Princess Leia's Theme - Played by digital orchestra

What's going on here ... ?

This music was performed and recorded by Paul Henry Smith and his digital orchestra, which consists of a Mac Pro loaded with a gigantic library of orchestral sounds (millions of recordings of single notes), and two wireless Wii controllers used to control tempo and balance in real time.




This is not air conducting or merely waving arms along to a recording. In fact there is no recording per se. Mr. Smith has created a set of instructions, like a player-piano roll, that the computer follows to produce a basic performance, with the precise tempo and balance left to be determined as the music unfolds.

Crazy as it sounds, at any given moment in the music, the computer is processing thousands of instructions for pitch, instrument, style, loudness, spatial location, and shape.

This approach allows enormous expressive flexibility, not just in the tempo, but in balance and phrasing (controlled by signals from a Wii Balance Board on which the conductor stands).

However, even before playing a single note, each phrase — indeed each note — of each instrumental part was individually shaped and then mixed within Logic according to the judgment of Mr. Smith, a professionally trained musician and conductor.

The single most important element, of course, is John Williams's score.

To find out more, please visit http://www.fauxharmonic.com.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• wiimote
• wii remote
• a new hope
• star wars
• john williams
• soundtrack
• film music
• film score
• digital orchestra
• virtual orchestra
• conducting
• symphonic

[serfox1]

Hey I'm going to be doing something similar to this for my final assignment in my degree of Music Composition and Technology. I take it you're using Vienna or East West as your sample library, but are you simply using a DAW or have you got a Max MSP patch too?

Thanks!

[Fauxharmonic]

Yes, I use Vienna Instruments. The DAW is Logic, and the Wii signals are munged via transformers within Logic itself. No Max patches.

[mradaChris]

Well this is very cool! I use Ableton Live on my PC to try to come close to this full 3D sound. Excellent.

chris

[Fauxharmonic]

Thanks, Chris. I used the Hansa Studio HD Surround convolution reverb (a preset that comes with Apple's Space Designer reverb plugin with Logic). I never thought of trying Ableton Live, though. I'll check it out. Cheers. - Paul

[congadawg]

Wow.. fantastic job. So realistic! I went to see Star Wars: In concert and I couldn't imagine this sounding any different than the real thing. Great work!

[spitzfire1138]

Incredible. I can't believe how far virtual instruments have come, and I appreciate that with all these advances the work of the composer only becomes more important. Thanks for posting! Wonderful performance.

[serfox1]

@Fauxharmonic @Fauxharmonic @Fauxharmonic @Fauxharmonic Aha, which is basically a compiled Max/PD program put into an interface. I plan on building a Max patch using the aka.wiimote object to send specific kinds of MIDI data, which should be very flexible and easy to integrate into any DAW. I shall look into the Environment of Logic.

[Fauxharmonic]

Yes, using transformers, conditional splitters, etc. .... But before the signal gets into Logic it's picked up by OSCulator and converted to MIDI. Forgot to mention that.

[goldkind]

Excellent!