Some suggestions for blending sampled strings?

[RKB]

I write soley instrumental music, a lot of it having some kind of orchestrations. As I don't have access to a 20-piece orchestra, I have to use sampled strings. Unfortunately, making them sound good after they've been recorded is no easy feat. For greater mixing flexibility, I sometimes record each section on its own track. (ie, violins on track 1, violas on track 2, cellos on track 3, basses on track 4). This makes editing on the sequencer while I'm composing a lot easier as well, rather than using a single orchestra patch, and allows me to tweak the performance during the mixdown. But obviously sampled strings don't sound like real strings, and tracking in this manner introduces another level of complexity into the mixing process.

I have two issues that I'd love to hear some suggestions on:

EQ ranges for each instrument: While I can find a multitude of information on the preferred frequencies for kick drum or bass guitar, there's not much out there for orchestral instruments. If anyone has found some key frequencies for each of these stringed instruments, I'd appreciate it. In particular, I'm having trouble keeping the mush out of the basses without sacrificing low-end power. It's either too much, or it's mushy.

Blending: Any suggestions for blending via efx or other means would be greatly appreciated. I generally use a Hall reverb with a very low diffusion rate and about a 2-3 sec delay, 10ms pre-delay. I've also found that cutting the highs at about 7Khz helps to give them more of a full sound. Any other suggestions??

 

[rjt]

Over the years I have read a lot of articles about making strings sounds better, although not specifically about some of the points you made (e.g., EQing). There is a small section in Eric Turkels (spelling) book on Arranging for Synthesists about how to make them sound more realistic. There was also a phenomenonal article in Keyboard several years ago that was so detailed about making them sound realistic (different samples for bow up/down etc) that it lost me. Currently on the Keyboard mag web site, http://www.keyboardmag.com/ in the archives section is an article about midi orchestration.... look up the J's (I know it doesn't make sense). A few of the things I do:

I try to layer a solo instrument of the same type over the top (e.g., solo violin over the violin sect). If my synths support small random variations in pitch and or sample start times etc I will use that with a second (or 3rd if I have the solo instrument going) string sample, generally quieter than the "main strings". Also, a piece of advice in the orchestration article that I really like, you do things with midi that may not sound good with an orchestra. One time, to fatten up some violins, I added cellos then used a band pass filter to cut out part of the cello sound and added it to the violins thicken them.