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  • The String Library that is everything VSL aims not to be,

     

    I received an e-mail from "another company" with the subject line:

    New: EMOTIVE STRINGS - ultra-playable legato string phrases

    As a string player, I required little more than the title to get me to click to the  web page for demo songs. Emotive strings could not be a bigger misnomer. I do realize it is a phrase-based product, but some quotes from the web site for a product at $300 USD I felt the need to express my feelings about the productl

    I was going to post a comparison of the packages in regular social media, but it would take pages of quotes and links to comparisons to get my basic point across: No package could have a philosophy farther from VSL's than Emotive Strings.

    One quote from the description of this sound package will sum up what you would hear if you choose to click the link below or already have heard the package. From the web site:

    After months of analyzing major motion picture hit scores, the essence of what makes them great was extracted. This ‘musical DNA’ was then distilled into the fresh, lively melodic themes and fragments in EMOTIVE STRINGS. Together, they allow you to create original compositions with built-in universal ap-peal... Over five days of tireless recording, this scoring orchestra meticulously played each phrase together for a guaranteed level of precision, realism, and authenticity only a real orchestra can delive

    http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/orchestral-cinematic/emotive-strings/


  • Sorry, I really cant see any necessity for a bunch of "phrases" like that at all.


  • I think it's rather expensive for what it is.


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    There are things that a traditional sample library doesn't work so well for, so I can see the use for certain phrase type libraries. For example:

    detache example

    Also, VSL does include scales and arpeggios in some products, so it's not as if it is totally against the ethos of VSL.

    DG


  • The demos - including the ripoff of Smetana, uncredited, his Ma Vlast -  are crude and have no superiority over VSL legato strings, whether Solo, Chamber, Orchestral, Appassionata, or Dimension, and have none of the flexibilty.


  • Thats exactly my impression. We already have Arpeggios and runs, but what they sell is what wee can easily with our regular legato patches aswell. Presumably they compare to the NI-Action-Strings to see any necessity for anything  more "emoptional" but none of them do really inspire any "emotions" at all for me....


  • Well, I'm definitely not trying to buy something with the total emphasis on phrases-based.
    However, there are things in various libraries I use frequently that give 'gestures' that one is not really going to cut with discrete samples. Or that at least would mean a terrific expenditure of time to get vaguely close to.

    The VSL full percussion library has whole performances on Thundersheet that would never be, using the library 'straight', for instance. There are older 'extended' techiques from back in Giga days, string section glissandi and so forth, that, once you know what you want you may as well use 'em rather than futz around, I think. Jazz horns articulations eg., "doit"; unless you have no basis in it you're not cheating yourself and it's all about creating an illusion in the first place.

    This thing by NI is a sign, more and more development is prefabricated music. I don't know who in the world of high-budget motion pictures would resort to doing it this way, but I understand that 'games' composers might.
    Cinesamples has come with a couple of these. Past a point and I think we have, it's a sign of people believing copying music is writing music, I think. Which is kind of bleak if not a sign of the end times. ;)


  • NM, that was 'Session Strings', I have no idea about 'Action Strings'.


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    My fault, "ActionStrings" is another older Phrase Collection made by NI, the basic NI Stringsamples are called "Session strings".

    I dont know what you are in trouble about. The copy and paste creativity seems to me at least something like the Principle of "maximum parsimony" applied on music production (the easier the more convincing)

    Oh It is just sooooo incredible oldscool to work hard on details 😉


  • PaulP Paul moved this topic from Orchestration & Composition on