Ableton Forum

I have downloaded all the orchestral packs and am disappointed with them all. Especially after reading The lavish descriptions! The sounds are mostly ok but are really annoying in the range and positioning on the keyboard. Some dont even have a whole octave. Not at all what I would expect from the Suite edition so am very glad I didn't go ahead and buy it. Also I don't understand how the samples are supposed to work. Dragging them on doesn't work in the same way as for sounds.
Any thoughts or help appreciated.
Thanks.

Good orchestral libraries are expensive because they require lots of samples and ways to switch articulations easily. The sort of libraries people use for scoring films cost thousands of dollars. I think you would find the orchestral libraries of all DAWs to be rather pathetic, Logic probably has the best one because the EXS24 sampler allows articualtion switching.

The reason some orchestral sounds have limited ranges is because the real instruments do as well. Some libraries assign the samples across the keyboard to match the actual note ranges, so string basses only sound in the lowest octaves, violins only in the highest octaves, etc. Many orchestral instruments have note ranges of only about 3 octaves.

Hi and thanks for your response.

I should have added that I'm only using the Lite trial version which may make a difference. I do understand about the range of classical instruments but still not happy with these. I have the Roland orchestral sounds on my old JV90 so will have a go with that again.

This is my first post. I’m a classically-trained amateur musician who’s experimenting with sound, so I upgraded upgraded from Intro to Lite and then, yesterday, to Standard.
I'm surprised not to find even basic orchestral instruments in the product. Live provides a fairly wide range of weird and pop sounds yet apparently denies me and my students the purer sounds that are much easier to work with.
I'm expected to pay MORE money for things I regard as basic?
Lee De Cola

Ableton has a very clear "Compare Editions" page, and even if you are skeptical about any company's "marketing", Live is very popular and there is a huge amount of 3rd party info out there that explains the difference between Live's editions, even by people who don't like Live but have to cover it anyways.

Orchestral instruments are not "basic", they require careful recording with great equipment, a lot of time in a great studio with many skilled musicians (a LOT of time, each note has to be recorded separately, in each velocity, in each articulation, literally hundreds of thousands od recordings), and as computer instruments they take form as quite large sample libraries.

So they are literally the LEAST basic instruments. The best synth plugins cost like $150 and provide multiple types of synth sounds (one synth can provide pretty much all synth sounds you need), while the best orchestral libraries can cost thousands, and yet they are still limited and specialized compared to synth plugins (in terms of breadth, not quality).

Yes, I'd thought of that and will do more research on what I think I mean by 'instrument,' but every self-contained keyboard I've ever had - I'm on my 4th, a Roland E09 - (and none were very expensive) has some nice-sounding 'basic' instruments: STRINGS, BRASS, CLARINET, GUITAR that don't seem to be available in Live Standard. Maybe it's easier for Ableton to supply all kinds of jarble/interplanetary/funky stuff - and that's what most users/composers want.
Thanks for your enlightenment.

Those arranger keyboard sounds are called retro "General MIDI sounds" (often shortened to "MIDI sounds"), "sound canvas". etc. nowadays, not "orchestral".

They are actually considered "synth sounds" nowadays, not considered realist and they are associated with "retro" hardware that are considered "synths" by most people nowadays, like MIDI sound modules or soundcards like soundblaster.

EDIT: In fact, for some people it is not even "synth sounds", for them those arranger keyboard sounds are considered "chiptune", that is retro game music.

Everybody mentioning "orchestral" in 2021 is talking about large and expensive sample libraries like Spitfire, Kontakt, EastWest, etc. for anal-retentive attempts of creating music that sounds like real orchestras from movie scores.

Then what I want is probably those MIDI sounds, because as a scientist I think there an excellent way to explore the basic physics of harmony, etc.

It's a challenge to choose among the various grooves, clips, packs, sets, sounds, presets, etc. that Live offers.

E.g. putting 457 the various 'device group file' names from my Live installation into a spell-checker produces 141 new words. As a statistician, I do think there should be a way to group them by their simplicity.

This 76-year old newbie argues that it would help learning if there were a little group of simple, recognizable instruments we could get started with.

Sampled acoustic instruments included in the box with Live are admittedly not its strong suit. You have to move up to the Suite version to get them, and you’ll still find something better elsewhere at a lower price point. Cubase and Logic are probably the best DAWs for the included sampled acoustic instruments. Studio One is pretty good in this regard as well. Each of these also has a scoring view as well, so that may be of interest if you are a classically trained musician.

I'm pretty far into Live to want to make a shift - just disappointed they don't make simple (not sampled) 'synth'esizations of basic instruments available up front. I assume they can be found elsewhere, then I can create a folder for them.
And anyway, I'm beginning to enjoy making music (etc.) in a new way!

Yeah Cubase HALion Sonic has actually really good to very good sampled instruments. Live's stock sound Library is set to be updated with Live 11. There shall be brass and strings from spitfire audio, updated instrument racks and more modern presets for operator and other included synths. So I'm curious what's coming (in 3 days)...

My Roland E09 'arranger' has its 675 'tones' nicely arranged into groupings (piano, sax, percussion, etc.) - so
1. is there somewhere I could get those simple 'synth' sounds to load into Live, and then
2. organize them into easily accessible 'folders' etc...

You could sample them all individually note-by-note in the sampler or simpler device. But I wouldn't venture down that path, as it would take a very very long time. Instead I would buy Halion Sonic 3. The factory library should nicely cover all of the typical instruments. It does need their e-licenser USB dongle though. Otherwise something like UVI Orchestral Suite is another option. It doesn't have saxophones, for example, but has most of what you'd typically find in an orchestra.

We'll find out soon what Live 11 has. I think it requires the Suite version though, to get many of the acoustic instruments.