Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars
The latest in the growing range of highly playable instruments from Kirk Hunter Studios is Concert Strings Adaptive, a symphonic strings library that aims to adapt to your playing in an expressive, responsive and seamless manner. The core idea with their previous release, Kinetic Strings, was movement, enabled by a flexible motion engine. With Concert Strings Adaptive, it’s playability, which in this case means having the ability to incorporate dynamics, vibrato, and multiple articulations into your performance without having to stop for controller adjustments or keyswitching.
This Kontakt library can be loaded in two ways: as an ensemble patch featuring 12 first violins, 12 second violins, eight violas, eight cellos and four basses; or as individual instruments. Articulation, vibrato, attack, legato and bow change are customisable for each instrument, both individually and as a global setting. Although the space the library was recorded in — the First Presbyterian Church, Santa Monica — is the default reverb setting when you load each patch, it also offers a ‘bone dry’ setting, leaving you free to add your own reverb of choice.
There are plenty of articulations on offer, from short (spiccato, staccato, detaché, pizzicato, col legno, Bartok pizzicato and variations), to long (sustain, tremolo, maj and min trills). You can choose one short and one long setting for each patch and, triggered by how you play a passage, it switches between the two articulations without you having to manually do so. Note attack can be controlled in multiple ways: by toggling the velocity attack parameter, selecting a global setting from the Speed menu (largo is particularly smooth), and modifying the bow change setting — all adding nuance to a performance.
A bonus feature is the ability to add an octave up on the played note for violin, and down from the played note for bass. This is handy if all you have is a two‑octave keyboard and you’d like to hear higher or lower voicings while playing.
The workflow of Concert Strings Adaptive makes it easy to put down ideas. The drop‑down menus have uniform functionality across all patches, and any parameters you might want to adjust are easily accessible. Feedback from actually putting musical ideas down, and the ability to improvise without technical interruption, are a big positive.
While all the information you need is at hand in one place, the GUI could use some cleaning up. The header area is rather large, and for a user who is tight on screen space, this means scrolling to bring the main menu up into view. Trimming that in exchange for things like bigger menu fonts would be a welcome change. That’s a minor quibble, though, because when it comes to taking your ideas from ‘just a thought’ to musical reality, Concert Strings Adaptive is a useful and versatile tool.
$259
$259