Slate + Ash – Primaries Strings 1.0.1 (KONTAKT)

Primaries Strings offers solo strings as the primary color of the orchestral spectrum. The notes behave like bright beams of light, merging together in abstract expressions of color and texture.

A New Orchestral Flavours
With a focus on challenging performance, extended techniques and spatial exploration, Primaries Strings combine solo performances with rich ensemble arrangements.

Each member of the string family – double bass, cello, viola and violin – features over a hundred multi-sampled articulations and is immersed in a variety of spatial settings, offering a range of unique timbres and experimental performance approaches that convey a wide range of emotional nuances.

FRACTURED FINGERPRINTS

Starting in our state-of-the-art studio in Bristol, the articulations were recorded as conceptual explorations, each capturing the natural progression of the performance in hyper-detailed detail.

Each articulation is an exploration in its own right: a fluid, organic encounter – each note a free-form performance that breaks the boundaries of mechanical reproduction. Space, silence and human nuance play an active role in shaping each sound, adding depth and texture that emerges from the margins.

EXPANDING THE CANVAS

Each recording has been re-amplified through a series of iconic spaces and physical processes, transforming them into an expanded palette of hues and tonalities.

Each space opens up a new perspective, refracting and imprinting its presence on the string recordings, expanding the spatial palette of each articulation.

The iconic Funkhaus studios building in East Berlin, designed by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich, was historically used as a broadcast complex for German Radio. Its cavernous echo chamber is a cathedral of brutalist concrete and cubist angles, imbuing the recordings with industrial reflections that are at once mesmerizing and beautiful.

FULL SPECTRUM OF PERFORMANCE

PRIMARIES/STRINGS is a full\spectrum of uniquely expressive string articulations.
It has everything from layered, evolving textures to lyrical, flowing melodic phrases; from rich, resonant intervallic passages to deep, cinematic gestures with booming low tones, haunting atonal slides and percussive pizzicato rhythms.

Space is deliberately built into each articulation, allowing phrases and dynamics to intertwine, creating a pointillist interplay where instruments complement each other in a layered soundscape. The result is an arrangement where each instrument’s voice fits distinctly into the overall picture.

All articulation possibilities are realized in the EXPRESSIONS presets, providing unrivaled emotional performances via the modulation wheel. In addition to the usual dynamic control, each preset creates dynamic gestural moments in real time. This opens up a new level of natural depth to live performance, forming sequences that easily adapt to your control.

A KALEIDOSCOPE OF ORCHESTRA MANIPULATION

With a variety of processing options, PRIMARIES/STRINGS opens up vast possibilities that blur the lines between acoustic and electronic, organic and synthetic.

With over 150 sound presets developed by Sound, raw string sounds are transformed into a wide palette of reimagined textures, drones, statements and synth impulses, each completely malleable and ready to be explored.

IMPORT YOUR OWN SAMPLES

Simply drop a sample into the interface to load it into the PRIMARIES/STRINGS engine.
Up to ten individual samples are supported at a time – five for each layer – or individual elements of your own orchestral patches can be replaced with custom samples.

Samples can then be pitch-shifted, mixed, enhanced with effects, and transformed into something entirely new by the sound design engine.

106 INDIVIDUAL ARTICULATIONS

• 22 bass
• 25 cello
• 23 viola
• 36 violin

80 EXPRESSIONS

• 20 bass
• 18 cello
• 16 viola
• 26 violin

139 SOUND DESIGN PRESETS

• 17 arp
• 12 atmosphere
• 12 keys
• 17 motion
• 30 pads
• 24 primary
• 27 texture