Violin solo combi

Is there any way to control the amplitude of vibrato - down to non vibrato?

As far as I know all the layers and samples that come with Sonic/HALion, or with hosts like Cubase/Nuendo/Dorico have the vibrato built in. The violinist they sampled was doing true vibrato with the fingers.

Are you running the full version of HALion 7? It shouldnā€™t take very long to lay out a non-vibrato layer for a solo violin.

I think there might be some short non-vibrato samples at U of Iowa you can use free for personal use (find a good loop point and get a pure steady string scrape you can LFO or use envelopes on). Seems like the ones without vibrato might be mono, but itā€™s possible to resample them in stereo (LCR configuration with some delay on the sides) if you really need that.

Iā€™ve been meaning to look into making a simple ā€˜non-vibratoā€™ layer for string instruments, but havenā€™t gotten that far yet.

You can get some other decent string samples at no charge in various VSCO kits. I donā€™t think any of those have a non-vibrato layer worked up though.

Not sure what all commercial violins come with a true non-vibrato layer. I know Garritanā€™s GPO or PO strings do NOT (other than a detache layer in some of the solo strings of GPO5). HALion Symphonic Orchestra does NOT. All their solo string instrument samples were recorded with vibrato.

Seems like East West has some non-vibrato strings in their Classic Symphonic Orchestra Gold, and Hollywood Orchestra products. I needed it (and a nice word builder capable choir) for one project a while back and subscribed to the EQ Catalogue long enough to get the job done (As opposed to laying down hundreds to out right buy full keys).

From there, as far as I know, it can get pretty expensive to find strings with a non-vibrato layer (Stuff like Vienna Pro, Project Sam, Iconica, etc, might have it, and theyā€™re all rather pricey).

xsample strings has that. xsample

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Thank you Brian for such elaborate explanation.
Iā€™ll definitely try out some of your suggestions.
Truly appreciate,
Igor Borodin

Thank you Steve.
The sample they provide goes mostly over quick short notes. Which is not exactly what Iā€™m looking for. For teaching purposes, I need rather long sustained pitches.
So, for my needs the sample was not as demonstrative as I would like to hear. And itā€™s not especially cheap to take chances.
Sorry to be picky.
Thank you for your suggestion.
Igor Borodin

Iā€™ve used samples in the past to get what I want if the presets canā€™t deliver.
Normally vibrato is on or off so, to get what you want I think thereā€™s some tweaking requiered

@ADRIAN_DIX

Sorry, but ā€œsome tweakingā€ is not particularly helpful :slight_smile:

Fiddling about and found something that might be of interest.

In the full HALion library there is a nice one in the Halion Sonic Factory library.
Concert Solo Strings

It does have vibrato, but thereā€™s a good half a second or more of sustain before the vibrato kicks in. It might be possible to get decent loop points from these samples before the vibrato kicks in, and shape up a non-vibrato set of solo strings.

Thank you Brian.
That initial non-vibrato ā€˜half-secondā€™ is present even in default library that Dorico uses.
As a matter of fact, I thought about trying to utilize that, but my total inexperience in such modification(s) made that idea just a fantasy.

Maybe I can come up with something this weekend. Will experiment a bit.

Judging by the previous instances of inquiries (quests) for non-vibrato sound of otherwise very nice natural tone of HALion Violin Solo there would be more than just a few grateful Dorico users, should you succeed in utilizing that initial portion of the sample.
Even more so, although I have no experience in working with inners of VSTs, I do have some modest experience in programming. What Iā€™m trying to say is that if you come up with certain sequence of steps to modify one sample, Iā€™d be willing to implement such a pattern of modification to the rest of the violin range - roughly 4 octaves or 48 pitches.

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See xsample_violin

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Iā€™m planning on taking a closer look at some stuff I thought I heard at U Iowa. Seems like I remember tapping a few that were straight tones without vibrato. I think they were done at like 15ft, and in mono.

If my memory is correct, it might be possible to first glue together several copies in Cubase at a good loop point, touch it up a bit, then resample to stereo using the old LCR+DD-Invert Phase of one side trick, then bring into HALion for even further refinement.

It might end up being a fruitless quest, but itā€™s worth taking a closer look.