Recording - September 2010 - 49

took a while to refine but is now extremely elegant) you section violin patch from the VSL string library. The net might initially be dismayed by the fact that LASS lacks effect, with LASS leading the way, was stunning. such an interface. However, the Kontakt player has a 127 slot bin into which you can drop patches, and the resulting Intoxication keyswitches operate as continuous controllers, which So how good is this library? I’ll give you two instances means that the location you choose for playback will auto- where its musicality blew me away. matically call up the proper patches. You’ll have to figure Do you know “Lujon”, Henry Mancini’s great cue from the out how to use this aspect of Kontakt in conjunction with movie Hatari? For my money, this cue, scored for bass marimyour sequencer’s MIDI transform function to insure that ba, percussion, a great ‘bone solo in the style of J.J. Johnson, you use keys outside an instrument’s range that do not alto sax, nylon string guitar (with a mandolin or some exotic interfere with scripting data built plectrum instrument playing the last Windows Woes into LASS. chord), and a huge violin section, is one Audiobro recently released LASS 1.5, a of the most glorious pieces of music Then there is the A.R.T. (Auto Rhythm Tool) in LASS, which lets you free upgrade. If you’re using either a Vista ever written in the “Hollywood” style. I instantiate staccato patches, hold down or Windows 7 based workstation and loaded up all the first violins patches chords and use MIDI CC64 (usually the Native Instruments Kontakt 4, let me save that include legato, portamento and sustain pedal) to activate arpeggiation, you a potential major hassle. glissando, looped “Lujon”, and played Firing up Cubase 5 and LASS I discovered along with this cue for about ten minwhich you can modify by drawing in that the version 1.5 instruments failed to load utes. I was intoxicated! pattern lengths and accents. into Kontakt 4, and I was presented with a Years ago I ushered at Carnegie Hall, Tips message telling me that I needed a newer which really taught me how great Head up to the audiobro site and lis- version of Kontakt. This persisted even after music, players, and instruments sound ten to the demos. They’re all really heading over to the NI Service Center to in an ideal environment, and I still good, including the ones that Colin download the latest K 4 update, and the K 4 remember listening to the Cleveland O’Malley contributed. For my money app itself was acting a bit churlish. Neither orchestra perform Mahler’s “Das Lied Colin’s one of the best orchestral Audiobro’s tech folks nor I could fix the prob- Von Der Erde”. There’s a point in the mockup composers working today, and lem, but a call to Gabriel Ferrer of Native score where the double basses hold one working he is. When we spoke he’d Instruments tech support got me a solution. of their lowest notes and there’s no Gabriel told me that on Vista and Win7 other sound except, if I remember corjust had a pair of spots he scored run on the Super Bowl. Although it’s easy machines the installation process for NI prod- rectly, a dust of violin harmonics and to get caught up with combining mul- ucts can get confused, and the installer can flutes at the tippy top of their range. tiple sections into a conglomerate, be misled into thinking that the original path What an effect! It felt like my head was Colin makes an interesting point: “I’m for .dll placement has been changed. That’s slowly being spun around on its axis! finding that removing bandwidth what happened to me. The 64-bit .dll sitting The first time I loaded up the LASS opens up a mix. I do a lot less doubling in my VST plug-ins folder had not been updat- BassesFullEspSus patch (the Full of live players these days, and with ed—instead, the new .dll had migrated patches are a blend of all three sections LASS I tend to use the divisi sections somewhere else on my computer (the two .dll and the soloist) and struck the low C, I as sections. I ask myself, which section files have the same name; the only way to tell was reminded of that long-ago perforsounds best on a line? The A sections them apart is to look at their properties). I sim- mance, and the fact that this patch trigsound the smallest to me, and so I tend ply had to search for it and place it in the gered that memory impresses me. proper plug-ins folder. As we move into the to use them on my lead lines.” Very nice, Colin. Still, load up all 64-bit world, problems like this will crop up So—should you? the violas, drench them in reverb, and from time to time. Gabriel told me that NI is Keresztes has clearly achieved the improvise a solo line using the octa- reexamining its installers.—GE goal of releasing a string library that tonic scale. Man, that sounds great! working film composers (like himself) So do the ensemble gliss effects. Grab them by the hand- will find attractive, particularly since this group can ful and you morph into Bernard Herrmann. afford to purchase multiple libraries. Achieving convincing runs at medium to fast tempos has But what about bozos like you and me who work on a been a thorn in the side to orchestral mockup composers. limited budget? If you can afford only one string library, Many have resorted to exotic tricks like adding low register should it be LASS or one of its competitors? That’s a hard trills at a low volume to purposefully add some mud to the call. Fortunately, audiobro is currently working on subsets sound. Although fast run execution wasn’t the principal of the program that will allow users operating on a limitgoal of this library, using the edit function on the Legato ed budget to purchase only the first chair samples, for Tweak page yields great results in this area. Once again, I example, and if you buy one of the smaller libraries you loaded a violin section, called the first-chair player in from can upgrade at any time and receive full credit towards his cigarette break, and demanded they all play the same the complete collection. line. This time I clocked in a moderato portamento on the Bottom line: Smart ideas, outstanding playing, first-rate lead track and adjusted the fade out and attack on the sec- MIDI implementation... and highest recommendation. tion part so that they would play with moderate staccato. I performed in a line at a tempo of 60 Content: 40 GB of content on five dual-layer DVDs BPM and ramped up playback speed to 120 BPM. Format: Native Instruments Kontakt Player 3 (included) or Kontakt 3.5+ The resultant run sounded great, but could be Documentation: User Guide on PDF improved. I looped the two bars, went back into Licensing: User cannot sell or transfer sounds; no royalties on the Legato Tweak page of both parts and made adjustments. I could have added a third LASS compositions using them; two installs permitted section, perhaps an expressive patch, but I’m forPrice: $1399 ($1099 street) tunate enough to have several other string More from: Audiobro, www.audiobro.com. libraries on my computer, and so I loaded in a flautando (lightly bowed, to sound like a flute)
RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2010

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Recording - September 2010

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