Measured Glissandos?

Composition & Production
1

I don’t know if the term is correct, but I want to do: Measured Glissandos

I would love to be able to do a portamento/glissando synced note transitions, meaning landing on a determined note length value for the glissando. Let’s say, the glissando starts on the measure start, and finish on the half bar. I want full control, meaning choosing exactly how long the glissando is in note length.

  • Are there any orchestral libraries that let me do that?
  • Are there any synth plugins that allow me to do that easily?

PS. The best way I have seen so far of what I want, is what the ROLI Seaboard allows you to do. Basically controlling the exact timing of a note to note transition, including the speed and curve.

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2

Hey Mikael. Check out spitfire studio strings. They’re very affordable and have a few of these measures patches.

3

Thanks Geoffrey, I will check those out. My dream would be to have the entire orchestra do “glides” to synced note values, so I could use those as part of entire motif phrases. I guess the only way to do that right now is with pitch bends, which of course will sound very unnatural. =/

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4

Oww I think the whole bundle is like £800 ish. But as I say… I don’t rate the percussion or brass from spitfire… just not my taste so I wouldn’t really recommend anything other than strings and woods. Looking forward to what others say regarding this post. Interesting concept.

5

That’s the one thing I hate about “sample” libraries. The control over the speed and curves of transitions is so limited. If you listen to eastern and oriental orchestral music, you will hear measured portamentos/glides used a lot as part of the main musical idea/theme. It’s a dimension of music not available with software orchestras right now. And not even synth plugins have note value based portamento, you have to manually calculate the timings depending on tempo of your project to land on the correct downbeat.

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6

I think it is available but I would rather write my own measure which is available. A pre measured articulation is great for extreme speeds of some music so it’s great to have some for that, but definitely not essential. I will say that when I have used it I’ve saved a little time which has been useful in tight spots.

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7

I’ve also searched for a controllable glissando on strings. I play a lot of Swedish folk music that have a lot of half note “slides” in different tempo. Are there Spitfire libraries where you can control tempo on such things?

8

I am hoping at least some library has it, I believe it is a very beautiful and emotional transition…and very effectful! :slight_smile:

9

hello
i think that for measurable glissando the best soft is wrting soft like sibelius, finale, dorico
i am not sure that there is a library that provide you all kind of measurable glissando

10

Thank you Florent, I am also sceptic that there is any sample library that can handle that. Perhaps “time-stretched” to sync to note values would work.

11

i think that fior short glissandi like third , fourth and may be fifth it will work and you can keep the sample quality, but time strech sample for more than an octave you might loose quality on your sample and a lot of glissando has a long range specialy in classical music think of the harp i have seen glissando on 2 octaves
perhaps if you program or create little scheme or motif just for a glissando in midi you can quantize it and it follow the tempo of your track and you can program what you want for the range and the way you want the glissando up, down or up/down

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