Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta – IV (Sibelius Ultimate, NotePerformer 4.1 & NPPE)

This is a software performance and not a studio recording. No DAW software involved in its creation. Just Sibelius Ultimate and NotePerformer 4.1 with the new NPPE Engine running a layered mix of Spitfire Audio BBCSO Professional and Cinematic Studio Series.

This is straight from printed score, typeset by hand into Sibelius Ultimate and audio playback with NotePerformer Playback Engines. In order to be able to fully test NotePerformer’s AI engine, I’ve tried to maintain all dynamics and articulation exactly as it appears in the score. In only a few cases have I adjusted an articulation or dynamic to achieve a more [objectively] musical performance.

Goes without saying that it sounds better with good headphones/speakers ;)
Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Techie Stuff

About me
I’m a classically trained musician (piano, double bass & clarinet) and composer with a love and fascination for orchestral film music (Golden Age of Hollywood, John Williams, Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, Alexander Desplat, James Newton Howard, Thomas Newman, Alberto Iglesias, Disney, Pixar) as well as 20th Century orchestral music repertoire.

I’m typically quite old-school when it comes to my own composition workflow. I like to write scores from sketches for real instrumentalists – with notation rather than using DAWs. The problem is, having regular access to a symphony orchestra is just not feasible.

So up until recently, I was making do with Sibelius’ sound output until I came across NotePerformer. I find programming MIDI such a buzz-kill so NotePerformer has been an absolute godsend. I can now simply think about the creative aspect of composing instead of drowning in midi messages and key-switching…yawn.

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