Thanks for bringing that up, Stephen. It looks like my loyalty to VSL products will remain intact, although it could be a long time before we hear anything about the choir.

December 2008 IIR, but the nature of the product makes dating it's release difficult, if not impossible.

stmain, that is a great post about the EW choir. I don't have that but have the earlier one - VOTA which is good but which I only use the "angels" sounds out of simply because they have an ethereal tone for the kind of mystical wordless choir Alex The Slavic Limey hates with a passion (along with taikos. I am thinking of writing a piece just for wordless choir and taikos to get to him). What is "SC"? I am blanking out on that one...

All that choirs right now can do is add a more or less pleasing vocal ambience. There is no such thing as real choral music with samples possible now, the way such things ARE possible with orchestral sound. Though hopefully that will change with the VSL choir. The question is will they try something revolutionary and proprietary (such as the Vienna Instruments software) in order to tackle the gigantic, so-far-impossible problem of word formation, or will they simply do a better version of what has already been done - a vocal ambience generator with legato...

Sorry, William -- SC is "Symphonic Choirs" by East West (so, same product -- it's just how the users on the EW forum often refer to it).

Yes, I agree that Choral sound in sample libraries remains a problem. In fact, even the Ahhs and Oohs of EWSC can't really get that close to a real ensemble doing Ahhs and Oohs -- but they get much closer than much. I don't want people to think that the EWSC library doesn't sound good -- it sounds GREAT. In fact, many think it's the best choral sound out there. And at 36 gigs, they definitely didn't skimp on the product. When you buy it, it's very clear that the developers really poured their hearts into the project. That's why it's such a bummer about the ranges.

But for film-score type sound, it's actually still the best, IMHO.

I understand that no rumor is ever official, but is there actually any thought that the VSL team will tackle a choir in the future? That would be an epochal event. I know that Garritan is thinking of doing one.

Steve Main

VSL is doing a choir. The soprano bonus files were a tiny taste of it. But when the whole thing will be done has not been announced.

Wow. Anyway, all I want choirs for is to add some power. I'd never expect to use it to create entire vocal solo performances. Just get a real choir for that. Definitely, though, EW could have done better so I'm looking forward to VSL choir.

I cant wait to hear VSL's choir library. [H]

@Anonymous Joe said:

I cant wait to hear VSL's choir library. [H]

For all of them who never heard the sopranos, here are three demos so far:
Allegri: Miserere
Sopranos + Concert Organ
BK: Cathedral St. Quen (short sequence)
several instruments (oboe1, appassionata str., ...)
Bach, BWV 11, Choral
Chamberstrings, ... (Sopranos, Altos VSL, Tenors and Basses from Steinberg's Hypersonic)

Keep in mind that only legato aaa and uuu and some "short notes" - aaa, uuu as well - are available.

Have fun
Beat

Wow, "soprano bonus files," huh? So where can I find these? I never heard of this before now!

Ah, just saw the link from Beat Kaufmann and listened.... these sound great, especially for a Beta/teaser release! I can hardly wait to hear the full library when it happens.

A few thoughts come to mind:

1. I REALLY hope that VSL gets the right ranges. As I indicated above, this is the problem which hinders many from using the EW Choir.

2. The legatos sound good in many spots.... HOWEVER! They must not be allowed to become "portamentos" (which they occasionally sound like in the demos). Again, it's important to get advice and input from real choral directors here. As a professional choirmaster myself, if I heard my sopranos "scooping" like that, I would tell them to stop!

Legatos that are almost portamenti are great for some moments in string playing.... they're almost NEVER okay in choral sound, except for a few special instances. You want clean singing from a choir.

But what a library this will be when it's done!

Steve

@stmain said:

Ah, just saw the link from Beat Kaufmann and listened.... these sound great, especially for a Beta/teaser release! I can hardly wait to hear the full library when it happens.

A few thoughts come to mind:
...
Steve

Hello again
Please take the demos as that what they are. They present one kind of legato.
It is wrong when we are going to extrapolate the sound of only 2 articulations to the whole library. If we do this, then I need to delete the demos. I trust people of VSL, that they do their very best - also with this Choir Library.

Beat

Sorry, Beat, didn't mean to seem critical of your programming job, which is beautiful in these pieces!


And it's good to hear that there are many articulations -- that completely takes away my worry!

Best,
Steve

@Another User said:

One BIG problem with EW Symphonic Choirs is that the ranges are wrong for standard choral literature.

EWQLSC is a gorgeous library. I love it.

But you have to use it for what it can do, not what it can't do. Anyone who expects to do standard choral literature is going to be disappointed. This is human voice, and you're just not going to pull that off - in fact someone tried to do the Mozart Requiem with it a couple of years ago, and despite all the raving on Nothernsounds, it was a complete disaster in my opinion.

You have to treat sampled choirs as a different kind of instrument from real choir. They usually want to be doubled with other instruments, and you rarely want to use them exposed. Maybe VSL's choir will be different - and I hope that it's an advance over what's out now, otherwise what's the point? - but it's hard to imagine a sampled choir that doesn't have more limitations than capabilities.

The bonus files were only for those who bought the whole Symphonic Cube before a certain date, right?

Hi Nick, you're certainly correct that every sampled choir has limitations, and that EW has fewer than most -- we're on the same page there.

However, I truly feel that the developers let themselves off the hook too easily when they say "oh well, every sample library has its limits." Because in this case, their advertising claims -- that you could compose choral literature using this library -- are quite false. Or so would any choral conductor or composer say. To have a Soprano section that cuts out at A above middle C and doesn't go down any further is, as I said above, simply removing a part of the standard range of the "instrument." Like a violin with no G string. We're not talking the far outside limits of sopranos range here! This is standard stuff.

As a result, I've not been able to ever seriously use EWQLSC in my choral composing, beyond a few passages here and there in film-scoring type demos. Yet the manufacturers sold it to me with the claim that I could (it says so in the manual). So there's the problem for me (and for many users of EWQLSC).

But anyway, this is the VSL board, so back to the marvels of the Vienna Libraries. And I'm totally with you in looking forward to what Vienna will do with a choral library!

All the best,
Steve Main

Well, I don't want to apologize for the range limitations - that is a real issue. And it's not like I have no criticisms of the library after using it for a while either.

Probably the best workaround is if you're using Kontakt: stretch the upper range.

The only reason for my post is that I really like the library, and it's the state of the art at the moment. It's not like all the notes other than the missing four at the top are total crap. [:)]

"You have to treat sampled choirs as a different kind of instrument from real choir. They usually want to be doubled with other instruments, and you rarely want to use them exposed." - Nick Batzdorf

So what does that mean?

That sampled choir sucks? Though you love the EW sucking choir?

It is an interesting question, why does sampled choir have to be doubled? Because it cannot do the most basic things that a real choir does?

One does not make similar statement about strings, or brass, does one? In other words, you can do a real string piece for sampled strings, or a brass piece for sampled brass.

But not choir. I would tend to agree, so it suggests that the most difficult thing possible to sample is choir. Though some people think it is strings, others think it is piano. I tend to think the human voice is more difficult than anything else. Look at the "Vocaloid" from EW. That tanked, right? I haven't heard a peep about that since the hype. Probably solo voice, then ensemble voice, then everything else is the top-to-bottom difficulty of sampling.

Yes, that's absolutely right: sampled choir sucks if it's exposed and used the wrong way. This is human voice, which is far more complicated than any other instrument; you hear immediately that it's fake if you don't write to what it can do. That's true even though it's a choir, which is harder than a solo singer.

As I said, there are lots of things EWQLSC can do really well. There are far more it can't do.

What it can do is give you that big bombastic wash in the background, and with those phrases (the Latin ones especially) it has a lot more motion than than "ooh and aah." Nick Phoenix can do a lot of other things too, in fact he's better at it than anyone else I've seen/heard...which isn't a surprise of course.

Actually, there's a private library out there that may be better, but it's not available commercially. Right now EWQLSO is about the best you can do.

Bela D's children's choir is nice too, by the way, but it's a more specialized thing.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

What it can do is give you that big bombastic wash in the background,

What about the lyrical side?

Nick Phoenix was also behind VOTA which is great. I agree about that Bela D children's choir - that is fantastic. And the Diva sounds which are very musically done within strict limitations.

I strongly disagree that choir is more difficult than solo voice to sample. Solo would be much, much harder to do satisfactorily. Ensembles tend to lessen the expressiveness of each individual musician to a degree, by constraining them within the ensemble. Solo allows for everything that the individual musician can do. That is why it is far harder to get a decent sample performance of solo strings than ensembles. Try doing a sample performance of 1) an ensemble violin section playing a famous orchestral work and 2) a solo violin playing a famous concerto. You will instantly know what I am talking about. The same thing happens with solo voice, though to an even greater degree.