What string libraries for long ports/gliss?
- Thread starter davidnaroth
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peterharket
Music is life
LA Session Strings
EDIT: LA Scoring Strings
EDIT: LA Scoring Strings
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OP
OP
davidnaroth
Naroth Audio
From the Orchestral Tools LA Sessions?
peterharket
Music is life
Sorry, my bad it is LA Scoring Strings. It is abbreviated LASS on this forum, so I forget from time to time. It is absolutely gorgeous, and my favourite library of all time.
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Guy Rowland
Senior Member
I was looking around recently and in terms of chromatic glisses a full octave in either direction I think LASS is still the only game in town after all these years. VSL duality has a few specific intervals, other libraries have some that come under the category of effects, but they're even more limited.
I think there's a real gap in the market here. Even LASS's glisses aren't super-long on the max setting, and never mind the classic romantic style, a lot of contemporary scores use reeeeaaaaaally long glissses. There's really nothing to cover that.
A strange mentality seemed to set in some time ago that all port and glisses were gauche and nobody in real life used them. Utterly bizarre.
I think there's a real gap in the market here. Even LASS's glisses aren't super-long on the max setting, and never mind the classic romantic style, a lot of contemporary scores use reeeeaaaaaally long glissses. There's really nothing to cover that.
A strange mentality seemed to set in some time ago that all port and glisses were gauche and nobody in real life used them. Utterly bizarre.
8DIO and for the price it's okay...
peterharket
Music is life
8Dio will only lead to disappointment IMHO. Get LASS, and you will be a happy man.
Henu
Dismember
Just tested it, and unless there's a hidden setting somewhere in LASS I can't find, I think SCS's old legato performance is even longer than that. Afflatus strings FC has a rather juicy slide as well, but it's not a section. However, it doesn't sound like a "solo violin" due to the recording setup which is definitely a bonus.
I'm a big fan of portamento. A big fan. I'd be first in line for a string library of nothing but portamento. Various durations, customizable durations. It'd be awesome.
Maybe it's some sort of union arrangement on the part of live string players to make sure libraries can't replace them entirely. Want extra-long portamento? Hire a live string section.
Seems reasonable.
peterharket
Music is life
It is not legato, but the half step and whole step (both up and down) from Realitone's Sunset Strings are also breathtaking. And they are pretty long, as can be heard in the very beginning of the walkthrough.
Rudianos
Senior Member
I very much like VSL elite strings for portamento. Its not as though it is particularly long. Its just well programmed. Nice the way it works with the attacks releases and vibrato. I think one can change the sample speed for longer versions? LASS is nice in that you can adjust speed of transitions quite a bit.
If it's just for an occasion I think it can do the job, and it's not the same price as Lass.
clintowenellis
Member
I’m a massive fan of ports and gliss - it’s the best thing about string instruments and what makes them so unique.
I think LASS has it the best at this point. The First Chairs sound incredible as well.
I’m also always pleasantly surprised with SCS too. And to top it off they both blend together really well!
I think LASS has it the best at this point. The First Chairs sound incredible as well.
I’m also always pleasantly surprised with SCS too. And to top it off they both blend together really well!
Guy Rowland
Senior Member
I'm with a libary that's conceived to cover port and a range of glisses from the ground up. Commercially it would seem a pretty sound investement as there's nothing else like it - every new string library released is a variation on what has gone before, making each a tough sell. But you can imagine something new with demos ranging from 40s/50s right through to Mica Levi stuff and it having no real competitors, espcially for the latter. You'd need a range from none-to-Motle Vibrato mind, and that could be one goliath sampling session, so it would need to be a company with very deep pockets.
I'm 99.999% certain there's no union arragement on forbidding sampled glisses though!
jcrosby
Senior Member
Another vote for LASS...
There's 3 legato speeds, each triggered by different velocities (which you can customize). See below...
jcrosby
Senior Member
No, it's for the same reason why any type of 'legato' articulation can be hit or miss depending on the library. It requires recording transitions, then editing and scripting the patches in such a way where the transitions sound semi-passable. A library focused only on this would have to have a decent handful of transitions, and a lot of scripting. Both take time, which costs *a lot* of money.
But there are some more technical reasons (at least it seems so, from my crude understanding of how some of the current libraries work)... The transition portion won't always be from the same sample as the sustained portion; which means phase issues, obvious/fake sounding transitions, etc. The more transitions, the less often the samples 'belong' to one another.
Basically, (I'm assuming) this would mean that the only way to have transitions originate from the same sustain sample would be to have to key switch at the beginning of the sustained portion of every note, and a separate way to trigger transitions, (like velocity).
Even then you have some other obvious issues... The transition will never perfectly line up with the sustained portion of the note before the transition, because this would require specific note lengths; in which case you might as well just use phrases with time stretching, (which is hardly a desirable solution). The only way to have the sustained portion and transition be in phase is with a lookahead system that can crossfade the sustain 'body' with the sustain 'transition start', as well as the actual portamento transition; (which is how/why I'm assuming LASS has its lookahead feature, and why it has such a long delay).
This leads to an obvious question... If you had really long glisses that were (for example) 2-3 seconds, then wouldn't you need more than 2-3 seconds of lookahead? (Because the "pre-transition" needs its own lookahead buffer, not just the transition length).
How on earth would you be able to dynamically crossfade with something this complicated? I'm sure it's possible, but can you imagine how complicated it would be to develop something like this?
I'm assuming the reason this doesn't currently exist is because the issues above show that it's incredibly difficult to solve, and the only current ways known how to solve it would result in crazy long delays that are simply impossible to record a MIDI performance to... And, while working composers might be ok with having some template tracks dedicated for this kind of thing, (where you would ultimately need to record MIDI on a different instrument track, then move the MIDI); it wouldn't be a hit with people who already tend to complain about legato as in its bare form. The average person who doesn't understand the challenges going on under the hood would be likely to tear it apart...
TLDR; there are a number of reasons why I can see that no one's bothered trying to tackle this yet. Someone probably will, if they do it will probably be quite expensive...
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Guy Rowland
Senior Member
@jcrosby - I don't think it's quite that complicated. A gliss is a long port, and a port is (sorta) a long regular tansition. They all have to make those transitions from the end of one note, through the transition and then transitioning back to the next note. Obviously the decision to have it gliss (or what have you) is determined at the outset, then it's just a normal process of crossfading, so there's no need to have a very long decision-making delay. Indeed LASS demonstrates that it works well without it.
Ensembles here are massively easier than solo instruments - the general ensemble wash hides a multitude of audio sins. Also ambient libraries are MUCH harder than drier ones with the tails swishing around everywhere. Our fictitious library should be recorded in a relatively dry space a la LASS and HOOPUS. That's also right for both vintage and Mica Levi-type uses.
Ensembles here are massively easier than solo instruments - the general ensemble wash hides a multitude of audio sins. Also ambient libraries are MUCH harder than drier ones with the tails swishing around everywhere. Our fictitious library should be recorded in a relatively dry space a la LASS and HOOPUS. That's also right for both vintage and Mica Levi-type uses.
While I was rather joking about the idea of string players forbidding such a library, this has opened up some interesting discussion on the technicality of it.
Real-time MIDI input certainly could be a challenge. Ultimately you would have to define, when does your first note start, when does the port/gliss begin, when does the port/gliss land on the second note, and when does the second note end. (Ignoring for the moment glissing onward to a third note!)
I could see the input mechanism for this being more like constructing a fade-out, or a modulation change. Insert some points on the timeline and draw lines between them. The notes themselves could be played in real-time with some quick portamento / legato just to get the basic musical idea in place.
I would think that the transitions between "long notes" and port/gliss samples would not be any more unwieldy than what we already have with the shorter portamentos? The tougher part would be being flexible on the port/gliss segment itself, which I imagine would consist of samples of various lengths that could be time-stretched.
Real-time MIDI input certainly could be a challenge. Ultimately you would have to define, when does your first note start, when does the port/gliss begin, when does the port/gliss land on the second note, and when does the second note end. (Ignoring for the moment glissing onward to a third note!)
I could see the input mechanism for this being more like constructing a fade-out, or a modulation change. Insert some points on the timeline and draw lines between them. The notes themselves could be played in real-time with some quick portamento / legato just to get the basic musical idea in place.
I would think that the transitions between "long notes" and port/gliss samples would not be any more unwieldy than what we already have with the shorter portamentos? The tougher part would be being flexible on the port/gliss segment itself, which I imagine would consist of samples of various lengths that could be time-stretched.
Erik
Senior Member
Take a look here, it was discussed earlier:
Mancini style smooth glissando strings?
How do you mean? There are more transition controls than any other library I know of. If you were referring to making the glissando much slower though, I'd agree with that. But most libraries don't even have glissando or transition controls in the first place so MSS still has advantages. I...
vi-control.net
