This Sinking Ship

This is probably my first attempt ever at writing a piece entirely for strings. You can call it a study, as it definitely took some studying. It was not simple.

I wanted this to sound as real as possible; not like a generic string ensemble patch, but like real instruments playing together. That meant I'd need to author every part individually.

The other thing that makes emulating strings difficult is that there are so many aspects of the sound you can control. A string on a violin can be played loud, soft, quick, slow, high, low, and so on, and all within even a single note. The sound that a violin produces is rich, complex, and varied.

As I discovered today, all of these must be taken into consideration to create a faithful violin performance. This screenshot says it all:

That's the whole mix! Every instrument channel required lots of treatment:

• I used the INTEGRA's SuperNATURAL string patches.

• It took many takes to get each part down.

• Every single note required lots of modulation, which behaves like expression for the patches I used.

• I had to painstakingly adjust velocity (orange dots), modulation (green lines), as well as fader to control the final note volume and intensity.

• I applied some light panning after imagining the instrument locations in physical space.

Multiply this effort by five parts:

• One cello

• One viola

• Two violins

• One contrabass

Yeah, this one was rough, but I think it came out pretty good!

This song sounds like something the string quartet on the Titanic would play as the ship sank. Even if you haven't seen the movie, it feels like an impending loss: slow to arrive, but inevitable.

It's tragedy in the making, not yet written.