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Faster String Runs Library to complement CSS

jimjazzuk

Active Member
Hi everyone,

My first sample library was Cinematic Studio Strings, and I adore it! However, I've always struggled to get any faster string runs out of it and make it sound realistic. Do you have any recommendations for libraries that would work well with CSS and allow more agile, faster, realistic string passages to be played?

(an example might be the opening to the Harry Potter theme, with all of those really fast string runs)

Thanks,

J
 
CineStrings Runs is great if you want recorded phrases of runs. If you want to construct your runs then there are a few options, though costly.

Personally, I feel the single best playable runs patches out there are the Runs Legato patches in Spitfire's Chamber Strings. They have those patches in Symphonic Strings but I don't think they sound quite a realistic. The large section size sort of gives them away. Chamber Strings is a great library to own and compliment CSS if you have the money for it.

The other options, which is rather dated now, is Orchestral String Runs by Orchestral Tools. They have both playable runs patches and a Runs builder where you can construct little fast phrases into Runs/patterns. This was THE library when it came out for this type of stuff and still holds up in some ways. However, I believe OT has abandoned support for it.

I've tried the fast legato options in other libraries and haven't found anything that comes close to the realism and clarity in Chamber Strings. I know my opinion is subjective but that's just my experience.

Best,

C
 
Thanks guys,

I should have been more specific - I want to be able to have full control over the 'runs', and by that I really mean 'faster lines', i.e. NOT just scale runs.
 
I don't know how great some customized patches turned out according to the opinions of others (especially those with discerning ears at VI-C), but I tweaked and tweaked LASS to get something that was relatively good to me. I read another forum user mention doing this and I tried my hand at it since he couldn't share the patches.

Depending how comfortable you are messing around with sips/wips in Kontakt (just the existing scripts, I didn't make anything new), this approach could be viable with other libraries. All of the string runs here are LASS. Listen from about 0:11-to about 0:22.

 
It's such a bloody shame they ditched 'live mode' etc for CSS! Runs in CS2 were fantastic. Adding decent runs and more vibrato layers would've made it the ultimate bread-and-butter string library. I'm on a tight budget so as much as I love the sound of CSS, I couldn't justify it with those things omitted.

The best I've used are the playable runs patches in Hollywood Strings, to be honest. Not heard much love for them, weirdly, but it can pull off some really convincing runs. Plus it's dirt cheap (I paid £80 for Hollywood Strings Gold during the last sale). It's a fairly dry mic position with Gold, would blend ok with CSS I think.


Here's a very rough version of the string runs torture test, I just did this as a quick play after getting HS:



One of my own pieces, a bit generic but my first attempt at writing runs! All Hollywood Orchestra:


Lots of little 'flourish' runs in the Star Trek theme! Could get this sounding more realistic with a bit more work, I think:
 
It's such a bloody shame they ditched 'live mode' etc for CSS! Runs in CS2 were fantastic. Adding decent runs and more vibrato layers would've made it the ultimate bread-and-butter string library. I'm on a tight budget so as much as I love the sound of CSS, I couldn't justify it with those things omitted.

The best I've used are the playable runs patches in Hollywood Strings, to be honest. Not heard much love for them, weirdly, but it can pull off some really convincing runs. Plus it's dirt cheap (I paid £80 for Hollywood Strings Gold during the last sale). It's a fairly dry mic position with Gold, would blend ok with CSS I think.


Here's a very rough version of the string runs torture test, I just did this as a quick play after getting HS:



One of my own pieces, a bit generic but my first attempt at writing runs! All Hollywood Orchestra:


Lots of little 'flourish' runs in the Star Trek theme! Could get this sounding more realistic with a bit more work, I think:

Love that Jerry!
 
Hi everyone,

My first sample library was Cinematic Studio Strings, and I adore it! However, I've always struggled to get any faster string runs out of it and make it sound realistic. Do you have any recommendations for libraries that would work well with CSS and allow more agile, faster, realistic string passages to be played?

(an example might be the opening to the Harry Potter theme, with all of those really fast string runs)

Thanks,

J
Berlin strings.
 
The runs in CS2 are realized by layering half note trills on top of short notes. The shorts are for the grip and the trills for the blur. That's easy to rebuild in CSS too. You can also layer fast legatos and dequantize and detune them. More or less handmade humanization. Works with any string library with fast legatos.
 
Hi everyone,

My first sample library was Cinematic Studio Strings, and I adore it! However, I've always struggled to get any faster string runs out of it and make it sound realistic. Do you have any recommendations for libraries that would work well with CSS and allow more agile, faster, realistic string passages to be played?

(an example might be the opening to the Harry Potter theme, with all of those really fast string runs)

Thanks,

J

Depends on the runs and all in between depending on tempo and notation..I use to approximate a few of them with 3 different types of settings:

1. Articulated runs
2. Blurred / Smeared runs
3. Almost gliss like

1. In that case bowing each note means you have to hear those articulations quite good. (Good examples are the da coda section in Tschaikowskys Romeo and Juliet). Berlin Strings timemaschine shorts with scripted legato + layering blurred shorts can pull of quite convincingly those things.
2. These are less articulated and have more like a feel of smearing and blurred sound, they are also less perfect in tuning, so detuning scripts can help. Libraries like Berlin Strings have blurred staccato and spiccato which comes handy, but also Hollywood Strings with their runs patch are quite useful.
3. These ones are similiar to 2, but even less in articulation or the least, so there you have a sense of fast flowing connecting lines which I do by layering a fast legato patch with loose blurred staccatos quitly layered under those. Sometimes I use a glissando patch for creating more of that smearing effect.

In general it can help to customize attack and release times of the samples as this helps to avoid an undefinted sauce of samples clouding all the definition, also detuning is essential to all of them.

Other than that..there are also pre-reorded run libraries like mentioned before which can sound good in very specific situations but they are limited in customization so for the most time I don´t use any of them. Sometimes when I have lets a V7 - I cadence where I just want a major / minor run into the next bar those runs can sound good.
 
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