Playing with Tokyo Scoring Strings
2024.10.17
Tokyo Scoring Strings 2.0 (by Impact Soundworks) just released recently, and I had quite some fun testing it out and writing with it.
Here's a screenshot of the main interface, which features most of the important information like the articulation currently being played, dynamics, vibrato and so on.
Personally I also find the UI very clean and visually appealing:
Note that this is not going to be a guide on how to use this library, for that please read the offical manual, it's just for sharing my personal thoughts and opinions.
First of all there are some pre-made mixes and mic postions to choose from, at the time of writing I really like the Board Mix as it sounds the brightest to me, that really helps it cut through mixes that are more dense without too much additional EQ and compression.
If you are like me and have listened to many Japanese music from the past 10 years or so, especially Japanese pop, rock or game soundtracks you'll often find these high strings doing fast runs, creating exciting moments of tension. I would assume a lot of that is recorded in studio sessions, as it has always been difficult to replicate fast runs with programmed strings, but the runs from this library (using Run Legato) actually do this relatively well. Of course it's not going to be perfect and probably still won't sound as good and smooth as real players, but if you ask me, for something that is programmed it already sounds pretty convincing.
There are also some other features that make writing and progamming your music easier and faster, like the Lookahead Mode, Easy Articulations, Poly Legato (so you don't have to load multiple instances of the same instrument to write chords or "double/multiple stops", I really hate that) and a lot more that I'm sure I won't be able to mention here. For anyone reading that is curious, you should just go check out their website and manual and go through it by your own.
There are so many string libraries today, that besides the most important "how it sounds", I think the ease of use and what workflow improvements a library brings actually matters more and more. Tokyo Scoring Strings and its various tools for helping you write and compose faster become increasingly more valuable in this day and age.
I'm sure I will use this library for a lot of string writing in the future.