The Synthetic Orchestra Blog

Welcome to the Synthetic Orchestra blog - a collection of articles, tutorials and thoughts in general to do with virtual orchestration. I'll try to post these relatively often. If you have any suggestions or want me to cover anything in particular feel free to contact me through the site.

Articulate Pro

In this blog I'll start to introduce you to some of the upcoming features for Articulate Pro.

New Website Launched

Welcome to the all new Synthetic Orchestra website, now improved for mobile and phone devices!

The Articulate API

In this blog I'll be covering the new HTTP JSON API featured in the the 1.14 version of my Articulate plugin for FL Studio.

Kontakt bitmap font generator

An online tool allows you to convert a typeface into a custom font for your Kontakt instrument. Drag a TTF of OTF font onto the tool and then select the settings required.

Multiple Articulation Banks

In this blog I'll be covering the new Multiple articulation bank feature in the new 1.05 version of my Articulate plugin for FL Studio.

Spitfire Combination Palettes

In this blog I'll be looking at the combination palettes included in Spitfire products such as Mural and Sable, and explaining what they are, how they work and when to use them.

The Sustain Pedal

In this blog I'll be looking at the sustain pedal - why some Spitfire products have a problem with it, and how this can be fixed.

Batch Re-saving

In this blog I'll be giving a little background as to what Batch Re-saving is inside Kontakt, how it can help, when you should do it and some quirks associated with it.

Swapping out an NKR file

In this blog I'll show you how to swap out an instrument's NKR. You might need to do this to upgrade an old patch to a newer version of a script, or to fix a missing NKR.

Optimising Spitfire (Part II - Rests)

In this blog I'll be taking a look at something a bit more advanced within Spitfire instruments: How to remove unneccessary articulations from an instrument - in particular the 'empty ' rest icons you may see scattered across the Stanza.

Changing Articulations

In this blog I'll be looking at the various ways to switch between articulations within Spitfire instruments, from Keyswitching to CC32 to UACC.

Troubleshooting Spitfire Instruments

In this blog I'll be looking at simple things to try when experiencing problems in Kontakt and Spitfire products.

Building Bigger Sections

In this blog I'll be looking at a bit of a cheat to take the smaller sections recorded for Spitfire's BML range and give them a bigger sound. This has been covered before by Spitfire Audio but I figured it's useful to have it here for reference.

Performing with Spitfire's Strings

In this blog I'll be taking a look at some higher-level tips for recent Spitfire releases (Mural in particular). Hopefully there's some things in here that may prove new or useful to you!

Optimising Spitfire (Part I - Mics)

In this blog I'll be taking a look at something a bit more advanced within Spitfire instruments: How to optimise Kontakt in respect to the microphones you require.

The Spitfire Articulation Stanza

In this second blog I'm going to look at the Articulation Stanza in Spitfire Audio's sample line series in detail.

The Spitfire Microphone Mixer

In this first blog I'm going to more thoroughly cover some of the functionality included in Spitfire Audio's sample line series.

© 2021 Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra

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