A question about choir libraries

[Archangel]

Hi everyone,

I\'m searching for a nice quality Choir library. I don\'t need to do vowel stuff as VOTA, but I only need Ahhs and ohhs (men and female). I do orchestral stuff with ahhh choirs.

I don\'t have that much budget to buy VOTA. What choir library do you suggest me?

Archangel

[Francis Belardino]

I\'m going to jump in before King http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif hehehehe

I would say, Extended Classical Choir.

You may want to attach a few custom art files to it (Attacks on GPC2) that sort of thing.

I have them and I believe King does as well.
BS-192 (\"BS-192\")



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Francis Belardino
fbelardino@score4post.com (\"fbelardino@score4post.com\")

Composer/Sound Designer
www.score4post.com (\"http://www.score4post.com\")

[PeterRoos]

Hi Francis (and others),

Do you have or have you worked with Symphony of Voices (SoV)? I have it, it is of course a great library, but the choirs are quite massive (recorded in a church) and lack any word building support.

I\'d like to know if the Extended Siedlaczek Choirs is a nice complement (with consonants, like Vota), or if there is a lot of overlap.

Cheers,

Peter

[PeterRoos]

And eh, Archangel,
sorry I forgot to mention that SoV would probably suit your needs, but it is a rather expensive 5 CD library...

Peter

[Francis Belardino]

This is funny http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

I want to know if SOV blends well with ECC and VOTA. It\'s mighty crowded in this boat...

(booowwwisssshhhhh, man over board...was that King? http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif)

I was ready to grab SOV, to blend with VOTA and ECC and now there is MV Choir to wait for and save up for....it never ends http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[Francis Belardino]

Oh, BTW...
Did SOV convert well into Giga and how is the sound? Nice? Good for haunting/mellow?

[Francis Belardino]

I am a little confused about, \"Church but not Hollywood sound.\"

If you have a second could you go into more detail?

Are you saying that SOV is more Monk/Gothic, kind of sound, or?

Thanks so much
Frank

[This message has been edited by Francis Belardino (edited 02-14-2002).]

[PeterRoos]

Ofcourse the 5 SoV CD\'s contain a LOT of programs. My SoV folder contains 860 GIG files in 116 folders, based on the \"volumes\" on the Akai format CD\'s.

Total size is 7,36 Gb on my system. Maybe I need to convert again with Gst; I did it with GS.

There are a lot of Male, Female and combined programs for Ahs, Oo, Oh, Ee, Mm. Most programs come in several memory versions (A, B, C) and sometimes also with velocity switches. There\'s also a boys choir, all kinds of solo phrases (boys, soprano, tenor) andd Gregorian phrases and drones. Too much to summarize here. If you are really interested I can make and mail you 5 screen caps of the main CD directories. Just let me know (peter @ deltaworks.com).

Cheers

Peter

[Francis Belardino]

Wow, that would be more than cool!

Take your time and please send mail to:
fbelardino@audiovisionsonline fbelardino@scroe4post.com

Sorry for the multi mail...Just want to be sure I get it.

BTW, That is a killer amount of single Gig files. I mean, that\'s great...but you said you may have done something wrong in the conversion?

[This message has been edited by Francis Belardino (edited 02-14-2002).]

[PeterRoos]

Francis,

Man, I can\'t keep up with your speed of posting... ;-)

Maybe my remark was little bit vague, but if you check the typical VoTA and Thomas_J choir examples, you just can\'t do that with SoV. The SoV choirs (London Chorale, 80 voices) only do the vowels Ah, Oo, Oh, Ee plus Mmm, and there is so much reverb (and/or release) that its tricky to make any kind of cross-fade (IMO). If you check the Assisi piece: no additional reverb on the choirs. For layers, pads, drones, ofcourse the sound is great.

I\'ll send you some jpgs with the folder listings. I\'ll also check if I can find a demo mp3 with the Spectrasonic discs.

Yeah, I know that for some libraries you needed to tweak the S-Converter (some stereo setting), but I don\'t think it was with this set (I believe it was BurningGrooves).
I mean, 5 CD\'s expanding to 7 Gb... But what the hack. If I need space, I can dump all B and C versions.
And the Kyrie boys phrase program (if you have listened to my example...).

Peter

[Francis Belardino]

Peter,

Thanks for the email. Very helpful.

I take it that the (+) symbol next to a gig file is a memory version?

If I am interested in words in the sense of...I would like to just trigger phrases and so forth. SOV has a ton of that, right?

[KingIdiot]

Boo!


Archangel,

I\'d say go with ECC. It lacks the flexibility of seperate Male and Female choirs, but is wuite good for the price.

If you have a Roland XP/JV compatable Keyboard, you may want to look into the Voice/Choir Expansion board. All the patches are based off of Symphony of Voices

I only suggest these for \"budgest concerns\" they are in the \"cheaper\" route.

If you have the money you might want to look into SOV, if you NEED the choir now. Miroslav also just released a new choir library that looks promising.

ALL,

About SoV. I know a few people with it. Its a good library. I didg the boys choir, but wish I could build words with it. I\'m waiting for Nick\'s or Yellow Tools or whoever is doing a new Boy\'s. Plus I\'m tired of hearing that freakn agnus dai sample in movies.

There is a lot of variety,when people say its not \"hollywood\" its more that its not \"BIG\", You\'ll get nowhere near Duel of fates with it. But you can get close to some Elfman and the broodier/pad like Zimmer stuff.

I want it but I\'m still waiting for a giga native version, or a spectrasonics VSTi or something.

About the way it converts. When you gonvert Akai Samples with Giga, it converts EACH \"instrument\" into its own gig. This means if there is a forte patch, a piano patch, a multi velocity patch, and \"slow\" and \"fast\" versions of each, Giga will create seperate Gigs for all of them. This means that multiple versions of the same samples are created. So you need to go in and either manually merge all the instruments, or delete the gigs you wont use.

Better to use a converter like Chicken Sys or something, atleast I would think.


Also, a suggestion, if yu guys can at all hold a note, you may want to try building your own mock choirs. I\'ve had good results with singing a few notes and formant shifting my voice into a female voie and then creating harmonies. Also Melodyne is now accessable to more people this could be a killer way to create better \"mock choirs\"

All you have to do is to remember to \"sing for the effects\". meaning try to manipulate your voice differently in the real world before tracking. Sometimes singing lower and formant shifting more and pitchshifting is a better way to get a better female high pitched sound http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif


another thing. Learn to glissando with the libraries. Even choir patches on synths take well to this. Just put a slower attack on the patches. It adds all sorts of expression.


Haunting and scary stuff takes well from Effects. Short delay lines with long decays and dopppler effects are awesome for scary stuff with voices.


ohyah...Dont play chords....do each note seperately like you would with string parts. yah it sounds big when you hit all those keys, and it saves time, but you lose all the expression capabilities of glissandos and expression envelopes.


back to the Grind....

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Really...I am an Idiot

[This message has been edited by KingIdiot (edited 02-14-2002).]

[This message has been edited by KingIdiot (edited 02-14-2002).]

[PeterRoos]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Francis Belardino:
Peter,

Thanks for the email. Very helpful.

I take it that the (+) symbol next to a gig file is a memory version?

If I am interested in words in the sense of...I would like to just trigger phrases and so forth. SOV has a ton of that, right?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The + means slow attack.

Yep, there are a lot of phrases (boys, gregorian, sopr, tenor), but, like King said, some may be quite familiar from film and tv.

On this Assisi piece I assembled the soprano melody from three separate phrases. But this is simply yohohoho... I can\'t tell if it\'s easy to de-construct the Gregorian phrases, for instance.

Another nice thing I did not mention yet: chords (minor, major, suspended, etc, also different inversions). Always lots better than building them yourself in the sequencer.

King, I recently checked with Dutch distributor DMM about Spectrasonics ever supporting Giga, and I got a definite NO (maybe Eric is real MacFan, I don\'t know...).

Peter

[KingIdiot]

I\'m not really sure what the deal is with them not supporting Giga.

I would say its because PErsing is a Sound Developer for Roland.....but the libraries are also Akai Format...soooo....

Then there is the Spectrasonics VSTi\'s that are due out soon. Those may be more of the reason.

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Really...I am an Idiot

[Francis Belardino]

Is it just me or do you just have to love the great and timeless King http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

I may go with SOV. Like I said, I have ECC and VOTA but I cant see going $799.99 for choris...$500 I can deal with and it seems that SOV is a bit of a classic/must have.

[PeterRoos]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Francis Belardino:
...and it seems that SOV is a bit of a classic/must have.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As you can see on the file list you also get some nice pop stacks and whatever-you-call-those-close-miked-dooooo-and-zzzz-sounds...

Always remind me of the sound track to \"Siesta\" by Miles Davis and Marcus Miller (I really like that).

Peter

[jubal]

I have SoV, VotA, and ECC (Someday we\'re going to have a translations page for these acronyms).

SoV is missing those quick attacks compared to VotA (there is a couple of staccato patches that are usable however), which to me is part of the BIG sound folks are talking about. I personally LOVE the fx patches.

I converted SoV using ChickenSys GigaTranslator (newest version) and it was an improvement over the earlier versions of ChickenSys and GigaStudios own in terms of the release time for the samples being too long. Fairly painless too. I personally didn\'t find the number of .gigs created overwhelming.

Something to think about though. When I took a Strings Writing course at Alexander University (online, www.alexuniv.com). (\"http://www.alexuniv.com).\") I was able to get any ILIO libraries (Sympony of Voices, Kirk Hunter Strings, RetroFunk, Digital Boy, Vocal Planet, and Metamorphosis) at a 25% student discount. Now my class was I think $120-$140. It was a great introduction to string writing and a cool benefit of the student discount. We used the Revised Rimsky-Korsakov\'s Principles of Orchestration book and the lessons were online. Something to ponder.

[Z6]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jubal:
When I took a Strings Writing course at Alexander University (online, www.alexuniv.com). (\"http://www.alexuniv.com).\") I was able to get any ILIO libraries (Sympony of Voices, Kirk Hunter Strings, RetroFunk, Digital Boy, Vocal Planet, and Metamorphosis) at a 25% student discount. Now my class was I think $120-$140. It was a great introduction to string writing and a cool benefit of the student discount. We used the Revised Rimsky-Korsakov\'s Principles of Orchestration book and the lessons were online. Something to ponder.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Great info. Thanks a million. If I can get some time, some of those courses look interesting (and those student discounts are tempting).

[Thomas_J]

Wow! $799 .. must be a new record with Miroslav libraries :=) On a whole, judging from what I could read in that short article, I don\'t think they look like they\'re worth the $800 pricetag. I think Classical Choir can pull it off just as well.. Still remains to be heard with some demos. It\'ll be interesting. I doubt i\'ll buy it, though. I got my mind settled on the VoTA library.

Thomas

[Archangel]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Francis Belardino:
Oh, BTW...
Did SOV convert well into Giga and how is the sound? Nice? Good for haunting/mellow?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I may check for symphony of voices...but are you telling me that there are 5 CDs for ahhhs and ohhhs? Or there are other patches included?

5 CDs and expensive..... I\'ll check that price tag...you told \"convert\"....do you mean SoV is only available in AKAI?
And the extended choir? How much Cds does the library contain?

Whoah...so many questions :P

Archangel

[This message has been edited by Archangel (edited 02-14-2002).]

[Francis Belardino]

ECC, is Giga. SOV, is Akai.

[Lance_M]

Don\'t forget about Pure Choir, whenever that\'s going to be released... anyone have info on it?

[Francis Belardino]

Not for some time. (The info, I mean)

[This message has been edited by Francis Belardino (edited 02-14-2002).]

[PeterRoos]

Yep, not enough ROOM, I guess?

Can all these singers sit together and behave?

Conversion is no problem, although my original conversion (to Giga 1.0) expanded the required disk space to about 10 CD-roms to backup the new Gig files...
The quality is high, typical Eric Persing. But as I said, lots of (natural) reverb, making it most suited for church-like and new age music and less for the typical Hollywood sound.

I used it in \"Assisi\" on http://www.mp3.com/emano (\"http://www.mp3.com/emano\") (128 kb version).

I have just posted a higher bitrate version on http://www.audiohelp.com/music (\"http://www.audiohelp.com/music\") (192 kb). The choir samples typically suffer a lot from mp3 compression...

Cheers,

Peter

[Lougheed]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>When I took a Strings Writing course at Alexander University (online, www.alexuniv.com). (\"http://www.alexuniv.com).\") Now my class was I think $120-$140. It was a great introduction to string writing ...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I have wondered about taking this course (and perhaps others from the same site). Can you provide any additional information, recommendation, pros, cons. etc?

Thanks,

Lawrence




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Melodialworks Music
www.lawrencelougheed.com (\"http://www.lawrencelougheed.com\")

[PeterRoos]

I believe that Peter Alexander just joined the forum (Gos section). Maybe he can provide addition and to-the-point info.

Cheers,

Peter

[Archangel]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Francis Belardino:
Is it just me or do you just have to love the great and timeless King http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

I may go with SOV. Like I said, I have ECC and VOTA but I cant see going $799.99 for choris...$500 I can deal with and it seems that SOV is a bit of a classic/must have.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, guys, I have decided to buy SoV ... thanks for your advice!

Archangel

[jubal]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lougheed:
I have wondered about taking this course (and perhaps others from the same site). Can you provide any additional information, recommendation, pros, cons. etc?

Thanks,

Lawrence
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As someone else has said above Peter can give you detailed information about the course. The course is a good introduction course that starts with lessons on bass,cello,viola,violin getting the user comfortable with the ranges of each instrument as well as the timbre in each of their ranges as well. The lessons than move on from simple chord progressions using combinations of the different string sections. The more interesting lessons involve techniques to turn the chord progressions into compositions.