Zilhouette Strings is the first pure string library we are releasing and we are very excited about it!
It includes 7 violins, 2 viola, 7 cellos and 2 basses in total. The musicians we recorded are german-known session and live orchestra musicians. All content was recorded in several recording sessions in our own recording rooms in a close and intimate distance to the instrument in a solo as well as in a trio situation. We have used condenser mics such as Neumann U-87 and TLM 103, Schoeps MK4 as well as dynamic mics such as Sennheiser MD421, AKG D112 among others.
In summary, you get a collection of string sounds which is directly at your fingertips. You can quickly select the amount of player, mix the separate instrument groups at your own requirements, select the kind of seating and place them into an ambience – and that´s all with an intimate, natural and catchy sound.
ARTICULATIONS
The Zilhouette Strings are available in three different articulations: Shorts, Longs and Pizzicato. Each articulation comes along in a single patch which is easy and quick to use – you can directly play it at your fingertips. The long variations are easy to use. Just move the modwheel to slide through all the dynamic layers.
The shorts and pizz articulation are working different. In order to get a natural playabilty we have set a high focus to achieve an almost continuously dynamic. We managed this by adding some advanced programming as well as by varying the length from short to spiccato by moving the ModWheel. The result is as precise and accurate as it should be.
PLAYERS AMOUNT
A great and absolute unique feature of Zilhouette Strings is the ‘Players’ option. You can select between different amounts of players. This happens in ‘real’ because we haven´t recorded an entire orchestra at once – we have done solo and trio sessions which means that Zilhouette Strings can build up several ‘true’ player ensembles. You can choose between a …
Quartett (1/1/1/1)
Full Range (7/2/7/2)
Chamber Ensemble (6/2/3/1)
Just Lows (0/0/7/2)
Just Highs (7/2/0/0)
After selecting your favourite type of ensemble you can now mix these 4 instruments groups (violin, viola, cello, bass) by separate volume slider.
Saying so it is logical you can leave out single instruments or instrument groups which results into a lot more variations of the above mentioned amount of ensemble variations. For example, you can play just a solo cello by selecting the quartett ensemble and turn the violin, viola and bass volume slider to zero.
SEATING
Besides adjusting your favourite type of player ensemble you can also decide the kind of seating, available is the „American” or the „German” seating. In order to generally set all panning to center please use the “off” option.
SWEETNESS
Zilhouette Strings provides a sweetness function which lets the overall sound of all instruments change from natural (left end position) to sweet and smooth (right end position). By using this option you can easily let Zilhouette Strings sound more distanced.
BONUS: INTIMATE PIANO
In addition to that you get – as a bonus – the Intimate Piano which fits very well to the strings. Intimate Piano is a completely new recorded set of samples of our beloved Zeitter & Winkelmann upright piano. We recorded the piano with two different sets of mics. Intimate Piano is simple but very expressive!
The whole package of two instruments contains over 4.000 Samples.
The full version of Kontakt 4 or higher is required.
The pricing is 135€ / 150 USD
Website: http://cinematique-instruments.com/page_zilhouette_strings.php