strings from a keyboard

andris · Post by **andris** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:46 am

I've got a decent collection of keyboards for sounds (rhodes, hammond, moog), but feel I am missing a good string sound. I can't afford a mellotron but really like the strings sounds. Any cheaper keys sound similar? Is the arp string ensemble any good?

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:43 am

andris wrote:I've got a decent collection of keyboards for sounds (rhodes, hammond, moog), but feel I am missing a good string sound. I can't afford a mellotron but really like the strings sounds. Any cheaper keys sound similar? Is the arp string ensemble any good?

Weird... your post seems to have gotten delayed by a few decades.

apropos of nothing · Post by **apropos of nothing** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:52 pm

andris wrote:I've got a decent collection of keyboards for sounds (rhodes, hammond, moog), but feel I am missing a good string sound. I can't afford a mellotron but really like the strings sounds. Any cheaper keys sound similar? Is the arp string ensemble any good?

You could get a digital synth.

(hides)

Okay, kidding, kidding. I haven't heard the string ensemble. I used to have an ARP Omni that I liked the string pads on. Very New Order. Another to look into would be the Crumar Orchestrator.

apropos of nothing · Post by **apropos of nothing** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 9:03 pm

Check this:
http://www.keyboardmuseum.org/soundshee ... sheet.html

inflatable · Post by **inflatable** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:08 pm

apropos of nothing wrote:Check this:
http://www.keyboardmuseum.org/soundshee ... sheet.html

Great stuff. Now I know where all those anoyying 70s/80s soundfonts came from. Especially the old PBS stuff. It's a fairlight!

percussion boy · Post by **percussion boy** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 1:54 pm

The old Roland Super JX MKS70 module sounds good for analog strings, although I wouldn't say it sounds like a Mellotron. Sometimes I think strings is ALL the MKS is good for.

Effects really help in this situation too, especially chorus --which is what the Arp string ensemble and the MKS both use onboard -- reverb, delay, etc.. The effects give the little fake string sound lots more body.

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 2:06 pm

Crap. Now I'm looking for some of those sounds... mellotron/chamberlin/etc.

I know about M-Tron. Any outboard midi modules that have respectable sounds like that?

apropos of nothing · Post by **apropos of nothing** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 2:55 pm

I mean... The problem is you have to define what you mean by strings. If you're talking about mellotron-esque strings, what you really need is some variety of sampler -- its a different technological implementation of the same fundamental idea.

If you want to stay analog, you're not going to get anything that really actually sounds very stringlike at all. I love the "string sound on the Omni, but that's more for the texture, and also for the phaser (which I haven't found a single plug-in that emulates properly) than for the stringlike nature of the sound.

If you want real strings, you really have to record a string player or a few. If you don't have access to real string players, the second best option is one of those massively multisampled orchestral virtual instrument packs, and I understand that several of them are very good these days.

Without doing the plug-in thing, a sampler is probably where its at.

My $.02.

A.David.MacKinnon · Post by **A.David.MacKinnon** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 6:39 pm

M-Tron is awesome. I stongly recomend it.

The Real MC · Post by **The Real MC** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:55 am

The ARP String Ensemble only sounds good in the upper range. They get that sweet singing in the high notes, but pretty useless anywhere else. Omni I/II might be too electronic sounding if you're looking for Tron strings.

If you are after orchestral strings and variety, a good cheap module is the Kurzweil 1000SX (string expander). Kinda dark sounding but much more useful and expressive than the ARPs.

Chrisbrownsound · Post by **Chrisbrownsound** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:46 pm

Emu Vintage Pro?

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Apr03/a ... 8699acd1b8

AstroDan · Post by **AstroDan** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:23 pm

The Real MC wrote:The ARP String Ensemble only sounds good in the upper range. They get that sweet singing in the high notes, but pretty useless anywhere else.

I agree. I had one but couldn't justify hanging on to such an expensive synth that was basically a limited one trick pony.

Wilkesin · Post by **Wilkesin** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 7:11 pm

on the cheap Tweakbench makes a free VSTi that does a mellotron thing. Just google it up.

dirk_v · Post by **dirk_v** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:58 am

I must say I love my string ensemble and I'll never part with it. Last week, I had a band member in who wanted to track one part with it, and we ended up putting it all over 3 songs. Sounds great. Mind you, we had it running through a tape delay into a tube amp....

Mellotron strings are kind of a different animal, but there are so many good mellotron samples available that there's really not much reason to go out and buy one. I have heard some decent string ensemble samples, too, but nothing that captures the synth's unique 'modulation' circuit. Heard about a free VST called 'cheese machine' that's supposed to ape the machine too a while ago which might be worth checking out.

Have fun!

-dv

longfade · Post by **longfade** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:43 pm

If you're looking for outboard gear, you can get Kurzweil K2000's with the Orchestral ROM for pretty cheap these days. Even w/o the Orch ROM the K2000 is loaded with sounds and is extremely flexible b/c of its Synth Architecture. It also reads multiple sample formats (Akai, EMU, Wav, etc) so you can import your own sounds.

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