Looking for pop strings

[jancivil]

Your important work of correcting the grammatical errors on the internet must be exhausting. Society really owes you a debt of gratitude that will never be paid.

Evidently a bigger deal to you than it will ever be for me.

[jprykiel]

Hi bigcat.
A negative delay would sound the same, just a little sooner. I am really looking for a different more stacato kind of attac, but in sustain articulations.
The .Sf2 bancs seam to have been recorded from synths to. I was hoping for something more natural. It seams hard to find. VSL maybe?

[bigcat1969]

I know Jan Civil dislikes them and they can be strident, but I find the Kirk Hunter Strings to have very fast attacks on Marcato mode. With Hunter Marcato is a long or sustain articulation, it is a short articulation in some other libraries.

To the best of my knowledge the best way to 'fake' faster attacks is to up the envelope curve dramatically and shorten the attack down to maybe 10 milliseconds and then move the samples forward slightly. Still you can only do so much to change the sound of an actual recording.

The other way would be to layer a spiccato or staccato articulation with a sustain. You would probably want to control the short articulation with velocity and the long articulation with the modwheel. Results would be pretty variable.

[jancivil]

Some people seem to like those. I find them sour-sounding. Marcato is the real choice, if you have to layer them, so good call there. Spiccato is... well if you need that, but it's a very particular kind of attack.

Just for general consumption, I get the OP doesn't want to look at very much and Kontakt has to be bad for the visually impaired, but cutting into the sample a bit is going to be noticeable according to 1) how well it's done, which oddly enough can have a lot to do with what you're using, and 2) how exposed is it and what is the musical effect intended. Physically, this is a bowed instrument and cutting even 50 ms into the sound may not be anything, because of the continuity of the bowing. Now, effecting a solo performance is another matter. Pop strings? Pros do this for more than that, I assure you.

I'd use the Appassionata Strings lite, comes free with VE Pro.

[goldenhelix]

Your important work of correcting the grammatical errors on the internet must be exhausting. Society really owes you a debt of gratitude that will never be paid.

Evidently a bigger deal to you than it will ever be for me.

Sarcasm Authoritarian here: it's not. To anyone.

[goldenhelix]

The .Sf2 bancs seam to have been recorded from synths to. I was hoping for something more natural. It seams hard to find. VSL maybe?

Some are recorded from synths, some are not. Keep in mind "synth" here is probably a misnomer in many cases, as a synth is something that synthesizes sound, and many of the soundfonts that I've come across are recorded from sample based keyboards, which means they are actually sampled sounds, so the strings are as real as any sample library you're going to find. It really depends on which soundfonts you're talking about. Also keep in mind you're talking about pop strings which aren't exactly notorious for their utter realism.

[bigcat1969]

Actually I agree and I've fallen out of love with the Hunter strings in general. On a massive double sale I overspent myself and got the 8dio Adagio / Agitato pack and the 'free' Anthology upgrade and the sound is superb if a bit quirky and beyond anything in the Hunter realm. However they aren't suited for 'instant attack' if you will. Really the only strings I'm personally aware of that do that are the Hunter strings in Marcato. The three Concert Strings versions were on an 85% off or so sale a while back, I bit, and Concert Strings 3 certainly has this long Marcato articulation. I did decline to get the solo instruments on sale however as the concert Strings seemed generally mediocre and being me I 'extracted' some of the lead instruments from CS3 and put them in their own Kontakt shells and they sounded poor as solo instruments significantly worse than both the 8Dio 'first chair' instruments and the Embertone solo strings.

Anyway long ramble short version, Hunter Strings will do this but sound less than good in general.

[nineofkings]

OP, do you have XPand!2? If so, this patch may do. I wouldn't use it for a movie score but for a motown-influenced pop song it seems like it does the trick. It combines the two techniques suggested throughout the thread, cutting off the attack of a legato patch and then subtly layering in a staccato attack to give a hint of bow noise. If you'd like I can send you an fxp.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vmp2j93g10xqq ... s.mp3?dl=1

[jprykiel]

goldenhelix, sure. you are right about my bad use of the word synths in this case, but what I meant is that sounds like these were recorded from… All right, sample based workstations, with The memory that technology allowed at their times. Meaning, Few notes, no velocity layers, not to speak of round robins. Just imagine such an articulation recorded with today's means, wouldn't it be awesome? I'll check Kirk Hunter Strings anyway.
Thanks.

[jprykiel]

nineofkings. no, unfortunately I don't have XPAND!2. thanks for your offer though.
Cheers

[JonSolo]

Trailer Strings by Musical Sampling has a fast attack on the longs/sustains. I use it just for that purpose.