String banks, does sustain always mean slow attacks?

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Hi all.
For years, I have been looking for that articulation and never found it. Useless to say I cannot afford to try every bank on the market, and that demos are mostly composed in this cinematic style which is not what I want.
So, everything I tried had short notes with fast attacks, and sustained notes with considerably slower attacks. Layering both doesn't give a natural result does it? So, is there any bank on the market that would give me sustains with fast attacks? Yes, I found one, LA scoring strings, which is very expensive and full of things I will never use. Really, I would be happy with just one articulation and an ensemble patch, no need for separate sections, I just want to play it live.
Hope you can help,
best,
Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Blind one
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You take a look at musical sampling? Adventure strings got some general patches for mockups w/o keyswitches per section or full strings. Got that 1 size fits all sustain for live work. Does repeats and runs w/o that laggy feel I f*ckin love it. Price aint all that friendly but still worth it imo.

I own shit like ewql hollywood plat or diamond or whatever, lass + cs, all the symphobias, couple strezov libs and some vienna. I dont touch those til I got the notes down with adventure strings. Sometimes even leave it like that cus it sounds fine in the mix.

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The Adventure patches (fast attack->sustain) in Adventure Strings are only in the individual sections. The ensemble patch doesn't have it so, for a live all-in-one patch, you'd have to strap several sections together in a multi on the same MIDI channel. Musical Sampling did have a pretty good sale on both Adventure and Soaring recently. They may do it again some time.

I don't have a big problem with bolting together two instances of the Kontakt Factory strings and selecting Sustain in one and Sforzando or Staccato in the other and having them play together. If you back off the attack somewhat on the Sustain articulation, you get a fairly natural swell that's not too far from a marcato-into-sustain style. The Sforzando blend is easier to achieve. A bit of MIDI mapping of velocity to Sforzando volume and Sustain attack (making it quicker as the Sforzando section gets quieter) should get you the ability to have chunky marcatos feeding into gentler passages.

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Armagibbon, thanks! never heard of them before, they sound great.
Gamma, which strings in Kontakt factory strings? Session strings pro? I know NI has other banks available, symphonic strings sound okay, but I'm not sure I'll get what I want there.
Problem with me is that I'm visually impaired, and Kontakt's gui is unusable in my case. I would have to get someone to design a NKM for me. Could you do that?
Best,
Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Blind one
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I was talking about the VSL strings in the Kontakt Factory Library. I can post a basic NKM but I was using it as an example. As it's a scripted library, to do those velocity/CC changes there is the matter of dealing with interactions with the scripting and finetuning the settings. Without knowing the playing style it's had to get those things right. A library based on sfz samples may be better for you because the changes can be embedded in the sample data.

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Okay;
meanwhile, I'm trying to get in contact with the musical sampling team to see for what reason they didn't do an ensemble adventure patch. But I think this bank is definitely the way to go. At least, I have never heard anything as near as this 1 to what I wanted. It is funny that this particular articulation is so rare. But maybe is it because all of these banks are film score/videogame orientated.
Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Blind one
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Sustain articulation is not meant to represent a particularly fast, or very vigorous attack.
There are ways in certain interfaces to cut into the sample. I don't know this library, so...

As far as layering two artics being unnatural, how paranoid do you need to be? I mean with a solo, maybe pretty paranoid but for a section? Really, strings in an orchestra are distributed in the acoustical environment so diffusely that there is all sorts of BLUR factor. Also I should apprise you that for virtual strings, pros do it all the time. So a marcato attack with a longer sustain portion for instance, nothing exotic really about doing so. In fact, the [VSL] VI Pro interface has 8 slots for this, crossfade assignable (per A & B rows/2 artics) to a controller. (Their market is not the quickie 'games composer' crowd.)

As for the Kontakt Factory VSL demos, I always glommed a SFZ onto the sus if I needed vigor in the attack.
Last edited by jancivil on Sun May 27, 2018 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Good advice jancivil.
I would probably follow them if I was not blind. Being blind nowadays makes things tough for customising sound banks to your liking. It was much easier in the analogue, or even the first samplers days. But I'm not nostalgic about that, it's just that my options are limited.
I would gladly hire an assistant to do this kind of job for me, but they are not easy to find in France, and we need to work in real-time together. Working over the net would be awfully time-consuming.
Thank you anyway,
Cheers,
Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Blind one
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Sure.

I don't see so well myself. I'm not going to do but so much in the Kontakt interface, I grow weary.
If you need to see an interface more easily, see my screenshots in the... where is it?

I'll just put one here then:
Screen Shot 2018-05-26 at 10.34.56 AM.png
text is still pretty dang small though isn't it. at least it's not a bunch of isolated pages.
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btw if you need some example of just plain raw adventure strings played live heres a doodle I recorded for you b4 I clocked out today.
http://clyp.it/1mfjiu3i?token=4b5651fe7 ... 0a6c15618e
Add some verb and the samples can sound good imo.
http://clyp.it/vfhtb3w1?token=2555ed889 ... feced051b5

Dont comment on my playing I know Im shit lmao but its a combo of long and short with some runs in there hope it helps. No pedal wheel or keyswitches... I can make it a preset tomorrow if you want but its just the 4 adventure patches loaded up all on the same midi ins and audio outs... violins, violas, cellos, basses. Dead easy to setup imo.

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Armagibbon, very cool! thanks for sharing this.
Are you using soaring as well?
Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Blind one
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Yea that clip is pure adventure strings but I use soaring and trailer strings for softer and smoother or louder and meaner work. Can do most work just fine with adventure imo cus its right in the middle.

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Yep, they definitely have something unique, and not even too disc space demanding, compared to other expansive banks. But they require a bit of eq though don't you think?
Jean-Philippe Rykiel, the Blind one
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Def need eq in a mix but thats up to you fam. Personal pref I only eq when I gotta make samples work together or balance a mix.

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NI session strings have the "sustain with accent" or something like that which has fast attack.

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