We all know you can score a movie or compose a symphony from the comfort of your DAW, but what can orchestral sample libraries do for other genres of music?
Orchestral sample libraries, as has been amply demonstrated in this March 2022 issue, have reached a state of high sophistication, fuelled by the potency of modern‑day computers and oceans of hard‑drive space.
But that image of the Zimmer‑esque modern composer living the music‑for‑picture dream, with a backdrop of the huge mixing desk and a machine room full of high‑spec PCs running every library going... well, it’s probably not one that most of us can relate to personally. And if your interest is in songwriting, dance music, or pop/rock‑oriented recording and production, why should it be?
In these and other fields orchestral sounds can often be a really valuable addition: they can lend a sense of authority, grandeur and timelessness. And a little can go a long way, which allows for potentially faster, leaner and less financially demanding ways of working. Then there are those orchestral‑related libraries that can in themselves kick‑start creativity, or more naturally cross over into electronic and experimental genres.
So here’s a quick round‑up of alternative approaches, techniques and products that can get you in on the action without needing the orchestration chops of a Rimsky‑Korsakov or a Hollywood budget.
Orchestral sounds can often be a really valuable addition: they can lend a sense of authority, grandeur and timelessness.
Flavour Enhancer
Getting straight to the point, even single orchestral lines or isolated chords can add so much to productions that might otherwise be built on more conventional pop/rock principles. And it’s often strings that do the bulk of the work.
Notable songs that use (largely) just a single line from a small violin section — or possibly a line played in octaves — include Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Happening Brother’, Chic’s ‘Le Freak’, and Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song’. Actually, all these have sustained block chord sections too, not unlike typical synth pads. A single line can be played in multiple octaves extending down through midrange violas and into cellos and basses: check out Led Zeppelin’s ‘Friends’ or the closing stages of ‘Kashmir’. And let’s not forget ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears: it’s brilliantly effective in combining what is a tiny amount of string material — just a low and high riff, and one short surging pair of chords.
Then there are those tracks that have more ambitious and ‘worked’ arrangements of a whole string section, perhaps with lines for the typical string section make‑up of first and second violins, violas, cellos and basses which move separately from each other. A really effective (and in fact not especially complex) example is the Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, which combines just a few separate ideas. More ambitious is Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ or Björk’s ‘Isobel’. For gold standard section writing check out lots by ELO (‘The Diary Of Horace Wimp’, ‘Sweet Talkin’ Woman’, ‘Turn To Stone’), ‘Lonesome Tears’ by Beck or Radiohead’s ‘Burn The Witch’.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to keep dredging up gems from my most visited playlists... The wider point here is to illustrate the diverse range of string writing we see in pro‑level production, from little more than pads to full‑on theory‑driven contrapuntal textures. And also to consider the different playing techniques encountered. For strings these range from soft‑edged sustains to more attacked held notes (often called ‘marcato’), short driving strokes (staccato, spiccato), and special effects (muted ‘con sordino’, ghostly ‘sul tasto’, and ‘col legno’ that uses the wood of the bow, rather than the hair, on the string). For wind‑blown instruments we might expect to hear a similar range of note lengths, as well as attack variations associated with different kinds of tonguing, and their own specialist techniques. All melody instruments are capable of playing lines that are detached, smoothly connected (legato), or perhaps with a subtle pitch swoop (portamento).
If the only string and orchestral sounds you have are those bundled in a DAW (or in a workstation keyboard or module) you might not have access all of these techniques. Or at least, not without going between a few different patches or presets. But no problem — you can potentially still do a lot and get good results. And if you do have some more sophisticated tools, well, more of that in a minute.
Logic’s Studio Strings is one of the best DAW‑bundled orchestral sound sources out there. Some of its short‑notes articulations (playing techniques) work superbly well with dynamics controlled by key velocity, but for expressive, sustaining lines use the Dynamics via CC option to get your mod wheel in on the action. Actually, via the instrument’s extended parameters you can bring other controls into play too.
Single Expresso
A first step towards dynamic, real‑sounding orchestral parts is to inject some expression. Keyboard velocity is a great driver for short‑note playing styles (including string pizzicato), and many orchestral sound sources will often include multiple sample layers with different brightness and attack speed that trigger according to how hard you play. Harness those changes in timbre to spice up repeated, driving chord patterns or single line ostinatos.
Longer, sustained notes, often used in arching phrases, are less suited to being controlled by velocity, because you often don’t want them to trigger at one volume and just sit there, but instead to bloom and die back over time. That’s a much more believable, human sounding effect.
And yet, control by velocity of long notes is what many sample players default to. So if you can, see if you can override this, and instead look to control volume using MIDI Continuous Controller messages (or on workstation synths, dedicated controls). In software you’ll sometimes get a toggle, allowing velocity‑driven volume to be replaced with control by the mod wheel, for example. Even when you don’t, try sending CC7 (channel volume) messages or CC11 (expression, quite often generated by default from expression pedal inputs) if your MIDI controller will allow it. Some experimentation may be required, and you may need (shudder) to read a manual for your controller or sound source, but both CCs have the potential to vary the volume or intensity of held notes, for many virtual instruments.
Next up, consider how some string lines use combinations of playing techniques: perhaps several bars of long notes, interspersed with more agile marcato or short strokes. ‘Toxic’, which I mentioned before, is a classic example of several of these varying techniques following in close succession: short, fast speaking detached strokes down low (though still with some groups of notes connected), and then a legato line with lots of portamento up high.
One of the main reasons to use more sophisticated, dedicated orchestral sound libraries is to have access to single patches or presets that have these multiple ‘articulations’ (as they are most often called) all in one place. It’s still largely the domain of paid third‑party options, though the very best bundled DAW instruments include them as well. Having access to so much variety is not only more convenient, but you can also switch articulations on the fly, with dedicated MIDI key presses commonly known as ‘keyswitches’. In a few cases, with really tight software integration, you might see articulations referred to by name in DAW MIDI tracks as well.
For Logic instruments that offer MIDI keyswitches, these can be viewed and configured in the Smart Controls pane. Most third‑party libraries utilise their own system, incorporating on‑screen prompts within the plug‑in’s graphic interface.
Adding to this, good libraries will have multiple layers representing varying dynamics and intensity within each articulation, and CC‑ or velocity‑driven schemes in place to explore those.
The icing on the cake is often ‘scripted’ playback features, which some libraries specialise in. A fairly common scripting example is the ‘round robin’, a system which ensures that you don’t keep hearing the same sample when you play repeated notes, but instead a more natural sounding alternation from a pool of similar samples. Another is the triggering of samples between notes, for very smooth and perhaps pronounced swoopy transitions, when playing single‑line (and sometimes polyphonic) parts in a legato fashion.
Broad Strokes
Several libraries by British developer Spitfire Audio are based around section‑scale patches, including their more recent Abbey Road One.If you’re ready to start using specialist orchestral libraries, first consider what type might suit your musical objectives and way of working: there’s a huge range of style and method. A really convenient type is the whole‑section library. This might offer you patches with an entire string section mapped out across the keyboard, say, or several useful pre‑combined woodwind and brass combinations. Even when you play single notes you’ll be getting a euphonic blend of timbres, and for wide‑spaced two‑handed chords you’ll be triggering instruments that are appropriate for each note’s pitch.
By the way, it’s far from a given that all orchestral libraries offer this way of working: in fact the more you pay the more likely (as a rule) it is that you’ll get only individual instruments that make up a section, requiring you to score out and record in all the individual lines separately to create a whole‑section sound. Much harder work, with ultimate flexibility and realism the driving principles.
Whole‑section libraries like NI’s Symphony Series String Ensemble are really useful and give great results quick. Here the pitch mapping of basses (red), cello (yellow), violas (green) and violins (blue) is clearly displayed. This library also offers independent control over Expression (timbre) and Dynamics (volume), alongside multiple articulations and round robins.Several libraries by British developer Spitfire Audio are based around section‑scale patches, including their highly regarded Albion One, which runs in Native Instruments’ Kontakt platform, and the more recent Abbey Road One, which uses Spitfire’s own player. There’s a difference in character between these two — some say Abbey Road is more ballsy — but both offer useful pre‑configured combinations of instruments for the entire orchestra, often in ‘high’ and ‘low’ divisions. There’s good articulation variety too, and scope for lots of dynamic and timbral expression.
Another option in a crowded market (the entirety of which I would need a whole issue of SOS to get close to covering) is Native Instruments’ Symphonic Series. I mention it because if you happen to have either of NI’s Komplete 13 Ultimate bundles you’ll have it already, in either the single‑mix Essentials or multi‑mic full versions. The sound from the 60‑piece ensemble that was sampled is notably lavish and cinematic, and it could hardly be easier to use. Alongside section patches there are individual instruments too, so you have full flexibility in how you work.
With a tighter and more modern sound than the Symphony Series, Native Instruments’ Session Strings Pro 2 offers all the keyswitched articulations shown here (and more besides), auto‑voicing, polyphonic legato, and sequenced playback features. You can also turn off entire instrument groups, like the violas (no comment...).We’ll come back to them later for a different reason, but I’ll also mention Native Instruments’ Session Strings 2 and 2 Pro in this context. These brilliant‑sounding Kontakt‑based libraries have the sophistication to intelligently split and assign chords of up to four notes to separate sampled violins, violas, cellos and basses, like an arranger would, in real time. And, amazingly, to maintain legato connections between those four lines simultaneously. (Quick tip, by the way: for polyphonic legato‑capable libraries using a sustain pedal while you play makes it miles easier to get good, smooth results). Actually, you don’t even have to play full chords: a Smart Chord feature will generate full, nicely spaced chord voicings from single notes.
Phrase Array
An entirely different approach to orchestral scoring is represented by ‘phrase‑based’ libraries.
These represent a frankly laughable level of convenience: after a patch loads up you often have to play only one note (or at most a chord) to achieve complex, multi‑layer, fully worked and produced phrases, perfectly tempo‑sync’ed to your DAW project. Think Casio‑keyboard auto‑accompaniment, with fabulous orchestral sounds, and you’ve just about got it. Some people are opposed to the concept on grounds of compositional ethics, but perhaps that’s a discussion for another day...
Actually, phrase libraries work in one of two ways that are fundamentally different to one another, and it’s useful to know the pros and cons of each.
In the first type, orchestral players are quite literally sampled playing entire phrases, in a range of keys and harmonic variations, which the library’s playback engine sorts out according to what notes you play. In terms of realism this approach may be unbeatable, because you’re hearing genuine, uninterrupted recordings by top‑class players. Great! Except that you’re largely stuck with the phrases the library developers offer you, and tempo matching occurs thanks to the plug‑in’s time‑stretch algorithms, which have limits...
In Sonokinetic’s Minimal you choose the phrase‑length sample material using graphic score representations. Fundamentally quick and easy to use, there’s nevertheless a lot of flexibility, and lots of keyswitches, as Kontakt’s colour‑overlay keyboard shows.In the other type, samples of individual notes form the basic sampled material, but they’re triggered using on‑board sequencers that govern note patterns, dynamics and perhaps also articulation switches, for multiple instruments at once. Arguably there’s not the same realism as the ‘long sample’ approach, but when it’s done well there’s not much in it, and this way can buy you back some flexibility to alter preset patterns to exactly what you need.
One of the leaders in the whole‑phrase approach is Sonokinetic. Their Orchestral Performance Series instruments often include separately addressable strings, wind, brass and percussion within single patches, and the titles span a range of genres, styles and moods. A personal favourite is Minimal (very Philip Glass), which can easily find use on its own or underpinning pop and production music. Also try the weird and wonderful small‑ensemble Indie for some characterful and inspiring points of colour.
In Sonokinetic’s Ostinato series you trade a smaller vocabulary of phrases for the ability to cope with more chord types, voicings and inversions.
More affordable, with a smaller palette of material but in a way more sophisticated and flexible, are the five libraries of the Ostinato Series. These are still based on pre‑recorded phrases, but the end result is a clever script‑driven reconstitution of smaller slices, which allows for multiple voicings, inversions, and a dozen different chord types.
Turning to sequenced‑style phrase libraries now, we find ourselves back with Native Instruments’ Session Strings. The Rhythmic Animator and Phrase Animator modes can produce not only repeated note accompaniment patterns and ostinatos but riffs, licks and melodies. The repertoire extends to stuff that’s ideal for funk, soul, disco and R&B.
Native Instruments’ Action and Emotive series utilise generic, repetitive figures, making them ideal for use in lots of different genres.
No fewer than three other NI libraries are built around a similar concept. Action Strings (available with Komplete) and the separately available Action Strings 2 present complementary groups of quite generic (and because of that amazingly useful) phrases, all skewed towards ostinato‑style, driving, rhythmic movement. Very cinematic, and ideal for underpinning more conventionally played (non‑phrase‑based) lines. Most are triggered with just one key, with velocity switching between major and minor harmonies. AS2 allows for far more customisation of phrases, with a user‑accessible phrase/step sequencer running within Kontakt. A more lyrical option is Emotive Strings. It shares the same interface and basic concepts of operation but is musically quite different.
Another great alternative is 8Dio’s Century Ostinato series. Five libraries exist, covering strings, flute and clarinet, oboe and bassoon, trombones and tuba, and finally trumpets and horns. In each a relatively small menu of ostinato patterns (just over a dozen) is available, but with full user control over articulation, expression, voicing and harmonic content. It’s one of the few phrase libraries that will support dissonant tone clusters, should you want them. Any lack of flexibility in the ostinatos is mitigated by flexibility in replay speed and retriggering options.
It’s An Orchestra, Jim...
Here’s where things start to get weird. There are libraries that twist traditional orchestral timbres beyond recognition, perhaps making them much better suited to electronic genres, game music, as well as sci‑fi and modern thriller scoring.
Output’s Analog series is founded on orchestral samples but is really more than anything a versatile synth and effects plug‑in. A funky‑looking macro system and beautifully clear interface make it easy to explore hybrid acoustic/electronic textures.Output’s Analog Strings and Analog Brass & Winds are great exponents of this style. None of the software titles by Output are in any way conventional, and in these Kontakt instruments you have somewhere around 20GB of orchestral sample and phrase material embedded in a synth‑style playback engine that allows you to loop, layer, sequence, arpeggiate, and heavily effect it. There’s something about the interaction of source material and processing potential, in a very attractive and controllable package, that makes these really inspiring to work with.
Equally potent are Heavyocity’s trio of Novo (strings), Forzo (brass) and Vento (wind). These premium libraries (which also come in more affordable Essentials versions) are extremely flexible, with fine multi‑sample multi‑articulation playback (albeit in a very modern style) supplemented by separate ‘Evolved’ patches. These utilise the possibilities of layered, filtered, effected, sequenced, glitched and looped playback, and the results can be astonishing.
And here’s where we come back to Spitfire Audio once again. Part of Albion One, and other titles in the Albion series, is ‘Stephenson’s Steam Band’, which is essentially an accessible, visually rich synth and effect architecture for orchestral samples, extending once again to looped material, rhythmically sync’ed multi‑effects, and more.
Remember too, that most DAWs are jam‑packed with effects plug‑ins that can be applied to any orchestral sounds you have available. Put a step‑sequenced gate or low‑pass filter plug‑in on any old held string chord, follow it up with a stereo delay, maybe some light distortion or bit‑depth reduction, and spice it all up with a bit of automation, and you can end up with results very similar to these dedicated libraries (as lovely as they are) for free. Rhythmic effect plug‑ins like iZotope’s Stutter Edit 2 and Output’s Movement can take things even further.
Wind Power
With the focus of this article the way it is I’d hate to be thought of as anti‑wind and anti-brass. My flautist other half would never forgive me, for starters... But true orchestral‑style use of them is much rarer than the comparatively common string arrangement. And pop/funk/soul ‘horn’ arrangement — frequently of a small combo of trumpet, sax and trombone — is a discipline all its own. Not that there aren’t plenty of sample libraries that cater for it: try Vir2’s MOJO 2, Chris Hein Horns Pro, Big Fish Audio’s Vintage Horns or Native Instruments’ Session Horns Pro. Some recommended listening, should you need it: Tower Of Power, James Brown & The JBs, the Specials. ‘Our House’ by Madness is a string and horn combo masterpiece.
Why not try something unusual with wind and brass, though? The track ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ from Elbow’s recent Flying Dream 1 has a simple but exquisite use of sustained clarinets. Something like Madonna’s Timbaland‑produced ‘4 Minutes’ demonstrates a different but still easy to achieve possibility, albeit not exactly naturalistic.
The Mod Wheel
Although comparatively rarely encountered, a few libraries take the idea of modulation wheel expression and run with it, so you get not only volume and intensity gradation but changes in instrumentation too.
This is one of the key features (called ‘Blending Textures’) of Garritan’s long‑established and quite affordable Instant Orchestra. A product that arguably sits towards the simpler end of orchestral scoring tools, it nevertheless makes up for any lack of finesse with phenomenal convenience and speed. If you just want to get down and dirty with orchestral textures, with the minimum of fuss, it’s a great option.
Something very similar exists in Spitfire Audio’s Albion One, in various factory ‘Combinations’ which use the mod wheel to crossfade one layer on top of another. The quality is top class and it’s only one of many ways to work.