Fluffy Audio 'Venice' / Modern Chamber Strings

[Piet De Ridder]

No details yet. Just a little announcement video of a new chamber strings library by Fluffy Audio, recorded in the same room where Rinascimento was recorded:



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[Linos]

Interesting. Not much to discuss yet. No info about the library, and, oddly enough, the trailer music mainly feautures a piano. Who would have thought that. Also, 'modern' is not the first adjective that comes to mind when I think of Venice. Nor the second. Nor does the cover picture evoke any such meaning. Mysteries over mysteries.
There's some established competition for Chamber Strings. But coming from Fluffy Audio, the library has my interest.

Piet, where do you have the additional info from that these are chamber strings (the video names them as 'Modern Strings'), and that they were recorded in the same room as Rinascimento? I couldn't find any further information apart from the youtube video you linked to.

Edit: found it on the other forum.

[KyleJudkins]

I live in venice and I wasn't invited to the recording.


Wrong venice paolo - should have came down to florida, the heat and humidity are … good for acoustics???

[Ashermusic]

Video has too much going on to reach specific conclusions about the strings, but every single one of the Fluffy Audio libraries I have, and that is most of them, has a lovely tone and for me, tone is king.

[paoling]

Piet is right! These are chamber strings (8-5-5-5-3 to be exact)!

We perfectly know that this video doesn't say anything more than "oh, there are some strings from FluffyAudio coming soon".
But we also took the chance to create something beautiful, which I hope this video is a bit.
The video was mostly 80% fun and 20% job. We spent 4 days in Venice and we had great time taking clips of the city.
So the video is mostly a kind of "passion project" that somehow fits in what we do. I also do Fluffy for similar reasons.

Nevertheless there's a reason why the library is called Venice Modern Strings. Most of the musicians in the library are handpicked from the "Virtuosi Italiani", an excellent string ensemble which mainly performs in Venice and they have recorded with dozens of artists.
Also the term "Modern" was added right to avoid any association with the Baroque era, because, well, it is material for another product!

In anycase I feel grateful, because until few years ago we could only dream of having the resources and the skills to make a library like this. We've been working on it for an entire year and I've spent a lot of time together with my colleagues dealing with the crazy number of samples, while this library was taking life.

Now it's demo time, time to polish some little things reported by our first testers and preparing all the material for a proper release. And then Dominus 2!

[Luciano Storti]

Bravo Paolo e Fluffy Audio!

The video was a pleasant change of pace from how the city is normally portrayed, so your intentions of staying away from the very ingrained Baroque were clear and successful. I also quite liked the music!

[Guy Rowland]

I'm pretty unflappable with videos these days, but that really was very good indeed.

[The Saxer]

.
So the video is mostly a kind of "passion project" that somehow fits in what we do. I also do Fluffy for similar reasons.

This is a simpatico way of starting projects! And the world (at least my world) needs more chamber libraries.

[paoling]

I'm pretty unflappable with videos these days, but that really was very good indeed.

Thank you Guy! I guess if the library doesn't please, we try filmmaking as a backup job

[KyleJudkins]

And then Dominus 2!

THIS ladies and gentlemen. I can't wait to see what the goal for Dominus 2 is.



Although rina users might benefit greatly from a string library if their goal is more geared towards fantasy music.

[Piet De Ridder]

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Something to listen to:
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(High-res audio here.)

And some more info:

"This library will be a "traditional" kind of core string library. The main stuff is there with some little things that you may not find elsewhere. We have an automated modulation system for all the sustained-like sounds, so you can create some custom articulations that can morph from a tremolo to a flautando, in an automated, controlled, or semi-random way. There will be arcs "a la" 8dio (can I cite other developers). Staccatissimo samples extracted from a real fast performance to perform ostinato-like stuff, time-streatchable staccatos (with Up-Down alternation and RRs), and there will be glissando, legato and bow-change legatos. Also rebowing on the same note.

Sections are 8-5-5-5-3. 'Venice' has up/down for the arcs and the staccato, 4 dynamic layers for legato, poly legato and sustain and the staccato.
RRs vary for the staccato and staccatissimo, with a system for random RRs with more than 4/5 RRs x up/down so it may be 10 per note. (Every note in a certain dynamic area "picks" a random sample from the available RRs in that area).
The Arcs have 4 dynamic layers."



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[paoling]

Piet, you beat me in speed! I was about to post this info here

[Guy Rowland]

Damn that does sound lovely. Any chance of those demos naked, paoling?

I hear some splendid molte vibrato here and there.

[Ashermusic]

Paolo, you always nail the tone!

[paoling]

Damn that does sound lovely. Any chance of those demos naked, paoling?

I hear some splendid molte vibrato here and there.

Thank you Guy! Thank you Jay!

I have something more fun than a naked demo: there are two classical pieces that Olmo is patiently mockupping. One of them is the Adagetto from the Symphony n°5 of Mahler, this is the first half:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4wr8hk8cy9bzh ... VIAUqVXfec

Redoing classical musical pieces is a risky business with sample libraries, but I don't know, I love to try. And I feel it is alive in someway. The challenge here, since it's a very subtle piece, is to work with like 30 values of modwheel. This thing gave me the idea to create a kind of "modwheel" curve control which helps to gain a bit more resolution in a certain part of the dynamic spectrum.

[Markus K]

This sounds very promising. I’m really looking forward to Venice Strings. Would be nice to hear demos more on the agile side. Some ostinatos, runs etc. After hearing the Adagietto live recently every rendition of it is hard to bear I must admit. Although this one is pretty good. But after all that’s not what any libraries are made for at least as I view it and I doubt they will ever succeed in doing it.

[givemenoughrope]

Sounds excellent, paoling

[Linos]

It's released:

https://fluffyaudio.com/shop/venice-modern-strings/

The intro price is 349$/€, regular 399. Congratulations Paolo, this must have been a huge undertaking for your company. Best of luck with the sales. It is not the strings sound I am looking for, but I'm sure this can be a true workhorse library for many.

[kpc]

Sounds fantastic to me. Congrats Paolo.

[Lawrence]

Paolo-sounds wonderful and warm. Congratulations.

I listened to the overview and all of the demos-very rare for me. While everything sounded lovely and emotional, there was practically nothing that demonstrated how agile the legato is for faster passages. Also, I heard very little of the staccato, spiccato or pizz even. Will there be a walk through soon? I'd love to hear the separate articulations.

Again, congratulations!

[Ashermusic]

Great stuff, Paolo!

[paoling]

Hello Guys!
Thank you for your kind words!

I'm actually exporting a video now to show some articulations alone and so on. I'm quite thrilled about this release and a bit confused, because we worked so hard on this thing with 114000 samples.

I'm quite confident about the most of the important things, its sound. It sounds lush and warm. It has detail, but it doesn't sound too roomy. I love it.

There are a gazillion of things I'd like to add to this library, but I had to stop and release it. There will be many updates for sure, with the ideas we get and functionalities that our users will suggest but at least I won't have the anxiety of having to release it. I'm happy that we are expanding the Fluffy family so I share my thrilling with my colleagues that are way more laid back than me

As usual we strived for making the best legato we could, for smooth and cantabile passages, but all the other articulations sounds quite nice with few caveauts. The staccatissimo is "designed" to make it as short as we could without destroying the room. We cut little samples from a fast performance to make it.

Other articulations are particularly cool when used with the Morph Controls. It's our way to make a kind of sound design system that's actually useful. On many libraries when they implement sound design tools they sometimes make their instruments to sound like a synth.

In the end I'm quite happy that I'll finally sleep more than 5 hours.
I hope you'll enjoy the library.... The articulation walkthrough video is up.
It's still low quality though. I hope that Youtube won't take ages to process it, since I'd like to add it to our site and
finally sending the e-mail with the announcement. There so many things to do all at the same time.



The first piece with the section solos is a bit silly, but I like to make things into a musical context. I hope you won't have to write anything like that

[givemenoughrope]

Paolo, I'm really enjoying the tone of the demos. Congrats!

[bigcat1969]

Only 114,000 samples? Have you been slacking? Serious congrats. Lovely demos.

[Thorsten Meyer]

Sounds wonderful lush and emotional, Paolo. Congratulations to the whole team behind producing Venice

Cheers,
Thorsten