Whether you’re composing for film, television, or games, understanding how to use different string articulations can completely transform the emotional impact of your score.
In this breakdown from Mattias Holmgren, you’ll explore the most common cinematic string articulations from sustains, legato, and staccato to spiccato, pizzicato, tremolo, and marcato, and how each one adds unique texture and storytelling power to your music.
He also shares some fantastic free orchestral libraries to help you get started!
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374otCVu4aE\
For composers here in the Lounge: Do you have a favorite free (or budget-friendly) orchestral library that’s helped bring your cinematic sound to life?
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Spitfire Audio’s free Labs instruments, and Orchestral tools free version of their Berlin Orchestral and their SINEFactory instruments are quick good too! The issue with all budget libraries is they’re typically lite in the numbers and types of articulations available. But you cans do some pretty good stuff with these!!
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This is such a great resource. I'm a violinist so I'm fussy about string libraries and have at least 12 different ones for different sounds. My only thing to add would be, free and cheaper libraries can work great in adding texture, especially with movement and rhythm but sustained notes and melodies often give them away for what they are
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The real problem articulation in string libraries are the Legato articulations. The Legato transition that occurs between the notes, can be shorter, longer, louder, or more subtle, it can be a portamento transition which can also vary, it can be more sweeping and so on. This particular playing style is so dependent on the performers feelings and emotions during the performance I’m not sure these articulations will ever be great. There are some good libraries now days that do a good job and have flexibility to do some of the variations mentioned above, but they’re expensive, very technical and more time consuming to use and again the performer is missing in this case.
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The Embertone library is nice for small ensembles.
It takes a little time to get the sound you want, though a lot of options are available.
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You're right, Mark, it's often difficult. I saw that Sonuscore just released a new string library with many articulations called Lux. I haven't tested it yet. We'll see if this library provides any solutions.
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Hire a LIVE violinist or a quartet. Or violin and piano. LIVE. Or soon there will be no LIVE musicians.
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Jon Shallit - I did hire a violinist for one project I did last year. I could never get the sound I wanted from two or three different libraries..
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It is the intangibles that our ears hear that can't be computed.