Now that we have Audiobro’s LASS, EastWest’s Hollywood Strings, the Vienna Symphonic Library, and the soon-to-be-released Miroslav Vitous String Ensembles, we’ve arrived at the place in music technology where the composer really must know string bowings and how to plan them. Previously, we really didn’t have this option. At best, we had available a sustained [...]

Today I started scoring the Bourree Fantasque excerpt for strings for the 50th Anniversary re-release of Professional Orchestration: A Practical Handbook by Joseph Wagner. Here’s a screen shot of it: For the first six and a half bars, the melody falls into the range allowing for Vlns 1 + Vlns 2 + Violas + Cellos. [...]

Reading the preliminary test results from other composers on the Kontakt 3.5 update beta that’s just been released suggests that the Mac Pro Nehalem is now the dominant music computer with the oft wished request of being able to do it all on one system, pretty much here. The new 64-bit Kontakt 3.5, in standalone [...]

EastWest Gypsy is worth your consideration because in one library you have one of the finest collections of guitars I’ve run across not to mention a superb solo violin that has thousands of uses beyond Gypsy music.