Somerville Sounds / Woven Violin

[Piet De Ridder]

Somerville Sounds, until now best known for two (pretty special) drum libraries, an upright piano library and a few other small (but always characterful) releases, are entering the sampled strings arena with their newest library Woven Violin.

"Woven Violin is a deeply expressive solo violin library designed with a focus on organic movement and evolving textures. Recorded in a carefully controlled and intimate space, Woven Violin’s variety of articulations layer as well as they stand alone. The library’s interface allows you to choose between traditional articulation selection and dynamic articulation mapping so that, from sophisticated underscoring to sprawling cinematic folk, Woven Violin belongs in the fabric of your expression."

Audio demos on the product page.
Intro price: $79.



__

[Guy Rowland]

Oh I like.

Have you bought it, Piet?

EDIT - It feels like a similar concept to Crow Hill's String Murmurations, but much more playable and (to my mind anyway) logical. Hope so anyway - I never went for String Murmurations cos I figured it would just frustrate me in the end.

[Geoff Grace]

I just saw the video on my YouTube feed and thought it was a little like a cross between British Drama Toolkit and Violin Untamed but with a dash of folk mixed in.

It's worthy of discussion at least. I don't know whether or not I'll buy it. There's a lot of products I'm interested in right now, and Woven Violin is on that list; but I can't/won't buy them all.

Best,

Geoff

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) Have you bought it, Piet? (...)

No. But that's mainly because I'm not into all this slow ebbing-and-flowing, pseudo-emo music that seems to be all the rage these days. That's also why I have no interest whatsoever in the Crow Hill line — I've bought one of theirs a few weeks ago, and it's been quite the disappointment — nor in Strezov's latest String Contours. But again: my point of view has nothing to do with the quality of these libraries, it's just that I don't make the sort of music in which libraries like these can shine.)

So, despite having no intention of purchasing Woven Violin, I do hear this is a great library. Somerville's libraries — I have both drum libraries as well as the piano — are very well engineered, I find, and the sound of this one is up there with the best. Just imagine a comprehensive solo violin library, or even better: a set of solo strings, recorded the Somerville way, with this level of timbral and textural detail and nuance ... wouldn't that be something?

If I were a media composer, forced to abide by the reigning musical aesthetic of today, I'm pretty sure I would have bought this already.

_

[Guy Rowland]

If I were a media composer, forced to abide by the reigning musical aesthetic of today, I'm pretty sure I would have bought this already.

I know a siren call when I hear one! Bought and love.

Interesting timing after my Cremona Quartet Ensemble, both useful for adding a human layer to expansive stuff.

[Guy Rowland]

I've been having a catching-up on bits and pieces day. Woven sounds fantastic, but I've been having tech issues. Sometimes nothing will play, changing presets or parameters doesn't help and the only solution is to reload the nki completely.

I can't make this reproduceable though. I've written to their tech support mindful that such a vague description is hard to act on - don't suppose anyone else out there has had any issues?

[Geoff Grace]

I’m sorry to hear that, Guy. I’m afraid I never bought it, but I hope you’ll be able to solve the problem without much effort.

Best,

Geoff