String arrangement

Contests for Composers String Arrangement Contest
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  1. Hello everyone. Hope everyone is fine. Here is my contribution.
    My vision was to make a mix of something sweet and something with a little more bite. First part of the piece is solo instruments playing like a quintett and in the second part the whole ensemble comes in.
    I´ve only used strings no other instruments.
    Libraries: Cinestrings core and Cinestrings solo

  2. https://soundcloud.com/fredrik-danielsson-175084776/string-arrangement

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beautiful and well done. It sounds like vivaldi a little bit sometimes.

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I love it Fredrik. Fantastic piece with different moments and even styles I would say. Great job. :clap: :clap: :clap:

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Thank you gentlemen. Always a pleasure to be here.

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Plenty of great writing and arranging going on here, and some seriously beautiful parts! Impressive and inspiring.

I’m rather liking the clean and intimate mix, and the quintet + orchestra provides a nice depth dimension, though the EQ might be a bit on the thin/hollow side when there are no other instruments competing in the mix.

The full sections sound a tiny bit “synthy” to my ears at times (perfectly natural for strings without vibrato, especially if the players have great intonation), and I’d probably try using the solo strings as first chairs to add some more detail to them. (With an appropriate mix to place them with their respective sections - though actually having the soloists play first chairs as well might make for an interesting mix, though that’s not normally done AFAIK.) Just a single extra instrument per section, mixed in at a rather low level, can add a lot of color and control, so you can use that to inject a bit of “feel,” or subtle vibrato, instead of depending on whatever resolution of control the full section samples offer.

(BTW, really liking the tone and precision of the CineStrings, especially SOLO… I mean, I can feel my own violin and bow in my hands when hearing those solo strings! :smiley: Might have to move those up a bit on my wishlist.)

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Thank you @olofson . Not too long ago I bought a lot of Cinesamples instruments for a great discount. So decided to take them for a real spin here. This is what I think of them so far:
1 Cinesolo. Absolutely love them. Have some limitations but the sound makes up for it big time. My favorite plug for imitate a quintet.
2 Cinestrings Not my favorite yet but can be stunning if tamed. I’m not comfortable with them yet but I think I’m getting there. I feel their so “naked” and exposed so slightest mistakes shines through. Which of course also is a good thing. In this particular piece I ran out of time programming expression which is another cc than dynamics so I had to copy since I don’t have two faders aside each other.
3 Cinebrass and cinepercs their flagship I think
4 Cinewinds not much to say love them especially the pro library with the ethnic stuff
5 Cineharp also great and versatile
6 Cinepiano my new go to

Pros: all sounds are good, cinesamples let’s you have many ways to control you can change between using keyswitches or mod wheel or via velocity. You can automate most things,

Cons: hard to find maybe a long learning curve

Got a survey mail the other day that hints their working on a Cinestrings Pro. Really interesting if it comes.

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Very impressive piece Fredrik! Late Baroque/early Classical styled piece that sounds authentic. Good motifs that are developed and varied and I like how you broke the quicker, staccato passages with slower legato bits to keep things interesting.

Well done!

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Awesome! Thanks for the review.

I’ve had the full CineBrass set for some time actually, and it sounds amazing, but I haven’t used it much yet. (Are we going to do brass next, by any chance, @Mikael? :wink: ) Was tempted to grab more of their libs on that last sale, but my budget was already strained by this whole modeling thing that I’ve been focusing on lately, and various other things.

Ironically, strings are still by far the weakest/most problematic link in modeled instruments (a bunch of issues, some of which I’ve solved, and others that I might be able to ameliorate with some custom scripting or plugin, maybe), so unless I’m planning on getting good at the real instruments real quick, I might still be in the market for some more good strings samples. I’m already pretty well covered, but when experimenting with the real instruments, you realize there is a lot of stuff you can play that just isn’t going to happen with sample libraries, unless you have specific samples for it…

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