Producer Glenn Gordon Caron has chosen virtual strings over live players for the new NBC drama Medium. The mystery thriller features music by Emmy Award winning composer Jeff Beal, realized using the Kirk Hunter Concert Strings.

In his direction to composer Jeff Beal, Caron asked for a main title sequence that “sounded like death – cold and scary”. To achieve this effect, Beal used the short bow and non-vibrato bowings from the new Kirk Hunter Concert Strings library. “They had a great scary vibe to them,” said Beal.

When the producer heard the final recorded version sweetened with a 12-player string section, he decided on the original version featuring the Kirk Hunter Concert Strings. “He thought the “live” version sounded too old and less scary,” explained Beal.

Beal also said that the Kirk Hunter concert strings are of amazing quality and value: “The sounds have great ‘big movie’ size, with a lots of emotional variation, bite and warmth.”

“Kirk made sure the programming lends itself to working fast, which is always a necessity in my projects. The ‘load and go’ approach makes using these sounds very fun and intuitive. I also like to program my own patch variations – this is simple to do given the inclusion of every layer as a separate program in the files.”

More information on the Concert Strings in GigaStudio format is available at the Kirk Hunter site. A version in Kontakt format is expected to be available at the upcoming Namm 2005 Winter Show.