EastWest/Quantum Leap has announced that its latest release, Hollywood Strings, a new virtual instrument, will be presented in a series of online tutorials (here) on Thursday, January 14, 2010, the day The NAMM Show 2010 opens its doors. Hollywood Strings is scheduled for release February 15, 2010.
Hollywood Strings is an advanced collection of orchestral string instruments that offers "unprecedented" control over sound and performance while delivering "extraordinary" creative power to composers and content producers for film, video, web and music. Multiple finger positions for all sections, including open strings, are available for the first time in a virtual instrument collection, according to EastWest.
EastWest says that Hollywood Strings is "a blockbuster virtual instrument that has many groundbreaking features not found in any other virtual strings collection". For instance, this collection was engineered to include multiple finger positions throughout the entire range of the fingerboard of each sampled instrument. This range of positions allows composers to realize the true voicing and emotional content of a string section. Vibrato intensity and extensive dynamics, including five dynamics of up- and down-bowed sustains and notes, are also controllable by the composer. Extensive multi-dynamic true legato has been sampled for all sections in three different categories: slurred, portamento and bow change. This results in legato performance that has "never been available in the sample world". Hollywood Strings has five user-controllable microphone positions including main pickup (Decca tree), mid pickup, close pickup, surround pickup and an alternate vintage circa 1945 RCA ribbon room pickup, delivering the full range of the string experience.
"The intent with the Hollywood Strings collection was to produce an extensive and musical sonic pallet covering every nuance of string performance, " says Doug Rogers, founder and producer for EastWest. "This collection is unrivaled in the industry on every level. We assembled a team to produce this collection that included Quantum Leap producer Nick Phoenix, Thomas Bergersen, a highly respected composer and orchestrator in Hollywood, and the legendary sound engineer Shawn Murphy, who has worked on countless Hollywood mega-films from Titanic, Star Wars and Jurassic Park to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The ensemble of sterling sound recordings, engineered in our award-winning EastWest Studio 1 with the finest by the top "ears" in the industry, has produced a string collection worthy of the name Hollywood, a name synonymous with world-leading, high-end films."
Hollywood Strings will be available in two editions from February 15, 2010:
- The Diamond Edition, the highest level in the Hollywood Strings line, includes all articulations and bowings, five user-controllable optional mic positions, 44.1 kHz 24-bit and 16-bit samples and comes supplied on a pre-configured hard drive. List price for Hollywood Strings Diamond Edition is $1,695.
- The Gold Edition includes all articulations and bowings, except divisi, bow-change legato and sordino and offers single mic position, 44.1 kHz 16-bit samples supplied on dual-layer DVDs. List price for Hollywood Strings Gold Edition is $1,195.
For more information, view the presentation tutorials (which will remain online), and to pre-order the collection, visit the EastWest Web site.
