decent strings

karambos2

karambos2

New member
How does one get really good sounding strings in a project studio? I have only a couple of synths and the strings aren't very good. Can anyone advise?

Please don't suggest hiring the Berliner Philharmonic I'm on a tight budget here! :D
 
nice one Grinder! I have indeed used elixir stings on my Tele. They are quite good.

But seriously, I meant realistic sounding orchestral string section "strings" as opposed to guitar strings.
 
As important as the sounds you get are, the biggest problem with most keyboard strings is that the arrangements suck. If you have a decent patch, but you have it playing a real string part, it sounds pretty good. Most people just play block chords and pads, and they sound really boring. Spend the time to write a real string part (or get someone who understands composition and counterpoint to do so) and you will be happier with your string parts, even if the tones are only mediocre. You get a lot further with a well written string part than with a really expensive sound module.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
This may help or not. I'm not much of a midi guy so what i'm saying might not make much sense.

I recently downloaded a free VSTi called Ensembler that you can find at the Kvr-vst site that sounds pretty good. I just paint in the part (I don't play keyboard, and don't have the time to learn.) to what I want. I then use the string synth that came with my sequencer, with the same arrangement. I also pan the two string synths to the far left and far right.

Then by tweaking with the volumes with the three tracks I can get a fairly good sounding string sound. This may be a round about way of doing things but I do like the sound so I don't complain much.
 
I use GigaStudio, and Dan Dean Solo Strings. I also work with real violins, violas, and cellos. When arranged and played properly, the Gigastudio stuff is amazingly real, because in effect it is. It's just using a keyboard to trigger high quality recordings of real instruments. Nothing inside a synth, or even a hardware sampler can touch it.

RD
 
Another vote for GigaStudio. I use Garritan Lite Strings.

I've heard great things about Dan Dean Solo Strings and the demo samples I've heard seem to bear this out.
 
Michael Jones said:
I like the "Orchestral" Expansion card of the Roland JV 2080.

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=1656&alid=-1
(December's Mist, strings come in at 1:00 and again at 2:05)

There's more here:
Lakeside Rainfall

http://artists.iuma.com/site-bin/streammp3.m3u?204548
Click to expand...

A local music store has had one of those Orchestral cards for months asking $97 bucks. Seems like a good deal to me.

I've got a JV1010 that has some of the 2080 sounds. At least I think it does in the Session card. Anyway, are there any good tweaks to fix some of the piano decays? Some of them are really awful.
 
Seems I remember those expansion cards going for ~$300 new - so $97 seems like a great deal.

My ROland Xv5050 piano sounds are terrible too, especially the decay portions. That's why I went to Giga libraries.
 
Phyl said:
Another vote for GigaStudio. I use Garritan Lite Strings.

I've heard great things about Dan Dean Solo Strings and the demo samples I've heard seem to bear this out.
Click to expand...

Hey Phyl, how is the Garritan Lite Strings? I like arranging quartet stuff with DD Solo Strings, but would like something with some ensembles.

RD
 
I'm not thrilled with it, probably because the library is based around string sections and not solo instruments. It's a heck of a lot more relistic than the synth patches I've heard though.

The other thing I don't like is the articulations. There are quite a few but I find I only like a few of them. Moreover, the articulations I like aren't looped (the samples are only 1-2 seconds long) so you can't write long legato style lines easily.

Things might be better with the full up library, not sure.

So what do you think of the Dan Dean library?
 
1 to 2 seconds long? Wow, that doesn't sound like it was built for Gigasampler. Probably a converted sample set originally done for Akai or something. As you know, but I'll expound for those not familiar, Gigasampler (Gigastudio) is all about not needing to loop or interpolate either pitch or velocity by escaping the limitations of RAM and instead streaming samples off the disk so fast that they need not reside in RAM. Without size constraints, sample sets for Gigastudio can and do use wave file collections measured in the gigabytes to perfectly reproduce every note, velocity, and articulation of the sampled instrument, including the full sustain, without the use of looping and envelopes.

Anyway, Dan Dean Solo Strings is actually better than the demo leads you to believe. It's not for doing orchestral work, but gives you a great set of multiple articulations of solo violin, viola, and cello. They are dry, natural samples that need the same treatment as if you brought in the real instruments and miked them up stereo. The set employs key switching, so you can use low register keys on the keyboard to instantly switch articulations seemlessly between notes, with no artifacts. Brilliant!

Cheers, RD
 
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