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How would you do the classic high pitched string sound from Psycho?

G

General_Disarray

Active Member
For no particular reason, I'm trying to do a MIDI mockup of the Psycho murder song. I assumed wrongly that that particular sound would be in the FX section of many libraries, but came up empty.

Because of my lack of music knowledge, I don't even know what to call it, my best guess is that it's a "riser"? The best I could do was to load Iconica Ensembles in HALion, then load the high string ensemble and play a D6 in staccato over and over while moving up the pitch wheel. And then when I played the audio track from the CD, I realized it wasn't a D6, but the note is secondary, eventually I'll get the right pitch.

But I looked online for this, thinking it would be the easiest thing to find, and while I found some articles on the Psycho score (a great score by the way), I haven't found anything on this particular and classic sound cue. Spitfire has a Bernard Hermann library for $500, but not chance I'm buying that for a mockup.

Any ideas? I would like to hear from other people how would you accomplish that sound. I'm talking the classic scene in the bathroom where the shower curtain rings snap one by one and you see the knife.
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Here's how it's played (or at least one way to do it).



So as long as you have a library with a Sul Ponticello marcato or staccato articulation and you can somehow get it up to E6 (via range increase or pitch shifting) it should get you 90% of the way there just playing it at the highest dynamic offered.

If you want to pitch bend it that extra half step up for the glissando effect, you'd probably need to have several tracks set up so you don't have to bring the pitch bend back down before the release tail ends and the next note begins.

As for libraries, as an example, Berlin Special Bows 1 Sul Ponticello Staccato sounds basically right there out of the box as long as you increase the pitch range up to include E6.
 
Here are a few more I've found that can do the trick.

Metropolis Ark 1 High Strings - Spiccato Blurred
Metropolis Ark 3 High Strings - Staccato Short Cluster Tight (or go with the wide version for total insanity)
Metropolis Ark 4 High Strings - Trill Short
Metropolis Ark 5 High Strings Large or String Orchestra Large + Woodwinds - Stabs Short Cluster
Berlin Strings Violins - Staccato Blurred

Sadly, the string stabs in Bernard Herrmann Toolkit aren't really aggressive enough to do this convincingly.
 
The beauty of OT is that you can purchase single articulations, so thats probably the smart way to go. Afflatus (which would a big investment for just this one sound) also has some Bernard Herrmann inspired stuff:

 
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