Write it like a piano.
Hear a violinist.
A violin built from physics, with a player inside. Play it live, about 1.5 ms at 48 kHz: it picks the bow stroke for every note, slides between notes and turns one violin into sixteen. No samples, so the whole download is about 35 MB.
Each clip is MIDI into the plugins, with the playing drawn in the way you would draw it in your DAW. Keyswitches or the Smart Player pick the stroke, the mod wheel (CC1) is the bow, CC11 swells, CC21 rides the vibrato and CC17 moves the bow between the fingerboard and the bridge. Every sound is a NØLL plugin, the piano too. Levels and a light peak limiter only: no EQ, no added reverb.
The vibrato waits, then blooms. Slides on the leaps, a legato run up to a high A, a fast run down, a bar of spiccato the Smart Player bows with no keyswitch, then sixteen violins take the line.
The low C string, soft on the fingerboard. A slow slide up, a singing line with the section, tremolo that walks the bow to the bridge, spiccato with accents, then pizzicato.
A singing line: a slow slide up a sixth, an octave slide, a climb to a high G, then a low E accent and a fast run. Violas, basses and piano underneath.
From a whisper at the bridge to a full roar. An ostinato the Smart Player bows on its own, pizzicato, a tremolo swell and a hit on the low C of the extension.
One theme for the whole section: violins and celli singing, violas on tremolo, basses on Auto, the piano under them. Every part is a NØLL plugin.
Overlap two notes and the player shifts to the next one, the way a violinist does. Wide leaps slide slower, steps barely slide at all, and a softly played note slides in slower still. There is no pitch bend in this clip. The swells are the mod wheel (CC1), and CC21 rides the vibrato.
The Smart Player bows each note from how you play it: how long you hold it, how close the next one is, how hard you hit it. Notes that touch go legato. Short notes bounce off the string. Accents dig in. Repeated sixteenths turn into tremolo. It does this live, in about 1.5 ms at 48 kHz, or reads up to a second ahead if you want. No keyswitches in this clip, though you can still force any stroke with one.
Every clip on this page is the plugin playing MIDI. Levels only: no EQ, no compression, no reverb added.
A slow line that climbs to a high E and settles on a three-note chord. The section splits the chord between its players on its own.
A sixteenth-note riser into a high lead, with offbeat chords under it. Two tracks of the plugin, summed.
A hook written to sit next to a vocal: close, warm and quick to speak, with slides on the leaps.
The Style switch sets what 12 o'clock means on every knob, so the middle of each knob is already a finished sound for that kind of track. The settings came from 720 test renders scored against real violinists, and each Style was then picked by ear, blind.
A physical model with a cellist inside. The Smart Player picks the stroke, the bow and the string for every note you write, for one cello or up to sixteen. Seven cello bodies, the same three Styles as the violin.
An early render of the full section. Like every clip on this page, it is the plugin playing MIDI, levels only: no EQ, no compression, no reverb added.
Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass and Piano, each a physical model you play from plain MIDI. NØLL Strings plays the whole section from one keyboard. All six together are the NØLL Orchestral Suite. All out Tuesday, Nov 3.
5 violins · solo to 16 players
7 cellos · solo to 16 players
5 violas · solo to 16 players
5 basses · solo to 8 players
6 pianos, built the same way
the whole section · Quartet, Chamber group or Full orchestra
pay once · every 1.x update free for every instrument in it · mac, apple silicon and intel · vst3 and au, the five singles also standalone
Picks the stroke, the bow direction and the string for every note, live, in about 1.5 ms at 48 kHz. Look-ahead reads up to a second ahead.
Solo, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 or 16, each with its own violin, tuning, vibrato and timing. Chords split across the section.
Singing, Power, Brilliant, Sweet and Dark at the same loudness, in rooms from a dry pop studio to a long dome hall.
Four EQ bands you drag to any frequency, and a final limiter: Clean, or a gentle Warm.
A take number fixes the performance, so a bounce sounds the same every time. Want another reading? New take.
Pop, Cinematic and EDM starting points: solo lines, long strings, shorts, pizz and tremolo.
| compared | NØLL Violin | a typical string library |
|---|---|---|
| download | about 35 MB | 3.5 GB to 81 GB |
| articulations | chosen for you, or a keyswitch if you want | a keyswitch or a track per articulation |
| section size | 1 to 16 players, from one menu | fixed when it was recorded |
| between notes | one bow, so strokes and slides connect | separate recordings, crossfaded |
| bounces | Takes 1–99, the same take every time | round robins |
| price | $89, pay once | $299 to €840 list |
I make music as NØLL. I grew up in Texas playing violin and piano in school and district orchestras, and I've produced dance and pop records since 2016: releases on Strange Fruits, CloudKid, Lowly Palace, Lost in Dreams and NCS, and sets at Beyond Wonderland and HARD Summer.
Strings are on most of my records. The orchestral version of Safe Ground has six times the streams of the original. Writing those parts with sample libraries always felt like admin: gigabytes to load, a keyswitch on every note, and slides I had to fake.
I wanted a violinist I could hand a MIDI part to, so I built one: a physical model with a player inside, tuned against real violinists and picked by ear, Style by Style.
NØLL
Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass and Piano are $89 each, NØLL Strings $129.
The Violin is $89. The Cello is in testing and follows on Nov 3.
The Orchestral Suite, all six in one licence, opens the day the last of them is out.
All six together, as the NØLL Orchestral Suite, are $349.
No. Plain notes from a keyboard or the piano roll are enough, and the mod wheel (CC1) rides the dynamics. Keyswitches B-1 to F0 are there when you want to force a stroke.
Yes. Live is the default: the Smart Player picks every stroke, and the plugin adds about 1.5 ms at 48 kHz in Live mode. Look-ahead (0.5 or 1 s) is there for bounces: the plugin reports that delay, so your DAW lines the track up by itself. In Logic, Low Latency Mode bypasses a plug-in with that much delay, so record in Live.
Measured on an Apple M4 Pro at 48 kHz with a 128-sample buffer, default settings, in % of one core: a solo Violin, Viola or Cello about 1.3 %, a solo Double Bass about 1.5 %; 16 violins, violas or celli under 6 %, 8 basses about 4 %; the Piano about 1.7 % for a 10-note chord with the pedal down. NØLL Strings: about 5 % for the Quartet, 9 % for the Chamber group and 21 % for the Full orchestra. A track that isn't playing sleeps at about 0.2 %.
The plugin computes a bowed string, a bow, a player's hand and a wooden body in real time. There are no recordings inside. That is why it's small, why the section size is a menu and why one stroke flows into the next.
No. Each body is a production tone in the spirit of classic Italian violins, pushed further so the difference is easy to hear in a mix. The rooms follow the reverb times of real halls. Nothing inside is a recording, and NØLL is not affiliated with any maker, owner or venue.
Mac only for now. Join the list to hear if that changes.
No subscription: you pay once, keep it, and every 1.x update is free. Refunds within 14 days, and the 14-day trial lets you try it in your own sessions first: no account, no email, and it works offline.
All six: Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Piano and NØLL Strings, each complete, in one licence. There are no winds, brass or percussion in it. Own one already? You pay $349 minus what you paid, at least $29. It opens the day the last of the five is out. Leave your email on the Suite card and you get one email that day.It is $349 instead of $574 bought one at a time, with the same terms as one instrument: pay once, a 14-day refund and every 1.x update free.
They are in development, and each comes out when it is ready. Join the list at the bottom of the page and you hear first.
It is in testing and follows on Nov 3. Leave your email on the Cello card above and you get one email the day it is out.