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Posts Tagged ‘session strings’

Phrasing

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

A couple of days ago I spoke to a composer who is looking for strings as part of his composition for three short films. He’d spent a lot of time working with very high quality string samples but felt that when it came to staccato bowings and phrasing, there was just something missing that gave sampled strings an unreal quality.

What differentiates an outstanding string player from an average one (as well as sampled strings) is his or her ability to really sing through the instrument. All the best players ‘phrase’ so the listener can really hear the whole direction of the music, like hearing a whole sentence rather than a series of single words. When the phrasing is done beautifully, the bow seems to disappear and instead of hearing a succession of ‘down’ and ‘up’ bows, there is a feeling of seamlessness with no apparent breaks in the sound. When this happens, the instrument can really seem to glow.

When phrasing is coming through, it can have a very individual sound for each player and with the very best musicians, it is possible to tell exactly who is playing from their unique sound and characteristic tone. This is rather like recognising someone from their speaking voice or accent, but it is the way they use their speaking voice that makes a person sound so individual. If one has a distinctive voice but talks in a monotone, this will be less recognisable than a person who injects real vitality and variety into their speech. A couple of months ago, a composer sent me an mp3 of some of his work that he’d had recorded by a really good cellist - on listening to it, I recognised the cello sound as being played by a woman I had been at college with 20 years ago and when I queried it, he confirmed that it was her.

In order to convey convincing phrasing to an audience (or studio microphone), the player must really project it with clear definition. Without using the word ‘exaggerate’ there must be a level of commitment and passion that clearly conveys whatever the performers intention is.

Any half measures will strike the listener as bland or uninteresting. There are many excellent players who are so concerned with accurate intonation and note perfect playing that they risk sounding ’safe’ with little or no phrasing to characterise their playing. This is often evident in good string quartets who display excellent ensemble and great tuning but don’t inject their playing with enough character and inflection.

In the studio, the best way of a string section sounding really impressive is for all of the players to phrase at the same points and really feel the music together. No sound sample as yet can achieve that human soulfulness that gives real strings their ability to move the listener.

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Up and Down Bows

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Really, I don’t like the term ‘up and down bow’ very much because the motion of a bow is very fluid and when played artfully, gives a seamless, warm, glowing sound - nothing to do with ‘up’ or ‘down’ which sounds very rigid. My violin teacher (Kato Havas) says that all a bow going ‘up and down’ does is iron the music flat, so to get to the essence of the music the player should try and achieve a naturalness of phrasing which transcends the bow.

Nevertheless, there are instances when composers or string arrangers purposefully write a certain bow direction to attain a musical effect. For example, Stravinsky wrote several down bows (travelling in a downward motion repeatedly, lifted from the string in between notes) in a row to create an aggressive, percussive effect. An example of ‘up bows’ is in Paganini’s 24th Caprice where he alternates left hand pizzicatos (a future blog entry!) with ‘up bows’ played near the tip of the bow - the effect is of a whipping, pecking sound that goes well when alternated with the pizzicato.

Symbols are added to a score to indicate when there is a particular ‘up or down’ direction to the bowing. In 18th and 19th century music, this was often left to the discretion of the individual player but increasingly in the 20th century composers began to specify up and down bow markings more, frequently seeking the advice of professional string players on how best to ‘bow’ the piece.

In a live orchestral performance, bowings are marked into the parts in advance to enable each section to play with synchronised bows travelling in the same direction together - although Leopold Stokowski’s Philadelphia Orchestra were famous in using ‘free bowing’ which the conductor felt achieved a more glossy sound, even though it didn’t look as impressively uniform.This leads onto the phrase ’staggered bowing’. This is where longer notes which would require more than one bow direction to keep sustained are bowed in such a way that members of a string section change in different places, this gives a smooth and continuous effect so that the change in bowing is inaudible.

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Cadenza

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

To begin with, a Cadenza is not something a string arranger would usually write into an average 3 minute pop song or rock track but they can be added into other styles of music and apply to any instrument (not just strings!). A cadenza comes from the word ‘Cadence’ (a cadence is an ending either to a phrase or even section of a piece) and is essentially an ad libbed passage in a piece of music (usually at a Cadence) where a solo instrument breaks out from the rest into a flourish. In the baroque era, a singer would often embellish a cadence with an improvisation (normally near the end of an aria). Later, in the classical period the cadenza developed into an improvised solo at the end of the recapitulation section and before the coda of a first movement (normally a concerto). In this form, the soloist would take themes from the piece and develop them, often changing the form into something quite different yet still related to the original melody. Cadenzas became increasingly virtuosic, allowing the performer the chance to really demonstrate their skills on the instrument - and in many cases became quite a few minutes long. Nowadays, a cadenza is less commonly improvised and more often carefully composed before the performance to cleverly capture themes from the piece and gain the maximum impact whilst still feeling ‘improvised’. The performer has the complete attention of the audience during a cadenza so it’s important to ‘get it right’ and most cadenzas are carefully prepared beforehand.

In a string arrangement for a song, the length of the track will determine how long a cadenza might last but in modern pop or rock music it now takes the form of an instrumental break - where the vocalist and other instruments takes a pause and one of the instruments comes to the fore with a solo phrase or quick flourish, possibly only lasting a few seconds. An appropriate section could be at the end of the introduction, before the first verse begins. 

So how does a cadenza differ from say, a guitar solo? In a guitar solo the beat or pulse of the track continues underneath - sometimes the same chords repeat, allowing the guitar to float over the top with improvised runs. In a cadenza, the beat of the music stops completely (like a pause), allowing the instrument to provide a fill in until the music starts where it left off. A cadenza is usually a solo instrument, but there’s no reason why a whole section of instruments couldn’t play one!

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Session at the Engine Room

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

On Sunday the 6th December, we were booked as a string quartet comprising two violins, a viola and cello to record at the ‘Engine Room’ (part of the group of Miloko Studios in London). We were required to add simple string parts to seven tracks for an independent band - as these weren’t string arrangements that we had been asked to write, we simply had to turn up and play the music given to us on the day. The bands style favoured irregular time signatures which kept us on our toes with large sections being done in a single take to capture a live feeling of spontaneity. The end product certainly enhanced the sound with the tracks gaining richness and depth as a result of including live strings. In a couple of tracks, the producer discussed the possibility of using the tracks laid down by the four session musicians to add a top layer to existing sampled strings - this technique is becoming increasingly popular where there are many different sounds in the mix and can certainly help the strings to sound more convincing than only using samples.

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Layering strings

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Some of the work that Stringsection does involves providing strings for composers or bands financing their own projects on a limited budget. People believe in a track enough to invest in live strings (rather than samples), but simply cannot afford to hire a full sized string orchestra without going overseas and potentially compromising on quality.  Occasionally, in order to keep things within budget, or because only a few of us can fit into a smaller studio, we have overlayered the same players in order to create the impression of more musicians.

Although this might sound straightforward and the obvious answer to keeping costs down, it is actually a skillful process that only very good players are able to pull off convincingly. It is vital that the first string parts laid down are rhythmically perfect with 100% accurate tuning, as any slight discrepancies of timing or tuning can become exaggerated with a subsequent overdub. It’s often the case that this first layer takes the longest time to record and get right. If a handful of players are to successfully layer their sound a second or even third time, it can potentially end up sounding weird and slightly artificial - rather like a choir made up of the same few voices, without the variety of sounds produced by a large group. One way to overcome this is for the players to add a little variety to each take, without disturbing the rhythm or intonation. This can be done by varying the speed of vibrato, changing the weight of sound and even playing a passage on different strings (so that some notes on the lower region of the violins ‘E’ string for instance could be played higher up on the ‘A’ string). A good engineer will help enormously and can subtly change the position of the microphones between takes to avoid ‘phasing’. ‘Phasing’ is where the identical frequencies are replicated or fractionally overlap, causing the sound to become sort of ‘fizzy’. When overdubbing, if particular care isn’t taken to avoid this, what started out as a high quality group of string players can end up sounding  more artificial than samples - which completely defeats the object of hiring live session musicians in the first place.

When overdubbing is done badly, it’s easy to tell straight away what’s gone on, especially in exposed passages. However if over-layering string parts is done with care and attention, the sound can be quite flawless- but success really depends on having excellent players, a sensitive producer and some very precise ears for detail.

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