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How many tracks would I need for a little piece of strings music?


coffincoffee

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3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

"Cello Sustain Up Bow" is misnamed? Wouldn't surprise me with SONiVOX. It sounds solo-y to me, but I'm not an expert.

Most of them are multiples, which is what I usually want anyway. I believe the gentleman requested embiggening? That's a way to get it.

Whatever, it's worth 4 bucks, innit?

It's definitely worth 4 bucks...

So yeah, I would be mostly using string ensembles for tracks anyway, as solo strings aren't really my thing. I'm not a string player, so don't think I could pull that off in a convincing manner anyway, LOL!!!

From the SONiVOX product description it's clear what the product is intended to be: https://sonivoxmi.com/products/details/orchestral-companion-strings

Strings.


They're lush. They're dramatic. They're emotionally evocative. Nothing sets the mood like well-done ensemble strings in the hands of a skilled composer/arranger/producer.

...snip...

Up and down bow bowing, sustain, staccato, and spiccato notes, plus instrument pizzicato and tremolo articulations provide the depth of content needed for convincing ensemble string parts and tracks.
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AARRGH! I hate when this happens. This thread is on page 2 already and none of us has mentioned the obvious.

There is of course the IMO pretty darn good sounding Cakewalk SI-String Section that you can download for free with the BandLab Assistant.

It has dozens of sampled string sections, both acoustic and synth. Some of the "synth" samples are kind of Mellotronesque if you like that sort of thing, and I do.

And as a matter of fact, although I still prefer my Orchestral Companion Strings for versimilitude, if I had already had the SI-String Section I wouldn't have been looking for something else and would probably just now be buying up the Orchestral Companions for $3.99.

BTW, @coffincoffee, if what you're starting with is Cakewalk by BandLab, how is it that you also have TruePiano? I thought that was a Splonar goodie?

Edited by Starship Krupa
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On 10/18/2019 at 9:59 PM, bitflipper said:

Might I suggest skiing? 

That's a rather good alternative to dying in front of a DAW from exhaustion and burnout😁. Too bad, we dont have natural snow where I live, but if I could convince 10k neighbors to dump the ice from their fridges at a stadium close by, I might get somewhere close to skiing on snow!

On 10/19/2019 at 6:44 PM, Starship Krupa said:

 

 

On 10/20/2019 at 5:27 PM, Starship Krupa said:

 

There is of course the IMO pretty darn good sounding Cakewalk SI-String Section that you can download for free 

And as a matter of fact, although I still prefer my Orchestral Companion Strings for versimilitude, if I had already had the SI-String Section I wouldn't have been looking for something else and would probably just now be buying up the Orchestral Companions for $3.99.

BTW, @coffincoffee, if what you're starting with is Cakewalk by BandLab, how is it that you also have TruePiano? I thought that was a Splonar goodie?

Yes, I already have Cakewalk SI-String Section installed and have had a few hours playing with it. However I notice that the ranges of these insttuments are different by a few notes compared to the string vsts I got for free (vst4free.com). Not a big deal really, unless I was going to have my music played by real musicians which can never be the case today.

Now that you brought this up, I forgot to mention it but when I decided to have CbB installed I had a friend, who knows much better than me abt daws, over to help me with the setup. I think he said something abt trying an earlier version of Sonar on my laptop to make sure it had the juice to run a later version of it. Yes it's still there, tho somehow there's no icon on the desktop. I wouldn't have known if you had not mentioned Cakewalk TruePianos. If I uninstall it now, would the pianos still work? I'll have to get by with those free piano vsts instead.

Well some good news at last. I just finished 'writing' my first piece of music in a daw! It's not much, despite taking weeks, it's around 3 minutes, and only makes use of some strings and pianos like I intended and still not properly mixed but for a beginner I'd love to believe it's a good start!

Thanx to all who have helped👍

Edited by coffincoffee
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5 hours ago, coffincoffee said:

Yes, I already have Cakewalk SI-String Section installed and have had a few hours playing with it. However I notice that the ranges of these insttuments are different by a few notes compared to the string vsts I got for free (vst4free.com).

Be sure to try the different instruments that are available via the browser in SI-String Section. Some of them may have the extended range that you need.

5 hours ago, coffincoffee said:

he said something abt trying an earlier version of Sonar on my laptop to make sure it had the juice to run a later version of it

I don't know what version you have, but CbB is actually less resource-hungry than the last version of Splonar. If you post the hardware specifications of your DAW computer (as I have done in my signature), we can tell you whether it's up to the task of what you are trying to do. OS, processor, processor speed, RAM, what kind of hard drive (spinny, SSD, if spinny, what RPM).

As for being able to use the plug-ins that came with whatever version of SONAR you own, AFAIK the best way to do that is reportedly to install the newest version of SONAR you have a license for with all the trimmings, then install CbB. At that point, you'll have the best of both worlds, the stability and features of CbB and the bundled software and content of SONAR.

Congratulations on your first composition! Next bit of fun is learning how to mix, which I also love and see as a creative process in itself. There are so many resources available these days, here in this forum and on the web, YouTube, etc.

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Hi again.

Thanks for your reply. 

Bought this laptop in 2012. Here are my system's specs:

Asus n56v

Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit

Intel Core i5 3210M @ 2.5 GHz

8 gigs of DDR3

Seagate 1 TB sata III, 5400 rpm

Realtek Hi Def Audio 

As far as stability is concerned, in the almost 3 weeks of use to finish that little piece, CbB did not crash or hang even once. Everything was smooth sailing on smooth sea, I only had a few stutters in audio output but was quickly fixed by playing with the buffer size. 

But then it was less than 10 instrument tracks. If in future I'm gonna need some heavy processing, I'll just use the freeze button to conserve ram, that's what they say anyway. 

So up to this point I think I'm still fine.

Just downloaded some more free pianos, but havent got to try them yet, in case I need to uninstall the other version I have here, Sonar X3. Or maybe I'll go your route and get the license.

Thanx again guys.👍

 

Edited by coffincoffee
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