Realistic MIDI strings...possible?

[DC-Choppah]

I have learned to break it down into three steps:

Step 1: Arrangement. Just focus on the arrangement and don't worry about the details. Make the big decisions - 4 part harmony for the violins, counterpoint in the cellos, bass plays an octave below, etc. Get the parts playable on the keyboard and get them into a single track. Print the score out so you can play the individual lines. But get the arrangement defined.

Step 2: Performance. Call up your instrument and play the single note parts using the basic instrument sound. Don't worry about the detailed articulations. Just get the part played as musically as you can for as many instruments as you need for each voice. Play each voice separately. Use your controller for vibrato, expression, intensity.

Step 3: Articulations. Load up a fresh (empty) track for each of the available articulations you have. Experiment with moving notes between articulations for part 1 to make it sound natural as a real player would do it. There are many kinds of portamento, new finger, old finger, etc. Then there are slides. Combine articulations. So you can have a single part use a staccato note AND a legato note to simulate an accent. Once you have one instrument, distribute the notes the same way for each each instrument using the first one as a visual guide. Set your sampler to use a different sample start time or other diversity for each instrument in the section. Then move to the next part that you played and do the same thing. Once you get a template for your string section set up this is all much easier.

[MarkOne]

Understanding what a real orchestra is doing is more than half the battle. You could do worse than getting hold of Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration.

I've also heard good things about Paul Gilreath's The Guide to MIDI Orchestration, though not actually read it

[Mixedup]

Dave Stewart's 2012 SOS series on string arranging is worth a read:

String Theory Pt1
String Theory Pt 2
String Theory Pt 3
String Theory Pt 4

Also, Gary Garritan's online version of the Rimsky Korsakov text is worth a look:

Principles Of Orchestration Online

[MartinJG]

+1 DC-Choppah

Get it down when the muse strikes. Believe it or not, I actually use Hypersonic 2 for a lot of my sketching. Quick, easy and lightweight. That way, I concentrate on capturing the moment, make notes and worry about the details later.

[MorayM]

Orchestration by Walter Piston is probably the seminal text on the subject. Generally I've found that larger ensembles are easier to reproduce than smaller ones, where each musicians' inflections and articulations are more obvious.

As an aside, I did some string arrangements at the end of last year for a small ensemble, and managed to persuade the producer to get some real live players into his studio. Being able to just say "play it like this" and getting an instant response, instead of mucking around for ages with articulation switching was a joy, and the end result was night and day. Well worth the three hours of studio time. (And half an hour with Sibelius transcribing MIDI to dots!)

[coopertron]

Sweet...cheers for all the help people...very much appreciated.

[Luke JD]

Everything everyone has mentioned above is spot on!

Sam Adler's Orchestration 3e is a little more up to date than Piston and Rimsky (both of which are still excellent) if you can get your hands on it, but it is a chunky beast

When I started out doing MIDI strings these helped me out a bunch:

http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-ultimate-list-of-tips-for-producing-sampled-strings--cms-21216

http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/a-guide-to-producing-an-epic-orchestral-track--audio-13389

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce989ZsUWuA

I tend to use the mod wheel on my keyboard for dynamics/vibrato of a string line (to create the natural swell and de-swell) when recording instead of writing the automation by hand (like in that last tutorial) - and I find doing it separately for each instrument adds a tonne of realism as they are all swelling slightly differently.

If you can afford it maybe look at some of the string libraries out there - they are seriously good these days. Depends on what you want, but I've tried quite a few and I'd hands down recommend LA Scoring Strings 2.5

[NicoleProducer]

Sure. It is very possible to make MIDI strings sound realistic. When producing orchestral especially, automation plays a big part, i.e. changing and recording in effects and modulation in real time, such as volume changes, panning, expression, tempo changes, etc. I made a tutorial here of how to make MIDI strings sound realistic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U1Zq36 ... 0s&index=7

[Guest]

I made a tutorial here of how to make MIDI strings sound realistic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U1Zq36 ... 0s&index=7

Have you tried Spitfire products? You can mess around with the vibrato a bit more.

[Eddy Deegan]

A bit late this topic, but I suspect I'm echoing what others have said above.

Going back years, I was a pianist who played regularly with orchestras, and I 'failed' at being a classical pianist insofar as my approach to music drives me to do things where I'm forging a new path as opposed to refining a well trodden one. Putting the hundreds, then cumulatively thousands of hours into learning, practising and refining pieces of music that are played by many dozens of other people to the same and better standard wasn't my thing.

That said, I spent a lot of time around professional players of many disciplines who were spectacularly accomplished at their instrument but who couldn't whizz up a quick improv if there wasn't a score in front of them with every nuance meticulously scribed on it.

While I was in awe of their dedication and skill, I never got my head around how anyone could play something so well when they had the programming in front of them, but not when they didn't. Thank goodness those folks exist because if they didn't we wouldn't have orchestras as we know them.

One relevant thing I learned relating to this topic is that players of string instruments favour certain intervals, and certain note progressions due to the physical nature of the violin/viola/violincello etc. Perfect 5ths work so well on a 'cello for example, as they are related to the 'open string' tuning of the thing. Vibrato, when applied by a good string player, is mindblowingly good and all but impossible to reproduce on a MIDI setup, but that doesn't mean you can't have a good crack at it.

MIDI is a somewhat mechanical protocol, insofar as application of the mod wheel is likely to produce the same result every time, but if you hear a gifted cellist play the same piece a dozen times it'll never be the same twice.

The trick is to try and introduce some randomness into it, and I don't mean simply finding some samples to trigger. I'm surprised this isn't an arena that more purveyors of sample instruments, softsynths and even hardware devices haven't gone into. Given that in a MIDI performance you can edit the modulation lanes in a DAW, that would seem a good place to experiment with some hand-drawn randomness/variation, perhaps while watching a youtube video of an accomplished player at the same time for reference.

So yeah, careful and controlled random application of vibrato and the judicious choosing of appropriate intervals is likely to work wonders.

And never go drinking with the folks from the brass contingent. It never ends well...

[Dynamic Mike]

Given that in a MIDI performance you can edit the modulation lanes in a DAW, that would seem a good place to experiment with some hand-drawn randomness/variation, perhaps while watching a youtube video of an accomplished player at the same time for reference.

So yeah, careful and controlled random application of vibrato and the judicious choosing of appropriate intervals is likely to work wonders.

I find the easiest (okay laziest) way of randomising controller lanes is to use a fairly shallow sine wave tool starting a random point, then overdraw that with an even shallower one again starting at a random point. Cubase makes this difficult by trying to snap to the bar but you can drag the track slightly each time & then realign it when you're done.

[Luke JD]

Funnily enough I've just done some live string recording today. I must have heard the mock up strings a thousand times, but when those players played the opening few chords, boy oh boy, did a smile creep across my face or what!

Speaking to the players about it afterwards they said samples are great, but real strings will breathe so much life into a piece. Things like the individual players' vibrato mixing, and the blend between instruments as the ensemble reacts to each other's intonation have such a big impact... I learned a lot! And it really is a living and breathing thing!

Side note: Also a big fan of Spitfire Audio!