Sounds & Samples
Like last year’s Hans Zimmer Strings, the latest instrument from Spitfire Audio eschews the use of Native Instruments’ Kontakt to host its content in favour of a bespoke plugin design. Once again you will need a hefty amount of free storage space (over 170GB). This time, the focus is on the somewhat trickier human voice, in full (tutti) choir and smaller section-based configurations.
Eric Whitacre is a composer and conductor who straddles the classical, pop and film music worlds. He is also well-known for his ‘Virtual Choir’ projects, where hundreds of performers submit recordings over the internet to create huge collaborative works. This library makes use of the more modest (but all-professional) Eric Whitacre Choir, consisting of 22 performers (six soprano, five alto, five tenor and six bass) singing a wide range of styles and articulations under their namesake’s baton. All have been recorded with multiple mic configurations in Air Studio’s Lyndhurst Hall (famed both for its sound and quality of recording kit).
In the Choir section you will find a total of 170 techniques, while the Evo Grid version (which has its own dedicated plugin) includes 111 ‘evolutions’. Although there is plenty of tweaking on offer, the presets allow you to get going immediately, and it’s obvious from the start that the quality is very high. As well as more conventional singing, the library makes good use of some excellent microtonal, episodic, and harmonic timbres as well as swells and unusual ‘FX’. The ‘Evo Grid’ part of the library allows you to select a different technique for small clusters of notes across the keyboard. Even playing a simple chord here results in some great evolving choral soundscapes (and almost worth the price alone).
Spitfire’s use of a dedicated (and resizable) plugin design for this library is very welcome, as it provides more space for the various elements (that are small and very crowded in their Kontakt-based offerings). However, some of the potential gains are slightly wasted here. Like ‘Hans Zimmer Strings’, it is only possible to see a maximum of eight articulations/techniques, or six signal channels, at once in the main instrument. The light texture background, with white text, also makes for a slightly unfocused experience. The ‘Evo Grid’ version of the plugin turns in a stronger performance here, with better use of contrast and colour, though the screen real-estate could still be optimised somewhat. Of course, these small functional niggles obviously have no bearing on the resulting audio, which remains excellent throughout.
Overall this is another strong offering from Spitifire, which is extremely engaging to use. The broad range of textures will also allow you to incorporate choral elements into more than just the usual filmic contexts. However, it may not fully satisfy those seeking to add a more obvious large choir bombast to tracks, or more microscopic control over phrasing. East West’s Hollywood Choir library allows you to create custom phrases with its Wordbuilder system and would make the perfect partner to Spitfire’s more subtle offering – though at more than £500 a piece, this may be prohibitive for many. That said, Eric Whitacre Choir still sounds great on its own, and will find many willing users.