Impact Soundworks have released Tokyo Scoring Strings 2, available in 3 tiers with intro pricing:
- Tokyo Scoring Strings Complete – $349.00, increasing to $449.00
- Tokyo Scoring Strings Essentials – $199.00, increasing to $249.00
- Tokyo Scoring Strings FREE
Impact Soundworks’ flagship orchestral string library, Tokyo Scoring Strings combines groundbreaking legato and a brilliant workflow with the perfection and agility of Japan’s world-renowned Koichiro Muroya Strings. A well-rounded studio string library that holds its own across all genres, especially — but not limited to — Japanese-inspired music. Tokyo Scoring Strings is powerful yet user-friendly, allowing you to easily realize virtually any score.
Recently rebuilt from the ground up for v2.0, TSS features even more versatile and natural-sounding legato, new articulations, enhanced Lookahead, an ensemble patch, and more.
In a crowded field of string libraries, Tokyo Scoring Strings stands out for its unique sound, extraordinary lookahead technology, and remarkably easy-to-use workflow.
In creating Tokyo Scoring Strings, we wanted it to be fun, inspiring, and easy to use, while still powerful enough to create truly realistic, lifelike performances. Impact Soundworks have gone to great lengths to polish and perfect our legato so that it sounds perfectly natural and real, whether you’re writing expressive or rapid passages.
The Complete version of Tokyo Scoring Strings gives you incredible fine-grained control, as well as extraordinary levels of detail and the ability to mock up an even wider range of performances due to expanded articulations.
Choose from the following three mic mixes, or design your own from four individual mic positions.
- Board Mix: An upfront mix by Mitsunori Aizawa, using his hardware setup at Sound City.
- Anima Mix: A light and airy mix most suited to agile and intricate writing.
- Cinema Mix: A dark, smooth mix suitable for cinematic scoring and low string chorales.
Individual mic signals in the Mic Mixer patch:
- Close: A very dry mono signal that can be used for adding more crisp detail.
- Decca: A “Decca tree” mic arrangement using cardioid mic.
- Side: An “outriggers” signal, providing a wider stereo image than the Decca.
- Back: Ribbon mics pointed at the wall, with a darker tone that can be used to bring out warmth.
Lookahead the ideal solution to make programming parts in MIDI as realistic and easy as possible. This engine mode, available with a single click, allows you to work directly on the grid with consistent delay for all articulations and legato speeds, and polyphonic legato that works perfectly with no additional effort on your part.
For the ultimate in realism and saving time, you can even choose the optional Easy Artic mode, which selects articulations polyphonically without needing to use keyswitches.
The sound of Japanese strings is both captivating and highly unique. What makes it so distinctive? Smaller ensembles recorded in focused studio spaces lend themselves to more agile playing, and a focus on perfection leads to incredible accuracy. These strengths make Japanese ensembles equally capable of delicate nuance and sweeping emotional performances that move listeners to tears. For many of us who have admired Japanese soundtracks for years, this sound has long been a source of inspiration, but it’s been out of reach for most composers outside of Japan — until now.
The goal with Tokyo Scoring Strings is to give you the orchestral string sound featured in so many world-famous Japanese productions. This project has been a dream come true for all at Impact Soundworks, and they’re thrilled to have worked with some of our musical heroes to bring it to life. But they weren’t satisfied with just capturing this remarkable sound; they also sought to deliver an outstanding, inspiring UI, flexible editing, beautiful legato, and recording depth to rival any other industry-standard string libraries.
The updated and improved Tokyo Scoring Strings 2.0 features stunningly realistic, consistent, and smooth legato created using our in-house developed Spectral Fusion System. Using proprietary DSP software, editing, and programming techniques, all 60,000+ legato samples have been carefully balanced and matched to all combinations of source and destination notes, including the associated recorded dynamics.
Normally, this processing would be impossible to achieve through any manual process due to the sheer number of samples involved. That’s why legato recording, editing, and programming is by far the most time-consuming part of creating realistic sample libraries, and why results often come up short — lumpy transitions, rapidly-changing timbre from source to destination, a “sucking” effect that makes the recording space sound suddenly lifeless, and more.
The unprecedented, library-wide balance from the Spectral Fusion System does not compromise the versatility or range of legato either; Tokyo Scoring Strings includes a total of seven distinct legato and portamento types along with four independent speed profiles which allow stunning and consistent performances at all dynamics and tempos.
Writing music is a deeply personal act of creation, and your workflow preferences are just as unique. Our TACT system allows you to personalize how you use Tokyo Scoring Strings to suit how you work best, regardless of which DAW you prefer or whether you use a MIDI controller or not. Do you rely on keyswitches, stick to MIDI CCs, set everything by velocity, or use a combination of all three?
If you can dream up the perfect articulation mapping, you can make it real in Tokyo Scoring Strings.
Features include:
- Five orchestral string sections & Ensemble patch – 8 violins 1, 6 violins 2, 4 violas, 3 cellos, 3 basses, plus a convenient, efficient new Ensemble patch.
- Four mic positions in a legendary space – Pristine 24-bit, 48kHz samples (downmixed from 96kHz) captured at Sound City: Close, Decca, Side, and Back.
- Choose from 3 hand-sculpted mic mixes or make your own – Choose from Mitsunori Aizawa’s own upfront Board Mix (using his hardware setup at Sound City), our hand-sculpted Anima Mix (a light and airy mix most suited to agile and intricate writing) or Cinema Mix (a dark, smooth mix suitable for cinematic scoring and low string chorales), or build your own with the provided mic signals.
- All crucial playing techniques – Sustains, pizzicato, staccato, staccatissimo, spiccato, spiccato secco, tremolo, harmonics, trills (whole-tone, half-tone), long & short decrescendo and sforzando
- Expressive dynamics and vibrato – Up to five dynamics per articulation (pp, mp, mf, f, ff) and three vibrato levels (senza, con, molto).
- Industry-leading legato – Five distinctive legato types: Legato Bow, Legato Slur, emotional Lyrical Legato, super-agile Runs Legato, and powerful Marcato Legato incorporating adjustable bow noise. Two portamento types: bowed and slurred. 2x round robins for all.
Watch the walkthrough video HERE.
Tokyo Scoring Strings 2 requires a free or full version of Kontakt Player 7.8.1 or later.
For more information on Tokyo Scoring Strings 2, click here:
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