studiobee music

LA Scoring Strings is one of a new wave of string sample libraries to appear in 2009 and into 2010. It takes the best elements of some other notable libraries, and a couple of its own unique features to give us the best commercial string library available yet. It preys on the user’s desire for ease of use and realistic results.

It uses the Native Instruments Kontakt 3.5 engine, and comes with Kontakt Player 3.5 for those who don’t have the full version of Kontakt, v. 3.5 or newer.

LASS has received rave reviews from critics and film composers alike, and is being used by some very major names in the film music industry. It will get some competition in 2010 from East West who are putting out Hollywood Strings, there’s Cinematic Strings that was released at around the same time as LASS, and there is rumour that VSL has something new up its sleeve.

The library takes a leaf out of VSL’s book by being recorded very dry. This makes it very flexible to fit in many different styles and sizes of ensemble, rather than being stuck in a symphonic hall like East West Symphonic Orchestra is. It comes with a range of Early Reflections and Tails to slot into your favourite convolution reverb and of course you can use your own reverb if you wish. The downside of course is having to add the overhead of a good convolution reverb to something that already demands a lot of your computer.

It takes a leaf out of Garritan and AudioImpressions (does DVZ even exist?) philosophy by suggesting that we make our string section up with small groups. This makes for human timing and tuning elements that give the library an organic feel in use and when we do go divisi, we don’t end up with a section that sounds like 500 string players. It comes as five sections (violin 1, violin 2, viola, cello and double bass) with three different size groups for each section – violin 1 and 2 each come with a first chair player, two separate groups of four players, a group of eight players, plus a mixed full section of sixteen players to save on some programming time and overhead.

It has full ensemble patches which are stereo samples in regular symphony orchestra seating order, which gives us instant gratification for composing at the keyboard. These are actually very usable as is, but for technical reasons lack some of the unique features of the sections that really make LA Scoring Strings so wonderful to listen to.

The individual instrument sets are mono samples already panned into the same kind of seating arrangement, though obviously they could be re-panned if desired.

LASS includes some unique and extremely well programmed features, such as a fantastic legato, portamento and glissando articulation. Its short articulations make use of something that AudioBro calls ART (Advanced Rhythm Tool). This doesn’t work quite as I’d expect, but for how it does work, the way it was designed to, and the results it spits out are nothing short of stunning when creating fast rhythmic lines that don’t have a hint of the machine gun effect. The problem with ART is re-triggering and the fact that when you add notes, they always start at the beginning of the ART sequence, rather than at the position governed by your DAW. This is a hard one to explain, even more so to those who have never seen ART in action, but I think its an issue, and the developer has agreed to look into a change of behaviour on it.

Another unique feature is AudioBro’s deliberate decision not to autotune the crap out its samples. Tuning is loose to say the least. In some libraries, this really bothers me (eg, Garritan Jazz & Big Band), but with LASS, it sounds very natural, very organic, and so human.

There are several layers of recorded dynamics (ppp, mp, f and fff) and they crossfade between each other without any noticeable phasing. This is a good thing since LASS doesn’t come with a huge range of articulations, so things like sfz’s and fp’s have to be done by altering the dynamics, just like with real instruments! I prefer this approach to having a million different articulations chosen by keyswitch. Sampled sfz’s are too limiting in their timing for my liking. The articulations by the way differ a little between instrument groupings, but generally go something like -

- Espressivo Legato (with and without portamento/glissando)
- Non espressivo legato
- Spiccato
- Staccato
- Pizzicato
- Tremolo
- Trills
- Harmonics
- Con Sordino sustained

Although I find LASS to be amazing, inspirational and all the rest of it, I would be blind if I thought it was perfect. The following problems are those that I’ve experienced. They might read as major, but actually they’re pretty minor.
- some of the samples are a little too out of tune.
- the bow changes particularly in the bass are a little too noticeable or “bumpy” in the sustained patches.
- the ART script needs to be re-thought so that its sequencer matches yours.
- Some of the patches are a less than perfect match for each other. So if you flit between arco style and spiccato for example, its hard to match the two patches so they sound like they’re being played by the same instrument. This is most noticeable when using the first chair players as soloists.
- some of the controller uses are a little confusing – cc1 for example does dynamics in the sustained patches, but note length in the short ones. I’d like to see it being used universally.

To end on a positive note, the best features are -

- wonderful legato and portamento scripting that sounds simply perfect and is so easy to use.
- the most human sounding string library I’ve ever heard
- amazing short note patches (spiccato, staccato, pizzicato) that have real bite to them in the upper dynamics and that avoid the dreaded machine gun effect like nothing else.

I’ve used East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold XP for several years, and have mixed Kirk Hunter Emerald with it. Neither have been opened in my DAW since LASS arrived. it’s a very versatile library that works fantastically and offers sections of virtually infinite combinations of size (subject to your computer’s power!). The developer is a small one, and we can expect that updates and bug fixes might take a while to come through, but he is very receptive, supportive and worth supporting. LASS is not a budget library (it comes in somewhere between the price of Cinematic Strings (cheap end) and Hollywood Strings (expensive end), though the developer is planning to start selling cut down versions in the next couple of weeks with an upgrade path to the full product.