VST instruments offer a variety of options for your recording needs. You may not own a string instrument, or you may want to broaden your sound palette with different strings samples as well as experimenting with other instruments.
Berlin Strings kontakt 5 64 bit
Most orchestral strings VSTs are of excellent quality and each library I find tends to get approved by a lot of my clients. Many of them prefer high-quality sounding pieces over music that may be well-written but used with poor samples.
Some libraries are similar in sound yet have their own individual perks. With research, every composer is capable of choosing an appropriate strings library that will enhance their compositions depending on their creative requirements. I have met colleagues who prefer certain libraries over others and vice versa.
Orchestral Tools Berlin Strings is a string library held in high regard by its users. This library is one of the industry standards when it comes to orchestral strings and is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
There are numerous legato expressions in Berlin Strings that are triggered by the keyboard velocity. Legato patches create soft attacks at low velocity and accented sustains at high velocity; portamento slides are activated at high velocities. It is worth noting that legato is a very important articulation in string playing. It causes strings to sound lush and full in an orchestral piece.
Berlin Strings by Orchestral Tools is a high-quality, industry-standard strings library backed by many composers and musicians including the likes of David Newman, Junkie XL, Harry Gregson-Williams, Jeff Russo and Richard Harvey.
Orchestral Tools have just released a new strings library: Berlin Symphonic Strings. The library focuses on large string sections capturing cinematic, rich string compositions that maintain the renowned characteristics of the Berlin series.
The strings were recorded at the Teldex Scoring Stage in Berlin and are sampled in situ, with players in the traditional strings seating arrangement with violins on the left, violas in the center and celli and basses on the right. This seating arrangement helps create a natural, homogenous blend.
Overall, EastWest Hollywood Strings is an enormous library full of everything you could possibly need in a traditional orchestral strings setup. The powerful scripts that implement many techniques and finger positions are what makes Hollywood Strings an industry-standard choice for composers.
It contains ensemble, divisi, as well as solo string sections. The strings were recorded inside a church instead of a typical closed studio setup like most other string libraries. In spite of the recording location, these samples are not heavy in reverb and sound quite natural.
8Dio has really outdone themselves by re-working and consolidating the best samples from their Adagio and Agitato packs into one combined library with a more notably clean and intuitive interface. Those who owned Adagio and Agitato will rejoice in knowing that Anthology strings has placed all articulations in the browser on the main window instead of creating hundreds of separate instruments.
Typically, low strings can sound quite muddy, but 8Dio has created a sound that can be large and weighted, or very nuanced. For fans of the 8Dio sound, this will be a natural purchase or upgrade from their previous string collections.
Hello Samantha.I enjoyed reading this blog.I am an aspiring composer and would like to ask some advice.I am amateur. I purchased cinestrings core. I found that when playing 1/8th notes in soft velocity (p) the notes drown out.Is there a strings vst that you would recommend that would offer nice legatos in various velocities where you can appreciate each individual note( without severely breaking the bank)?Many thanks
At the end of the day, when you do your final mix-down or exports, it all comes down to the actual sound of the strings. They need to sound great! Mixed to standard orchestral seating, all the divisis combine beautifully for a lush and glorious sound. From articulate Smart Ostinatos and Scales to the velvety smooth Sordino and Sul Tasto articulations to the powerful Shorts articulations to the hair-raising Aleatoric articulations (and everything in between) MSS is a library that fully captures the broad expressive range and diversity of the strings family and our Auto Divisi engine does all the hard divisi work for you resulting in a smooth, balanced sound. Pristine recordings with 4 different mic mixes and meticulous editing coupled with our easy-to-use and intuitive orchestral engine will ensure every note of your music will shine without the need for tedious MIDI micro-editing.
The instrument covers a variety of styles, from melodic passages and ethnic phrases to unique double-strings, trills, sul ponticelli and other techniques. Pressing a key instantly evokes the characteristic, unmistakeably human touch that can be adjusted in key, speed, length, succession and connection of phrases.
Below are seven of the best VST strings packs at a variety of different price points. All five of our top picks can be used in both the paid and free versions of Kontakt. Additionally, take a look at the end of the article for our favorite free strings plugins for EDM production.
Available for $199 at Plugin Boutique, Output Analog Strings is a strings library available at tremendous value. Output sampled a 60-piece string orchestra, a 22-piece orchestra, and vintage analog synths to create a playable instrument with over 500 presets. Analog Strings also features unconventional sounds like a plucked piano and guitar resonance. It has a sleek, user-friendly interface with interesting parameters for FX and rhythm.
All the orchestral sounds needed to create complex arrangements that will rival those heard in big-budget, blockbuster movies. Sensuous strings, bold brasses and wonderous woodwinds come together to create an amazing arsenal of sound at your fingertip
Vivid The piano creates the sound in real time while you are playing and takes intoaccount all the complex factors that makes the piano a truly vivid instrument,such as the interaction between strings, the use of pedals, the cabinetresonance and the position of the hammers. It will feel like you have a realpiano in front of you... as if you could just lean over and touch the strings!
The Harp pack includes a Concert Harp and a Celtic Harp. The Concert Harp is physical modelled after a Salvi concert harp, used by many baroque and classical composers in the 18th and 19th century. The Celtic Harp is frequently heard in folk music as well as in earlier classical music and contemporary new-age. Both harps include foot-controlled pedals to change the pitches of the strings. They also add the ability to play harmonics (flageolets) and glissandos.
Harmonics (horizontal orange lines) start simultaneously but the higher the frequency the shorter the harmonic. By the way, we can observe in this figure the beatings produced by a slight detuning between the 3 strings of the unison. We will explain this shortly.
With the exception of the low range, each note of a piano has 3 strings, struck simultaneously by the hammer. The fact that there are several strings makes the attack stronger, and it also increases the sound duration.
No two strings can be exactly in tune. So setting several strings together will create close frequencies. Gradually, two close frequencies will fall alternatively in phase - the sound reaches its maximum amplitude - and in opposite phase - the sound cancels -, that is the beating:
I'm thinking of laying down some slow jazz drums and layering Nelson Riddle strings over the top andfinding a good cabaret singer to do a vocal. There are 15 in my area to choose from. Those Linda Ronstadt albums were great. Harry Nilsson made one too with classic tunes like "As Time Goes By".
1) Sibelius with NotePerformer (wonderful bass - probably recorded on a Mac)2) StaffPad (default instruments in the app)3) Berlin (#3 maybe a larger recording hall - strings bury the woodwinds)4) CineSamples (#1 good bass strings - my favorite overall but not by enough to justify the $'s)5) SpitFire (#2)
Then I split then up and put them on 5 tracks and lined them up so I could label them and make quick changes to compare and I must say that the default StaffPad Orchestra holds up well against the $100-200 orchestras (they split strings and winds into 2 purchases in most cases).
Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by billworld - 31 Jul 10:34PM Hide picture While I've enjoyed Sibelius v6 for the last couple of years doing piano notation of my works I've finally gotten to doing orchestral works and have upgraded to Sibelius 7. I love the new UI but really do not care much for the new sounds promoted as being "professional". I need something much better for reasonably accurate orchestral concert music renderings. Accordingly, I've been spending a whole lot of time the last few days researching various sound libraries. I'm still not sure which direction to go and seek advice of folks on this forum.I'm looking for the top sound library for concert orchestral sounds which provides tight integration with Sibelius via well supported SoundSets. I'm also learning that there's issues with some libraries and their sample players with respect to large overhead (huge sample sizes and slow loading when competitors with equally good sounds load much faster and don't hog the machine).I believe I've whittled the list of contenders down to the following:LA Scoring Strings 2 (LASS) for strings - uses Kontact which seems to be well seasoned, well designed and efficient. There appears to be a Sibelius SoundSet at least for LASS 1.0. I don't know yet about a SoundSet for LASS 2.0. Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) - uses Vienna Ensemble for playback. There are so many VSL offerings I'm still a bit confused on which one(s) to focus on. Their Website is pretty confusing and I've spent a lot of time browsing around trying to get a grasp of things. Some of the demos sound great. But, one never knows just how processed they are. I'm curious how efficient (in terms of design, workflow and resource utilization) the samples and player are and seek professional feedback on that as well as of course the sound quality. VSL appears to have SoundSets for free direct from Vienna which seems a plus.EastWest Qauntum Leap (EWQL) - uses Player for sample playback which I've been hearing bad things about ( =bO2FE7GileA&feature=related) in terms of resource utilization and very slow sound loading. Their Website I find confusing and cluttered which puts up a red flag to me as indicative of how they do other things. SoundSets for many EWQL offerings appear to be available.I seek quality sounds with maximum ease of use. My desired focus as a composer is on music composition and orchestration. While I'm quite technical, I don't want to get into the programmer head for this activity. So, ease-of-use is VERY important to me.I'd really appreciate pointers, tips and lessons learned from others who have gone down this path in terms of research and trial and error. Purchasing a quality sound library on a budget is an important task and one which I can't afford to mess up.What are the pros and cons of the top packages based upon your own personal experience as it relates to using them with Sibelius for playback of concert orchestral music?If I am forced to mix and match among libraries, what are the downsides? Does running Kontact and Vienna Ensemble concurrently with Sibelius bog things down and/or introduce other issues?Thanks much for your help.Bill Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by Peter Roos - 31 Jul 11:43PM Hide picture I can warmly recommend Eastwest's Symphonic Orchestra. The sound quality is superb, it is tightly integrated with Sibelius (courtesy of the soundsets developed by Jonathan Loving over the past few years) and it is very easy to use straight out of the box. In terms of resource utilization, I never had any issues. Obviously loading a full fledged orchestral template takes several minutes but you can cut back on that by using SSDs ($$$).You can combine different EW libraries with different soundsets. Sibelius has an intricate way of dealing with sound but it's all clearly laid out in the manuals written by Jon Loving.Everything depends on your budget and how far you want to take broadcast quality. If you want to get a *really* polished product you still do best by exporting a midi track into a sequencing program for further tweaking. Though, that said, I have exported scores straight out of Sibelius for movies where I didn't have the time to do the tweaking thing. In my perfect world I'd be able to work in Sibelius and tweak the midi notes etc simultaneously in pro tools or whatever program. I've floated that idea on several occasions; it hasn't really picked up yet.Obviously we do not live in a perfect world. In fact we live in a significantly less than perfect world, where today the entire core staff of Sibelius was sacked. But that is a whole different story.-- Peter Rooswww.summeroflovemusic.comIMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm2039241 Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by Mark Isaacs - 01 Aug 01:16AM (edited 01 Aug 01:28AM) Hide picture A compromise that I use for "tweaking" without leaving Sibelius and going to a sequencing program is playing with the Live Velocity numbers, and the parameters for crescendi and diminuendi gradations in Properties (Inspector). This allows for what amounts to local mixing once the mixer faders are set. Effectively it's MIDI editing with a friendly front end.-- A composer www.markisaacs.comSibelius 6.2.0 build 88, Sibelius 5.2.5 build 37, Vista SP1, Intel quad CPU Q9450 2.66Ghz, 3GB RAM, 27'' monitor, M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard, Bose Computer Music Monitor speakers, Sibelius Sounds Essentials, Sibelius Sounds, Garritan Personal Orchestra 3, Garritan Authorised Steinway. Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by Philip R - 01 Aug 01:25AM Hide picture I have both VSL and EWQLSO, both are great and work well with Sibelius. (For EW you will need to purchase Jonathan Loving's sound sets)Still, commit to spending some time understanding the ins and outs of learning how the sound sets work, as Peter says.Also, putting your samples on an SSD will really help loading time for big projects.I use XSample for chamber sounds (Kontakt-based) and it is excellent, and a sound set is included with Sibelius.-- Sib 7.1.2 Mac 10.6.8Intel 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core, 14 GB RAM Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by Mark K Sealey - 01 Aug 02:51AM Hide picture This checklist for Vienna still has much good and relevant configuration information: -bin/helpcenter/chat/chat.pl?com=thread&start=534304&groupid=3&words=&name=sealey#534442Good luck!-- Mark Sealeymid-2011 2.7 GHz, 27 inch iMac; 16 GB RAM; 10.7.4; 7.1.2 Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by Derek Bourgeois - 01 Aug 08:34AM Hide picture I use a mixture of Vienna and East West. If you can afford to put them both onto SSDs they load a whole symphony orchestra as well as 40 independent percussion staves in well under a minute. The sounds are very good. EW has the better soundsets provided by Jonathan Loving at a modest cost.Once loaded you can leave the sounds in memory (if you have enough) until you quit Sibelius.Derek-- Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit - Intel Xeon@3.47 Ghz - 24GB RAM - NVidia Quadro 5000 with 6143 graphics memory - 3 TB hard disks (of which 2 TB SSD) Vienna Symphonic Library Special Edition plus full percussion library. East West QL Symphonic Orchestra and Choirs. Sibelius 7 Sounds. M-Box. Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by SeaMajor - 01 May 11:06PM Hide picture Hi Bill, I stumbled upon this post and I can relate 100% to what you said you were looking for. I can't help but ask...what did you decide on? Did you find an orchestral library solution that works for you?Cheers,Chris Back to top Allthreads Re: Sib. 7.1: Best concert orchestra sound libraries with tight Sibelius integration Posted by Mark Isaacs - 02 May 09:27AM Hide picture This threads need NotePerformer to be added to it!-- A composer www.markisaacs.comwww.facebook.com/markisaacsmusicSibelius 6.2.0 build 88, Bob Zawalich plugins, Windows 10 64-bit, Intel Core i5 7400 Quad Core Processor (3GHz-3.5GHz 6MB), 8GB RAM, 27'' monitor, NotePerformer 3.3.1, Sibelius Sounds, Sibelius Sounds Essentials, Sibelius Gold (Kontakt), Garritan Personal Orchestra 3, Garritan Authorised Steinway, Bose Computer Music Monitor speakers, ASIO4ALL. Back to top Allthreads 2ff7e9595c
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