Suggestions for getting my EastWest Symphonic Orchestra Strings legato run to work?

[rallsopp]

Hi all, I bought EW Symphonic Orchestra Strings ages ago, and let it collect dust until now. I'm now finally attempting to learn some virtual orchestra composition with it, and struggling to get my strings to sound realistic. It sounds like legato strings are notoriously hard, but I'm hoping there is still something I'm missing as a beginner? Here's my journey so far:

I started with the Qlegato cellos, and they just sound...awful. Am I doing something wrong here? What is this articulation even useful for? Have a listen to the attachment `cellos_qleg.mp3`

I moved on to the butter legato articulation, much better, but is still missing something. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_opus.mp3`.

I read that the notes in some of the legato articulations need to actually overlap to work right, so I tried overlapping them. Opus can't seem to handle this and starts behaving very oddly. Dropping notes, shortening some others. Very weird. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_overlap_opus.mp3`.

I wondered since Symphonic Orchestra is quite old, if I should try using the older Play engine and not Opus. I ran the overlapping version through Play and it did indeed work better. Listen to `cellos_butterleg_overlap_play.mp3`. Is this a known issue with Opus and Symphonic? Is there something I need to do to get the butter legato patch working right in Opus?

Overall, things are still sounding too smooth and uniform. I wanted to have some notes sort of leave gaps or transition more sharply. It sounded like mixing different articulations would be the key here, and that maybe some of the Portato articulations would be appropriate. I tried mixing these with the butter legato articulations at the right times, and it straight up sounds like these two articulation sets are different recordings. They don't seem to work together at all. Have a listen to `cellos_butterleg_portleg.mp3`. Am I not supposed to mix these?

Bottom line is I'm struggling to understand how to use this library. I can't find many examples for it online, despite its age. What can I do to make this work? Is slapping the butter legato articulation on and riding CC11 a bit as good as it gets? Should I just think about upgrading to Hollywood/using composer cloud?

Click to read more...

 

[Jeremy Spencer]

SO doesn’t have true legato patches.

 

[maxbedroom]

SO is 20 years old, and it's confusing to navigate with the context of modern sample library terminology. True legato was definitely not the standard then, so "Q legato" is a very rough approximation - it's literally just sustains that (try to) sound like they're part of a phrase. Behind the scenes, QLeg patches are the instrument playing a single note repeated once, but the sample start position is set to when the repetition begins. (And then a release sample is played upon note releases of course.) So it's meant to have more musical context than dead-start sustains, but compared to modern true legato it's generations behind. And in my opinion, this approach kind of backfired because each note needs to be aggressively faded in via modulation due to it starting from the middle of a phrase, so it gives a synthy aesthetic. But there's a whole ton of other sustain types you can try - anything goes... This was the wild west era of deep-sampling. ModDXF patches are probably best since they have true dynamics crossfading.

And I don't know about Opus, but the Play version allows you to toggle an artificial legato/portamento effect for any sustain which adds a little pitch slide to connect notes when played overlapped. This helps a lot, but it unfortunately disables the true release samples, so a reverb is needed to make up for that.
Edit: if Opus glitches out with overlapped notes by default that's odd. Maybe investigate if the legato/portamento effect was auto-applied.

Legato aside, it can hold up pretty well with enough effort:

 

[maxbedroom]

it straight up sounds like these two articulation sets are different recordings.

They probably are though! 2 years after the first SO package was released they went back to Benaroya and recorded an equal amount of additional articulations with the same players (Pro XP expansion). This was all combined into the singular Play/Opus package later on. So layering is a good idea but it might require some experimentation to find the perfect fit.

 

[Francisco Relaño Peña]

SO doesn’t have true legato patches.

I don't think interval legato per se could be considered "True Legato", though. Legato also requires to make the illusion that the notes are connected.

 

[Jeremy Spencer]

I don't think interval legato per se could be considered "True Legato", though. Legato also requires to make the illusion that the notes are connected.

It’s still legato the OP is trying to achieve, and that’s not going to be convincingly possible with SO.

 

[cmillar]

If you like to play your parts 'by hand' into your DAW, you might try picking up Kirk Hunters' newest string package (Concert Strings Adaptive) and mix them in with the EWSO strings.

The KH strings will 'fatten' the sound up a bit, so you'll have to adjust the mix. And the legatos are excellent.

Kirk Hunter is a string player himself, so he's pretty picky about what's going to 'fool' the listeners.

And, he also knows that 'true replication' of what string players can do is pretty un-achievable.

Bottom line....your audience will never know or care, because the KH strings and East West libraries all sound totally and musically convincing when the mixing is finished. They can put out some 'soul' and 'emotion' unlike some sample libraries.