I need strings for my track - nothing fancy just for texture

Hi Guys,
 
Its me again, back with yet another question...
 
So I have a track that could do with some strings....nothing outstanding, just some bland generic strings to help thicken the mix. So far my efforts with midi haven't gotten me anywhere, or at least anywhere I want to be.
 
So...What are my other options?
 
An online session player? Expensive right?
 
Sampled strings? What packages should I look at? And how easy are they to use?
 
String Plugin?
 
Any other suggestions?
 
 
 
Ed.

He did sy he wanted generic strings. However, even with expensive soundpacks, you still may apply tweaks - ie: EQ, pretty much. et, t also depends on what you mean by thicken because "bottom end" or that alone won't give you the thickness you're going for.

So, define thickness:

Bottom end is one way, but you gotta be careful with this.
Perhaps Stereo widening (a la chorus)
Maybe you could layer different samples of strings or take one or two sets EQing, Panning and "Effecting" them different.

While the hugh-end stuff is good (or not), but may indddmo satisfactory results if you fiddle around with what you have (Taking breaks every now and then of course)

THe only real advice I can give you is to experiment as all of the options I (and even Beepster) have given may not be to your liking

Depends on the Sonar package you have.... I don't recall if Sound Center has stings in it or not since I don't normally compose stuff with strings in it..... but if you have CSC check in there too. 

Cake has studio strings>>>>  http://www.cakewalk.com/P...io-Instruments-Strings

GPO has some decent strings in it....

Kontakt likewise has nice strings...

you can also use synths and pads to get some string sounds.... 

I think even TTS has string instruments that can be used in this manner. 

Of course, the ones with samples will sound better than the ones made by synths and oscillators. 

if you're having trouble adding a string arrangement, another option would be to buy a cheap version of Band in a Box.  enter your song structure (chords, timing, etc), find a similar genre with MIDI strings, generate the parts, export (or just drag and drop) the MIDI of the string accompaniment from BIAB to Sonar, use the output to SoundCenter, Garritan Pocket or DimPro depending on what you have and voila'!  you have a string arrangement to go with your song!

tweaking may be necessary on the MIDI, but it's really not even as complicated as it sounds.

Perhaps one thing to bear in mind is that string sections are mutliple sound-sources, which is what gives them their "fatness".

No two musicians will be playing exactly the same thing. Consider a section of, say, 4 violins. Each violin line is a different performance, usually by a different musician on a different instrument. Each line will have different timing differences, tonal differences and pitch differences.

The violin family has no frets, and every musician will "hear" how to play a particular note slightly differently. E.g. most will tend away from even-tempered scales towards a more "natural" scale, but exactly how much will vary from player to player, the music and any fixed-pitch references (piano, woodwind, guitar, etc) they are hearing while playing. The pitch differences set up a slight tremolo effect similar to running detuned oscillators against a tuned one, but the amount of detuning constantly changes.

Then add in varying degrees of vibrato, variances in bow attack at the start of notes, bow pressure fluctuating during a note, whether the bow is playing a downstroke or upstroke (downstrokes usually have a more pronounced attack), and you end up with something very hard to synthesise even if you start with good samples. Simply slapping a chorus effect on a single string instrument doesn't come close.

It's the subtle variations that go into each part that make a string section sound like "strings". To do this via MIDI and a sampler requires, I suggest, multiple MIDI tracks, each slightly different, and ideally multiple samplers with each one eq'd slightly differently and maybe with slight differences in the envelopes as well. For some reason many string samples/sounds have long, slow attacks. In the real world, string players can play with a great deal of attack and often do, be they traditional fiddlers, jazzers or orchestral section members.

On the other hand, if the strings sound is really an ambience-setting background pad kind of thing, the amount of MIDI work required to make things reasonably convincing is probably overkill. In which case consider a "string synth" kind of sound with reverb, eq it tightly, push it into the background and see if that works.

I think that you can use some fairly average string samples and get a great result if you think about how they are scored. Gives a much better result than good samples badly scored.

Bibs

I have heard some amazing orchestral compositions done totally with TTS.