Secco Strings: Kontakt String Instrument by Ben Osterhouse

Secco Strings offers three play modes. Single Notes mode lets you assign up to 15 steps, each with its own instrument and articulation. Rhythm mode plays steps sequentially, with adjustable step count and time division, a Jitter control for added fluctuation, and an arpeggiator button. Texture mode cycles through steps at a user-definable speed, and its Distribute button plays steps in parallel.

The XY pad is fully automatable and controls panning, direction, formant and octave. A dedicated tone control crossfades between four layers for the pizzicato articulations and three layers for the arco articulations. Global attack, decay, low cut and saturation sit alongside eight convolution reverbs with control over send level, pre-delay, time-stretch, low-pass and high-pass.

Four user-definable sample slots let you drag and drop your own samples into the instrument. The developer notes that this feature is only available for Kontakt 6 users.

The preset system uses .nka files, so you can save and load your own patches. The included presets are split by mode: 21 for Rhythm, 17 for Single Notes and 13 for Texture, giving a starting point in each style before you build your own.