Hi, I'm working on my first Orchestral EDM track, trying to get string sound similar to the one used in this track starting at 00:45


I tried all Kontakt libraries I had, but couldn't get rich and crispy sound like this. Is this obtained using any sample libraries ? or a live recorded sound ? Is there any kontakt library or vst which gives similar result ?

 

Unfortunately, having all the sounds libraries in the world doesn't help you make good songs. Indeed, perhaps it is better to have few and use the right ones at best.
It is necessary to work a lot with the piece, from the composition writing, to mixing and mastering. Using consciously your avaiable tools, based on your musical taste, your ear and your production experience. Over time, you will achieve the desired results.

 

You could try using the library that you find to be the most similar and from there try using audio effects to closer achieve the sound your looking for. I'm not sure what DAW you're using, but I use Ableton, and some effects that come to mind to try and experiment with are Amp and Pedal. You could also try Saturation, Distortion, Filtering, or Boosting EQ around 1k? (Just a guess from what it sounds like to me).

 

I actually dont find these staccato strings that "special". Pretty any high quality string/orchestra library can do that out of the box without any effects, just look for the staccato sections.
Just layer 1 instance of cello and violins, keep it dry with not too much reverb and add some compression to make it sound more "in your face".
Then you wanna make sure it doesnt sound too mono, not sure if a mono to stereo plugin is that necessary, the good old "duplicate the track and let it be delayed my 30-40 ms" or so does the trick as well, ofc pan the one left, the other right.

Native Instruments Session Strings 2 is amazing for this kind of music because these strings were made for Pop or pretty any electronic genre, since their base sound is very dry and super fast attack. They also sound amazing and come with a lot of very useful features, if you can't recreate these strings in the posted track with this library, then it must be alienware. You should check it out, especially if you wanna go for cinematic EDM or similar (thats kind of my genre as well) I guess you know where.

And ofc, some saturation or exciter of your trust should make the sound even more rich and crisp, just dont overdo it :D

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2020

Sadly OBS didn't capture the sound properly, in the Zip is the Wave how it should sound

 

go to YouTube and search for Violin articulations and expressions. Study the way bowed Instruments work and sound in real life.
Its way more complicated than any EDM synth bullshit. Thats why most of the EPIC compositions sound like EDM today.
NO one listens to the masters like Stravinsky, Holst (planets), Rimsky Korsakov, Mahler and so on.
Classical Music is an Art, not only something like "i know how the sound is made". We have maybe 100 mio people playing violins , why dont we have 100 mio composers? Because its the most complicated thing + u need ideas and be creative+ a lot of skills in Theory.
to your question the accented violin bow strikes are Spiccato

just found this one too, very good sound!

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2020

I wouldnt say more complicated or anything, its just a lot of automation in a very natural way to express the instrument with virtual instruments, but for the EDM type of music, the basics should be enough.

It takes a lot of understandment and "feeling" that you create once you throw yourself into that universe of cinematic music and try a thousand times to create these sounds. There is a learning curve but I think something similar applies to EDM...if you do it from scratch, rather than just throwing in some loops and dry Serum presets if u know what I mean.

But the entire "soundtrack" workflow is something you dont even wanna have to create such cinematic accents in EDM/POP/Drum&Bass etc. productions, keep it simple :D

Just checked the Native Instruments Sessions Strings Pro 2 library to compare and as Ive said, out of the box, sounds like the stuff you hear in the posted track, adding some smooth exciter or saturation and you can't be anything but satisfied.

 

I agree with what you said; in fact, I only have few libraries, I try to get most out of them, in this case I couldn't achieve desired result that's why I decided to post it here

 

Thanks for suggesting Session Strings 2, I'll check it out. BTW, I tried spiccato patches from Albion 1, LASS, CineStrings with minimal processing, results didn't suite my track, so decided to reference few tracks that I listened in the past; strings in the mentioned track struck me as go-to sound, tried getting similar result, but I couldn't. Would've spent more time doing processing but wanted to get someone's opinion, also felt that I could find a better library for this

 

Thanks for the demonstration, that's very kind of you. Action Strings sounds really great, will check this out as well