perhaps the most important creative decision you'll make!

Late last year, I was rummaging through old Sanguine Hum recordings, cataloguing tracks for inclusion in the retrospective release What We Ask Is Where We Begin. Many of the archive recordings, squirrelled away on DVDs and hard drives, were initially intended to be included in the original Songs for Days master, but for reasons known more intimately to our younger selves Matt and I had decided not to release them at that time.

Rewind even further to 2014. We were adding the finishing touches to Now We Have Light, a relatively late alteration in the track Bubble Trouble had been crafted by Matt to accommodate a brilliant vibes solo by vibraphonist Jim Heart. Then, for some reason, Matt and I got a bee in our bonnets about strings, convinced that a string arrangement to accompany the new solo section was what the track needed to send the production stratospheric! 

So we drafted one string arrangement each and dropped the parts into the mix to compare. Neither of them was sitting comfortably, so we redrafted and tried again! This time, for good measure, we changed the string sounds to see if that helped it sit more easily. The same nagging feeling that the part wasn't right was still there. So we redrafted and edited it again! Eventually, after all that work writing and editing, we concluded what the music actually needed was to be left alone!

Sometimes the most creatively astute decision is to leave it out!

And this brings me back to my rummaging around to find tracks for What We Ask Is Where We Begin. Inevitably the things we choose to leave out find their way into the world as part of another project, and if indeed a section of the arrangement isn't right, then the idea should be tucked away in a quiet corner to wait its turn. It might turn out to be just what's needed later on.

I recently listened back to my string arrangement for 'Bubble Trouble' and as a piece of writing I really enjoyed it. The score for the strings is below as is a midi mockup of the parts. 

Here's some info on the samples I've used in this midi mockup. 

CINESAMPLES - CINESTRINGS CORE

vienna symphonic library - orchestral strings 1 & 2

For this mockup, I decided to use the Vienna Symphonic Library Orchestral Strings library in combination with Cinesamples' CineStrings Core. I've used both libraries to exploit their particular virtues. Where the VSL Orchestral Strings are much more nimble, with an extensive range of detailed articulations, the Cinesamples CineStrings Core library sounds more realistic, owing to the multi-mic position sampling methodology, the quality of the Sony Pictures scoring stage acoustics, an impeccable signal path and the skills of a brilliant engineer, Dennis Sands. 

In contrast to the Cinesamples recordings, the Vienna Symphonic Library samples are recorded at The Silent Stage, a purpose-built facility constructed to record the instruments in a consistent, relatively dry environment using just one mic position. The dry samples are then processed with a convolution reverb to add a sense of space to the sound.

When using two different sample libraries side by side, I find it helpful to add an additional reverb to the mix to help blend the two sound sources, effectively creating a shared space in which the instruments perform. 

The recording shared in this blog features Vienna Symphonic Library's Ensemble Pro mix host software, with the integrated MIR Pro convolution reverb engine and the Teldex studio impulses loaded from Roompack 2. 

Both companies have lots more information available on their websites: 

Vienna Symphonic Library

Cinesamples

Enjoy!

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