# LASS Sords - Get out your Hankies...



## stevenson-again (Jun 7, 2011)

...to blow your noses with you filthy minded perverts.

http://idisk.mac.com/rohan.stevenson/Public/webdemos/TheBallroomRemix1.mp3 (The Ballroom)

This is a remix of an old old cue that i originally did with symphobia muted strings and the miroslav muted strings. The best sounding muted strings I think are still the symphobia ones but they are really soggy - very hard to make an expressive line with them. The miroslav are the next best, but of course no legato.

- The LASS sords are fantastic sounding too, but I would have loved a little more shimmer and vibrato in them, and I am finding they bump from note to note a bit too much in some places. I think they could be smoother, unless I have missed something. Also, I have found the odd note to be way too present or too loud and some others swallowed up. It's not every time but when it crops up its v hard to program into submission.

- Auto arranger is awesome. I am getting into that and working out how to put it into my workflow. It'll make my templates a bit cumbersome but I love that sort of detail.

- Like others, I found that the volume curves were not quite to my taste, and correcting them didn't quite fix it either. I think I need spend a little while before I settle on a curve - either that or flat was what I should started with to begin the remix.

- The violas are particularly nice in the LASS sords. In that middle C range for inner voices they simply wonderful.

- I found the bass hard to work with, it was quite boomy and over powering here. I had to really turn it down, and in the end I found eqing the bass separately is what was needed.

- Finally, my normal eq shape for the rest of the library didn't work. this needed to be eq'd a lot more subtely. I still think this is an area I could improve.

My overall feeling is there is some room to tweak the patches in LASS Sords, so that it's a bit easier to achieve a smooth line, but that the library is, for my tastes the absolute gold standard in power, flexibility, reliability and ease of use.


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## TheUnfinished (Jun 7, 2011)

Excellent. That is all.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jun 7, 2011)

Beautiful-again.


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## noiseboyuk (Jun 7, 2011)

Good God man. Outstanding.

Are the strings all LS? How much is auto-arranger?


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## stevenson-again (Jun 7, 2011)

thanks guys and guy.... 

i used the AA on each section. initially its because i thought i had to but i realized it was really only because i had been lazy with my orginal arrangement. but then i sort of started playing around with being able to add the extra voice on here and there. i had the cellos double the viola inner voice whilst still holding their end of the bass chord.

all the strings are LS - the only live instrument is most of the guitar.


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## ontrackmusic (Jun 7, 2011)

Terrific sound, Rohan. It seems to me that the samples have less baked-in "bloom" or swell than the non-sord LASS legato samples, making legato lines flow without the wah-wah effect I sometimes struggle with in LASS at certain tempos. However, this contradicts some of what you say in your OP, so perhaps what I'm hearing is more a result of your careful editing than the samples themselves.

Fantastic composition as always...


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## Mr. Anxiety (Jun 7, 2011)

Bravo Rohan....... nice piece, and a lovely sounding sequence.

I'm about to dive into AA with LASS, never used it. Do you feel it can be a time saver, or just a step sideways in transferring a four line string performance on the keyboard to the string sections?

Love to hear your thoughts......

How about those LASS Sordinos........ they did it again!

Mr A


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## Ed (Jun 7, 2011)

Really really nice.;... so much to buy god


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 7, 2011)

Nice work Rohan! As always your music and productions are classy.


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## germancomponist (Jun 7, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Tue Jun 07 said:


> Nice work Rohan! As always your music and productions are classy.



+1


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## choc0thrax (Jun 7, 2011)

Great piece! Didn't pay attention to the strings but they probably sound good too.


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## doubleattack (Jun 7, 2011)

Mr. Anxiety @ Tue 07 Jun said:


> (...) I'm about to dive into AA with LASS, never used it. Do you feel it can be a time saver, or just a step sideways in transferring a four line string performance on the keyboard to the string sections?
> 
> Love to hear your thoughts......(...)
> 
> Mr A



The same here. Would like to hear about your experience with auto-arranger. 

And: Very very nice piece! Good work!
Do we listen to Efimov acc guitar and spitfire harp here? Just curious.


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## Ryan Scully (Jun 7, 2011)

What a beautiful piece - The Sords sound gorgeous....Thanks for posting Rohan!



Ryan


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## stevenson-again (Jun 7, 2011)

Thanks again guys. No it's not spitfire harp, and the guitar is live except for the opening chords which are a blend of the VSL harp (used throughout) and the contact guitar.

AA is just the bomb. It just works - although I did have a moment where it wasn't because the the not overlaps where different lengths. It really is simply a matter of just adding some voices to the existing part and it handles the divisi. Not only that it will do a port gloss or legato on each voice independently. I mean, you talk about just having functionality that speeds up work flow...

The way I am going to have to use it is by creating quite a complex template in plogue. Thanks to the combined efficiency of having ncw format and an SSD, I could in theory create auto arrange templates for each articulation. In reality the most practical thing will be to create a midi splitter activated by program change to switch the midi signals from a single instance of contact with the full mix patches for the other articulations, in banks as I currently have them set up.

I think the advantage that plogue has over VEpro becomes apparent in this scenario. It's easy to create complex routings that you can understand and keep an overview of.

As to the 'bumpiness' of LASS vs LS, definitely LS is bumpier - but not always. I do think there is room for improvement in this department but I don't think it would be too hard to fix - that is if there *is* anything to fix. It may very well be unfamiliarity with the library. I have only been playing around with it for a couple of hours. That speaks volumes of itself. It just works right there and then and is easy to understand, albeit with it's own quirks.


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 7, 2011)

I was sure that guitar was live. :D


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## David3D (Jun 7, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Wed Jun 08 said:


> I was sure that guitar was live. :D


Its not?

...Wow.

Very impressed! It was a beautiful piece indeed. Thanks for uploading


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 7, 2011)

David3D @ Tue Jun 07 said:


> Guy Bacos @ Wed Jun 08 said:
> 
> 
> > I was sure that guitar was live. :D
> ...



Yes it is.


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## doubleattack (Jun 8, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Tue 07 Jun said:


> I was sure that guitar was live. :D



you won the bet :lol: 

a half year working with samples has corrupted me already... :lol: :lol:


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## stevenson-again (Jun 8, 2011)

I am posting this version 2 for those who are interested to see how LS works with other non-legato libs. i have a mixture of the old miroslav and siedlecek advanced orchestra exs sords. i muted the B and C sections, and in logic used transformers to scale the CC1 rides, and convert them to CC7 rides. then i rode the old library outputs so they weren't too strong in the mix.

interesting result. it's smoother and a little more sord like but i am not sure i don't prefer the absolute clarity you get from the LS alone. i think ultimately the best results will be from LS alone. I feel like i have lost something somewhere.

http://idisk.mac.com/rohan.stevenson/Public/webdemos/TheBallroomRemix2.mp3 (The Ballroom v2)


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## JohnG (Jun 8, 2011)

Unfortunately I couldn't get the v2 to play here, but very much enjoyed hearing your composition. As usual.

Thanks for posting this, Rohan.


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## stevenson-again (Jun 8, 2011)

Cheers mate.

It does work. It seems to be the quicktime plug-in bug. Try wiggling the position slider, or posting the link into quicktime...


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## cc64 (Jun 8, 2011)

JohnG @ Wed Jun 08 said:


> Unfortunately I couldn't get the v2 to play here, but very much enjoyed hearing your composition. As usual.
> 
> Thanks for posting this, Rohan.



Happens to me a lot. What i do is i ctrl click on the link and press download. 

HTH mon ami Jean ; )

Claude


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## JohnG (Jun 8, 2011)

heard it now -- worked fine. Nutty computers.

Really interesting hearing your fine work, Rohan. Thanks again for sharing it.


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## SvK (Jun 8, 2011)

Rohan great stuff just great. 
So passionate.

Strings sound very natural and everything feels organic. Love the writing the mix everything. If there was any harshness, you've certainly tamed it nicely.

thanx for posting this.
Now where is my hankie?

best,
SvK


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## Dave Connor (Jun 10, 2011)

Loved it! Very nice sentiment and conveyance of it.


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## stevenson-again (Jun 13, 2011)

Thanks for the kind words guys. I have played around with it some more trying to work out the bumpiness and it turned out to be autoarranger....well not AA per se, but me not driving it properly.

The thing is with AA, it needs to work out whether 2 concurrent notes are a transition or a chord and there are controls to help it determine that in the GUI. I think the best way to work with AA is to use the cc30 for turning it on and off and only have it on for the bits where it is needed, allowing you to be less precise with your programming. Or I think that's how I am going to work with it. So the problem was what I thought were weird transitions was actually AA not being sure if I wanted a chord there or not.

So here is my final version with LS alone (ie no other sord libs), with nice transitions:

http://idisk.mac.com/rohan.stevenson/Public/webdemos/TheBallroomRemix3.mp3 (The Ballroom v3)

Incidentally another thing I have noticed is that these guys like slightly less ER reverb than does the regular library. I found trying to lift the air a bit but have a little more main reverb brings out the sord-ness (for want of a better word). I am really loving this library.


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