r/ableton • u/PressPlayPlease7 • 2d ago

[Question] Within the stock sounds that comes with Ableton Standard, what's best for doing the "sustained House music string" method?

I saw a video by the great Julian van Straten (Bound To Divide) a few months back where he uses a stock sound to do this - but I can't find it now

A "sustained House music string" is basically a well known technique where you have one long string playing as you build (usually) towards your last chorus section

Does anyone know which of the stock sounds (in Standard) does this best?

I'm hoping Julian was using a Standard stock string, and not a Suite one

Thanks

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14

u/PressPlayPlease7 2d ago

I did a bit of digging into my YT history and found it

It's the "Magnetic String" preset

And the part of the video is here in case anyone wants to have a look

https://youtu.be/TbdZuSoHHdk?t=521

8

u/Laoas 2d ago

There should be some free orchestra packs on the Ableton website. Grab them and use the violins/string section device

3

u/Significant_Cover_48 2d ago

If you want a nice oldschool sound, use a shorter sample and loop it in simpler

3

u/fouronsix 1d ago

This is the way, maybe put Redux on the output when sampling and turn of the interpolation on the Sampler to get more LoFi sound.

3

u/Significant_Cover_48 1d ago

Oh yes, and resample after adding some bit crusher, or speed up the sample and resample it to imitate not having a lot of sample memory.

Also playing the looped string at different pitches and spending way too long finding the perfect loop point by ear so the beating sounds just right is really enjoyable to people (like myself) who likes to tinker with samples and believe that imperfections and other artifacts in the sound is what makes sampled music so much fun.

Sure, a 60 gb orchestral library is nice, but there's just something really nice about looped 12-bit samples.

3

u/Waterflowstech 2d ago

While there's some decent sounds included, for strings I always got better results using LABS, the string quartet or other. Free!

https://www.audiotechnology.com/free-stuff/labs-strings

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u/rockmus 1d ago

So I’m assuming it’s a synth string sound (that’s a classic in house music). Usually that’s a pretty basic analogue tone, so look at analog’s string presets, and hold one down.

1

u/w__i__l__l 1d ago

Usually those strings were from an M1 or JV1080 back in the day, bound to be a sample floating around online. If all else fails get Roland Cloud or Korg collection on demo, sample the preset and cancel 😆

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u/Duvetine 1d ago

The best orchestral presets are from the projectSAM pack sold on ableton’s website. They are incredible, I recommend all of them. Pricey but worth it.

2

u/Rcecil88 1d ago

Get a free sample of a wav somewhere online go the korg m1 string sample. Loads out there :)