Need your advice

[sdhanwada]

Hi All,

I am an enthusiast and nowhere close to what the work and level some fine gentlemen here are involved with and capable of. I just see the amount of knowledge that flows within here and thought maybe I can learn something that I always wondered of achieving with strings.

I will share a link to the beautiful soundtrack The Da Vinci Code - Chevaliers de Sangreal -

I love the effect that Hans Zimmer produces with strings here and was trying to get a similar effect on mine. I have tried a few things with layering tremolos with spiccato/staccato and with delays etc but haven't gotten anywhere really. I am sure I am doing something wrong or I dont really understand how the layering is done. 

If someone can help and guide me in the right direction here, that would be great.

Thanks for your time and advice.

[hetoreyn]

Not entirely sure what you mean by 'effect' on the strings. These are just staccato repetitions using the entire string ensemble playing slightly different syncopations and riffs. I guess what you're referring to is the overall 'bigness' of the sound. Which is largely achieved by the fact that that's probably a really big string section playing this, recorded in an awesome hall with a top engineer balancing out the reverb and processing it all through analogue circuits that cost more than a million bucks.

If you're looking to get thi kind of sound quality in your recordings that's definitely a worthy goal, sonically. It can be achieved by a combination of layering up different string libraries to try to gain more 'thickness' .. but mot of it is in the processing. I reccomend buying the steve slate Virtual console collection, Virtual Tape machine and Virtual mix bus plugs which will all liven, thicken and spice up your virtual orchestra.

You'll probably find that Mr. Zimmer also layered some VI's over the real strings for thickness. A good reverb is also needed for depth and realism but try not to make things too echoey. Set your instruments back in your virtual room .. then use some compression and limiting to bring there levels up .. (and do try not to crush the life out of the dynamic range if you can help it).

Hope this helps.