Inspiring Soundscapes

Whereas Vienna’s excellent musicians usually avoid experimentation during sampling sessions, in this case they were asked to cast aside convention and go far beyond their normal limits. The result is a treasure trove of tonal and atonal textures and elements that you may blend effortlessly for creating your very personal, unique sound. All varieties and combinations are easily accessed with the new Vienna Synchron Player. Synchron FX Strings I is not limited to orchestral applications but can be used in any contemporary genre and style, such as Ambient, Alternative, EDM, World and many others.

Key Features

• Ready-to-use musical elements, from breathy, spherical pads to pulsating or even aggressive patterns and rhythms
• Large 50-piece string ensemble, divided in 6 sections:
  14 first violins, 10 second violins, 6 first violas, 6 second violas, 8 cellos, 6 double basses
• Total flexibility for infinite creative possibilities – almost “everything may be combined with anything”
• Large selection of presets in ten categories (spherical textures, spherical chord textures, character textures, rises and hits, glissandos, clusters, tremolos, harmonic FX, pizzicato FX, Inspiration XFades)
• Experimental Presets to be modified with the mod wheel in the categories of “Morphed” (morphing between articulations with added FX), “Scary & Brooding” (FX applied to specific articulations and stacked FX strings sounds), and “Short”.
• Mixer Presets
• All-new, easy-to-use Synchron Player with high-performance playback engine
• Intuitive access with three pre-configured real-time controllers: Bow Style (CC 1), Velocity (CC 2), Density (CC 3).
• Multiple microphone arrays provide for a wide variety of sonic possibilities, from stereo to 5.1 surround and Immersive Audio (Dolby Atmos, Auro 3D). Additionally, each musician was recorded separately with a dedicated microphone, and all signals were down-mixed to provide you with an optimized section sound.

Microphone Positions

Ten Categories of Presets

The preset patches are organized in ten categories. By using our pre-configured controllers you may adjust the “bow style” and “density” in real-time, e.g., for building up tension by gradually blending from basic to more complex and agile variations of one of the same pattern.

1. Spherical Textures (e.g., slightly pulsing effects with aleatoric rhythms and random bow changes)
2. Spherical Chord Textures – based on the so-called “Alpha“-chord (please see more details below)
3. Character Textures – screaming and shouting high strings and grumbling low strings, aleatoric cluster FX with random pizzicatos, dirty and aggressive sounds with high bow pressure, ethereal “outer space” sounds performed behind the bridge, staggered, pulsating bow-bouncings on a string, melodic ornaments in the Ionian scale
4. Glissandos – regular and fingered, available in “regular”, “half-tremolo”, and “ponticello” bow styles
5. Rises & Hits – upward runs and glissandos with high dynamics and exaggerated crescendo, with speed variations
6. Clusters – short and long note clusters, as well as glissando clusters with speed variations
7. Harmonic FX – “freaky” sounds, e.g., with slightly detuned harmonics or upward and downward glissandos
8. Pizzicato FX – e.g., random pizzicatos in various tempos or finger glissandos after the pizzicato
9. Special Pads – various “breathy“ sounds, e.g., by strings tuned down a minor third
10. Inspiration XFades – crossfading combinations from different preset categories

About the Alpha chord (spherical chord textures)

The spherical chord textures are based on the “Alpha chord” that is composed of two symmetric layered diminished seventh chords, with a whole tone gap in between. In Synchron FX Strings I this chord is featured in its basic form (on center key “C”) and in two inversions. 

The notes of the alpha chord are derived from an alternating octatonic (eight-note) whole step-half step scale:

The whole step-half step (or “diminished”) scale was first found in 20th century music, particularly in the music of Béla Bartók, Alexander Skrjabin and Olivier Messiaen, e.g., in his magnum opus, the “Turangalîla” symphony. Messiaen described this scale as the second mode of his seven “modes with limited transpositions”, as it can only be transposed three times (the fourth transposition would already be a repetition). Apart from the above-mentioned composers, the scale is frequently used in Jazz music.