Saturday, 22 March 2014
New, freshly-recorded violin voices for M3000
Last Wednesday, 19th March, we were in the studio of Glenn Tommey (Stackridge keyboards / trombone / flute) in order to capture a set of recordings of Clare Lindley, violinist with Stackridge and DLM. It has to be said, the violin is already the best-served instrument for tape replay and virtual tape replay instruments - there are Harry's original violins which then were EQd into the MK II, the M300A and M300B violins, M400 violins. Violins aplenty. And yet there is something about how violins sound, and how no two violins or violin libraries sound exactly the same, and there is always room for another chromatically-sampled set of voices for that lovely instrument. So, given all that, we had a shot at making a brand-new, clean, 2014 technology library.
I had been warned by the Streetly team that it isn't easy, and it turned out to be pretty arduous for the poor artist - 8 solid minutes of tremolo bow-bouncing is apparently an elbow-breaker!
But it was a successful evening's work, and I'm very, very happy with the results. A brand-new 2014 violin library with 7 distinct voices. There is a 'soft, slow' arco, which is fascinating, when played as chords it loses its violin quality and becomes almost muted brass. A 'soft vibrato' arco, with a very subtle vibrato, and using the mod wheel to transition between these voices is very effective. A pair of 'gusto' arcos, pure and with vibrato, and with no attempt made to edit out the transitions in bow direction - it sounds like somebody playing the violin, which is great. On top these there is a pizzicato, this one two takes doubled up for an ensemble sound, a cracking edgy spiccato, and the elbow-wrecking tremolo. The goal of this whole exercise was to develop a library in the spirit of the mellotron - simple, chromatic, 8 second samples of performance that can substitute for a string section on stage or on record. But not only that, to allow scope for expression and performance by recording multiple different techniques in one session. Taking a cue from Rick Wakeman's astonishing 'Space Oddity' performance, this will allow gifted keyboardists to make the library shine by subtle twiddling of knobs during play. So for example, by leaving the spiccato in B, 'soft no vibrato' in A and 'gusto vibrato' in C, wholly new combinations of 'attack plus soft sustain' and 'attack with strong vibrato sustain' can be created by use of the mod wheel during performance, setting partial blends of A and B, or B and C. The library is in fact boosted up to 10 voices - 350 samples! - by the addition of 3 'ensemble' voices, which blend 2 different 'soft' takes and a 'soft vibrato', a 'soft and gusto' mix and an 'all the stops out' gusto pure / gusto vibrato / soft vibrato mix. These allow a single M3000 on stage to be set up with say a Clare ensemble, a classic 8 voice choir and some Strawberry flutes in the ABC, for maximum prog rock impact.
This new library, along with the amazing Harry Chamberlin Tapes and a quite breathtaking, massive selection of Streetly's classic Tron tapes will be made available for in-app purchase at the next M3000 refresh, which will be submitted to the App Store for review within the next few days. Exciting times!
