How to make Spitfire Chamber Strings sound bigger

Spitfire Chamber Strings is hands down my favorite string library, it's really beautiful and sounds very organic with a lot of detail. While it works fantastic for medium to smaller and all the way down to very intimate compositions (if you focus on the close mics), sometimes you might want to get a bit bigger sound.

One thing to remember is that it is always easier to add something then to take something away. It's actually pretty easy to make Chamber Strings bigger, but you can't really make a symphonic sized string section much smaller because it was simply recorded with this big sound.

One advantage of Chamber Strings is that it was recorded at Lyndhurst Hall. The natural room sound of this big hall adds a lot of character to the sound and makes the strings already sound bigger than they actually are. You can enhance this by dialing in more of the tree and ambient microphones. But what if you are looking for a huge sound and want to write some epic soaring string lines? 

It works actually really well to get this type of sound with Chamber Strings. Here are four different ways to make Chamber Strings sound bigger.

1. Layer Chamber Strings with other string libraries

One pretty obvious thing you can do is simply combine Chamber Strings with other string libraries. All of the strings from Spitfire Audio that were also recorded at Lyndhurst Hall work perfectly for this.

All you need to do is load another patch in Kontakt to sit directly under your Chamber strings and make sure that the volumes match up. Of course you can also highlight one of them a bit more.

I love to combine Chamber Strings and Albion One to get a really epic sound and at the same time add some more detail to the Albion strings.

Of course it is also possible to use libraries from other companies. To make it sound like the strings are in the same room, you can add an external reverb to both of them to glue them together. This will also take care of the differences in the tail length. Some libraries will work better than others for layering, so you simply have to play around a bit and see what works best.

But what if you don't have any other string library? No problem, the next three tips will focus on Chamber Strings alone.

2. Combine different articulations

Chamber Strings comes with a huge variety of articulations, so why not combine a few of them to get a bigger sound. 

One of my favorite things to do is to layer normal legato and con sordino legato patches together. This way you are getting the full sound of the strings combined with the smooth tone of the con sordinos. I think they are adding a lot of depth and beautifully fill up the sound. Also you get a lot more of the room sound as well and I think it sounds really amazing.

Of course any other combination can work as well, so again, just try combining a few different patches and see which one you personally like best or which one is the best fit for your project.

3. Layer x2 round robins

Spitfire has build in some cool options you can use in the round robins menu. To access it click on the spanner icon first and then you will see "Round Robins: No extra functionality" on the right side.

If you click on it, you will see that there are several options in the drop down menu. Choose the "Layer x2 round robins" option.

This function plays two round robins at the same time when you press a key and gives you a bit fuller sound. The great thing about this method is that it doesn't take any extra RAM. It does however split your round robins in half, which might not be a big problem, but just be aware of it, especially if you are playing something with a lot of repeated notes. Another downside is that the legato transitions will be the same as before and won't be doubled.

You may also find that the sound doesn't change as much as you would like it to. In that case I think you will really enjoy the next tip.

4. Layer the same patch with the transpose function

You may wonder, why not just load up the same patch twice and play them at the same time? It sounds like a good idea in theory, but if you actually try it, it doesn't work that well.

One of the problems is that you are playing the exact same sample twice, which doesn't really add that much width to the sound because they kind of cancel each other out. The other problem is that you can get all kinds of phasing issues, so I really wouldn't recommend this method. There is however, a very easy way around this.

For this trick you need to load three of the same patches into Kontakt, for example Violins 1 legato.

You can leave the first patch as it is. On the second instance open the round robins drop down menu again and this time click on "Layer +2 (transpose)".

And on the third instance you need to set it to "Layer -2 (transpose)". So you are essentially transposing the second and third patches in opposite directions. Again, here is how it should look like:

First instance: no change

Second instance: Layer +2 (transpose)

Third instance: Layer -2 (transpose)

The settings for the second and third patches can be switched, just make sure that they are set to opposite directions.

This is all you have to do, but now you may wonder what this is actually doing?

It works like this, you are transposing the samples up and down two steps to get access to different samples with all three instruments. At the same time you will realize that the tuning for the second and third patches have changed.

The second patch will be set to transpose -2 and the tuning at the top will be set to +2.

On the third instance it will be the opposite: transpose +2 and tuning -2.

So you are transposing your instruments to access different samples with each instance and at the same time change to tuning so that they are all playing the same note. If you are playing a C now for example, you will hear the samples from C, D and A#, but all of them are tuned to C. Spitfire has build in the tuning change automatically, so you don't need to take care of it, when you click on the transpose function in the round robins menu.

The slight differences in timbre between the instruments actually work really well together to simulate a larger section. Try muting the second and third patches and play only the first patch to compare the sound. Then play the same line with all three patches together, you should get a much bigger and fuller sound. I think it sounds incredible and like to use this method a lot.

Normally Chamber Strings has 4 first Violins, so with this trick it will sound more like 12 Violins. Of course you can also delete the third instance and use just two patches to get a section with 8 Violins.

The only downside here is that you are losing a little bit of range, 2 half steps at the bottom and 2 half steps at the top. But there are ways around this as well. For example you can manually transpose both instruments in the same direction like this: transpose +2 tuning -2 and transpose +4 tuning - 4, or the other way around. This way you will have no restrictions at either the bottom or top range, which can be useful depending on which range you need more in your composition.

Here is a link to a video of Paul Thomson from Spitfire Audio, where he explains the last two tips in detail. Paul uses Sable in this video, but Chamber Strings is basically just a newer version, so you can use the same method.