Hot to get cinematic strings sound like in “In memoriam” by Kirill Richter

[M_B]

Hi there,

 

I recently started trying to compose for Piano, Cello and Violin, as I really love this combo. However, when I combine the three instruments you can always hear them seperately and I feel like they don’t glue together nicely. One example of the sound I am trying to achieve is the piece “In memoriam” from russian artist Kirill Richter. As far as I know he also uses those three instruments only, but once the strings are playing he achieves a touching and full sound. Does anyone have a tip on how to get this full sounding, cinematic strings sound? Or do you guess he is using more than just the three instruments?

 

Here is a link to “In memoriam”:

 

 

Excited to hear your thoughts on this!

Mike

[Danny Wyatt]

My guess is that it's more than just focusing on the fact that those are 3 instruments, regardless of the library. It's about which instruments do what, the chords they all play when played together, their dynamics, their performance, how hard/soft they are played (velocity), articulations, etc. If you can make them all flow together in terms of performance, I believe everything else just falls into place, with a nice reverb. It's more of a performance/composition work, than production, in my opinion

[MikeRobinson]

I agree – "here we are witnessing the magic of the composer and then the orchestrator." I think that I hear at least four layers ... no, there are many more than just four ... of instrumentation at work here, all but the piano being legato, but weaving a tapestry of sometimes-exotic chords as they pass from one note to the next. (None of these things are supposed to "draw your ear ...")

 

I can hear that a lot of mixing-work has been done to the piano part in particular, but in my opinion the overall success of the musical effect isn't tied to the instrument selection nor to the mix. The composer and then the orchestrator planned all of this, well before any performances or recordings began.