Modern Scoring Strings

Version 1.2 is here!!

The next evolutionary step in modern orchestral strings. Simple to use, more powerful than ever!

Version 1.2 is now available. Check out what the latest MSS updates includes! (click here)

Modern Scoring Strings Pricing

We are very pleased to offer customer loyalty pricing for Modern Scoring Strings (MSS) and MSS Expanded Legato as well as the LASS Full Loyalty program. If you are an existing Audiobro customer you can simply log into your account and see your special customized pricing in the store. New customers will not have an account yet (you need an Audiobro purchase to do this).

Audio Demos

Videos

Why Modern Scoring Strings?

1. Gorgeous Divisi Sound and Ease of Use

At the end of the day, when you do your final mix-down or exports, it all comes down to the actual sound of the strings. They need to sound great! Mixed to standard orchestral seating, all the divisis combine beautifully for a lush and glorious sound. From articulate Smart Ostinatos and Scales to the velvety smooth Sordino and Sul Tasto articulations to the powerful Shorts articulations to the hair-raising Aleatoric articulations (and everything in between) MSS is a library that fully captures the broad expressive range and diversity of the strings family. Pristine recordings with 4 different mic mixes and meticulous editing coupled with our easy-to-use and intuitive orchestral engine will ensure every note of your music will shine without the need for tedious MIDI micro-editing.

2. Smart Automatic Ostinatos (watch the Ostinato video here)

Available for violins, violas, and cellos.

Anyone who has tried to create realistic string mockups of ostinatos (or scales for that matter) knows how hard and tedious it can be, and in the end, how bad they can sound. Modern Scoring Strings has fixed all that by recording beautiful back-and-forth 8th-note legato ostinatos and by substituting m2, M2, m3, M3, P4, and P5 intervals into your chords and phrases with our Smart engine. By analyzing the chords your play, our engine will automatically create phrases at the tempo and dynamic you want by combining real performances with real round-robins in both directions. It’s so easy… it’s like cheating.

There are many play-assist modes to choose from, and for example with the settings above (“Smart+” mode), MSS will simply substitute ostinato intervals to satisfy whatever chord you play (even jazz chords!) – all in Auto Divisi giving you a balanced player sound:

3. Smart and Automatic Scale Runs (watch the Scales & Runs video here)

Available for violins, violas, and cellos.

We have recorded fast scaler 16th and triplet forms that our engine can easily stitch together giving you compelling performances. With our various play-assist modes, it’s never been easier to create great-sounding string runs in any key. You can also ride the dynamics with the mod-wheel and the runs will sync to your tempo. Best of all, these exact articulations are available on the violins, violas, and cellos. There are over a dozen smart play-assist modes, below are just 3 examples of how you can easily generate scales.
 

Diatonic Held Note Mode:

CCs control the direction of the scales, so in the example below you would hold on to a note for as long as you want the scale to go in that direction and then, to change the direction, you can switch the CC at any point before they play the next note. Also, if you prefer, you can switch directions with Key Switches or Host Automation. But in the example below, we show CC:


 

Diatonic 16ths Mode:

In regular Diatonic 16ths Mode, our engine will play either up or down (depending on your CC). Unlike the Held Note mode above, here you trigger diatonic scaler phrases depending on what direction you have chosen with the CC (as seen below with “CC up” and “CC dn”).

 

Diatonic Triplets Mode:

Similar to the 16th Diatonic mode, the Triplets Mode functions the same way except that our engine will play 8th note triplets as opposed to 16th notes. You can literally take the same MIDI part and switch modes and it will work.

 

4. Variable Attack Control Sustains



Great Strings players have an enormous range of attacks possible when playing sustains in any range AND at any dynamic… your strings library should too. Modern Scoring Strings continues with our Audiobro’s concept of Variable Attack Control and makes it available across all the string sections. Most importantly, these aren’t “Frankenstein” sample edits or synthetic envelopes. All of these sustains are easily switchable in a variety of ways: Velocity, CC, Key Switching, Host Automations etc.
These are real variable attack samples – recorded on each note and at each dynamic. Once you try it, you’ll never want to go back.
Bloom/Crescendo Sustains
These are beautifully performed crescendos leading into a sustain. The perfect way to get that gentle swell into a note. Played at all recorded dynamics:



Normal Sustains
These are your prototypical “normal sustains” that we’ve all come to expect from sample libraries:



Bowed/Accented Sustains
These are accented sustains and add extra power to your attack and note in general:



 


It should also be mentioned that you have full control over how much vibrato you want on the arcos and this can, of course, be controlled in real-time via Continuous Controller automation (CC).

 

5. Deep DAW Integrations

Meticulous micro-editing (without all the editing)

Using the included robust Articulation Sets and Expression Maps users of Logic X and Cubase can tightly integrate Modern Scoring Strings articulations and settings directly into their DAWs. This allows for easier changing of articulations during and after recording in your parts without the ugly extra notes appearing in your piano roll and score editors. But taken to their full potential, these integrations also allow you to control the most critical performance features to get a great and expressive performance without the need for memorizing random CCs and KeySwitch notes.



A few advantages of using Articulation Sets or Expression Maps:

• Set up live articulation switching directly in Logic/Cubase using a variety of methods.
• Keep keyswitch notes and/or CCs out of your MIDI regions for easier reading and exporting of piano rolls and scores
• Easily gain access to critical Modern Scoring Strings settings without any deep editing of random CCs required
• Completely customizeable to your liking
• Unify your preferred articulation switching methods across libraries

 

6. Diverse and Comprehensive



The main performance page interface allows quick access to all the main playback controls. Instruments come pre-configured for easy articulations switching but setting things up your own way is simple and intuitive. We have carefully programmed and combined multiple divisis into single patches making it simple and intuitive to load a group of divisis or a single divisi — you have total control. With our newer intelligent Auto Divisi, you can simply play and our engine will distribute the divisi sections evenly to your chord tones avoiding the dreaded (and fake-sounding) samples build-up sound so familiar in other libraries.
 



 

Legato | Sustains – Real legato, portamento, and glissando with user-controllable transition speeds and volumes as well as Variable Attack Control: Cresendo, Normal, Accented (see item #4 above). The sustained bowings include normal arco, sordino, sul tasto, and sul pont.

 

 

 

Shorts – Martelé, staccato, staccatiossimo, spiccato. Depending on the section (Vlns vs Vlas), with combined divisi playing at the same time, you can have up to 256 round robins for the violins (4 x 4 x 4 x 4), and 16 for all the other sections. Powerful play-assist, key switching, CC, and host automation options allow for changing these in a way that suits your work style.

 

Pizzicato – Plucking the note with the finger as opposed to bowing. Users can control the duration with the “Tighten” knob.

 

 

Col Legno – Hitting the strings with the wooden portion of the bow gives you a special sound often used in suspenseful scores. Bows can cost thousands (even tens of thousands) of dollars, so many players bring a “cheap” bow or use a pencil for Col Legno part. We told the player to bring their cheap bow for this articulation. Users can control the duration with the “Tighten” knob.

 

Octave Runs – We recorded Major and Minor octave runs in both directions with multiple round-robins: up and down. There is a smart “Diatonic Mode” and these runs can be synced to tempo.

 

 

Scales – We recorded short 3 and 4 note runs (triplets and 16ths) in every diatonic mode (Ionian, Dorian, etc.) that our engine can intelligently stitch together in real-time providing very real-sounding scaler runs. They can be diatonic, chromatic, or whole-tone. They are also synced to tempo. Experiment with the various engine modes — it’s a blast!

 

Ostinatos – We recorded repeated 2 note phrases at multiple dynamics covering the following intervals: m2, M2, m3, M3, Perfect 4, and Perfect 5th, These were recorded with starting at both the up and down interval directions over a 2-octave range. You can simply play a chord and our different intelligent engine options will automatically create ostinato lines outlining your chord. It’s like magic! Or you can play any of the ostinato intervals using CCs or key switches. These are also auto-synced to your tempo.

 

Aleatoric – We recorded different chaotic string phrases that harken to horror and tension. Many articulations were recorded up the entire range of the instrument giving you amazing control of creating your own aleatoric compositions. The articulations can be layered or isolated giving you even more variety.

 

Bass Runs – We recorded major and minor 3 and 4 note runs as sort of punctuation phrases. These types of phrases are often used in action and thriller type scores. They are also synced to tempo.


 

 

Bartok Pizzicato – For the basses, we had the players pull the string back and let it slam into the fingerboard thus creating the famed Bartok Pizz. sound.

 

7. MSS Expanded Legato



Modern Scoring Strings Expanded Legato is an add-on library with 60GB worth of Sordino, Sul Tasto, Sul Pont, and… legato, portamento, and glissando articulations. It will be available as a bundle with MSS Full, but will also be available as a separate product. While the main MSS Full library includes Sordino, Sul Tasto, and Sul Pont sustains, it does not offer the legato transitions of those articulations. We felt it was better to split out the 60GB of additional legato articulations to a different add-on library to give users the option based on their needs. Here is what you are getting with MSS Expanded Legato:
 

Modern Scoring Strings Expanded Legato Articulations

The chart below are all for Sordino, Sul Tasto, and Sul Pont.



 

8. Intuition Strings



Intuition Series Strings are included for every divisi section and soloist in the main Modern Scoring Strings Library. The Intuition Engine applies a complex model of instrumental connection (bow/finger pressure, pitch/intervallic change, string position, play speed, etc.), on top of the existing Modern Scoring Strings samples to create instruments with a layer of responsiveness and fluidity that is very difficult to achieve with sampling alone.
 
Intuition excels at faster lines and playable runs. It was designed to play back nearly anything you can throw at it and should be especially fun for pianists and keyboardists who want an instrument that can keep up with their fingers and imaginations. It’s also incredibly useful when you need to get a quick mockup of a score without much fuss. And because the sample pool is shared, loading Intuition on top of your Modern Scoring Strings template requires nearly no additional memory.

 

9. Ensemble and Stage


The Ensemble page is where the Stage and Audiobro’s coveted Auto Divisi and Delay & Humanization (DNH) features reside. Here you can choose and place your players on our virtual stage and our Auto Divisi will intelligently cater to your choices.

Some of the Ensemble Pages’s main features include:

• Auto Divisi automatically adapts to your player choices
• 52 ambiance presets using exclusive Audiobro IRs
• X/Y pad for easy placement of players
• Independent volume, width and pan per player
• Adjustable Stage amounts for each microphone
• Auto-purge samples from players that are not being used on stage

10. The Mixer



Audiobro’s new Mixer engine features extensive Modulation, Automation and Effects Sends sections that allow you to tailor your sound in compelling ways while keeping things simple and intuitive.

Our new mixer has advanced features like:

• 20 key switchable user-definable Mixer snapshots
• 4 microphone mixes: Close, Stage, Surround, and Full Mix
• 7 inserts per channel
• 28 Effects plugins
• Over 50 filters to choose from
• Put any effects or filters in any order in our insert slots
• Assign MIDI CCs to a plugin Effect parameter
• Modulation Tables to create compelling sonic landscapes
• Chopper – rhythmically stutter any channel to your specifications

11. Komplete Kontrol and NKS



Modern Scoring Strings integrates seamlessly with Native Instrument’s Komplete Kontrol software and NKS* eco system.

Control the most important features of MSS directly from NI hardware and using your sequencer’s device automation. We’ve made it quicker and easier to find sounds – browse and load all KOMPLETE Instrument presets from a single plugin. Knobs will display all the relevant controls on NI’s LED displays.

System Specifications for Modern Scoring Strings



Modern Scoring Strings Library Size:

• About 131GB with lossless compressed audio files (approximately 160GB uncompressed). 140GB required during installation for the entire 130GB library.

Modern Scoring Strings Expanded Legato Library Size:

• About 60GB with lossless compressed audio files (approximately 80GB uncompressed). 70GB required during installation for the entire 60GB library.

NOTE: Once successfully installed, please make a safe backup of the library for future reference. There is a $25 Amazon Web Server costs re-download fee if you want to re-download all of MSS’s sample data.

Supported Interfaces:
• Stand-alone, VST®, Audio Units™, AAX®



Minimum System Requirements:
• Requires Kontakt Player 6.0.4 or later. Click here to download the latest free version of Kontakt Player.
• Windows — Windows 7 or Windows 8 (latest Service Pack, 32/64 Bit), Intel Core Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2, 4 GB RAM (over 6 GB recommended – the more RAM, the better!)
  *** Windows XP is no longer supported. ***
• Mac — Mac OS X 10.12, macOS 10.13 or 10.14 (latest update), i5, 4 GB RAM (over 8 GB recommended – the more RAM, the better!)

* NKS is a registered trademark of Native Instruments GmbH.