STRING CONTOURS is a soon to be released collection of musical performances across the entire string orchestra made playable within Native Instruments' free Kontakt Sampler. It features each section of the string orchestra, as well as solo violin and cello, and focuses on aspects unachievable with a traditional multisample approach like contextual vibrato, effortless flow between notes, the transparency of a live recording and true dynamic motion within a phrase.

WHAT IS A CONTOUR?

A contour is a recorded performance with a fixed length and dynamic shape. For example a swell with 1 bar of crescendo leading into 1 bar of diminuendo with a bow change in the middle of it. String Contours allows you to play these performances and seamlessly change notes without triggering a new performance. You always stay within the initial performance's dynamic shape and phrasing. This leads to a realistic and fitting vibrato as well as dynamic flow without any Midi CC programming.

Every contour was recorded at multiple speeds and shapes to retain the contextuality of a live performance across the sections along with cosistency across the entire collection. Kontakt automatically picks the correct sample pool based on the tempo of the host sequencer and seamlessly adjusts in case of tempo changes.

This allows high quality results as well as a more minimalistic approach to composing due to the expressiveness of the recordings themselves.

The recordings were done using only handpicked musicians best fit to the required aesthetic in tone and vibrato as well as custom microphone arrays summed down to 3 different mic positions and a fully produced out of the box mixed signal.

INSTRUMENTS

• Violin Section
• Viola Section
• Cello Section
• Double Bass Section
• Solo Violin
• Solo Cello

BOWINGS

• Normale
• Normale Espressivo
• Sul Pont to Normale back to Sul Pont
• Sul Tasto
• Tremolo
• Sul Pont Tremolo
• Loure
• Contextual Tenuto Accents for each Bowing

PRODUCED BY Henri Vartio, Robin Birner and George Strezov