Thanks very much! Would absolutely recommend listening to Herbert Howells' Elegy if you want some really spine-tingling string writing; there's a score video available on KZfaq somewhere.

Absolutely - CSS v1.7.1 finally made the sustains without vibrato usable, so you can finally get a loud dynamic without a seemingly romantic amount of vibrato. Still needs massaging with CC11, but it's a huge improvement on what we had before!

Thanks very much! Thankfully this was received well once it was assessed too lol

Thanks! Certainly CSS is sounding better than ever, and it's a more capable library now as well.

Very kind of you to say - helps that CSS works so damn well in this context!

Thanks very much! I actually go straight into the DAW, and it's difficult to avoid being constrained by barlines at first. I don't do any tempo automation and everything (except instruments like piano) is quantised to the grid, which you'd think would make everything sound very robotic. The two main things that help avoid that are: 1) strong sense of dynamic shaping and, consequently, the direction of a given phrase 2) being flexible with harmonic rhythm (i.e. when the overall harmony changes) Next time you try writing something, avoid the potential trap of one bar = one chord; vary the speed at which underlying chords change and you'll suddenly be able to control the music's momentum to a much greater degree. Hopefully that helps!

Wow! I will try this out! Thank you!

Thanks - really glad you like it! 🥳

Thanks very much! The scores are done in Sibelius (you can manually adjust the page sizes so they line up with a 16:9 aspect ratio) and are exported as graphics, then brought into Da Vinci Resolve (free, professional software - literally amazing) and then have a few wipe transitions added so the page turns time with the music. Takes a bit of time to put it together, but it makes for slick presentation. 🥳

Thanks Daniel! The piano is Cinesamples' CinePiano (default patch, full mix) and the solo strings are Cinematic Studio Solo Strings (full mix again) - the CinePiano has an artificially fast decay baked into the sample recordings, so I don't recommend it for situations where you really need the long sustains of a 9' grand piano.

This is CinePiano (combination of the Main and Room mics) by CineSamples. Very good if you need a quick and dirty contextual piano, but I wouldn't recommend it for solo piano stuff - look at VSL's pianos if you want an excellent, sampled concert grand such as the Yamaha CFX.

Thank you for your detailled feedback !

Thanks! I can't remember the presets off the top of my head, but it's a mix of Cubase 12's stock plugins; REVerence and REVelation.

@@Nicolas-Bonnin i am interested in plugins for processing and reverb

I also am interested in how he used reverb/eq. It sounds so smooth and has such a body.

Thanks very much! I think a lot of it (i.e. realistic strings) is just working with what the library can provide, I guess. The v1.7.1 update added legato transitions for the sustains without vibrato which you can mix as much or as little as you want using CC2. Those non vibrato sustains have quite a driven, pressured sound by default which worked incredibly well here. The Violin at 0:05 does have some boosting of the highs (but with notch cuts around 9.5kHz to get rid of some odd noises) and the Violin I in CSSS is already quite bright anyway. The deepness at 0:38 and 0:47 is partly how the lower three voices are arranged. More specifically, using low 5ths in a chord can really help thicken the sound, mainly due to how the overtones interact with each other - it's very useful for making a final chord of a cadence sound like you've actually "arrived home". Also it's a bit contextual depending on what happens beforehand, like how the double basses and celli are in unison for bars 8-9, then the double bass drops down the octave for bar 12. Hope that helps!

@@alexpapas99 I only have stock plugins, so the reverb is a mixture of both REVerence and REVelation. A medium concert hall preset for REVerence and I reduce the ER/Tail mix so there's less tail, so I get "truer" early reflection content. Then I think I use a concert hall natural preset for REVelation (with a few extra tweaks) with the tail preserved and the ER reduced instead, so the tail has a smoother drop-off and has that algorithmic 'chaos' or whatever it is. It's quite a bad reverb though, so I remove high-end frequency info with an extra EQ just to avoid it sounding too metallic or splashy. And with EQ, it's basically a case of removing any problematic or resonant frequencies on each individual instrument first, then adjusting overall timbre to taste, and then making sure it all balances properly so that the changes you make in the master chain are extremely minor, if any are needed in the first place. Mind you, my template is an absolute mess at this point lol Hope that helps!

@@louis-marlowe Wow, yes it helped! Thank you for sharing this knowledge, kind sir.

Thanks very much! The score is actually done in Sibelius - all done from a Cubase MIDI export initially, then cleaned up and laid out so it perfectly fits a 16:9 aspect ratio, which can be done by adjusting the page size manually.

​@@louis-marlowe : Superb ! How dis you get the empty space bars in Sibelius ?

Thanks! Not sure how helpful the .midi file will be but you can find it here: icedrive.net/s/ZDRkaDkWtFPt1huyPzaijFWWTBZY The programming can sometimes be really specific to the library; for CSS I'll often adjust the expression so that I can get the vibrato intensity of a specific layer but with a different perceived loudness. I have the expression set to 85 for every instrument in my template for this reason, so I can use a mezzo-ish layer with a calmer vibrato but then bump the expression up so it has the same loudness as a forte cantabile or something. Hopefully that makes sense! In general, always roll off your dynamic control when phrases end, and dynamics changes should be relatively smooth and work in combination with how the music is phrased i.e. know where the dynamic of a line should peak. I also have everything locked to the grid; this should help expose areas where either the programming, or the music itself, needs improving.

@@louis-marlowe Wow, thank you for this! That makes perfect sense. I use CSS as well so this information is very helpful. I think the dynamic phrasing is really what I need to work on the most along with the correct dynamic level. I tend to often use too high of a dynamic level when doing a DAW translation from Dorico. It always amazes me how simple your midi lanes actually are. I over do it. This really does give me such a better understanding. Thank you. What instrument do you use for your Sub that works well for Orchestra?

Not at all - very happy to help! You might see my CC11 data moving around quite sharply, but that's generally to smooth out legato transitions that don't match the sustain loudness that well; essentially happens a lot when CC2 isn't 0 or 127. Also very easy to sit with CC1 values that are too high; louder always sounds better. Just knowing where the peak of a piece/cue is can help you adjust everything else against that moment. :) I just use Steinberg's Retrologue for the sine bass - could arguable use a purer sine wave than that, but I haven't really agonised over it much tbh. It just needs to add solidity without being distinctly audible, and used appropriately.

@@louis-marlowe I was wondering why you had such extreme CC11 values for the solo Violin in the beginning, but that makes a lot of sense. Ok awesome, I should give that a try and see how it sounds as a Sub. One thing I've noticed is that your Basses and Cello CC1 data is generally lower than the rest of the strings instead of all being at the same written level. Is this because they are not balanced and you find you need to drop them to sit in the mix better or is it a preference thing?

@@benjaminduk5764 Hmmmm not too sure - it might be to do with the CC2 values, as I think the viola in particular becomes extremely quiet. Also the celli are divided a lot of the time, with the lower part doubling the basses up the octave, so I could be cutting CC1 a bit just to mimic the loss of overall loudness by splitting the section in two. (Basses sound an octave lower than written, so bar 9 is the only genuine unison between 'celli and basses.) Ultimately it's to make sure the bass is solid but not overly-dominant, but also to get a good balance across the ensemble. Sorry for the slightly vague answer 🥴

No - this is Cubase playback (using CinePiano and Cinematic Studio (Solo) Strings) and combined with a score that I prepared afterwards in Sibelius.

Thanks very much! You can absolutely have the MIDI file, here's the link: icedrive.net/s/FCft9jb151P9YbFxxNVgZ66aNt3w

Thank you for the answer. I needed it to study film music. Thank you for your willingness to help.

What sequence are you using? Cubase? logic?

I'm a Cubase 12 user on a Windows PC.

Yep! The new update retroactively added legato transitions for the non-vibrato sustains, making the library a lot more versatile. There is a sine wave bolstering the basses, but there's no other layering here.

Cubase 12