The Ghanbari Sessions
Staccato violins played by Bahman Ghanbari.
ByBengt Nilsson
The story
THE GHANBARI SESSIONS
When I composed the music for the third season of Johan Falk back in 2014, I needed special staccato violins for one of the opening songs.
Because I knew what I needed, we only sampled what was necessary. The criterion was that they should be tempo synced and it was enough that they were sampled in one octave. However, I wanted the opportunity to play one, two, three or four unison violins in the same patch. The violin is played by Bahman Ghanbari.
You can hear the Kontakt instrument in this song.
Enjoy!
Reviews
A nice dry library of ostinatos
These almost purely dry patches feature different kinds of ostinatos for you to create your own sequences. Dry doesn't mean bad - In contrast, I believe that for strings it means good if done properly, and this is a good example of how to do it. The more dry the string instrument is, the more character and texture you will get from it. Then you will be able to shape it the way you want, but in this one you will need your own resources because it offers no settings at all.
In some cases, you can hear where the loop happens, but it's barely noticeable. The samples also don't sync together, which means you can create chaos easily, but if done with care, you can turn it into wonderful shimmery sequences. If played perfectly on time, the result is fantastic!
Great tempo synced rhythmic viola
A viola with a very fiddle character, very well sampled, and the tempo sync makes this instrument really usable. Yes, the instrument suffers from having no round-robins and only one dynamic layer, but it's a very useful tool. One trick that I use with this instrument is to detune the viola solo action, at least one octave, reduce the Kontakt bpm to half of the project tempo, and add a dotted eight delay with a couple of repetitions to create a very different texture from the original.
Violins in 16ths
If you're looking for a great solo violin ostinato library, this might be just the thing. The violin is well recorded, devoid of noise, and well played. This probably isn't the most useful library on PB, but it certainly has its uses. It's fun to play with and to make swarms with by adding some delay.