Arrangements Orchestration and Choirs

H-evolve

H-evolve

Member
Apr 21, 2014
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Montreal, Canada
What do you guys use to add orchestration, choirs and other arrangements?

I was looking for good plug-ins, and I have found many, but the thing that bugs me is that they all seem to work with Kontakt Player.

The thing is, I am not sure they are all "licensed" Kontakt third party provider. From what I understand, if you are not buying licensed products, (such as Seraph drum Samples), the free Kontakt player won't work with them. You'd need the fully paid version. Am I right?

Is there an alternative to Kontakt Player that works with those orchestration plug-ins? I use the Reaper Sampl-o-Matic thingy for drum samples, but I don't know how easy it would be to use it with Orchestration and Choirs.

I'm not interested in buying the full version, and anyway, I don't have that money. It's quite expensive (unless you upgrade from a previous version, which I don't have).
 
Kontakt is the only engine for this type of stuff that is powerful enough from what I have seen, outside of a developer building their own sample playback engine (east west is the only recent provider that I have seen do it). For my stuff currently, I use kontakt exclusively. My main libraries are

8dio
Adagietto, Agitato Legato, and Sordino
Lacrimosa
CAGE Brass

Strezov Sampling
Storm Choir I, and II
Belarus (only for off-tuned pieces)
Thunder 3

Native Instruments
The Grandeur
Alicia's keys

Cinesamples
Tina Guo
Solo strings

My next purchase is going to be the Master Brass bundle, but was holding out for another Native Instrument Symphony Series post Christmas sale. I plan on grabbing all three of the libraries (Strings, woodwind, and Brass) whenever they go on sale next.

Adagietto is like $99 right now, and is the back bone of my pieces for strings, and Storm Choir II is almost better than Lacrimosa, since the smaller sections actually feel larger/more three dimensional in an orchestral context.

If you don't have kontakt, you can buy the KompleteNI bundle for $499 I believe and will give you a nice chunk of libraries and will give you the full player for third party libraries, or you can buy the libraries from Cinesamples, or NI themselves, and they will work in the kontakt 5 player (which is the free one). There are a few others that do licensed libraries (Cinematic strings comes to mind).
 
newamerikangospel said:
If you don't have kontakt, you can buy the KompleteNI bundle for $499 I believe and will give you a nice chunk of libraries and will give you the full player for third party libraries, or you can buy the libraries from Cinesamples, or NI themselves, and they will work in the kontakt 5 player (which is the free one). There are a few others that do licensed libraries (Cinematic strings comes to mind).
Click to expand...

Not sure I get you... the "full" Kontakt player is 399 if I'm correct? As I said, I'm not spending that money on a player with libraries I will not use. Moreover, I have other "financial obligations". This is not a full time job. I'm not a professional musician, neither am I a pro studio owner. I'm just writing music for fun. I really find weird that the ONLY option available on the market is 400 to 500 bucks. What the fuck!?

I am not going to spend even more than the full Kontakt player (399?), on a Komplete NI Bundle, at 499
 
kontakt is definitely the best bet for good results. it's not cheap, and the best orchestral libraries are even more expensive than kontakt. UVI make a sampler that's free and similar to kontakt, albeit with less libraries available and none of the big sample libraries really use it.

if you don't want to pay, something like logic comes stock with a variety of different instruments in its EXS24 sampler.

alternatively you could just rent east west's libraries while you need it.
 
DSK makes really good free VST instruments. Maybe not good enough if you are trying to create something ultra realistic, but works for me.
Sometimes I use Reason limited too, that was free for me when I bought audio interface....
And sometimes I use samples from old mellotron with ReaSamplomatic. Those are free too, just google "Mellotron samples". And sounds really good in my opinion. Actually I use those a lot..
 
http://www.orchestraltools.com/libraries/metropolis_ark_1.php
You don't really need to buy the full version of kontakt to work with the libraries.Metropolis 1 or 2 uses a free version of kontakt.From the web page of orchestraltools "Works with the free Kontakt Player or Kontakt 5.5.1 full".Most libraries are like that but check the company you like and they have the info if it works with the free or the paid version.I'm saving for metropolis ark!
 
bryan_kilco said:
I've been curious about this as well. I want to get into programming synths/strings/choirs etc but can't afford any pricey plugins.
Click to expand...
http://www.pluginboutique.com/produ...-Instrument/1845-Orchestral-Companion-Strings The deal ends tomorrow, but that should be really good bang for the buck. I personally use EWQL SO Silver for my orchestral stuff and I've been pretty happy about it. You can get really good synth plugins for absolutely free, which is really not the case with the orchestral stuff IMHO.

My favorite vsti's that are free are u-He Tyrell N6, PG-8X, Synth 1 and U-NO 62, downloading those and playing with them would be a good start. Computer Music magazine also has some really good synth vsti's that you'll be able to download when buy a number of the magazine.
 
Hugues Berger said:
Not sure I get you... the "full" Kontakt player is 399 if I'm correct? As I said, I'm not spending that money on a player with libraries I will not use. Moreover, I have other "financial obligations". This is not a full time job. I'm not a professional musician, neither am I a pro studio owner. I'm just writing music for fun. I really find weird that the ONLY option available on the market is 400 to 500 bucks. What the fuck!?

I am not going to spend even more than the full Kontakt player (399?), on a Komplete NI Bundle, at 499
Click to expand...

It's daunting, and the prices will fall. I remember when Quantum Leap was $800 and felt way too out of reach. I am a hobbyist as well. I have no paid plugins as far as mixing goes, because my money went into orchestral libraries. EastWest has very manageable rate for their silver tier stuff, which has fewer mic and articulation pools, but still sounds good and works in their proprietary sample engine. Kontakt is just so powerful and already there, so people will use it to output their libraries instead of spending tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and years to get a playback sampler to work as well. When EastWest first put out "play", they dealt with a lot of backlash from customers, lost business because no one was buying, and spent a while building the reputation back up after it was fixed. Few companies would've been able to survive that. If you wait for it, you can find one or two half price sales, which makes KompleteNI $250. Thats way less than some plugins go for, and full kontakt, like a good eq/saturator/etc, will be infinitely useful. And again, if you buy licensed libraries from NI, Cinesamples, etc, you don't have to purchase any other software as they will play in the kontakt player.
 
There isn't a sale, but right now at stock prices, you can get the symphony essential series packs (basic articulation without legato, limited mic)

$199 Brass bundle ($99 solo and $149 ensemble)
$199 Strings Ensemble
$199 Woodwinds Bundle ($99 solo and $149 ensemble)

I personally don't find space for Woodwinds when combining orchestral elements into metal, so I would say to skip those for the moment. If you wait for the sale they will run (probably spring or summer if I had to guess), they may be anywhere between 20-50% off.
 
Thinking about this over the last couple of days, I forgot about a couple of older sample sets that are "cheap". They will sound way better in the demos than you will be able to get "out of the box" with these, fair warning. You will really need to spend time and learn how to automate and control these, but are a great starting point that will carry over into more modern libraries if you move past these.

Miroslav is still used by quite a few people for quick mock ups, and it has the "European" sound to it's samples (most modern libraries have an American/Hollywood type scoring tone). It's $399
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/philharmonik2/index.php?pp=philharmonik2-audio

Garritan Personal Orchestra is much more stripped down, but you can get it for $150
https://www.garritan.com/products/personal-orchestra-5/


Plus, if you build and orchestrate midi with these, you can always have them sourced out to people that have bigger libraries.
 
Thanks for your answers on this. You managed to convince me that Kontakt is the way to go, so I'll keep my eyes opened for sales. Once I have that I'll be able to shop for other bundles (orchestral, strings, choirs, etc.)

Thanks again
 
I snagged that Orchestral Companion Strings for $1. Not bad, but it's straight up piano, violins, brass and cello. Not quite as "deep" as I imagined, but a good start for me at least. I suck HORRIBLY with programming this kinda stuff. :lol:
 
bryan_kilco said:
I snagged that Orchestral Companion Strings for $1. Not bad, but it's straight up piano, violins, brass and cello. Not quite as "deep" as I imagined, but a good start for me at least. I suck HORRIBLY with programming this kinda stuff. :lol:
Click to expand...

How does that thing work? It requires Kontakt? I'm a bit confused, so many plugins were discussed/suggested in this thread haha.
 
Hugues Berger said:
Great I'll give it a shot! At least until there is a Kontakt Sale or something.
Click to expand...
It was just on sale for $1. Pretty sure the sale ended. Normally its like $105. I couldn't pass that kind of deal up. Though there's no choir or anything like that, it's strictly piano, violin, cello, brass I think.
 
Right, the Orchestral Companion Strings is 69.99$ now, versus the regular 99.99$ (at least that is what is said on their website... is it ever really 99.99$? I don't know...)

It's not that exspensive I might try it anyway... at least a demo perhaps.
 
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