SUPPORT TOPICS
General Support
The primary focus of our products is on the “digital production” side of music, giving customers an insight into the MIDI programming and mixing (the use of plugins etc) that might go into a final product or mockup.
It’s not an orchestration lesson, but it is about showing how a professional will produce orchestral music using software.
We don’t currently offer any direct lessons or coursework that tells you rules of how something should be done (since there really are no rules for this), instead we encourage “self-study” of the materials provided. Identify what you like about the piece of music or production, then go in and find out how it was done!
Our products are for anybody who has listened to a sample library demo or orchestral mockup and thought “I wish I could see how they did that!”.
For example, our product “Beyond The Storm” that uses EastWest’s Hollywood Orchestra – Somebody can listen to that track and think “Those strings sound great! How did they do that?” and then open the project and look at the EQ and plugins used to achieve that sound. “Oh I get it now!”
It’s also about how to translate traditional orchestration knowledge into the software realm.
For example, you could use the PDF score to see how the brass instruments are notated and orchestrated, and then look in the project file to see how those orchestrations were programmed with MIDI.
The other way that customers find benefit in our products, is that it gives them a starting point for their own productions. A template with pre-configured routing, track layout, instrument selection, reverbs and EQ, etc.
If you think you’d rather learn more traditional orchestration such as the differences between an Oboe and a Clarinet, and how to write for each section, then there are probably other resources out there which would be more suitable for you.
Once you know how to write for the instruments, the next hurdle is getting it to sound good with software. Ultimately, that’s where our products come in to help. 🙂
No. The original authors of the project files retain copyright and authorship of the music and MIDI contained within them. All products sold on this website are for educational purposes only.
Each product will specify the DAWs it supports. Currently, Cubase and Logic are the primary DAWs being supported by almost all products, with some also supporting Studio One.
The Eastwest Template by Ryan Thomas is only available for Logic Pro, and Beyond The Storm is only available for Cubase Pro.
If your DAW is not supported, look to see if the product offers a “MIDI & Score” option. This can be used with any DAW, and is priced cheaper than the DAW options.
Occasionally, a customer might type their email address incorrectly during checkout, causing their order emails to get lost. If you think you are missing emails, please get in touch using the contact form with information about your order or the email address used to make the order, and we will be able to re-issue your order emails.
If you believe you have something worth offering that is in line with Synthestration.com’s philosophy of “projects that are easy to open and learn from”, get in touch via the contact form and we’ll see what happens. 😉
No. All music used in products on this site is original.
MIDI data falls under the same classification as notation (sheet music), which can not legally be sold without obtaining the relevant licenses from the copyright holders.
If none of the support topics on this page answer your question or query, you can use the form found HERE to get in touch directly.
If you add two eligible products from an available bundle to your cart, our system will automatically add a 15% discount to BOTH products in your cart!
If you have previously purchased one half of a bundle, you will receive 15% off the other half during checkout. You need to be logged in for this to work.
NOTE: Bundle discounts will not apply if another sale of greater value is active (such as Black Friday sales)
Yes!
You can buy additional copies of the same product at a discounted rate of 50%. The discount will be automatically applied to your cart.
Note that our checkout system does not allow you to purchase the same item twice during a single transaction, so you must purchase additional DAW copies separately.
Loyalty Points were part of a discontinued rewards system that gave customers the ability to claim discounts on future purchases.
Loyalty points can no longer be earned, but existing customers will still have access to any points they previously earned, and can use them on any future purchase they wish to make.
Each point translates to $0.10, therefore 10 points is equivalent to $1 you can spend during checkout.
You can view your points from your account dashboard.
Downloads, Payments, and Accounts
There are a number of reasons why this might be occurring, sometimes it can be a fault with the site, other times it can be specific to your system (such as anti-virus software or a browser extension).
Firstly, please try refreshing the page that comes up after you click Download. Secondly, if you have visited this website before, you may need to clear your browser’s cache.
Safari and Firefox have specific issues of their own, so if you use either of these options and the above tips do not work, please try using a different web browser such as Chrome.
If none of these suggestions work for you, you can get in touch with us via our contact form and we will get you sorted out as soon as we can.
This is an interesting issue that a few of our customers have reported to us. Until we find a permanent solution, you can access your downloads by going to your “Orders” page first, selecting the order, and then using the download links found in there.
Occasionally, it seems our payment processors will flag an order as “Processing”, even when successfully completed. This can prevent the download links being released. We try to catch these instances, but if you have an order that is “processing” for more than 48 hours (2 days), please let us know so we can manually release your download links.
We offer refunds only in very specific circumstances, such as if the product description was incorrect and proved to be misleading, or if you purchased an item by mistake and have not yet downloaded it.
If you are on Mac OS, I recommend using TheUnarchiver to extract the .rar files. If you are a Windows user, you can already extract .rar files without a 3rd-party utility.
In simple terms, A “RAR” file is an alternative to a ZIP file. It works the same way, but is preferred over ZIP by many sample library developers and distributors of large digital downloads, as it compresses files more efficiently and effectively, and is more secure. Unfortunately, Mac OS can not open or extract RAR files by default, but it is highly recommended that you obtain a rar extracting utility (like the one linked above) so that you are prepared for future purchases you might make that include rar files.
We are currently transitioning all of our products over to ZIP archives to eliminate this minor inconvenience.
Using the Products
All existing owners of the RT Eastwest Template get the OPUS update for free. Simply visit your downloads section and re-download the Eastwest Template by Ryan Thomas. The OPUS update will be included in the downloaded files.
No! (Apart from either Cubase or Logic).
Included with each product is a “Lite” version of the project file that will open without the need of any 3rd-party software or plugins. Not even the samples!
Please check the software requirements listed at the bottom of the product page for the specific plugins used in the full version of the project file.
Please check your output configuration. To do this in Cubase, press F4 and navigate to the Outputs tab. If there are no outputs configured there, set them to be your audio interface.
If you use Control Room, leave the outputs blank and configure under the Control Room tab instead.
If you opened a “Lite” project, make sure you have either the Full Mix or some audio stem tracks enabled.
Yes! Each product comes with a “LITE” version of the project that opens with all tracks in a ‘disabled’ state, meaning it does not load any samples. This allows you to open and explore the project while only using a very small amount of RAM. It also frees up your CPU from having to process any virtual instruments, and can focus on playing back the audio files.
Each product will specify the DAWs it supports. Currently, Cubase is the primary DAW supported by default, with some products also supporting Logic Pro.
If your DAW is not supported, look to see if the product offers a “MIDI & Score” option. This can be used with any DAW.
If you are finding that the expression maps that were included with a project are assigned to the wrong notes or getting in the way of the notes of the instrument, you may need to change the “Root Note” in Cubase’s Expression Map Setup window.
Our expression maps are created for a root note of C0
This happens when you try loading a project that uses the VST2 version of PLAY, while your system only has the VST3 version installed.
Try running the installation for PLAY again, and make sure the VST2 options is checked. (you can have both the VST2 and VST3 options installed simultaneously)
There are a few possible causes for this, but the most common one is that your CPU is struggling to process all of the audio in time to play it back.
To help it out, you can increase your buffer size either in your DAW’s audio preferences, or the control panel for your audio interface.
For reasonably modern and powerful computers, a buffer size of 256 or greater should be sufficient for our most demanding product “Beyond The Storm”. If your system is not a “high performance” system, you may need to use a buffer size of 512 or greater.
Another possible cause is that your hard drive is too slow to stream all of the required samples. To alleviate this, you can increase the disk cache size in the sampler (PLAY) settings. If you use a Solid State Drive (SSD) a cache size of 0 or 1 should be sufficient. If you are streaming from a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) I recommend using a cache size of 2 or higher. Be aware, that higher disk caches result in higher RAM usage.
If neither of these performance tips alleviate your playback issues, I recommend using the “Lite” version of the project file that was included. From there, you can either rely solely on the printed audio stems for playback, or you can enable individual or groups of instrument tracks as you see fit. For example, you could use the audio stems for Brass and Woodwinds, but enable the instrument tracks for Strings and Percussion. The final audio will still be the full mix, but now you’re only using a fraction of tthe resources!
The RAM requirements are listed at the bottom of each product’s description. In situations where 8GB is not enough to load the full project file (such as Beyond The Storm), there will be a “Lite” version of the project file that opens with all instrument tracks disabled and thus not loading any samples into RAM. 8GB is more than sufficient for this.
That’s perfectly normal. Most of your DAW’s color and appearance preferences are local to your system, and do not carry across with projects.
Track colors are saved with the project (for example, BRASS = YELLOW), but the background colors, or the appearance of the track list is entirely up to you.
EW Spaces II is known to give a license error on occasion, which means it won’t load the impulse response or work unless you re-load a preset. If you experience this with Beyond The Storm, please reload the presets and dial in the settings as outlined in the Reverb Settings document >> HERE <<
Customers of the Logic version of Born To Protect by Benny Oschmann may notice that an included wav file is in fact blank. This is an error. Please download a corrected wav file from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_QDc1J4ljmt3RP1ozTzjKsZltdzqjSjy/view?usp=sharing
You can replace the existing file with this one.
