One of the awesome things about Garageband’s Smart Strings is that by turning on the modulation, you can change the kinds of sounds that play. You can get staccato, pizzicato, and legato all out of one track instead of needing to have different MIDI tracks specifically for the different ways to play. Secret string articulation options. When you open the Smart Strings and head into Notes view you can play individual legato notes by touching a string. To play pizzicato, touch and hold the articulation button on the left. Two lesser-known tips: Double-tap the Articulation bar on the left to keep pizzicato turned on (double-tap again to turn. See full list on justanotherhalfling.wordpress.com.

Unless you’re paying $200 for MIDI sounds, chances are good that your free MIDI sounds are… awful. This is especially true of strings – violins, violas, cellos, double bass; if it can be played with a bow and was free, the MIDI version doesn’t sound that great.

That being said, there are ways to help make your MIDI strings sound a little bit less pathetic and a little more realistic in your mix. This guide won’t make your stock Garageband strings sound like a real violinist actually played them, but it (hopefully) will make your stock sounds a little more bearable.

On Velocity and Quantization

Just like with MIDI drums, to make your MIDI strings sound most realistic, you shouldn’t just keep all your notes’ velocities at the same level. (In Garageband I think the preset is 98.) Varying your velocities within about plus/minus 15 steps is a safe place to keep it so that you get variation, but it still maintains a similar intensity.

The key to improving the realism of your MIDI string sounds is to humanize them – so you change the velocity, and you change the quantization. You don’t want to quantize your notes so that they begin right on the beat – about 80-95% is a good place to stay.

One of the hard things with strings and quantization is that the samples don’t always start playing right at the beginning of your MIDI note. To just keep your strings in time with all the other instruments, you may have to pull their start time a little bit back from the beat you want them to play on.In the first picture the notes are all aligned right with the beat. But if the sound doesn’t start right away, it can make your strings sound sloppy. Like the second picture, try pulling your notes back so that the sound starts right on the beat to help keep your recording tight.

Pizzicato Strings Garageband Download

Use Different Instruments and Split Up Tracks

If you can find some decent free MIDI sounds of each individual instrument in your string section (check out resources for some links!), you’re already light years ahead of Garageband’s stock. Use a different MIDI instrument for each of your instruments – violin, viola, cello, and double bass are the standard string section.

Even if you’re just got some stock “Orchestral Strings” instrument, try to have a unique track for each of those instruments, and keep notes that would fit for each instrument unique to that track. Just because you don’t have a specific MIDI sound for each instrument doesn’t mean you can split them up that way! Here’s a very generalized range that you can use to guide your track splits:

  • Violins can start as low as G3, and go as high as the spectrum allows
  • Violas can start as low as G1 and go to about D5
  • Cellos start as low as C2 and go as high as A4
  • Double basses are anything lower than G1

Those notes are by no means scientific or definite – they’re just a starter’s guide. I tend to have each instrument playing 3 octaves, with their lowest octave playing in the same range the instrument that’s lower than them, and their highest octave playing in the same range as the instrument higher than them.

For example: Violin would play C4-C6, Viola would play C3-C5, Cello would play C2-C4, Double bass would play C0-C2.The tiny little letters on the keys on the left help me determine where to keep my notes.

Layer Your Sounds

If you’ve got computer power to spare, one of the simplest ways to make a strings track sound more realistic is to layer sounds. Play duplicate tracks (same notes) with different instruments.

For example, say you’ve got a violin part, and you’re using an instrument that has just the violin. To give it more oomph, you can copy/paste the notes into a new track, and use the Smart Strings instrument. Bam! Sound improved.

Pizzicato Strings Garageband Reviews

Modulation and Mixing

One of the awesome things about Garageband’s Smart Strings is that by turning on the modulation, you can change the kinds of sounds that play. You can get staccato, pizzicato, and legato all out of one track instead of needing to have different MIDI tracks specifically for the different ways to play.

Play with the modulation on your different instruments to see if you can get any extra sounds out of your MIDI.A short little guide for playing the Smart Strings with Musical Typing:

Pizzicato strings garageband music

Pizzicato Strings Garageband Music

  • 3 is legato – smooth, blends together, good for long notes
  • 4 is a staccato – short, jerky notes played by the bow, this is a shafting sound
  • 5 is another staccato – same as above, slightly different technique
  • 6 is a pizzicato – short, plucked notes
  • 7 is another legato – same as 3, more or less
  • 8 is another staccato – similar to 4 and 5

Mixing is the last key thing you can do to get your strings to sound more realistic. First off, do your panning well. Give each of your MIDI strings its place in the stereo field.

Finally, feel free to EQ those suckers. It’ll help clean up the sound, at the very least!

These are the things I have found take my crappy sounding strings and make them more palatable and authentic. The vice of MIDI (it sounds terrible compared to the real thing) is also its blessing – it’s a different sound than you’ll get from a real instrument. Use that to whatever ends you will.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. You can always send thoughts, suggestions, and questions to justanotherhalfling@gmail.com as well 🙂 Thanks for reading!

Garageband

What is Audiobus? — Audiobus isan award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you useyour other music apps together. Chain effects on your favouritesynth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app likeGarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface outputfor each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive asynth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDIkeyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear.And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

Download on the App Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

in General App Discussion

For my recent tracks I enjoyed very much using synths for plucked string sounds instead of samples because I have much more control over the sound and really can design exactly the pluck sound I need. Which synths that are good at plucked strings do you know? So far I found

Comments

  • You will find a couple of pluked strings in GarageBand

  • edited August 1

    A good start so far, @krassmann. I was gonna mention all those
    I'll add to that KSSynth inside Caustic and Geoshred

  • edited August 1

    I'm sure someone will come and recommend any of the modulars like Drambo, Sunvox, Mirack, zMors, Jasuto, Audulus, etc
    But patching up may be more work than needed if you already have great options

  • Don't know if it fits the bill but the more I dig into Poison-202 the more it keeps on surprising me

  • Using the swam strings in pizzicato mode etc sounds incredible, you could then process with fx.

  • @LinearLineman said:
    @Gavinski, how do you access pizzicato mode?

    In Play Mode!

  • @krassmann said:
    For my recent tracks I enjoyed very much using synths for plucked string sounds instead of samples because I have much more control over the sound and really can design exactly the pluck sound I need. Which synths that are good at plucked strings do you know? So far I found

    Is Plectrum good at making guitar sounds?

  • edited August 1

    Drambo's Waveguide and and Comb modules do good strings, nylons, plucks, harpsichords, typical karplus
    strong stuff.
    +1 for Audio Modelling pizzicato. Really great on their double bass and cello models.

    Also, there are a few really cool user oscillators for Minilogue XD and Prologue. Sounds so good having those physical modeling sounds going through the analog filters and vcas.

    Physiq by DirtBox Synths
    https://www.dirtboxsynth.com/uncategorized/meet-physiq-the-physical-modelling-oscillator/

    Pluck by Tim Shoebridge
    https://soundmangling.sellfy.store/p/lrkzq3/

    Those are the best I've found. But there are some free ones like Cain'++, and the MI Plaits String model too.
    https://cain-synthesizer.com/cain

    edit: Nano Studio's Obsidian has a comb filter - route a short impulse into that and you'll get some good plucks.

  • Plectrum makes some epic old acoustic lute or guitar type sounds. They sound good after alot of tweaking, and it sounds natural.

  • @Stuntman_mike said:

    @krassmann said:
    For my recent tracks I enjoyed very much using synths for plucked string sounds instead of samples because I have much more control over the sound and really can design exactly the pluck sound I need. Which synths that are good at plucked strings do you know? So far I found

    Is Plectrum good at making guitar sounds?

    Plectrum is my latest addition and I did not dive deep into it yet. It has very interesting sounds but for guitar sounds I’d prefer strng and Lagrange.

  • @krassmann said:

    @Stuntman_mike said:

    @krassmann said:
    For my recent tracks I enjoyed very much using synths for plucked string sounds instead of samples because I have much more control over the sound and really can design exactly the pluck sound I need. Which synths that are good at plucked strings do you know? So far I found

    Is Plectrum good at making guitar sounds?

    Plectrum is my latest addition and I did not dive deep into it yet. It has very interesting sounds but for guitar sounds I’d prefer strng and Lagrange.

    Thank you 🙏🏻

  • @Stuntman_mike said:

    @krassmann said:

    @Stuntman_mike said:

    @krassmann said:
    For my recent tracks I enjoyed very much using synths for plucked string sounds instead of samples because I have much more control over the sound and really can design exactly the pluck sound I need. Which synths that are good at plucked strings do you know? So far I found

    Is Plectrum good at making guitar sounds?

    Plectrum is my latest addition and I did not dive deep into it yet. It has very interesting sounds but for guitar sounds I’d prefer strng and Lagrange.

    Thank you 🙏🏻

    Hmm… but look at the post of @oceansinspace. I guess I did not go deep enough into Plectrum. So far I found its sounds a bit harsh but you probably need to tweak it better.

  • Continua, has some nice plucks, especially with the @Spidericemidas free bank.

    All the Swam Strings do nice plucked aka pizzicato sound.

    SoundFonts AU - lots of great plucked SoundFonts out there to load into the app.

  • @Stuntman_mike said:

    @LinearLineman said:
    @Gavinski, how do you access pizzicato mode?

    In Play Mode!

    Yup make full screen to see all options, scroll down if necessary, should be to the lower right, tap play mode box, and switch between 3 play modes, bow, pizzicato, col. legato.

  • Laplace:

  • Mersenne?, very plucky, I don’t know if it’s strings…
    +1 on Spectrum. Love it.

  • edited August 2

    Thanks for additions. I did not try the other IceGear synths because I think that they put all their algorithms into Lagrange or do you think Mersenne and Laplace have got a significantly different character than the corresponding algorithms in Lagrange?

  • AddStation easily shines for mallets (the best in my opinion) but can also be good for plucked strings. Just draw the partials/attack/decay profile of a stringed instrument, add a pinch of inharmonicity.
    And the polyphony is very good, contrary to most of the synths.

  • @Samu said:
    Don't know if it fits the bill but the more I dig into Poison-202 the more it keeps on surprising me

    Good point, Poison is a simple but quite versatile synth - it keeps surprising me. It’s definitely a good synth for plucky arps although not really for plucked strings.

  • Frioventus' presets for Obsidian have some nice plucks - cello, guitar, harp, strings.

    Sampletank also has various packs with good pizzicato sound.

  • Reason Compact has the Karplus-Strong algorithm, and its pristine audio quality lends itself well to preserving the harmonics of a pluck. I love the sound engine, and it also has a really cool knob animation. However, it's not AU, it receives very little support, and it has contained some glitches since release.

  • Yeah that karptlus strong is sweet. ITs great on the micro freak. It is deff in the plectrum app as an option. It can be harsh and also the settings are a bit obscure, rather the knobs and names of them. It can be hard to make a good patch but you really get rewarded. Now if you want a 4 tet pluck that more synthy (or that what ive heard)

  • Can recommend GarageBand, GeoShred Pro and Yonac’s Steel Guitar.

  • Sunrizer default sound is called 1tar a sorta sitar sound. I enjoy messing with it. I am sure it can do more similar.

  • This thread is a good example how valuable this forum is to me. @aleyas pointed out Physiq by DirtBox Synths - something I never heard of before. Then I looked it up and I learned that there is a cool DIY synth from Korg: the NTS-1. It’s a monophonic synth based on the same Korg synth engine that allows to run oscillator plug-ins such as the DirtBox plug-ins and costs just about 100 bucks. Instantly this thing made it to the top of my Christmas wishlist 😃 Thank you so much.

  • edited August 3

    @krassmann said:
    This thread is a good example how valuable this forum is to me. @aleyas pointed out Physiq by DirtBox Synths - something I never heard of before. Then I looked it up and I learned that there is a cool DIY synth from Korg: the NTS-1. It’s a monophonic synth based on the same Korg synth engine that allows to run oscillator plug-ins such as the DirtBox plug-ins and costs just about 100 bucks. Instantly this thing made it to the top of my Christmas wishlist 😃 Thank you so much.

    Cheers man! these user oscillators really changed my outlook on the 'logue' family and the NTS-1. Before, the Minilogue XD was just a boring poly synth to me - now it's a hybrid karplus strong synthesizer, and a badass drum machine.

    Speaking of, Brambos developed a Ruismaker osc kit for the NTS-1, and it's free
    https://ruismaker.com/korg/

    And here's a thorough list of custom oscs and effects, including many free ones:
    https://korginc.github.io/logue-sdk/unit-index/

    And remember, the NTS-1 is also an FX processor, which can run 3 different algorithms simultaneously. You can find some really cool stuff like resonators, ring mods, and reverbs in the link above.

  • @aleyas said:

    @krassmann said:
    This thread is a good example how valuable this forum is to me. @aleyas pointed out Physiq by DirtBox Synths - something I never heard of before. Then I looked it up and I learned that there is a cool DIY synth from Korg: the NTS-1. It’s a monophonic synth based on the same Korg synth engine that allows to run oscillator plug-ins such as the DirtBox plug-ins and costs just about 100 bucks. Instantly this thing made it to the top of my Christmas wishlist 😃 Thank you so much.

    Cheers man! these user oscillators really changed my outlook on the 'logue' family and the NTS-1. Before, the Minilogue XD was just a boring poly synth to me - now it's a hybrid karplus strong synthesizer, and a badass drum machine.

    Speaking of, Brambos developed a Ruismaker osc kit for the NTS-1, and it's free
    https://ruismaker.com/korg/

    And here's a thorough list of custom oscs and effects, including many free ones:
    https://korginc.github.io/logue-sdk/unit-index/

    And remember, the NTS-1 is also an FX processor, which can run 3 different algorithms simultaneously. You can find some really cool stuff like resonators, ring mods, and reverbs in the link above.

    Ruismaker as a device - how cool is that? 🤩

  • I was gonna say SM One don’t have 2 yet. There is a decent amount of plucked presets in one, I’m sure 2 too.

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