REQ: Westwood Instruments Solo Strings Untamed
Improvised, expressive and human solo strings
SOLO STRINGS UNTAMED is a set of human, raw and expressive solo string instruments; Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass. We’ve recorded over 1000 unique, improvised performances over the four instruments. Instantly playable by just playing harder or softer on your keyboard. From breathy and fragile murmurs to absolutely wild and manic bursts of chaos.
Not for the traditionalist, and not for the faint of heart. This is for fans of alternative scores and inspired by composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Jed Kurzel and Jonny Greenwood.
There’s also our unique and powerful STORMS articulation, can create crescendos from a solo performance to a frenetic ensemble. As well as all of the this, there are many other classic long and short note articulations which complement the sound and character of all the instruments.
It’s here to inspire your writing and is really at home with compositions where you need the mood, feeling and performance do more talking than the melody. They are also equally useful for adding the life and soul to big ensembles.
"I wanted to create a library that is alive, human and felt like you were writing with players in front of you."
Rob Hill
Founder, Westwood
GLUE
Subwoofer not included
Included in all of the instruments is a trick we’ve been using for a long time with strings; sine waves. Adding a simple sine wave thickens up the natural sound of strings. We call this Glue as it fills in the gaps and cements the mix.
To give this the Westwood edge, we sampled every pitch of a sine wave across the entire range of each string instrument through 1″ reel-to-reel tape. This takes away the sterile nature of a pure sine wave and makes it feel more organic. There’s two versions to use; one at the regular pitch and an “8vb” version, which pitch shifts the wave an entire octave down.
PULSE
To add movement to an otherwise static signal, the Pulse section brings a sense of underlying motion.
You can control the intensity of the pulse and the rate which is synced to the tempo to your composition.
EFFECTS
We’ve added a low pass filter which you can use to smooth off the top end for a deeper and more subtle sound.
Use the “Grit” control if you need to roughen up the sound.
DYNAMICS
Control the dynamics independently or with the expression so the level rides in tandem with the main performance.
There’s also a master volume control so you can precisely blend in the amount you need.
MICROPHONES
This is how we recorded it
Recorded at The Nave, one of the North of England’s finest recording studios; a converted church with the most beautiful sounding live room. Engineer Tom Orrell and Andy Hawkins used an set of classic microphones and vintage outboard to tailor the perfect sound for the strings.
At the heart of the mix, is the spot position. A single Brauner VMA valve mic for the viola and violin, and a Neumann U47 FET for the Cello and Bass all providing a really warm, full and very detailed sound. A stereo pair of Neumann KM184s captured a close stereo overhead perspective for all strings. Lively but still intimate.For the room position, we either a pair of Neumann U47s or Oktava MK-012s adding more depth and openness. A second pair placed high up in the gallery, do a perfect job of capturing the natural reverb tail of the studio.
We collected this really wide range of perspectives for you to mix exactly the sound you need. Everything was recorded through through Neve and API preamps, an AMEK Rembrandt desk and captured at 96kHz using world-class Apogee AD16X analogue to digital convertors.