String Programming - The SECRETS
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Whilst many tutorials out there talk about programming strings directly they often miss out the important bit. How to set them up in your DAW (digital audio workstation). In this video Christian shares his 25+ years of working as a media composer to impart his ideas, approaches and secrets onto anyone who wants to get the best out of their string libraries.
Henson was using Glass Strings by Crow Hill, more info here: thecrowhillcom...
To download this logic file go to our hub: thecrowhillcom... and locate HUB_19 files in the hub-list (make sure you have the correct year tabulated (bottom left of table)).
I've seen a lot of composers using Glass Strings already to do some pretty incredible stuff. It's a pretty special library. I like that this video isn't really a walkthrough exactly. It's nice to see how you actually use the plugin. Hearing you explain what to rerecord and what to leave is also really nice.
Christian, thank you for all you do for the community. Have you done a video recently about how you save your work…SSD, Cloud and where and how you organize your sample librairies. I’m getting confused about how many SSD’s one should own. Thank you
Thank you for sharing about these secrets as you mention in the title. These are things that can cross our minds but when these details of creation: from how the plugins are designed to the creation of a piece - thanks to you we now realize small links between all these entities: big wow and thank you
Just wanted to say I love what you're doing Christian - I've been following the BTS videos of what you're putting together and hats off to you, my man...! I only wish I could do more in some way.
Keep keeping the passion alive...!
That intro was exquisite.
Wallop! brilliant Cristian, love the way this was put across......just keep em coming, much peace and love Gary
That intro was amazing
That was useful! Christian Thank you for your musical passion :-)
Stems/Groups:
LONGS
SHORTS
PLUCKS
EXTRAS (i.e. harmonics, incidentals, tremelo)
Thanks for all the bus help. It’s really helpful to see u load them up etc. had to slow the video down to see what u were doing. Really helpful thank u.
Thumbs up from me just for the choice and voicing of chordal movement in that first progression. Lovely stuff :)
Hey Christian, cracking video! I wondered if you could go back a step and explain more about how the process works for media composing? A lot of this goes over my head because there are some parts I'm missing - what happens when you send your music in, whats being re-recorded, how much of that is your choice, does someone else arrange, what is expected from you etc. I, and I'm sure many others, would be so thankful for more on this to help us forward!
The best as always, thank you Christian! keep 'em up!
this is absolute genius.
Thanks Christian for your insight and knowledge.
Awesome video! Thank you Christian!
Great stuff. I would love to see more similar videos of you building various templates from scratch. Purely orchestral, hybrid crime/tension, electronic underscore, etc.
Thank you so much for these videos!!! Always brilliant!!!
Love this lesson! Thank you!
Thank you for making these!
The condensed milk on the custard. Anyone in their right mind would understand that haha
Thanks Christian.
Thank you for sharing 🙏💜🙏
Superb!
I'm at 12.48 in the video. What is it about those sounds that reduce me to tears? Just few notes. It isn't just here on your channel either. I have a shed load of string sample libraries and the same thing happens when I play those same sounds. There's something deeper that we are connected with when we hear certain combinations of sounds and certain progressions. We are connected to something profound in this universe that we don't fully understand. I can't find words to explain and I guess that's why music does it better. I'm not religious (humanist as a matter of fact), but there is something spiritual about this experience.
It's often more to do with your own psychology and links to the music/sounds/chrd progressions and emotions that you hold they may be stirring up. Someone for example from a tribe in the middle of the rainforest may feel nothing for those chords or sounds, as they have no memories or experience of them. Nostalgia plays a huge part even in our subconscious brains. What connections has your brain made previously with the things you're hearing. If there's no connection and no synapses are firing then it's possible you may feel no emotion from them. Not to say it's not spiritual for yourself and your own experiences though, if anything it makes it even more special that the connection is deeply personal :) I feel it myself many times, and sometimes when i'm listening to techno/hard dance music. It is deeply linked with my experiences as a teenager and those formative years where we begin to know ourselves and become... us!? :)
We must not forget that music has developed over something like 35,000 years. This applies to instruments, of course, but above all to tunings and harmonies. Behind these developments are countless collective decisions based on what sounds beautiful. Added to this today are individual personal taste and experience, the Zeitgeist, but also the knowledge of harmonies and composition as we are used to it. I understand you, there is always something magical about certain progressions and sounds. That’s why i am always grateful to be able to experience and explore it. 🫶🏼
Nice one Xtian. Always love the BTS drops. A little more focus on the screen during these perhaps? Cheers though.
Recently noticed that there is a big volume increase with the vibrato control on spitfire’s Chamber Strings. Is this a common thing across libraries? It’s made me adopt a new approach to programming where vibrato is a lot more important. After the initial performance with one hand and dynamic/expression controllers, I do a pass for vibrato and then I manually adjust dynamic/expression to control volume and balance between sections. Anyone feedback?
i make pretty crap dance music in ableton live 12 (I AM TRULY AWFUL AT IT lol) , but i do love to watch your videos christian, id dearly love to have a go at making music or a soundscape for a movie. i just dont know where to start. i get so much from being creative, the end results dont matter much, for me its the process of it, i can get lost for hours in it, it really helps me cope with pressure from running a small tree surgery business and also depression. could you perhaps make a short video on how to begin or is that not a broach-able subject? anyways, regardless, thanks so much for all your content, ive been watching your videos since your old company.
Hello. I'm sure someone mentioned a composition competition but there's nothing on the website about it. Did I imagine it?
thecrowhillcompany.com/composing-challenge/
Very nice video Christian. Question: W hat is the controller you're using on the left for dynamics? Thank you.
What would be the difference is one controls the amount of wet/dry signal from the send controls of each instrument channel? 😵💫
What is that small controller on your left hand?
its a small midi controller used for controlling the expression and the dynamics of the strings,helps a lot for making string feeling more realistic
I don't get this at 14:20. How does putting the harmonics on a stem change how many players you are simulating? In the end, won't you still have more players than the section size?
He’s talking in terms of practicality with regard to mock-ups being then used for the recording sessions for the final score. In a real session if you wanted to record what he wrote with the harmonic line as well as the sultasto line, you’d need to use divisi and split apart the violins. So say you had 8 first violins and then 6 second violins.
You have already written a lyrical melody so you’d ideally want first and second to play that line but now you want that sul tasto and the harmonics….what happens is now you’ll need to split in half the two sections in order for this happen so you’d have 4 first violins A and then 4 first violins B and then you’ll have even less at 3 second violins A and then 3 second violins B.
As a consequence…because you’ve now reduced the breadth of the players your main tune which was supposed to have all the weight behind now has a fraction of the section playing it. It’ll sound smaller and also the extra tidbits didn’t add much in the grand scheme of things.
I've never understood this way of working. Creating individual tracks for each articulation is counter-intuitive and unwieldy on larger projects. No orchestra in the world records one articulation at a time. If you use MIDI note channels you will get a much more lifelike result and about a 10th of the resource requirements.
Interesting. I think I see the process of creating master recordings as part MIDI arrangement, part audio production. And instead of breaking these into the former traditional workflow of pen paper, orchestration, copying, rehearsal, recording mixing and dubbing I do a bit of everything from the get go. Non-linear. Is the world of post production these days so my workflow echos that.
@@TheCrowHillCo I get that, but this process is overly complicated and introduces so many overtones and phase issues with room-stacking (and reverb stacking if you enable that per instance). Just trying to track MIDI envelopes must be a nightmare on 100+ tracks
@@CybreSmeeThere are also articulation sets in Logic - you can simply use 1 instance of VST-instrument with all of the articulations and select an individual articulation for each note on just 1 track
@@cherrysound Cool, Kontakt does the same with with individual MIDI output channels per instance. Its means you can technically use each Kontakt instance as a BUS track for stemming. Much easier to juggle than hundreds of individual articulations.
@ But this library isn’t made for Kontakt, that’s the reason why I’m talking about this method of work. Anyway, nice video, Christian! Thank you so much!
Does this mean you're back in Logic, and that Cubase was a short fling?
Still working with it in the background. But this channel was built on my use of logic so feel I probably will stick with it where these tutorials are concerned.
Why do all roads lead to Pro Tools? All my roads lead away from that damn thing after 20 years of hard service and then getting truly stuffed by Avid for a sub standard product! 😐
I feel like I am being fleeced by Avid. I do think it’s a great piece of software for what it does, but the pricing for what you get is criminal.
Because the industry is run by old cronies who don't want change and are stuck in the past. Pro tools is a joke really in this day and age
you know how to read music
It exactly an advert for sample libraries
Bet there's no secrets shared.
I love Cristian, but yet, I cringe.
I think Christian's ADHD gets aways from him. He's all over the place if you try to follow him closely. For example, he doesn't clearly lay out his "4 stems". Sorry, not good teaching or instruction. But he seems like a fun person...
It will be fine not to program just for DAW. Setup for Unify that works in any DAW. It’s time to recognised. Because lots work with Davinci Resolve direct on film based.