I'll be taking a closer look at Hans Zimmer Strings in the next episode of Behind the Score for Inception. Stay tuned! Cubase File Download: bit.ly/2pRqXJX Libraries Used: Hans Zimmer Strings Hans Zimmer Percussion Metropolis Ark 1 (Brass) Metropolis Ark 3 (Percussion) Lacrmiossa Nocturne Solo Cello Joshua Bell Violin Albion III (Underbass) Omnisphere (Pads) Woodchester Piano Spitfire Labs Plucked Piano
To be clear, I was referring to the original comment. I believe that it is important to write music on manuscript. There is an artistry that doesn't quite carry over on newer interfaces.
It´s an... interesting subject for sure, I personally don´t think music notation will die, but you will limit yourself both by not learning music notation and theory and the tradition of music writing or on the other side of only using notation and pure empty intellectualism and not using technological tools for your advantage.
Just bought! 50% off sale! Thanks for this....... Helped me decide,💗 Couldn't justify before... Just a songwriter... Excited to muck around... Great composition & illustration of how awesome this library is...
Amazing Ashton, as always! Thank you very much for sharing the project! One question: You just used the tree mic positions, why didnt you use any other mic positions?
Hello! Great library, job well done! I was wondering, in the second 0:20 I heard some great brasses, which library is that from? Im struggling to find good brass libraries. Thanks. Ali
Go into the Cubase preferences and set all the colors in the "editor" section to black. Screen capture, bring it into the editing suite of your choice (Premiere for me), then you can just set the blending mode to lighten, and the MIDI becomes transparent!
Jeremy Sette I know it allows you to change the overall light/dark contrast but I’m not sure if Logic X allows you to customize colors like Cubase. I’m sure there’s any other way to do it though. There’s quite a few programs that convert a midi file into video, I haven’t used any, but you can use those, export them and use the lighten opacity and it should work the same.
I am trying to buy my first ever Spitfire Audio String library and can’t decide whether to purchase the Albion one, V Tundra or Hans Zimmer Strings. . I really love synthesizers so which would best compliment atmospheric music?
skylinez I would personally go for Spitfire Chamber Strings if you are looking for the best all purpose dedicated string library. HZS and Tundra are both great but more niche: HZS has a very wide cinematic sound, tundra has a very Scandinavian sound, but if you are looking for a library that includes more but is less focused in the string section (doesn’t offer individual instruments), but nonetheless you still get strings, Albion One is a good choice.
Nice piece Ashton. Tempted to get HZS but I would probably go down the "intimate" route rather than the "epic" route now. Chamber strings and Albion V Tundra appeal to me more these days. I have Albion One and love it, but thet hings that appeal to me more are things like Olafor Arnolds etc.
tabletop581 the same here, aone is great and i use it with oa and tundra. For me a great combination. Hzs is a no go for me. You need 128gb ram for great mic positions and not much tracks..
Hey Ashton, fantastic video! Love your stuff. I'm a new fan of your channel so the answer to this question may already exist somewhere on your page, but do you have any recommendations for VSTs that sound good, but are more budget-friendly?
Chris Barr Hey Chris! I’d say start with Berlin Orchestra Inspire, you get strings, brass, winds, piano, harp, a little bit of percussion, etc. Certainly doesn’t have everything but it’s a pretty good starting point and sounds great. For dedicated strings, I’d start off with Spitfire Chamber Strings, can’t go wrong with those, for brass I’d go for Berlin Brass, Percussion CinePerc or Percussion Redux from spitfire, and winds Berlin winds. Those are just my recommendations but there’s so many amazing libraries out there, it all really depends on what you are going for.
You sort of get the best of both worlds with this one, because the mic positions really open everything up. You can get a huge wide ambient sound (which works great for the quieter articulations), but also a really narrow intimate sound as well, which really works great with shorts because it gives it some sharp bite. Some of the quieter articulations like the sul tasto, and super flautando sound amazing on the more ambient mic positions like the gallery. The mic positions are pretty vast. It just has a bit of a learning curve.
Some of my favorites are spitfire chamber strings, percussion redux, berlin winds, berlin brass, and metropolis ark one. For choirs it's a mix of lacrimossa from 8Dio and Metropolis Ark 2 for the softer stuff, Dominus is also great for that Eric Whitacre sound. In regards to synths, you can't go wrong with Omnisphere! :)
So Ive replaced the strings with ARK 2 strings and 2 patches from Albion V (as I guess most people interested have that now!). I did not replace every instrument that I was missing, which means the strings are more exposed (good!). I did not touch any midi, data faders or other settings (all plugins are present) other than to pan a few patches to more closely match the HZ setup. So this is obviously 'rough' in that you have to write for and sculpt any library you have. I just dont have the time to do all that. Have a listen here... soundcloud.com/benedictnichols/eclipse-hz-strings-replaced-original-by-ashton-gleckman You can also download it from there to listen in higher quality as soundcloud compression isnt great. Take my hat off to Ashton for the close mimicking of HZ, and for sharing the project with us so we can do these experiments. Cheers Ashton. So, Is HZ Strings worth they money or can satisfactory results be produced buying other libraries that offer more variety in instrumentation (but less mic positions... :P )
I deffinetely appreciate your effort, and for taking the time to create this. I have Metropolis Ark 2 and it's quite good (I use the shorts quite a bit), but they just aren't the same thing. Metropolis Ark 2 is a fairly small section at the Teldux Stage in Berlin, HZ Strings is one of the largest assembled orchestras ever at Air Studios in London with Geoff Foster behind the console. HZ Strings in my opinion simply have more bite, umf, and the mic positions do open up endless doors in terms of the customizability of the sound, which is fairly limited in Ark 2. Not to mention the attack and release really aren't that brilliant in Ark 2 for fast lines such as this, and they are quite warm (even with some EQ I've found, it's just the personality of the sound). This isn't to demote the brilliance of Ark 1, 2, 3, or any other library for that matter. I think every library has pros and cons, and of course with sound being a subjective thing, everyone has their different take on things. To comment on the second section, I think Albion V is great, lots of awesome textures and such. But I think this example proves it, it doesn't have the dimension of HZ Strings. HZ Strings sounds very wide, and though some of the articulations are soft, they have a heaviness to them. Whereas Albion V sounds deffinetely very Scandinavian, but is a bit smaller sounding. That doesn't mean I won't use Tundra, I really love it, but I think HZS has a different identity. Again, I'm not here to defend Hans Zimmer Strings to the death. I believe in calling out any library where the rough ends are. This library has it's glitches in V1.0 that need to be addressed, and the team at SF are doing exactly that. I think once those rough ends get solved, it will make a pretty big difference. I really enjoy this library for what it is, and think the team at SF did a pretty brilliant job. I'll talk more about it in the Inception BTS. Even Hans himself has said, this isn't the Hans Zimmer Legacy collection, and all one had to do is watch the walkthrough to know this. it much more describes Hans' experimental side, and is more in line with scores like Interstellar, Hannibal, Dunkirk, etc. With that being said, I do think it has a good amount of versatility, and has a sonic personality that is different enough from other things to warrant the purchase. Anyways, thank you again. :)
Fair enough, I think I should make it clear that I only used Albion V to replace the synth sustain between the sections, and for one patch of the many used in the last section, trem sords or something. Its mainly ARK 2. They are never going to sound exactly the same, and there is no point in that really....but hopefully this will help those debating between ARK 2 and HZS which to get. Do they prefer the sound of the ARK 2 or the HZS shorts? ....I want to re-iterate that I did nothing to the default mics loaded for each ARK 2 patch apart from a mid string spic patch where I only used the Surround mic to very loosely approximate the gallery position in HZS. Definitely could have manipulated them further for a different sound.
Interesting. I think i prefer the sound of Ark in the first section but I prefer the sound of HZ strings in the second section. I may do my own little remake with CSS and Albion V later today (actually using Albion V for the main parts of the second section though).
I deffinetely respect his thoughts on the library, but I wouldn't say I agree. I think the library can get super huge, and you can deffinetely get the HZ sound out of it. It just takes some learning and getting used to. Particularly learning how to navigate those mic positions, it gives you a lot of control over the sound. I love it! That's just my thoughts though.
Ashton Gleckman fair enough! I’ll probably end up getting it eventually, I do really like the concept and I can see myself using a lot of what’s in it, but it’s not quite at the top of my list just yet.
Yeah, you deffinetely don't get it straight out of the box like you would normally be expecting. It takes some work, but really knowing how to navigate that collection of mic positions instantly opens up so many more possibilities with this library, it almost has multiple libraries within one because of all the different sounds you can get with it. All those ositnatos in this track for example actually don't have any any third party reverb, that's all the gallery, some close for bite, tree, and a tad bit of riser doing the magic. I love the approach, as Christian said, it's almost like using the manual setting on a camera versus the automatic setting.
Ashton Gleckman also, how are you enjoying the Woodchester Piano? I first heard it when Misha Mansoor posted a video of him playing it on Instagram, and it sounded incredible, but I’m having a really hard time deciding between it and Piano in Blue. Piano in Blue has been out for a long time and is known for being great, whereas Woodchester Piano is brand new and has no reputation yet, given their very similar price points it’s hard to decide.
K M I really love it! It’s my new go-to soft piano. The Spitfire one is really great, Una Corda is nice but a little more niche, but Woodchester is super nice. They also have 3 subtle synth layers you can use to add in, which works quite well.
Benedict Nichols I think they are just two very different sounds. Ark is a much more gritty, heavy attack, bow dig into the strings type sound, HZS has a bit of a more lush quality, that’s why I sort of combine them quite a bit in this upcoming Behind the Score. I’ll talk more about the differences then though.
Oh I know they are different. Thats become very apparent with the indepth looks into HZS. I think many people would be curious to know whether or not a similar sound can be created at least as quickly with ARKs, which is obviously a cheaper, more orchestrally rounded, solution. Send me your project file and I will do it if I have time...
Thanks, didnt realise. Have loaded up. Obviously I dont have all the same libraries (though I was amazed to discover im missing some Damage samples!) However I did discover something interesting, and think you really should have disclosed this above...you've also used Berlin Strings and the Joshua Bell Violin! So its not really fairly presenting HZS
Benedict Nichols I’m absolutely not using Berlin Strings anywhere in the arrangement. I don’t even have Berlin Strings, you can check with the team at Orchestral Tools. I have Berlin Orchestra inspire, and I have some in my template, But didn’t use any of it in here...
I'll be taking a closer look at Hans Zimmer Strings in the next episode of Behind the Score for Inception. Stay tuned!
Cubase File Download: bit.ly/2pRqXJX
Libraries Used:
Hans Zimmer Strings
Hans Zimmer Percussion
Metropolis Ark 1 (Brass)
Metropolis Ark 3 (Percussion)
Lacrmiossa
Nocturne Solo Cello
Joshua Bell Violin
Albion III (Underbass)
Omnisphere (Pads)
Woodchester Piano
Spitfire Labs Plucked Piano
Could you please reupload?
Could you please reupload, Ashton?
Could you please reupload? :)
Yes, please reupload? Thanks!!
Hi Ashton. Would u pls re-upload the Cubase project. I really appreciate. Tnx mate 🙏🙏🙏
I love how this video shows that MIDI bars have become the new language of music
Reminds me of Graphical Contemporary Composers, like Xenakis - Metastasis
Why do you think so?
To be clear, I was referring to the original comment. I believe that it is important to write music on manuscript. There is an artistry that doesn't quite carry over on newer interfaces.
and then what happens when u write on a manuscript?
It´s an... interesting subject for sure, I personally don´t think music notation will die, but you will limit yourself both by not learning music notation and theory and the tradition of music writing or on the other side of only using notation and pure empty intellectualism and not using technological tools for your advantage.
Sounds Amazing Ashton! I feel like your compositions and productions get better everytime!
3 years later and I still love this composition so much, thanks Ashton!
Excellent dude you are on it!!! Awesome inspiration!!!
great demo. really allows you to hear the sound of the library.
Beautiful!!!!!!!
Superb as always!
Amazing. I love it 👍🏼
Amazing. Great composer.
Holy crap this is good!
This video is going to be absolutely PILED with people looking for the new Hans Zimmer cover of Pink Floyd's "Eclipse" from DUNE.
PILED.
Brilliant work
Just bought! 50% off sale! Thanks for this....... Helped me decide,💗
Couldn't justify before... Just a songwriter... Excited to muck around... Great composition & illustration of how awesome this library is...
Well done!!
Love it!
superb
Amazing Ashton, as always! Thank you very much for sharing the project!
One question: You just used the tree mic positions, why didnt you use any other mic positions?
Omg this is so goood!!!
this is so artistic
How do you make a video of the midi information like that?
watcha doin here dude?
MDP set the Cubase editor settings to all black, screen grab the midi info, drag it into premiere / final cut, set opacity to lighten, done.
Ashton Gleckman awesome awesome awesome.. can i use this BG for my short film
Better then the original trailer. Props to you mate.
which trailer is it?
You sir, just got a new subscriber.
? " great , what do you think about clint manssel score "death is road to awe "
Sempre magnifico amico lode a te (;=))
Hello!
Great library, job well done!
I was wondering, in the second 0:20 I heard some great brasses, which library is that from? Im struggling to find good brass libraries.
Thanks.
Ali
It's never late for that kind of information, thanks! :)
@@alial-akabi4671 He said he used Ark 1 for brasses
I love this MIDI art! Ashton how do you get rid of the sequencer bar lines and replace it with that background? Looks sick!
Go into the Cubase preferences and set all the colors in the "editor" section to black. Screen capture, bring it into the editing suite of your choice (Premiere for me), then you can just set the blending mode to lighten, and the MIDI becomes transparent!
Ahh it's a Cubase thing, very cool! Maybe I can do something similar in Logic. Thank you!
Ashton Gleckman Hey Ashton, I was going to ask the same thing. Is there a way to do this with Logic X? Great video btw!
Jeremy Sette I know it allows you to change the overall light/dark contrast but I’m not sure if Logic X allows you to customize colors like Cubase. I’m sure there’s any other way to do it though. There’s quite a few programs that convert a midi file into video, I haven’t used any, but you can use those, export them and use the lighten opacity and it should work the same.
Ashton Gleckman thanks Ashton
I am trying to buy my first ever Spitfire Audio String library and can’t decide whether to purchase the Albion one, V Tundra or Hans Zimmer Strings. . I really love synthesizers so which would best compliment atmospheric music?
skylinez I would personally go for Spitfire Chamber Strings if you are looking for the best all purpose dedicated string library. HZS and Tundra are both great but more niche: HZS has a very wide cinematic sound, tundra has a very Scandinavian sound, but if you are looking for a library that includes more but is less focused in the string section (doesn’t offer individual instruments), but nonetheless you still get strings, Albion One is a good choice.
thanks for the reply, you got my sub
Nice piece Ashton. Tempted to get HZS but I would probably go down the "intimate" route rather than the "epic" route now. Chamber strings and Albion V Tundra appeal to me more these days.
I have Albion One and love it, but thet hings that appeal to me more are things like Olafor Arnolds etc.
tabletop581 the same here, aone is great and i use it with oa and tundra. For me a great combination. Hzs is a no go for me. You need 128gb ram for great mic positions and not much tracks..
Deffinetely check out Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions. That and Albion 5 are the power duo when it comes to that Icelandic intimate sound!
@Sen... This is what Daniel James is saying too. I just stumbled on his video.
Hey Ashton, fantastic video! Love your stuff.
I'm a new fan of your channel so the answer to this question may already exist somewhere on your page, but do you have any recommendations for VSTs that sound good, but are more budget-friendly?
Chris Barr Hey Chris! I’d say start with Berlin Orchestra Inspire, you get strings, brass, winds, piano, harp, a little bit of percussion, etc. Certainly doesn’t have everything but it’s a pretty good starting point and sounds great. For dedicated strings, I’d start off with Spitfire Chamber Strings, can’t go wrong with those, for brass I’d go for Berlin Brass, Percussion CinePerc or Percussion Redux from spitfire, and winds Berlin winds. Those are just my recommendations but there’s so many amazing libraries out there, it all really depends on what you are going for.
Thank you so much for the suggestions! I'm definitely going to look into those.
Great soundtrack ! Do you think HZ strings can be intimate as well or perhaps not because the close mics tend to be too sharp with all those players ?
You sort of get the best of both worlds with this one, because the mic positions really open everything up. You can get a huge wide ambient sound (which works great for the quieter articulations), but also a really narrow intimate sound as well, which really works great with shorts because it gives it some sharp bite. Some of the quieter articulations like the sul tasto, and super flautando sound amazing on the more ambient mic positions like the gallery. The mic positions are pretty vast. It just has a bit of a learning curve.
Ashton Gleckman perfect also ! Thanks for the quick reply ;) and keep creative things happen !
Nice ashton today i was watching daniel james video i was expecting urs too 👏👏👏🙏🙏🙏
But what about the brass and woodwinds? Where do they come from
Can you suggest me some libraries, maybe some of your favorites?!
Some of my favorites are spitfire chamber strings, percussion redux, berlin winds, berlin brass, and metropolis ark one. For choirs it's a mix of lacrimossa from 8Dio and Metropolis Ark 2 for the softer stuff, Dominus is also great for that Eric Whitacre sound. In regards to synths, you can't go wrong with Omnisphere! :)
Thank you! buddy👍💐
Second 35. What's the name of that string articulation? i am trying to find out how to achieve this sound texture with the strings. AMAZING WORK BTW.
I think you can achieve it with some work on tremolo arcticulation
And try to remove the vibrato
So Ive replaced the strings with ARK 2 strings and 2 patches from Albion V (as I guess most people interested have that now!). I did not replace every instrument that I was missing, which means the strings are more exposed (good!). I did not touch any midi, data faders or other settings (all plugins are present) other than to pan a few patches to more closely match the HZ setup. So this is obviously 'rough' in that you have to write for and sculpt any library you have. I just dont have the time to do all that. Have a listen here...
soundcloud.com/benedictnichols/eclipse-hz-strings-replaced-original-by-ashton-gleckman
You can also download it from there to listen in higher quality as soundcloud compression isnt great.
Take my hat off to Ashton for the close mimicking of HZ, and for sharing the project with us so we can do these experiments. Cheers Ashton.
So, Is HZ Strings worth they money or can satisfactory results be produced buying other libraries that offer more variety in instrumentation (but less mic positions... :P )
I deffinetely appreciate your effort, and for taking the time to create this. I have Metropolis Ark 2 and it's quite good (I use the shorts quite a bit), but they just aren't the same thing. Metropolis Ark 2 is a fairly small section at the Teldux Stage in Berlin, HZ Strings is one of the largest assembled orchestras ever at Air Studios in London with Geoff Foster behind the console. HZ Strings in my opinion simply have more bite, umf, and the mic positions do open up endless doors in terms of the customizability of the sound, which is fairly limited in Ark 2. Not to mention the attack and release really aren't that brilliant in Ark 2 for fast lines such as this, and they are quite warm (even with some EQ I've found, it's just the personality of the sound).
This isn't to demote the brilliance of Ark 1, 2, 3, or any other library for that matter. I think every library has pros and cons, and of course with sound being a subjective thing, everyone has their different take on things.
To comment on the second section, I think Albion V is great, lots of awesome textures and such. But I think this example proves it, it doesn't have the dimension of HZ Strings. HZ Strings sounds very wide, and though some of the articulations are soft, they have a heaviness to them. Whereas Albion V sounds deffinetely very Scandinavian, but is a bit smaller sounding. That doesn't mean I won't use Tundra, I really love it, but I think HZS has a different identity.
Again, I'm not here to defend Hans Zimmer Strings to the death. I believe in calling out any library where the rough ends are. This library has it's glitches in V1.0 that need to be addressed, and the team at SF are doing exactly that. I think once those rough ends get solved, it will make a pretty big difference. I really enjoy this library for what it is, and think the team at SF did a pretty brilliant job. I'll talk more about it in the Inception BTS.
Even Hans himself has said, this isn't the Hans Zimmer Legacy collection, and all one had to do is watch the walkthrough to know this. it much more describes Hans' experimental side, and is more in line with scores like Interstellar, Hannibal, Dunkirk, etc. With that being said, I do think it has a good amount of versatility, and has a sonic personality that is different enough from other things to warrant the purchase.
Anyways, thank you again. :)
Fair enough, I think I should make it clear that I only used Albion V to replace the synth sustain between the sections, and for one patch of the many used in the last section, trem sords or something. Its mainly ARK 2.
They are never going to sound exactly the same, and there is no point in that really....but hopefully this will help those debating between ARK 2 and HZS which to get. Do they prefer the sound of the ARK 2 or the HZS shorts? ....I want to re-iterate that I did nothing to the default mics loaded for each ARK 2 patch apart from a mid string spic patch where I only used the Surround mic to very loosely approximate the gallery position in HZS. Definitely could have manipulated them further for a different sound.
Interesting. I think i prefer the sound of Ark in the first section but I prefer the sound of HZ strings in the second section.
I may do my own little remake with CSS and Albion V later today (actually using Albion V for the main parts of the second section though).
What do you use for your brass section?
Ark 1
Hope this reminds you guys that It's not about the instrument but the player
Do you agree with everything that Daniel James said about the library?
I deffinetely respect his thoughts on the library, but I wouldn't say I agree. I think the library can get super huge, and you can deffinetely get the HZ sound out of it. It just takes some learning and getting used to. Particularly learning how to navigate those mic positions, it gives you a lot of control over the sound. I love it! That's just my thoughts though.
Ashton Gleckman fair enough! I’ll probably end up getting it eventually, I do really like the concept and I can see myself using a lot of what’s in it, but it’s not quite at the top of my list just yet.
Yeah, you deffinetely don't get it straight out of the box like you would normally be expecting. It takes some work, but really knowing how to navigate that collection of mic positions instantly opens up so many more possibilities with this library, it almost has multiple libraries within one because of all the different sounds you can get with it. All those ositnatos in this track for example actually don't have any any third party reverb, that's all the gallery, some close for bite, tree, and a tad bit of riser doing the magic. I love the approach, as Christian said, it's almost like using the manual setting on a camera versus the automatic setting.
Ashton Gleckman also, how are you enjoying the Woodchester Piano? I first heard it when Misha Mansoor posted a video of him playing it on Instagram, and it sounded incredible, but I’m having a really hard time deciding between it and Piano in Blue. Piano in Blue has been out for a long time and is known for being great, whereas Woodchester Piano is brand new and has no reputation yet, given their very similar price points it’s hard to decide.
K M I really love it! It’s my new go-to soft piano. The Spitfire one is really great, Una Corda is nice but a little more niche, but Woodchester is super nice. They also have 3 subtle synth layers you can use to add in, which works quite well.
Now recreate it using the ARKs, It would be an interesting exercise to see how close you can get.
Benedict Nichols I think they are just two very different sounds. Ark is a much more gritty, heavy attack, bow dig into the strings type sound, HZS has a bit of a more lush quality, that’s why I sort of combine them quite a bit in this upcoming Behind the Score. I’ll talk more about the differences then though.
Oh I know they are different. Thats become very apparent with the indepth looks into HZS. I think many people would be curious to know whether or not a similar sound can be created at least as quickly with ARKs, which is obviously a cheaper, more orchestrally rounded, solution. Send me your project file and I will do it if I have time...
Benedict Nichols the project file is already attached to the pinned comment. I look forward to hearing your result.
Thanks, didnt realise. Have loaded up. Obviously I dont have all the same libraries (though I was amazed to discover im missing some Damage samples!) However I did discover something interesting, and think you really should have disclosed this above...you've also used Berlin Strings and the Joshua Bell Violin! So its not really fairly presenting HZS
Benedict Nichols I’m absolutely not using Berlin Strings anywhere in the arrangement. I don’t even have Berlin Strings, you can check with the team at Orchestral Tools. I have Berlin Orchestra inspire, and I have some in my template, But didn’t use any of it in here...
:)
The question is: Does Hans uses his library??? LOL
why do they call this libary hans zimmer strings? they sounds not like hans zimmer!
Sounds like the expanse soundtrack....mmmmm....
I heard that as well. The chord progression/ atmosphere also reminds me of The Village soundtrack..
FUCKING A SPITFIRE