Spitfire Audio – Chamber Strings Essentials

This new streamlined edition of a Spitfire classic offers instant access to world-class scoring sound quality to enhance your film, TV and game scores and pop records. Discover a range of 53 essential techniques performed by 16 of the world’s best string players, featuring both Section and Ensemble patches for instant playability and inspiration. Expertly recorded at London’s AIR Studios, the home of countless blockbuster scores including Harry Potter, The Dark Knight and Dunkirk, this smaller section offers more detail and focus than our Symphony Orchestra, featuring both Close and Tree mic signals — while still capturing the unique resonance of the hall.

Walkthrough

Play 

24:39

Key features

• 53 techniques: 18 Shorts, 12 Longs, 18 Trills & Trems, 5 Legatos
• Close & Tree mic signals
• 16 world-class London string players
• Recorded in situ using priceless valve and ribbon mics
• Neve Montserrat Pre-amps into a Neve 88R desk
• Recorded digitally at 96k via 2″ Studer tape
• Multiple dynamic layers and round robins
• Diverse and detailed, with all essential techniques
• Legatos designed by Andrew Blaney
• Individual sections and ensembles

Lately, I have been exploring a smaller ensemble sound in my scores, and Spitfire Chamber Strings has become an integral tool in my process. For TV shows like Queen Charlotte and Bridgerton, and films like Chevalier and Origin, the Chamber Strings library was used for the writing of nearly every cue.

Kris Bowers

Oscar nominated composer (Green Book, Bridgerton, King Richard)

Very versatile, highly musical and exceptionally useable, and, if that’s not enough, it sounds truly sublime straight out of the box.

Intimacy & detail

The word ‘chamber’ describes any ensemble smaller than a symphony orchestra — anything from a quartet to 40 players. Our aim was to create the definitive chamber strings project, giving you that highly sought-after widescreen blockbuster sound, with detail, intimacy and focus — hard to achieve with larger-sized string sample libraries.

We give you 16 world-class players: four 1st violins, three 2nd violins, three violas, three cellos & three basses, expertly sampled at AIR Studios. Choose from over 35 techniques, including Longs, Shorts, Trills & Trems, and expertly crafted Legato patches, as well as versatile Close and Tree mic signals and up to four dynamic layers. Create realistic split section arrangements, building parts by section, or use the Ensemble patches to get your ideas down quickly for an instantly fuller sound. This library also blends perfectly with larger ensemble orchestral libraries. These performances are expressive, realistic and musical, offering an incredibly satisfying composition, arrangement and production process.

There is a musicality, a playability to these patches that resonates with me… Chamber Strings gives me instant inspiration that actually makes me think about the players in that space as I write. And most importantly it sounds fantastic and translates musical emotion, which is what it’s all about.

Trevor Morris (Vikings, Tudors)

Emmy-winning composer

Behind the samples

Spitfire was built on this chamber strings project. In our early years, many A-list composers agreed that sampled strings were unwieldy, ill-defined and too epic. Our first iteration of Chamber Strings was released as a private project, and became hugely popular amongst our peers.

Some, however, felt it still sounded ‘kind of big’. So we returned to the chamber challenge with a question: How small can we go before it no longer sounds like a section? The answer was 4,3,3,3,3. A uniquely intimate group of extraordinary players in one of the best recording spaces in the world. It is still the Spitfire team’s favourite string range, admired for its beauty, versatility and totally unique sonic character.