The other day I did my first review of LASS (L.A. Scoring Strings) at Sonic Control.TV. I said it was the new workhorse string library and I meant it.

When I first listened to it I was really taken aback as I was, frankly, expecting a much more warmer sound after hearing all one of the demos for several months. I wasn’t overly impressed with the newer demos either as they didn’t exactly spotlight the string section the way I wanted to hear it.

So far I’ve done two tests that really stress string libraries.

The first, since LASS is billed as being able to do divisi, was to start with divisi examples. In short, will this library let me move to an advanced level in writing electronically that more accurately mirrors the way I’d write for live orchestra.

It will or it won’t.

First test was with a copy I had acquired of Nelson Riddle’s arrangement of Unforgettable for Nat “King” Cole. This arrangement in places had 9-part vertical harmony. It was written for a smaller studio-sized string section, one that because of how LASS was recorded, I could potentially emulate. What I really wanted to see was how well LASS would handle 4-part triads in the violins in the upper registration. By four-part triads, I mean the line is voiced down in triads with the melody an octave below.

If LASS could do that, even if I have to “freeze tracks” to record the entire string section, I’d achieve with one library what typically takes several to do - over a period of days and weeks, not minutes and hours.

Well, I was shocked! LASS pulled it off. No buzz and no funny organ sound that you often get when just working with a single sampled string library.

The next step was adding in the low strings. That gave me 9 parts. LASS worked as did Logic 8.02. No crashes.

My next test came from my book How Ravel Orchestrated: Mother Goose Suite where I used the opening to The Fairy Garden. Fairy Garden opens with the strings in four-part vertical harmony, using four-part counterpoint with just Vlns 1, Vlns 2, Violas, and Cellos. This is one of my acid tests for individual string libraries.

Once you get sampled strings into vertical harmony passages, you find out quickly what the library will and won’t do. Most of the libraries I’ve tried previously have all tanked on these opening bars.

Well, LASS pulled it off.

Mercy me!

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