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Ólafur Arnalds Stratus — Available To Pre-order

To our son

01 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Rhythmic Attacks
02 - Spitfire Audio - British Drama Toolkit - Ensemble - Woodwind Ens Long
03 - Spitfire Audio - Woodwind Evolutions - A simple Start
04 - Sonuscore - The Orchestra Complete - Grand Piano Lib Open - Grand Piano Lib Closed - Viola Staccato - Double Bass Pizzicato

 
Been working a lot with Stratus the last couple of weeks.
This track is kind of a hybrid of a few things. I've taken the Stratus center piano and also run it through granular synthesis for some different elements with my Morphagene. There's some straight Stratus "real world shimmer" piano. A lot of Albion Neo strings, some LCO Textures but also run through morphagenes and tweaked a lot. Still probably more work to do here.

 
Last day for the Introduction Offer price. How are people enjoying it? My finger is hovering over the Buy button! Decisions, decisions :)
 
I don't have it, so take it lightly, but it sounds like a gimmick...
Yes, it is automated, but I could just do that with LABS soft piano, and play different octaves randomly
 
Hey, as I've said in my last post I think it's a great library which gives me instant inspiration and fits very well into my workflow, it creates rhythm, texture, ideas for new melodies...
I'm using it for games at the moment, fitting it into both a very subtle minimalist systems music genre, and a gun action game which needs tense synth layers.
I don't think it's a must-buy for everybody, but if you think it can fit your workflow it's a great library!

I also can't wait to buy libraries with as much depth as this one from everyone who says they can replicate it easily!
 
Sorry, if my opinion sounded rude...
I mean, if it suits you go for it, but for me, I didn't think it was that useful...
But as I said, if you like it then buy it.
 
yiph2 said:
Sorry, if my opinion sounded rude...
I mean, if it suits you go for it, but for me, I didn't think it was that useful...
But as I said, if you like it then buy it.
Click to expand...

It was a light-hearted answer to your post, don't worry!
You're not the first one to say something along those lines of "it's kind of easy to replicate", which I find to be amusing — yes, pretty much everybody is aware of pitch delays and random triggers within a controlled range, I'm myself a big fan of randomly generated effect chains generating sounds, but I don't think that this library is just "that".

I also would be genuinely interested in other personal takes on this kind of library, if they really delivered one as well-made as Stratus!
 
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Brasart said:
You're not the first one to say something along those lines of "it's kind of easy to replicate", which I find to be amusing — yes, pretty much everybody is aware of pitch delays and random triggers within a controlled range, I'm myself a big fan of big randomly generated effect chains generating sounds, but I don't think that this library is just "that".
Click to expand...

I had a go at trying to replicate the effect by layering 4 instances of the Olafur piano.

Some really fun and beautiful stuff came out of the experiment. But nothing remotely like stratus.
 
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I don't think Stratus can be easily replicated with other libraries, but I am also not sure what will be its strength. I am tempted by the sound, but fear that its usefulness will be limited for me.
 
That was literally the first patch I tried (technically, i copied the first matrix from Homay’s video), and the noodle just fell out. I was trying to treat it like a companion to Orchestral Swarm, more pointalistic orchestral than ambient, but otherwise just a freeform noodle.

The tricky bit is figuring out how to get melodies to interact with all the polyrhythms. It’s one thing to noodle a little melody on top of the stratus layer, but much harder to then work with it, and try To get stratus to accommodated a melody. But a lot of fun to work with.

I think the effect is a kind of pointalistic lyricism, which i really like.
 
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ism said:
The tricky bit is figuring out how to get melodies to interact with all the polyrhythms. It’s one thing to noodle a little melody on top of the stratus layer, but much harder to then work with it, and try To get stratus to accommodated a melody. But a lot of fun to work with.
Click to expand...

I agree that the hardest part is finding the right balance of polyrhythms.
IMO the patterns documentation is weak and the 01a waves has the patterns documented incorrectly (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 are reversed). You can get an indication of each pattern but I would've preferred a notation of the exact rhythm and notes played against the root (8va basso, 8va, 8va x 2).
That's the difference between the OA Stratus plugin and the most used OA patterns we have at our disposal.
 
I'm loving Stratus so far. The synth sounds are incredible (though I wish they were more tweakable). I will say that after using it I want to try and recreate the synths in something like Diva. The piano is nice, almost like a piano swarm. The warps are nice, I combed through the whole list and saved some of my favorites. Here's a track I recently did using Stratus in context. I knew the actual piano from Stratus was going to be super quiet so I've defaulted to the old reliable free soft piano for some of my leads. I think that with a lot of other Spitfire products that are niche this library inspires you to write a certain way but can't go much further beyond that. I'm happy I picked it up
 
01 - Spitfire Audio - Lea Bertucci - Tenor Trombone - Decay Swell
02 - Spitfire Audio - Labs - Amplified Cello Quartet - Tension
03 - Spitfire Audio - Oliver Patrice Weder - Pads glacier
04 - Spitfire Audio - Symphonic Strings Evolutions
05 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions - Chamber Grid
06 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Rhythmic Waves - Preset 1
07 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Rhythmic Waves - Preset 2
08 - Sonuscore - The Orchestra Complete - Violin 1 Staccato - Violin 2 - Staccato - Viola - Staccato - Cello - Staccato - Double Bass - Staccato
09 - Native Instruments - Noire Pure - Pure Felt

 
01 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Rhythmic Waves
02 - Spitfire Audio - Lea Bertucci - Acoustic Shadows - Trumpet - Decay Swell
03 - Spitfire Audio - Lea Bertucci - Acoustic Shadows - Timpani Crescendo
04 - Spitfire Audio - Lea Bertucci - Acoustic Shadows - Cymbal Roll
05 - Spitfire Audio - Aperture Strings - Refractions - Tremolo
06 - UVI - FALCON - Attack EP88 - Space Roadelay
07 - Soundiron - Voice of Wind - Adey - Sustain vowel - Oo p
08 - Sonuscore - The Orchestra Complete - Flute Sustain - Violin 2 - Staccato - Viola - Staccato - Double Bass Staccato - Horn Sustain

===> Other There
 
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Brasart said:
Hey, as I've said in my last post I think it's a great library which gives me instant inspiration and fits very well into my workflow, it creates rhythm, texture, ideas for new melodies...
I'm using it for games at the moment, fitting it into both a very subtle minimalist systems music genre, and a gun action game which needs tense synth layers.
I don't think it's a must-buy for everybody, but if you think it can fit your workflow it's a great library!

I also can't wait to buy libraries with as much depth as this one from everyone who says they can replicate it easily!
Click to expand...

Bonjour Paris!

Thanks for this ^. When you say "workflow," could I bother you to develop your thoughts further?

Do you have some of that music online? I'd like to hear it in context too.

Thanks! :)

Andre
 
01 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Looped Rhythms
02 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Synth - Looped Rhythms
03 - Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Amends
04 - Spitfire Audio - Phobos - Fat Symphony
05 - Strezov Sampling - Balkan Ethnic Orchestra - Macedonian Kemane
06 - Strezov Sampling - Balkan Ethnic Orchestra - Gypsy Flugelhorn
07 - Native Instruments - Rise & Hits - Vowel Rider
08 - Slate + Ash - Cycles - Machines
09 - Slate + Ash - Cycles - Movements
10 - Uvi Falcon - Attack EP88 - Magic Stereo Soft
11 - Uvi Falcon - Drum Designer
12 - Uvi Falcon - Devinity
13 - Addict - Hexeract
14 - Fracture Sounds - Woodchester Piano
15 - Heavyocity - Mosaic Keys


 
creativeforge said:
Bonjour Paris!

Thanks for this ^. When you say "workflow," could I bother you to develop your thoughts further?

Do you have some of that music online? I'd like to hear it in context too.

Thanks! :)

Andre
Click to expand...

Hello !

There isn't much more to it; it fits into how I think about making music, and how I go about doing it.
One reason why it works well for me is because it's very instantaneous, you just fire it up and you don't need to spend time setting things up, going through patches... etc

Another thing it seems to do well is taking up small spaces; in a track where I feel there's this small space which could have a tiny bit of movement going underneath, but not quite sure what would fit in, sometimes it fills it up nicely in a way I don't think I would have thought of on my own.

I'm not allowed to share those tracks, but I did post my first try using Stratus on page 8 if you want to listen to it !
 
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