Production Expert gave top orchestral composer David Tobin the new “Stradivari Violin” by e-instruments. Read on to see how David tapped into this authentic recreation of a treasured instrument from the world’s most renowned violin maker - Antonio Stradivari to see what he thinks...

The Basics

First, let us start with some basic details….. Stradivari Violin is a new virtual instrument based upon recordings of a 1727 “Vesuvius” violin made by Stradivari. It was recorded in Cremona, Italy in the same hall designed for its original sound.

Can You Add A Super Realistic Violin Solo Using Stradivari Violin?

How do you fancy being able to put some super-realistic solo violin into your composition? Like most composers that collect sample libraries like souvenirs from a holiday, I approached “Stradivari Violin” by e-instruments with some scepticism. By the time I’d been using this instrument for 20 minutes I was a convert.

Here’s a demo using Stradivari Violin I created after a few hours of learning with this instrument. You can hear it “naked” with no compression, no reverb and with a flavour of how I might use it, against an ambient sound bed - and just some reverb to the violin added.

4 Patches were used with keyswitches :

• Virtuoso

• Marcato

• Harmonics

• Sautillé (see below for explanation).

Despite the ancient nature of the instrument, the GUI and concept behind the instrument (which is a Kontakt based library, which works in either the full or player varieties of Kontakt) has some pretty cutting edge features - so let me delve a bit deeper into these and give you my feeling as to how useful they are and how well they are implemented.

Down to brass tacks;

There are two separate NKI-compatible patches available:

• Stereo

• Multi Mic

These are identical in every respect except for the ability to change the mic mix in the larger patch.

The main screen gives access to 4 separate features:

• Mixer (multi-mic patch only)

• Performance Controls (Dynamics, Vibrato)

• Articulations

• Position Control

On the Multi Mic NKI there is a small mixer icon on the top left of the main screen (see above), which allows you access to a mixer tab. This doesn’t show on the stereo patch.

Mixer

The mixer consists of 3 separate volume sliders for Close, Mid and Far mics as well as room noise. I found myself making recordings a little dryer than would otherwise be the case to get a feeling of closeness, but then adding reverb from a 3rd party… but that’s a personal choice of course.

Performance

The performance controls are one of the areas where some of the biggest claims are made by the manufacturers. Many solo violin libraries avoid the ability to move dynamics from very quiet (PP) to very loud (FF), because it would be too hard to crossfade from one sample performance to another without hearing the join, and introducing phrase misalignment.. effectively meaning you hear more than one sample at the same time at certain crossfade points. The same problem occurs when moving from no vibrato to vibrato samples. However, e-instruments claimed to have got around this with their new engine, blending real recordings and models of the bits in between.

The dynamics tab is accessed by clicking on the three dots in that area. As with many sampled instruments, loudness control (volume) is, by default assigned to Cc1 and expression (whether the playing style is quieter or louder) is assigned to cc11. I was extremely impressed to find that the claims about the removal of phase issues when moving from one sample to another are absolutely true. It’s totally possible to go from gentle to aggressive or loud to soft (or any combination) completely plausibly without hearing any artefacts, and that alone makes this library unusual. I played for a deal of time with the expression control (as I rarely use volume on instruments like these) and I was left with a sense that I could put together a pretty convincing recording of solo violin including the performance nuance of dynamics and not need any Nurofen when editing!

The same goes with vibrato. Many of the competitors to this library (Joshua Bell, Spitfire Solo Violin) offer vibrato control but don’t give too many options to edit the vibrato for fear of introducing the problems mentioned. In this instrument there are options to change the speed, width and intensity of the vibrato (which is achieved as I understand it by taking recordings but then modelling the sound in between recordings) as well as offering a preset of different vibrato styles eg passionate, narrow, evolving. Again, I found these to be hugely playable and unusual in comparison with their competition.

Articulations

There are numerous recorded articulations (20 in all), both long, short and special articulations in this collection. You can assign them to specific key switches or MIDI CC’s via a maximum of 8 articulation slots, which are shown on the main page.

What I particularly like about this instrument is the ability to use things “as they come” or to be more and more specific about how things are performed. Everything from syncing the tempo of Sautillé (repeated) notes to controlling the speed of crescendos / diminuendos. (as heard in the fast section of my demo).

The three available long articulations in many cases have the option to use one of three legato switches: Bowed, Fingered, or Portamento.

• Fingered legato changes note without a bow direction change.

• Bowed legato changes bow direction with the legato change

• Portamento - that infamous “slide” effect between notes.

There is a fourth “rebow” option in certain situations where a bow change is forced without an audible bow change sound.

Bow changes are chosen by a Key Switch separately from the articulation keyswitch.

It’s worth noting that not all of the bowing options are available for all long articulations and a complete list of what is available for each articulation is in the PDF manual.

There are 5 different short articulations available allowing for some very subtle differentiation in performances, and I particularly like the verve in the spiccato samples which offer drive and expression in their sound. The sul tasto sample (found as part of the “special” section) is particularly warm and delicate and this is in sharp contrast to the hard “col legno” sample which is hard-edged and perfect for those action cues that might include a solo moment.

The real star of the show in the articulation area is the Virtuoso mode.

It’s essentially a way of combining numerous articulations to avoid needing multiple instances of the instrument and give you a more playable option. Effectively you are given velocity control over legato and marcato articulations (with different legato choices for lower velocities). Use the pitch bend wheel to change between the shorter articulations. More pitch bend allows for shorter and shorter articulations. Move from legato to short articulations via mod wheel changes instead of velocities to allow the velocities to be used for changes between legato types.

Position

This is not a new feature - East West Hollywood Strings offered the ability some years ago to force a performance onto a certain string of the instrument and several others have followed suit. Firstly, why would I want this?

Well, like any string instrument there is a crossover where it’s possible to play the same note on several different strings, but it sounds different on each one due to the length of each string and the slight differences in thickness. So a middle C (for example) played on one string would sound different from the same note played on another.

As a rule of thumb, playing on the lower strings gives a more mellow, soft tone than playing on the higher strings. So writing a passage “Sul G” (on the G String) or “Sul D” would give a warmer, gentler sound than the same passage “Sul A” or “Sul E” - as the strings are consequently higher and shorter.

Stradivari gives you the option to force a performance towards a lower or higher string, or a “smart” performance, where the engine chooses the most realistic option. You can click on one of these, or change from one to another with a midi CC change (cc21). This really allows some very meticulous performance changes with very real nuance. If you aren't familiar with writing for solo violin and don’t want to use these choices, the smart option works really well, but if you want to take control then you have that choice. There is even a preference to force (or avoid) the use of open strings via a keyswitch. Open strings have a different sound to the same note played on a string - as obviously you can’t use any vibrato.

Conclusion

Of the 7 or 8 different solo violin options, I have at my disposal, if I wanted to write something qazi-classical or for a hybrid filmic cue, Stradivari Violin is about as good as it gets.

As a one-stop-shop, it covers most situations and I suspect this would cover 99% of my needs. As mentioned above, 90% of the demo I created, used nothing more than this mode with some mod wheel changes.

The articulations in Stradivari are an incredibly complete collection. My only wish for the collection would be real recordings of muted (con sordino) strings. It’s currently achieved with a modelled sound (essentially like a filter) and it just falls short of real recordings to my ears.

The collection as a whole is probably less bright and fizzy than most of the competition, but it’s rare that I would use solo violin “naked” as a sample… it would probably be to blend with an underscore, which this instrument does very easily for most of the situations I’ve currently tried it in. I’d thoroughly recommend Stradivari Violin!

Stradivari Violin is available from the e-instruments website and is 199 Euros.