In this piece I use new approach to harmonic structure: first decide the movement of one voice (choosing first note of a chord), then select a chord that includes this note, then find other voices for chord using voice leading. I tend to choose chords, that are not dominants or subdominants of surrounding chords and are far from surrounding chords in terms of circle of fifths. This leads to a constantly developing harmony without standard resolutions.
After building harmonic structure this way, I add note changes and sometimes add melodies.
I tended to avoid progressions and finishing tonic chords at the end of harmonic structures.
I used two new libraries here, both with their internal convolution reverbs. For Session strings I used default 1+2 contemporary production sections with closer sound, but increased reverb mix to 60%. Dynamics balance between two libraries was close to ideal and I just decreased Clarinet by -1.5 db.
Session strings is a powerful library with small to medium sized string orchestra (no solo). Although some transitions do not sound good, you always can choose different types (legato, portamento, glissando) and usually one of them sounds very good. Sometimes I had to decrease CC1 dynamics near legato transitions or separate notes to make transitions more smooth. I used only legato/tremolo/portamento/glissando/staccato/spiccato here. So there are many more articulations to explore in the library.
I use many glissando transitions in strings, because in this library it is difficult to achieve smoothness of some transitions other ways without decreasing dynamics or separating notes. On the other hand, glissandos sound good in this library.
I did not find second violins, so I just stereo inverted+panned first violins.
While sequencing this piece I was thinking a lot about cresc-dim vs dim-cresc dynamics curves of long notes. I used cresc-dim at the beginning of the phrases most of the time, but preferred dim-cresc for long notes inside phrases. This guaranteed smooth dynamics, at the same time eliminating long note fatigue with dim-cresc.
Chris Hines Clarinet is a good solo library with a lot of parameters, resembling Sample modeling in some aspects. I liked possibility to control noise, transition speed, accent control, pre-recorded short notes of different length, 6 velocity layers. This library feels closer to samples and real recordings, but lacks some physical-mathematical tools of Sample modeling like timbre, random vibrato and temperament.
Air noise level in CH Clarinet does not depend on current crossfade dynamics level, so you need to either correct it dynamically with another CC or set it low enough not to interfere with the piece. Without these corrections air noise will decrease realism in dynamic solo parts.
Sometimes crossfading sounds limited when you start from the lowest or highest dynamics (no big problem).
No randomization used. Libraries used:
Chris Hein - Winds (Woodwinds)
Native Instruments - Session Strings (Strings)
virtal_-_the_cloud.mid.zip
virtal_-_the_cloud.pdf
Virtal - The Cloud.mp3