Tokyo Scoring Strings Free
A no-cost introduction to Tokyo Scoring Strings, featuring violins and cellos.
Suggested Price: $5
Audio Demos
- In Pressing Forward Nabeel Ansari
- A Light Breeze Tremendouz
- The Crow And The Clockwork Boy Hew Wagner
- Heroic Desire - Part 3 Keiji Inai (Arranged by Jason Pai)
- The Snow Tower Sundered Nick Baronowsky
- Casa Asteroide Jaime Altozano (Arranged by Daniel Fortune)
- Cheerful Sarah Mancuso
- In Black, Red and White Vae Song
- Pineview Winter Arthur Vyncke
- A Light Breeze (Library Only) Tremendouz
- The Crow And The Clockwork Boy (Library Only) Hew Wagner
- Pineview Winter (Library Only) Arthur Vyncke
Overview
This free version of our flagship orchestral strings library includes two instrument sections (Violins I and Cellos) with the signature legato and user-friendly workflow of the Tokyo Scoring Strings engine and the beautiful, agile performance of Japan’s top string ensemble, Koichiro Muroya Strings. Lightweight, Kontakt Player compatible, and utterly risk-free. See for yourself just how easy it can be to write beautiful, realistic string performances with Tokyo Scoring Strings!
Tokyo Scoring Strings is available in three editions: Tokyo Scoring Strings Complete, Tokyo Scoring Strings Essentials, and Tokyo Scoring Strings Free. (To compare what’s included in each edition, see this Tokyo Scoring Strings series guide.)
Note: When you add Tokyo Scoring Strings Free to your cart, the free Delay Compensator plugin will be automatically added as well. This is an essential plugin that can be used to easily sync your DAW with instruments that use Lookahead, such as TSS.
Product Info
Two orchestral string sections
Violins 1 and Cellos included, recorded in great depth and with tremendous realism.
1 mic mix in a legendary space
Includes hand-sculpted Anima Mix, a light and airy mix most suited to agile and intricate writing.
Fully functional and incredibly inspiring
Even though it’s free, this edition gives you the full sampling range of all included articulations, including all round robins and script features.
An incredible introduction to a flagship library
Experience the distinctive sound of Japanese strings and the incredible convenience of Lookahead technology for yourself at no risk!
Expressive dynamics, legato, and vibrato
Multiple speeds, one expressive vibrato level, and up to three dynamics per articulation.
Features
Elegant and streamlined UI
Groundbreaking lookahead mode
Total Articulation Control Technology v3
Deep editing for power users
CONSOLE modular FX rack and mixer
Requirements
2GB disk space
7200 RPM hard drive or solid state drive recommended.
8GB of RAM minimum
16GB recommended for loading all sections.
Apple M1, Intel i5 or equivalent CPU
A faster CPU with more cores will allow you to play more simultaneous voices.
Kontakt Player 7.8.1+
This library will run in the FREE Kontakt Player.
Kontakt Requirements - Mac OS
Intel Macs (i5 or higher): macOS 11 or later
Apple Silicon Macs (via Rosetta 2 & natively on ARM in Standalone or in hosts that support it): macOS 11 or 12 (latest update)
Kontakt Requirements - Windows
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit). Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU. Graphics hardware support for OpenGL 2.1 or higher. Windows 10 strongly recommended.
Tutorials
Full Walkthrough
Articulation System
Lookahead 2.0 Tutorial
Behind the Scenes Story
Sonic Overview
Teaser Reveal
Featured Artists & Composers
Lena Raine
Celeste, Chicory, Minecraft, Guild Wars 2, Deltarune
Instruments from ISW are a staple of my soundtrack work for games. Vocalisa has been a mainstay vocal aesthetic of nearly every game I've worked on including Celeste & Chicory: A Colorful Tale. Shreddage 3 has also given me the confidence to write some really fun guitar riffs & solos despite not being able to play a real one. I've started incorporating Tokyo Scoring Strings into the acoustic side of my scoring work, and can't wait to try out more from ISW in the future!
Richard Jacques
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Mass Effect, Overwatch 2, James Bond 007: Blood Stone
"I'm a huge fan of the Ventus Winds series. They feature rare instruments deep-sampled to an incredibly high level of detail. It's so liberating to have such a wide range of articulations & phrases that perfectly capture the nuances and performance style of these instruments... from beautiful to haunting, celebratory to sorrowful. Each is expertly recorded and the sound quality is superb, sitting in the mix with ease. If you want to add authentic world winds to your palette, then look no further."
Jeff Broadbent
Assassin’s Creed Identity, Call of Duty Mobile, Resident Evil, Diablo Immortal, Transformers: Dark of the Moon
"ISW creates amazing, creative, and intuitive virtual instruments! I’ve enjoyed using them for over a decade, and they have found their way into many of my music scores. Their wonderfully realistic world instruments showed up in a recent Nexon video game, Shreddage 3 Stratus on the score for Grid, and Super Audio Boy is a favorite for retro sounds, effects, and fun nostalgia. Highly recommended!"
When it first launched in 2021, our flagship Tokyo Scoring Strings was revolutionary among orchestral libraries for its incredible Lookahead technology, and we’ve only continued to improve the library in the ensuing years, paying special attention to legato. This special Free edition is designed to be an easy, risk-free way for you to experience it for yourself, so we’ve held nothing back from either the legato or the workflow!
The Free edition retains the signature sound of Koichiro Muroya Strings, recorded in great depth at Tokyo’s Sound City Studio. This version includes Violins I and Cellos sections, as well as a selection of vital articulations and the Anima Mix, a light and airy mix most suited to agile and intricate writing. (Upgrade to the Essentials edition for more articulations, a total of three mic mixes, and all five instrument sections plus an ensemble patch, or the Complete edition for a complete list of advanced articulations as well as individual mic positions for maximum control.)
The sound of Japanese strings is both captivating and highly unique. What makes it so distinctive? Smaller ensembles recorded in focused studio spaces lend themselves to more agile playing, and a focus on perfection leads to incredible accuracy. These strengths make Japanese ensembles equally capable of delicate nuance and sweeping emotional performances that move listeners to tears. For many of us who have admired Japanese soundtracks for years, this sound has long been a source of inspiration, but it’s been out of reach for most composers outside of Japan — until now.
Our goal with Tokyo Scoring Strings is to give you the orchestral string sound featured in so many world-famous Japanese productions. This project has been a dream come true for all of us at Impact Soundworks, and we’re thrilled to have worked with some of our musical heroes to bring it to life. But we weren’t satisfied with just capturing this remarkable sound; we also sought to deliver an outstanding, inspiring UI, flexible editing, beautiful legato, and recording depth to rival any other industry-standard string libraries.
The Tokyo Scoring Strings series is designed with an easy upgrade path in mind. If you decide you’re ready to invest in Tokyo Scoring Strings Essentials, you will then be qualified for a discount on Tokyo Scoring Strings Complete in the future.
View the Tokyo Scoring Strings comparison chart to see what is available in every edition!
We are honored to have partnered with an incredible team of musicians and collaborators in Japan:
- Koichiro Muroya Strings, led by Koichiro Muroya. The most in-demand session ensemble in all of Japan. Their exquisite playing can be heard on many of your favorite soundtracks.
- Mitsunori Aizawa, Japan’s top engineer, responsible for mixing and recording hundreds of world-famous scores.
- Sound City, an incredible recording space with over 60 years of history. This choice of studio gives Tokyo Scoring Strings a tighter, more focused sound that lends itself extremely well to more agile playing and mixing with external reverb.
- Renowned anime & film composer Masaru Yokoyama, who brought his experience recording scores around the world through his companies Plugnote and MiracleBus.
- Crypton Future Media and SonicWire, our Japanese distributors who have helped with the project from the very beginning.
As a sample of what is offered in other editions of Tokyo Scoring Strings, Tokyo Scoring Strings Free features two independently recorded sections (Violins 1, Cello), in a typical Japanese ensemble size (8/4). Tokyo Studio Strings Free includes the most key articulations recorded in superb detail.
Articulations
- Arco (Sustain) – 5 dynamics, 3 vibrato levels (senza, con, molto)
- Slurred Legato – 3 dynamics, 2x rr
- Rebow – 3 dynamics, 5x rr
- Release (Natural)
A beautiful new version of our Console modular FX rack and mixer is included with the updated Tokyo Scoring Strings 2.0. Here, you can access over 40 different analog and digitally-modeled effects ranging from EQs, compressors, and limiters, to multiple flavors of reverbs and delays. You can sculpt and shape Tokyo Scoring Strings entirely in Console without using a single external plugin!
Download the Console manual here to learn more!
Reviews
Testimonial – Hiroyuki Sawano (Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, Seven Deadly Sins)
“I was curious about TSS because my work friends, Mr. Muroya and Mr. Aizawa were involved in the project. It was recorded in a studio that I often use for my string recording. I have enjoyed using this library as its sound presence and moderate ambience is unique and different compared to overseas recorded libraries that I usually use. I think it can be used effectively in a wide range of genres, not only for epic sounds, but also for rock, pop and dance music.”
Testimonial – Yasunori Nishiki (Octopath Traveler)
“It sounds exactly like what I’m used to hearing, Muroya Strings x Sound City x Mitsunori Aizawa! The staccato and pizzicato reverberation in particular gave me a sense of Sound City’s unique reverb, and I felt like I was in the Sound City control room. The sound definitely has the sense of Japanese strings and studio, making it easy to use for any kind of music. I believe this library delivers the sound of Japan to the world!”
Testimonial – Satoru Kosaki (Lucky Star, Monogatari, Beastars)
“I feel proud that a library made by close representative members of the Japanese soundtrack industry will be released. I played back MIDI data from one of my past compositions which was eventually recorded with the exact same team, and it sounded astonishingly similar. I was also impressed by how easily I was able to produce their sound without having to adjust or mix any details such as the space size, instrument balance, and legato speed, etc. I would absolutely recommend this library to anyone who wants to replicate the sound of Japanese soundtracks, and personally, I feel it will prove to be crucial in my arrangement process as it will be so much easier to imagine the final recorded result.”
Tokyo Scoring Strings – Kevin Kuschel
“But when it comes to smaller section-sized string libraries with a great legato, TSS has become a valid, new contender here that also brings a whole lot of workflow power to the table. If you want that JRPG tone with a smaller, focused ensemble size, for telling musical stories in a big context, then TSS is for you.”
Kevin Kuschel (12/21)
Tokyo Scoring Strings – StrongMocha
“Tokyo Scoring Strings is the answer to any composer’s dreams of having a world-class strings library in their arsenal. It’s also perfect for those who’ve never used such an instrument before because it has everything from deep-sampled playing techniques and expressive scripting that will take care of all the work of creating the perfect sound for you…not limited to just movie soundtracks or anime themes, as they could also fit well with anything from jazz, rock & roll, or even heavy metal!…The library is so much more than I ever could’ve imagined. It does seem like a magical palace, and it’s perfect for people who love to compose and produce.” (5/5 stars)
Thorsten Meyer (StrongMocha)