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Fragile String Evolutions

Delicate & haunting evolving chamber strings

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  • What's included
  • Tech specs
  • Delicate & haunting evolving chamber strings

    A collection of long, intensely beautiful chamber evolutions, perfectly complementing our other evolutions libraries, while also thriving as its own compositional tool. Recorded in the dry, vintage craft acoustic of Air Edel Studios with the UK’s finest progressive string players, we have captured the more delicate, subtle aspects of each instrument by using a range of avant-garde techniques, giving you the tools to create the most realistic and spine-tingling string textures.

    Presented in our own sophisticated GUI with an ingenious grid layout, you have an almost infinite number of configurations at your fingertips. The Spitfire team have also created a range of straight-out-of-the-box presets, offering you instant playability and inspiration.

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    Our dedicated plugin

    14 strings

    48 evolutions

    Dedicated plugin

    Fragile Grid Crop

    What is an Evo?

    Our recording expertise and acclaimed Evo Grid technology adds extra dimensions to each sample, offering you an instinctive, ever-changing kaleidoscope of progressive techniques. For the newly initiated, evolutions are hyper-long notes that change sometimes subtly and sometimes radically over time before looping, giving you unexpected results. Evolutions have become widely adopted amongst the composer community as the most effective means of easily writing music that is able to subtly change over time without melodic variation. These textures can be developed, shaped and processed further, offering you a rich range of possibilities.

    Fragile Mixer Crop
    Our bespoke, sophisticated Evo Grid interface, inspired by the EMS VCS3 synth, positions ‘pegs’ via an onscreen 12 x 48 grid arrangement, giving you access to recordings across 12 intervals, organised in a grid with an almost infinite number of possible configurations. Instantly select which evo (evolution) sits on each of those 12 key ranges, toggle your pegs, or hit "Feeling Lucky" to generate randomised Evolutions, replay the MIDI, and no cue will ever sound the same twice.

    What's included

    Instruments

    Traditional

    • Fragile — delicate
    • Gossamer — full bodied
    • Fragile muted — delicate
    • Gossamer muted — full bodied
    • Delicate — full and light
    • Gossamer — full
    • Delicate muted — full
    • Gossamer muted — full
    • Delicate — beautiful siren
    • Circular fragile — delicate
    • Muted fragile — accelerating siren
    • Fragile — beautiful siren
    • Pure fragility — overtones
    • Muted fragile — beautiful siren
    • Fragile — errors
    • Delicate — shimmer
    • Gossamer — pulsing shimmer
    • Delicate muted — shimmer
    • Gossamer muted — strong shimmer
    • Delicate — bow pulse
    • Gossamer — bow pulse
    • Delicate muted — bow pulse
    • Gossamer muted — bow pulse
    • Pure fragility — almost niente

    Episodic

    • Straight — harmonic wisps
    • Straight — overtone wisps
    • Straight muted — overtone wisps
    • Warm — shudders
    • Warm — overtone shudders
    • Straight — semitone flickers
    • Warm — tone flickers
    • Warm — ricochet flickers
    • Straight — ricochet flickers

    Extreme

    • Warm shimmer — heavy overtones
    • Fragile — full overtones
    • Warm siren — overtone siren
    • Bend — gliss
    • Light pulse — heavy pulse
    • Straight — heavy ricochet
    • Straight — strong madness
    • Straight — strong madness (with pedal)
    • Straight — reversed madness
    • Straight — reversed madness (with pedal)
    • Warm — heavy and wide
    • Warm — heavy bending pulse
    • Warm — heavy ricochet pulse
    • Warm — siren — strong madness
    • Warm — heavy ricochet — strong madness

    Curated presets

    Simple

    • Ambient tratto — bright
    • Building heavy bow — dark
    • Elegant sordino spread — bright
    • Harmonic whisps — bright
    • Parallel pulses — dark
    • Pure tone — bright
    • Sharp jetes — bright
    • Softening sul ponts — dark
    • A fragile start — bright
    • Pad waves — bright
    • Fragile beauty — bright
    • Stretched extremes — dark
    • Stretched moments — dark
    • Stretched pad — bright
    • Tone flickers — dark

    Intense

    • To hell and back — dark
    • Maddening trills — bright
    • Continued madness — dark
    • Distorted pans — dark — distorted
    • Is it broken — dark — distorted
    • Is it really broken — dark — distorted
    • Radio stringsbright — distorted
    • Ricochet flickers — bright

    Mics & mixes

    Close

    • A tight, dry mix

    Tweaked

    • A compressed version of Close with occasional glitches

    Ambient

    • Reverberant and atmospheric

    Distorted

    • A full-on, gritty signal, useful for adding some dirt into the mix

    Stretch x2

    • The Close mix stretched to be twice the length, giving the sounds a more ethereal quality

    Stretch x8

    • The Close mix stretched to eight times the length, to slow down busy evolutions

    FAQs

    What software will I need to run the Spitfire Evolution libraries?

    For Angular String Evolutions, Fragile String Evolutions and Woodwind Evolutions we provide an AU, VST2, VST3 and AAX, so as long as your chosen DAW supports one of those plugin formats, you’re good to go.

    Evo Grid 3 needs Kontakt Full to run. For more information on Kontakt Full click here.


    What are Evolutions, and what is an Evo grid?

    Evolutions are long notes that change over time then loop seamlessly back to the beginning. In our “Evo Grid”, you can select different evolutions based on the range of the note you are playing.


    Can I use this library on more than one computer?

    Yes, this is a single user license, but our EULA allows for installation on up to two computers at a time.

    Read more FAQs for this product

    Tech specs

    Mac system requirements

    Mac OS X 10.15 to OS 13

    Minimum: 2.8GHz i5 minimum (quad-core), 8GB RAM

    Recommended: 2.8GHz I7 (six-core), 16GB RAM

    Both Intel and Apple Silicon/ARM are supported

    32-bit systems are not supported.

    PC system requirements

    Windows 10 or Windows 11 - (Latest Service Pack, 64-bit)

    Minimum: Intel 2.8 GHz i5 (quad-core) or AMD Ryzen 5, 8GB RAM

    Recommended: Intel Core i7 6th gen and later or AMD Ryzen 7, 16GB RAM

    32-bit systems are not supported.

    File size

    27.00 GB disk space required during install

    26.30 GB download size

    Too large to download? Choose hard drive delivery at checkout

    Fragile String Evolutions sounds great with…