Nephew wrote:I'm working on dance music, deep house and disco-y stuff if that helps
Then you want NI session strings - quite cheap and exellent for those kind of sounds and typical articulations.
The rest just seemed too much like hard work to use/programme etc for the kind of thing we wanted.
A few months ago we were looking around a whole load of string VSTs from VSL/Phillamonic etc downwards - I think we bought session strings after about 5 minutes demoing it and been happy with it for disco/funky house type stuff.
At the moment Im doing something with full orchestra style strings arrangement in it - here were using the kontakt orchetra sounds (better for this kind of thing than session strings) and some interesting use of bits of the aether reverb, some delays etc to create a natural huge concert hall space for them.
For house abuse of strings, then you tend to want to EQ them quite hard to bring out exactly the aspect you want. Ive also found that an SPL Mk2 Vitalizer (even the software version) does wonders for strings - especially solo sounds.
As an alternative for house scoops etc - look out for a PWM string sound on a synth - works pretty well. String in this (
http://soundcloud.com/adam-g/as-demo-4) were a mix of pwm synth sound and strings with quite high frequency high pass on both and some enhancement on the strings (out of ECI2 I think) - the sample string really just used to play the the scoops. Did this last year sometime.
for lack of a better word. But I'm only imagining what those sounds would be like in context of a more aggressive background with beats, etc. Perhaps there are some more aggressive articulations as well.
