EastWest Sounds

The deliveries comprise a choice of simple and evolving vowel sounds, short ultra-breathy 'ahs', hums, crescendos and drifting-pitch sustains (good for spooky cluster chords). All in all, a very varied and colourful 7.3GB collection of expressive, finely performed and beautifully recorded solo female vocal performances, all patiently waiting their chance to make it onto the soundtrack of Gladiator 2 ('just when you thought it was safe to go back into the arena').

Wow! Well, that's the short-form review. To elaborate, these are superbly-recorded "ethnic" samples from Bulgaria, Syria, India, Wales (think Enya), and America (which tend toward more multisampled notes rather than idiosyncratic phrases). They play back through EastWest's Play engine (32/64-bit, Windows/Mac, ASIO/Core Audio, VST/AU/RTAS) which itself is pretty cool, with convolution reverb, delay, artificial double tracking (chorus), amplitude envelope, and lowpass filter. There are also interesting tricks, like assigning mod wheel to sample start point—start anywhere within a phrase. Another is you can use the left, right, or both channels of a vocal (different channels use different mics) but if you use only one, you can synthesize a stereo spread. The Welsh vocal "phrase generator" is cool, too. Although initially it seems there are only a handful of presets, the "master" ones use keyswitching to access multiple articulations. There are also presets with individual articulations, and some with true legato. Print out the PDF manual—lots of options are hidden in those presets. While obviously geared for video and movies, the vocals are great for replacing that clichéd diva sound used in a lot of trance music, as well as for any kind of chill. Three words: Evocative, fascinating, and unique. Oh, and add "wow," too.

I almost jumped out of my seat the first time I instantiated this library and played a note. That's how much personality these performances capture. The amount of attitude is in fact the strength of VOP and, in a sense, its limitation. Female singers from America, Bulgaria, Syria, and Wales were tracked, and EW made some very interesting decisions. Instead of performing actual words, the Syrian ladies, for example, intone a series of pitched phrases that "sound" real - at least to Western ears. The same holds true for the Indian and Bulgarian singers. Load the Bulgarian Master patch, for example, and you're presented with a series of chromatically pitched phrases that you can switch between. The mod wheel is critical to the execution of convincing performances. It filters the sounds and adds a great deal of nuance to them. All of the sample sets in this library have convincing legato and portamento, and they highlight the beauty of PLAY's DSP. In fact, there seems to be a lot going on underneath the PLAY hood, and the result - across the libraries - is, in part, a gorgeous set of legato transitions.

Voices of Passion contains samples of five really good solo female singers from around the world: Syria, India, Bulgaria, Wales, and America. The library contains a large variety of sounds and you can use it in many ways, but in general it's very emotional and sets a mood…as the name implies. Like the other libraries in this review, the recordings and performances are terrific. The passionate voices are recorded with different mics in each channel, so you can choose between thicker and brighter sounds. Normally you'd use the default, which is a stereo mixture of the two going through a rich PLAY convolution reverb that's mixed in very wet. The Indian and Syrian instruments are phrases—lots of them mapped to different notes in different keys (triggered by keyswitches). You can make the phrases start later with the mod wheel for more variety. Both these singers are remarkable—true virtuosos. Unlike the Indian and Syrian singers, the Welsh and American ones can be played like Western instruments—they have actual notes on the keyboard rather than phrases. Even though the singers cover a considerable range of sounds, the American and especially Welsh singers lean toward the breathy, ethereal side. Finally, the Bulgarian singer is in between: she sings mostly slow-moving phrases on one note. It's very effective to play her polyphonically, because these independently moving vocalizations—not words—sound like a small group of women on independent lines. In general the programming makes Voices of Passion easy to play, which seems to be EastWest's overall philosophy these days. My hunch is that this library will be especially popular among composers who do a lot of scoring. It's pure emotion in a box.