Ólafur Arnalds Stratus — Available To Pre-order

[creativeforge]

So I just got Stratus and started playing with it, love it !

I've tried fitting it into a pre-existing cue I'm working on for a game, which is composed as part of a systemic modular setup within Ableton itself.
I'm not completely satisfied with how it sounds yet, it still sounds pretty busy and obviously wasn't originally made with Stratus in mind.
I'll be working on this track in the coming days, but I thought it was still in a nice enough place to share it here.

But it's fantastic how instantly inspiring it is, you can play with it for hours, and while listening back it brings ideas for new melodies, themes, motifs... It's perfect for what I'll be doing this year!



Track is composed of:
1 Monark bass
6 Wavetable (synth from Live) pads & short plucks randomly controlled by LFOs
2 OA Stratus Synth instances
1 OA Stratus Piano instance
Various vst piano parts played by hand

Wow, nice, rich, evocative (I say that a lot )

What did you start with, Stratus?

 

[Brasart]

Wow, nice, rich, evocative (I say that a lot )

What did you start with, Stratus?

Thanks!

No, as I said in that post I was trying to make Stratus work into a cue that I already wrote, so the whole track was basically written before I tried using Stratus with it — but Stratus is at the front of the mix here in that soundcloud excerpt, and it starts with Stratus only

 

[ism]

Geoff has a great new video on Stratus

He has a particularly nice phrase, describing it as sort of like the swarms, but a lot more playable, "easier to get your voice in there".

A very nice companion to Homay's video. And a lovely composition.

 

[idematoa]

01 - Spitfire Audio - Hanz Zimmer Strings - 60 Cellos - All in One - Col Legno Tratto
02 - Spitfire Audio - Olafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Rhythmic Waves
03 - Spitfire Audio - Acoustic Shadows - Lea Bertucci - Trumpet Pitch Bend
04 - Spitfire Audio - Alev Lenz - Don't Sit Down
05 - UVI - FALCON - VOKLM - Cookle Cutter
06 - Sonuscore - The Orchestra Complete - Morin Kh High Sustain Nonvib - Violin 1 - Harmonics Tremolo - Choir Female - Sustain OH - Cello - Harmonics Sustain - Grand Piano Lid Closed

===> Rouge

 

[idematoa]

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...

vi-control.net

I finalized this track and published on SC ...

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
09 - Spitfire Audio - Olafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Looped Rhythms
10 - Spitfire Audio - Lea Bertucci - Acoustic Shadows - Tenor Trombone - Decay Swell
11 - Spitfire Audio - Symphonic Organ* - Full organ and 1 Others
12 - Spitfire Audio - Woodwind Evolutions - A simple Start
13 - Spitfire Audio - Spitfire Solo Strings - Violin [1st Desk] - Legato (findered) with Eventide - Blackhole Reverb - Nebula
14 - Spitfire Audio - Fragile String Evolutions
15 - Heavyocity - Intimate Textures - Texture Designer - Org Celli Combo 02
16 - Audio Imperia - Nucleus - Solo Oboe Legato
17 - Spitfire Audio - Tundra Atmos - Atmos

* : Rugby School Chapel Organ

 

[Dr.Quest]

Really lovely!

 

[idematoa]

Composé, réalisé par Jacques Lemaire, mai 2020 via Studio One

- Galaxy Instruments - Noire Felt - Basic Felt
- Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Looped Rhythms
- Spitfire Audio - Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions - Chamber Grid
- Spitfire Audio - Woodwind Evolutions - Woodwind Swamp
- Arturia - Pigments - Voyage
- Sonuscore - Elysion - Mars of Iron and Stone
- Spitfire Audio - Hanz Zimmer Strings - 60 Cellos - All in One - Col Legno Tratto
- Spitfire Audio - Olafur Arnalds Stratus - Matrix - Rhythmic Waves
- Spitfire Audio - Acoustic Shadows - Lea Bertucci - Trumpet Pitch Bend
- Spitfire Audio - Alev Lenz - Don't Sit Down
- UVI - Falcon - VOKLM - Cookle Cutter
- Sonuscore - The Orchestra Complete - Morin Kh High Sustain Nonvib - Violin 1 - Harmonics Tremolo - Choir Female - Sustain OH - Cello - Harmonics Sustain - Grand Piano Lid Closed
- UVI - Falcon - Beatbox Anthology 2 - AceT 1

 

[Brasart]

Stratus has just been updated (update is ~6go)

"1.1 (Nov 2020)
Various bug fixes
New Synth samples and patches
- 08 Synth Matrix - Looped Rhythms 2
- 09 Synth Matrix - Looped Rhythms 3
- 10 Synth Matrix - Looped Rhythms 4
- 11 Synth Matrix - Waves
- 12 Synth Matrix - Swarms 2
- 13 Synth Matrix - Swarms 3
- 14 Synth Matrix - Swarms 4
- 15 Synth Matrix - Swarms 5
- 16 Synth Matrix - Swarms 6"

 

[boinzy]

Any tips on how to get the most from these patches?

I've been playing with Stratus for a couple days and I feel like I can't quite get control of it. It's too unpredictable. I feel like less is more with Stratus, but even still...

Thanks.

 

[ism]

Any tips on how to get the most from these patches?

I've been playing with Stratus for a couple days and I feel like I can't quite get control of it. It's too unpredictable. I feel like less is more with Stratus, but even still...

Thanks.

I like to think of the musicality of Stratus in a metaphor of phase transitions. Like the way that at a certain point, all the atoms of your water suddenly stop sloshing wetly around and collectively freeze into ice. Or bouncing around as steam, depending on which phase boundary you're approaching . (*)

So:

Play a single note, and Stratus is like a delay effect.

Play a couple of notes and you have a rhythm.

Play a bunch of notes and you have polyrhythms.

Play a busy-but-not-too-busy sequence of notes and you move beyond discernible polyrhythms into a form of pointillism. Which can still be quite beautiful and intentional, but operates on a different level of structure, more like some of the articulations you find in the pointillism of Orchestral swarm.



Play too many notes any you have something that more like granular synthesis. Or, through a more classical lens, something ceases to even be pointalistic and just becomes merely chaotic (personally I avoid this "granular phase" at all costs. But I imagine that it might sound pretty good with the synth patches, perhaps a kind of "hyper organic granular synthesis". (Though I've never even opened the synth patches, so ymmv)

Obviously, the nature of each of the phases is inflected but the phrasing captured in the dynamics of the different families of patches. So this is another dimension of structure that plays into which phase you're in.


Crafting compositions in Stratus to me involves understanding, and controlling, which "phase of musicality" you're in. And in particular, I think that controlling the tension via feeling out the edges of the boundaries is crucial the musicality of Stratus - for instance, teetering on the edge of the pointalistic and then either falling fully into an embrace of pointalist, or alternately resolving back into the more highly structure of rhythmic phase. Meaning that you can convey tension or resolution, contrast and, in general, musical meaning.


But of course it's also fun to just try something random and plonk away and see what happens.



(*) As a medium with phase transitions, water is arguably a bit simplistic for this metaphor. A better one might be certain types of bilayer crystals the can exhibit of bunch of different phases of superconducting states depending on how the various forces of the crystal are balanced or imbalaced.

Where the phase transition metaphor does holds up quite rigorously however, is in how the entropy - that is the measure of order/disorder - determines respectively what phase or matter or musicality that you happen to be in at a given moment.

 

[boinzy]

I like to think of the musicality of Stratus in a metaphor of phase transitions. Like the way that at a certain point, all the atoms of your water suddenly stop sloshing wetly around and collectively freeze into ice. Or bouncing around as steam, depending on which phase boundary you're approaching . (*)

So:

Play a single note, and Stratus is like a delay effect.

Play a couple of notes and you have a rhythm.

Play a bunch of notes and you have polyrhythms.

Thank you @ism I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I am going to give it another go with this perspective.