How To Program Realistic Sounding Strings PART 1

hi my name is Christian Hansen and other than my work with Spitfire audio I also moonlight as a film TV and games composer I've been doing that for nearly 20 years and have written a whole bunch of orchestral scores but there is a catch I don't really understand music theory I can't read music very well and I didn't study it at college so anyway my first orchestral efforts happened when I was about 29 and I'd say I was cutting a lot of orchestral scores by my late 30s I'm now 44 and if I think about it I got my first synth which was a Casio cz 1000 when I was 14 so when writing for Strings here's a brief summary of what I've learned over the last thirty years so what is a string band or ensemble well the most famous set up I guess is a quartet we're seated left to right in front of you is the first violin the second violin which is exactly the same instrument by the way a viola and a cello for a string quintet add a bass and that's a full scream ensemble and any number of strings and the setup doesn't change whether it's five or fifty players just think of them as five voices known as sections who each play most of the time just one note at a time the highest notes are played by the first violins then down through second violins violas cellos and basses they can all play high and all of them can go fairly low but you kind of need to keep them in that pitch hierarchy observe this convention and your programming will take its first step to sounding truly realistic because that is what our ears are used to hearing so in this first module we're going to be writing and programming chamber strings quick translation symphonic big chamber small to be honest I find the word chamber a bit daunting this probably comes from the fact that if someone were to ask me to attend the chamber recital I'd usually make a polite excuse like I can't that night because I'm going to cover myself in vinegar and roll around in a bath of broken glass to me chamber music speaks of white wigs and harpsichords but the actual modern understanding of the word is just for a small to medium sized band of orchestral players not any particular style of music it could be three clarinets and the cello playing some American systems music or it could be a larger band of strings and woodwinds playing say Dario Marian Aires excellent Oscar winning score atonement written for and played originally by the London Chamber Orchestra for me it's any number of orchestral players up to about eight first violins anything bigger than that and I think you could call it a symphony sized ensemble a typical chamber strings on would usually be six five four four two or twenty one players a standard symphonic band would be 16 14 12 10 8 string sections tend to be top-heavy ie we get more violence than cellos usually so you can create a rich sound where the lower players already have that richness inherent in the instrument or range that it plays in just because we say small doesn't mean it sounds small it just relates the number of players you just have to work a little bit harder be a bit more creative dare I say it right better music to make it soar that's why I think the word chambers are slightly intellectual err with writing musical quartets probably earning you the most snob airmiles today I'm using an older library called sable which has now been superseded by spitfire chamber strings which are exactly the same samples but spit fire chamber strings is even easier to use this library I helped to conceptualize after writing dozens of low-budget films and TV I've worked out over about a decade what is the lowest number of strings that sound like a real string orchestra and can make nice sounds easily for me this's for firsts three seconds three violas three cellos and three bases it is agreed by most string players to that the most difficult number of strings to blend is two and I found that when you have two players they sound like two players three they sound like an actual section there's also something quite nice about this number being a bit unbalanced in the bottom end something quite cinematic about there being a really rich cello and bass offering strings sing like voices and historically string music harmony basically chords and the way they're arranged or voiced stems from choral arranging I believe a guy called Bach pretty much set out the stool for truly brilliant choral arranging but you don't need to study this provided you think of a string band set of five voices and not a synth e string patch you'll be halfway there a small chamber band is nimble and expressive you can't use size or scale to impress you have to use the Cully in a wholly more intelligent way it's not like standing at the foot of your lover's balcony screaming I love you it's about staying up to the early hours of the morning writing a finely crafted poem and it's not just about the quality of the paper and ink you've got to get the words right - so in a roundabout where you're gonna have to bear with me chamber arrangements just take that little bit longer I'm going to try and write a piece that encompasses all of these ideas from a sketch to something presentable as a strings idea when I say sketch I mean exactly that I always consider programming strings as akin to an oil painting where you start with either a charcoal outline or a quick color wash and you slowly apply each layer bringing the picture more and more into focus so other than a set of awesome samples what else do you need to make some realistic string programmed stuff well you need the computer to load them into and you need a DA wdo workstation I'm using logic you've seen me set up this demo in little clips so you first need to load in an instance of a sampler which for spitfyre is we use Native Instruments brilliant contact sampler this is their kind of the-- the engine of the plug-in if you wish we're spitfyre just makes content for a plug-in we're not we're not a software manufacturer if you will so we have to use a third party so we go track new tracks software instrument step back to the top swing it confused and then that instrument contact you only really need to do this once and then you can just duplicate tracks stereo so there's your rather daunting empty shell and with this saber or replaced by chamber strings library you just pull these in before we get to playing it I think it's important to also talk about the peripherals that you need you need a some fault controller a nice 88 note weighted keyboard is fantastic if you can get one of those and if your keyboard right mine that doesn't have any more than two faders then you'll need to get an essential piece of kit a some kind of fader controller the reason for this is there are several different ways of creating realistic dynamics and expression and two doesn't really cut it another warning is you can't really do this with knobs you often need to control more than one at the same time the way I've got this set up it's utter peace of youth is not a flash at all this is a piece of crap bérenger but I like the resistance and I like that it's real faders you do get iPad versions of this stuff but it's a I need to know where I am from 0 to 1 to 7 or 0 to 100% and so the way I've got it set up is expression which is kind of like volume but it isn't a volume if I I've actually got volume in on this one if you see if I push that you'll see that's actually controlling the master volume now this you should really use for little tweaks and mixes expression which you'll see moving up and down it's exactly the same thing as volume but you can it's volume within the volume so let's have a heart to show you a little example and if I turn the volume up so you're working you're changing volume within the volume so it's kind of like a trim really the second controller I use is modulation which would have been on the modulation wheel but again I need to wiggle more things at the same time so I've patched it to hear modulation often we're certainly with long's will modulate or crossfade between different recordings and usually between soft and loud performances so you'll hear there that's not just turning it up and down that actually that tomber or color is changing as I said before I've got volume which I used to mix and finally I use my fourth fader for vibrato which if you imagine it with a voice is that kind of wobble that all strings play with so these four controllers control your entire dynamic repertoire if you will the final piece of the puzzle is if we go back into the interface are the different articulations and I don't know the best way of describing this is it's almost different vowel sounds so this long is a normal and just up standard this is muted this is playing closer to the bridge this is plane over the region it's like this paint over the neck then we also have things like short plugs Pizza kata so what's great about this is it means you can actually switch between different articulations or vowels or shorts and Long's plucked and and muted on the same track you can do this by physically programming this this which is in or if you see these key switches down here you can actually use your keyboard to switch between them I'm a little bit old-school and what that means is I'm going to get rid of that is I've simply loaded a different articulation long it's a carto per channel you'll also see I've got some colored blue and some colored green and the blue ones refer to a an ensemble patch which basically means we've mixed the different sections if you recall me talking about the different voices so it's across the entire keyboard which for me you know when you're writing I like to use both hats and referring back to composing as an oil painting these are my color washes my sketching tools and then I go into the individual sections first violins seconds violas etc etc to provide a detail focus and these are often legato patches which are monophonic I you can only play one X time but they're the most articulate of articulations you'll get and what you need to do in order to make them work is actually make sure the notes join up so post it it's still effective for a different effect if you want them to feel really lyrical then you join them up so by using these different styles of articulations I'm going to demonstrate writing with two different methods the way I usually write is block chords or at least one hand mapping everything out like it was a keyboard part the other way which I find a lot more difficult because I'm not theoretically trained so it's very much in the moment and if I walk out the room to make a cup of tea I've forgotten about it is to physically work each voice each part up being aware of where each part is relative to the other I'm going to write a piece that uses one method the other method and also mixes them up as well so I'm going to start the first part using my favorite sound of all-time the spitfire chamber strings for our tango patch which is an italian word which basically means fleuti and it's where the players play very softly a little bit further away from the bridge and it produces a flute like tone this has a soft coral quality as I mentioned the trick with strings with writing is if it feels good with the choir then it'll sound excellent strings so this is a lovely mixture of the two almost there's also a fragility in the sound that matches how I always feel when starting to write a piece of music especially when I know I'm being watched doing it so here's the first bit of writing just with my right hand I'm going to remember that this is a small band so I'm going to limit the first pass to just three notes at a time you would have noticed I'm constantly moving my left fingers on my controller even if the part is fairly static when you see string players perform there's so much movement the bows the fingers not only playing the note but the vibrato and then they'll be moving side to side rocking back at backwards and forwards so always keep movement in there even if you want it to sound still imagine painting a portrait of small charge you want them to sit still and behave but you don't want them to stop breathing so as I've done here it sounds static but it sounds alive so just copy that over and I'm now going to transpose that down an octave just give it a bit of variety and next up bass okay sure about that last note so let's just have another go at that a lot more tender next up is cello which I'm going to actually try and put in between the base and the other strings I have to stand the moment so I have to go I'm happy with it just let's chop that up and then I'll move to the next bit because I forget what I've done otherwise and so let's just shift that up there and it's working it's bit so that's the first bit done let's move along to the next bit will actually speed it up a bit and often find if you use a curve it has a more natural sound but it's quite a considerable as seller and as they call it these colonies hitting the back of the hitting the strings at the back of the bow and for short articulations the volume is depending on how loud you physically hit the key duplicator that very soft muted shorts okay I wasn't actually recording so I'm gonna have another good at that excellent right can a quantized that ever slightly not too heavily loop those colonists always good to play everything in it gives it much more natural flavor actually they spit Scotty okay now I'm gonna do a lead line but in the cello and I'm going to use a legato just pick some quantize down for me here we go so that's that bit done couple of Corrections here you so I'm going to move on to the third bit and what I'm going to do is actually just transpose the basis down so I want to record the bases and cellos at the same time and I find this is easy for orchestrators if you actually write it at the pitch it's written so it plays up a pitch an octave lower than the pitch written and this is a very common orchestration technique over having the cellos and basses play an octave apart you lovely fatso really masking that one there's a few notes I've really don't like that song fits those ah God's here honey yeah they can do it ah last three notes were horrible in the second violin see these on preserving that time ever s hierarchy we depicted earlier so just correcting these harmonic points so the second violins are still underneath it still and leave the First's it's good to know speak time now I think let's take this up so this will open that will lap that note I just have a quick listen to that and they're on separate tracks very matter beyond both viola ponds nice when I duplicate the lagartos into the console dinner so let's start flushing this out a bit I'm going to take these flour Tango's and you copy them into the harmonics transpose the harmonics upper and octave so essentially they'll be playing an octave lower in real terms but again of the ethereal tone man can pull the expression information down submit the same slogan or two into the future tremor man low in the bass and cellos it's quote the theme nothing you this out with some more standard style articulations but I'm going to reprogram the automation so we can really give it a sense of shape over the entire bit of the piece so using the same notes but re-recording the automation you really starts to flesh out now in popular to the normals as well you you anything we can do in this next second part now under all some bartók bits you some more standard instruments Ally here new French bases take those down a bit chilly as well it's working on these harmonics just give it even more color chill fun so duplicating this up again just making as rich sounding blurring the lines a little bit using the most standard settings big ensemble stuff I'm just going to merge those two parts together and I'm just going to these the the in-between bit so the bits second violence and the violas just deleting their automation and now I'm just going to rerecord you yeah copy cup first violin so they're playing let's listen to that back and thanks very much for watching this with me and next time we'll be looking at some strings and going into maybe a little bit more detail of how I approach it you you you

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 197,775

Rating: 4.96453 out of 5

Keywords: strings, sampled strings, string programming, orchestral programming, spitfire audio, christian henson, virtual orchestration

Id: JBUrBtclD5Q

Length: 38min 1sec (2281 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/passionPunch]

Thanks for the post! For anyone looking for knowledge about orchestras and the more intricate things, someone had recently suggested this https://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/orchestration-the-string-section

Totally worth checking out the course description. Its a lot more than I thought it would be.

[u/KeyboardKonan]

I LOVE YOU

This is the most amazing tutorial I've ever seen in my life. Bravo - thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have most of the hardware he has! Even the dinky crappy behringer! lol (I knew it'd come in handy one day!)

[u/darien_gap]

Thanks, this might be life changing. I've been chipping away at learning a DAW gradually with online tutorials but really didn't have any approach in mind for what I really want to learn, which is how to produce orchestral/film score-sounding music.

Off to go buy the shitty Behringer, only $300!

[u/Footstompingsmoker]

OP here, if y'all are hungry for tutorials, I made a few for my channel which, like this one, might be up your alleys. Unfortunately I do not have a British accent.

How to compose a film music cue: https://youtu.be/MOtsfnRjHG4

[u/Heyrook]

What's the software he's getting the strings from called?

[u/[deleted]]

A great find.

Thanks to the author!

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome, just what I've been looking for!

[u/Footstompingsmoker]

Wow, some very angry person is going around down voting everything in this thread. What gives?

[u/Remy_C]

This… Is the best 40 minutes I've spent in a long time. I'm not even on the computer watching this, and it's already amazing. I'm using Reaper with native instruments using a Casio LK 50 as a midi keyboard. I unfortunately do not have access to faders like he suggests, but this was still a fantastic tutorial for layering. Now I just need to get better about automation apparently. Thank you very much for posting this video.