Checking Out: Soft String Soloists by Fracture Sounds

by Sam Burt

Soft String Soloists presents a violin, viola and cello in the gentle and intimate ‘Scandi String’ style. With nine articulations for each instrument in the trio, including an emotive legato, it dives deep into nuanced dynamics and subtle textures. Fracture Sounds have created an expressive tool that really captures the aching beauty of neo-classical strings.

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Checking Out: Soft String Soloists by Fracture Sounds

This is Fracture Sounds’ second instalment in a specialised soloist line that began with Brass Band Soloists. That was inspired by traditional colliery brass bands of Northern England. This time we travel further north to explore a string playing style deeply rooted in Scandinavian folk music. It is a raw and often fragile sound that sits more within a mix, as opposed to a more traditional virtuosic
style, which is more polished and designed to stick out above a large orchestra. In recent years, composers such as Ólafur Arnalds, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hilder Guðnadóttir have really embraced this ‘Scandi’ aesthetic with its trademark softer tones, textural timbres, dynamic swells, and short expressive gestures. It is a sound that has become increasingly popular in contemporary scoring and for certain recording artists. In contrast to a more classical style it seems to fit better with close mic’ed pianos and organic leaning synth or hybrid elements, often in more minimal compositions. The recording is also critical and requires lots of close detail, but also with some tasteful ambience, so we get a natural cinematic quality.

Fracture Sounds are really carving out a substantial niche for themselves creating libraries that are, for want of a better description, indie cinematic. By that, I mean they are not hiring huge symphony orchestras and world famous rooms, instead opting to work with smaller ensembles, or single players and in smaller spaces, yet still achieving an emotional depth and a filmic quality on par with more Hollywood-esque libraries; more A24 than Universal Pictures. Soft String Soloists is a shining example of this aesthetic. The overall feel in use makes this library especially excellent for melancholic and minimalistic writing, where we can clearly hear the fragile beauty and really focus on the evocative timbres.

While it might be a little short on shorts, so to speak, it still offers plenty of incredibly useful articulations that are so composer friendly. There is plenty of scope for these sounds to work in recording artist productions too, it is not just a soundtrack creator’s tool. On a more technical level, the clever Spatial Placement section adds significant flexibility and the Smart Legato makes writing complex lines much easier, with far less editing to do on the midi data. Special mention should be made of the three incredible first chair soloists who really nailed the nuanced ‘Scandi String’ style here, which coupled with excellent engineering in a wonderful space, has created beautiful notes just waiting to inspire a new piece of music.

Soft String Soloists normally sells for £149 from Fracture Sounds

Facts

26GB download from an uncompressed 58GB sample pool
3 instruments – violin, viola and cello
9 articulations per instrument, including two legato types
3 microphone position (close, mid and far)
Up to 3 dynamic layers and 5 round robins
Smart Legato performance engine
Flexible instrument placement (in situ, custom and centre)
Runs in the free Kontakt Player (6.7 or later)
Downloads via Native Access
Full NKS support with Komplete Kontrol hardware

Soft String Soloists normally sells for £149 from Fracture Sounds