part of the issue is in the native integration of VSTi headers, which would be an issue in terms of licensing. Anyway, since MuseScore supports Jack (which is what I use for all my music production), it _should_ be possible to still hook them up in a more loose way, assuming of course that NotePerformer works on Linux as mentioned above. I see there's a 30-day free trial, so I might try and get it working myself sooner or later.

At the moment, my main plan is to keep on scoring with MuseScore, and "render" the audio using an external DAW equipped with some free orchestral package. In part, this is exactly how I did the waltz: I scored in MuseScore, exported to MIDI, imported it in Ardour (a popular DAW in Linux), and used "Virtual Playing Orchestra" (VPO), one of the most popular ones among Linux users, to play it. The result was not great for a few reasons, mainly the fact that I tried to do everything by hand, including panning and the like. There are actually some Ardour presets that should simplify those steps, which is what I was planning to experiment with more in the future. Besides, the export/import process apparently results in the loss of some properties, in particulat some dynamics (which is one of the reasons why I didn't use the same approach in the Elegy I shared yesterday), so that's something I'll have to take care of as well.

Of course, quality may still leave a lot to be desired even after that, especially when compared to commercial frameworks: but even if I'm tempted, to be honest it feels a bit overkill for me to spend hundreds of euros on what is and will remain a hobby, especially considering I may end up not with something I can't really use.


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## lminiero (Feb 12, 2020)

adrien said:


> p.s. I really like your waltz. It is full of character. I wouldn't say it was poorer than mine at all.


Thanks for the kind words, they're really appreciated! It's just that the more I listen to it, the more I'd do things differently: for instance, the first repetition is indeed supposed to be quieter to pave the way for the build-up in the second part, but it still feels quite empty. As someone suggested, at the very least I should have doubled the violas, for instance. But again, I'm just starting with all this, and it feels great to learn in the process, especially looking at more fleshed out efforts like yours!


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

The problem with NotePerfomer is that it uses a whole heap of special CC codes to select instrument and articulation.

So even if you managed to get it to load as a VSTi in linux, you still need thousands of expression map entries to map out all the instruments and articulations.

Literally thousands - that's how many lines there are in the NotePerformer Sibelius soundset file.

Without the expression maps, it's basically unusable.


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## lminiero (Feb 12, 2020)

adrien said:


> The problem with NotePerfomer is that it uses a whole heap of special CC codes to select instrument and articulation.
> 
> So even if you managed to get it to load as a VSTi in linux, you still need thousands of expression map entries to map out all the instruments and articulations.
> 
> ...


I guess that's why next to their demos they write "Our demos represent playback of scores in their original form" and "Our demos are an honest representation of how NotePerformer can be expected to sound. Even for a composer with no sample library experience": they're basically moving the complexity away from the scoring application (and the user) to those mappings behind the curtains. This way you just worry about the score itself in terms of dynamics, crescendos, articulations, etc., and it takes care of the rest.

That's an interesting approach, but definitely makes integrations way harder! I do get the hesitation by the MuseScore developers now :lol:


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

you could start with a few instruments you plan to use. There are thousands of entries because there are maybe 100 or more instruments in there.


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