# Word builder reality check



## Robert_G (Jun 11, 2019)

So with my composercloud plus subscription i get the full version of HW choir with the wordbuilder.

For the life of me, trying to produce anything in english that sounds real, seems impossible. So i noticed they have some premade english phrases....i say to myself....."these will sound real cause they want to show off what the wordbuilder can do". So i try a bunch and they arent very real at all. Something is wrong when even the producers cant make their own WB sound real.

The only WB IMHO that is even usable is Realitone Blue which i think is fantastic....but for whatever reason the maker of Blue doesnt know that the letter 'i' is a thing. (A bit of jesting here)

Its missing r'i'de and w'i'll. It has everything else except for 'ay' which would be nice too...so 3 more vowel transitions and it would have been a near flawless product. I would happily pay for an update with that fix.

As for HW does anyone have a sample of some superior wordbuilding?


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## pmcrockett (Jun 11, 2019)

Are you looking for audio demos or actual wordbuilder phrase preset files?

I think the factory phrases just use the default word construction (as though you typed the words in yourself) and aren't specifically edited to sound good. It's definitely possible to get better results than that, but it take practice, audio editing chops, and a familiarity with what a choir ought to sound like.

*Important:* If you're on Play 6.1.1, you may need to roll back to 6.0.6 to make the wordbuilder work properly. I've encountered a bug in 6.1.1 that causes the syllable volume crossfades not to work properly (all syllables play at full volume all the time). I don't know if it affects other users than me, but support has acknowledged the problem, says they'll fix it in the next update, and tells me to use 6.0.6 until then.

The download links for 6.0.6 aren't up on the support page because EW delists the links to past versions, but the links themselves remain active. Play 6.0.6 for Mac is here, and for Windows, it's here.


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## Robert_G (Jun 11, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> I think the factory phrases just use the default word construction (as though you typed the words in yourself) and aren't specifically edited to sound good. It's definitely possible to get better results than that, but it take practice, audio editing chops, and a familiarity with what a choir ought to sound like.



Thats just it. You would think the creators of the WB would want to throw in some professionally rendered words or phrases to show off what it is capable of.

What i am looking for is to see if any of you pros have been able to really make the HW choir WB shine without spending weeks on editing in wordbuilder. I havent heard anything including the demos on the EW site that are impressive.


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## ReelToLogic (Jun 11, 2019)

Robert_G said:


> So with my composercloud plus subscription i get the full version of HW choir with the wordbuilder.
> 
> For the life of me, trying to produce anything in english that sounds real, seems impossible. So i noticed they have some premade english phrases....i say to myself....."these will sound real cause they want to show off what the wordbuilder can do". So i try a bunch and they arent very real at all. Something is wrong when even the producers cant make their own WB sound real.
> 
> ...




Check out this video from Mike Green on how to handle some of those types of sounds with Realivox Blue.


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## Robert_G (Jun 11, 2019)

ReelToLogic said:


> Check out this video from Mike Green on how to handle some of those types of sounds with Realivox Blue.




Yeah....he does try to improvise......but ah-ee is not 'i' no matter how much you want it be


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## purple (Jun 11, 2019)

I'm away from my workstation and I can't really send you anything I've done with it but I can say this: the first time i tried to really dig into the wordbuilder I was pretty pleasantly surprised. If you really get under the hood with precisely editing the lengths of each vowel(theres some button in the interface that lets you do this), you can get some pretty good results. I don't really think they ever intended to make it produce perfect and convincing sentences, but in the context of a loud full orchestral score it gives you the flexibility to approximate the sort of vowel sounds you get out a really big choir. Of course it's not like a real person (or choir) singing, it won't ever be with samples. I mean even the best current voice synthesizing software isn't completely convincing, and that's because we are naturally very critical listeners when it comes to speech--it's literally build in to our genetic programming.


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## DaddyO (Jun 11, 2019)

I bought EW Symphonic Choirs some years ago. After trying to get the Word Builder to work acceptably, I gave up. I took a class in phonetics in college (more than some years ago). I figure it must require a special gift or a PhD to get even acceptable word pronunciations for choirs given the current state of affairs.


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## NYC Composer (Jun 12, 2019)

Yeah, it’s shite for that. On the other hand, if you want it to sing some sort of indiscernible language that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s brilliant.


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## Divico (Jun 12, 2019)

The problem is that you dont only have to get the phonetics right. You also have to adapt it to your melody line. Thats imo the biggest problrm. If you want good results go under the hood and time everything manually.


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## DSmolken (Jun 12, 2019)

It takes a LOT of phoneme transitions to get realistic English. With singing synths, there is a ton of stuff to record, and it's recorded at only a limited number of pitches usually. Some consonant to consonant transitions might only be recorded at one pitch, because some consonants aren't pitched anyway.

Try to record that many transitions at every pitch in a singer's range chromatically, for a sampler that can't shift pitch while keeping formants, and you'll be recording for weeks and editing those samples for years. If you also want multiple dynamic layers and true vowel legato, well...

Latin or Japanese is easier than English because of fewer variations of vowels etc. Synthesis can get usable results with a smaller (though still massive) amount of data, and people like Kanru Hua are doing interesting research on emulating legato and vibrato in realistically human ways. But I think a big area of opportunity is applying synth tech to a choir. Choirs have lower expectations of intelligibility, don't need to be as expressive, so synthesize a few individuals at once with naturally randomized timing and pitch differences, and it would be a product that solves a lot of problems for a lot of people.

Synths also do two things well: dictionaries that can take plain English input and return phonetics instead of wordbuilders; and automatic compensation of syllable start timing on render. The things they do NOT do well is live performance (that automatic timing compensation is impossible live because it would require looking into the future) and recording expression (being able to do MIDI CCs is a huge improvement over the way synths usually work). If somebody were to put that together and make a best of both worlds thing...


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## Van (Jun 12, 2019)

In my experience with WB, you have to approach it with _appreciation_ that you can do more than simple oohs and ahhs rather than disappointment that it doesn’t produce über-realistic results. Out of the can, it does more than many choir libraries and it’s on the user to invest as much patience as they can tolerate. 

But in answer to your question, I haven’t heard anything that would convincingly pass for the real thing.


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## pmcrockett (Jun 12, 2019)

Full text of the piece:
_It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._

This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time). The piece was written for and originally performed by a real choir, so nothing about the composition was tailored to Hollywood Choirs. This mockup was the first time I'd used the library and I made a lot of mistakes in the process that had to be repeatedly fixed at the same time as trying to figure out a proper workflow, so if I attempted another project of this scale it would go a lot faster.

I've attached the wordbuilder phrases I used at the bottom of this post. To install, right click in the wordbuilder's text editor or click the Phrases button and select Organize Phrases, which will bring up a file browser viewing the location of the wordbuilder presets. Copy the contents of the zip file into that location, and the phrases will show up in the wordbuilder.

If you look at the way the Votox words are spelled, you'll notice a lot of cases where I have a letter present in the word but have that letter's volume at zero so it doesn't sound at all. This is because you can't add additional letters to a word without resetting all of your edits to that word, so I tend to overload words with letters that I think I might need and then cut the level on what I don't end up using just so I won't have to constantly reprogram things if I need to add a letter.





Back when I was doing this project, I wrote up a list of some of the things I learned about the wordbuilder, but I never got around to posting it on VIC. It seems relevant to this thread, so here it is:

Don't use default words. At least for English, you will usually have to layer vowels to get good results. Keep the manual's Votox reference pages open and consult them when you construct a word. To figure out what vowels you need, sound out different exaggerated ways of pronouncing the word, then include all of those vowels in the word and blend them until you get what you need.

Choral diction is a subject in its own right, but speaking very generally, you want to avoid vowel sounds that come across as nasally, and you want to avoid the schwa sound, which is the English general-purpose vowel sound (like in the casual pronunciation of the second syllable of "pencil").

Use the R sound with a light touch. Real choirs avoid Rs, and you'll often get better results by layering other things such as Ds on top of low-volume Rs. HC has a rolled/flipped R (Votox: r!) that can be used in some of these cases, but it's a pretty aggressive sound and I usually prefer layering D and R.

Sometimes you'll have better results by putting a syllable's starting consonant(s) on the end of the preceding syllable instead.

Your MIDI notes should usually be disjointed instead of connected. Most syllables include release samples that play on note-off, and you usually don't want these mashed into the start of the next note. There are cases, however, when you want connections in the text that can be achieved by running an end consonant such as T into the start of the next word -- use your ears, not your eyes. Finding the balance here is one of the keys to getting a proper legato sound.

You probably won't need any of the articulation modes besides the default. Real choirs go to great lengths to avoid scoopy legato transitions.

Default attack values on vowel phonemes are usually too hard for anything but epic ff stuff. Your vowels should typically fade in, with the fade ending within the first 200-750 ms. The exact length of the fade will depend on musical context.

Consonant levels should be adjusted on a case-by-case basis. Properly leveled vowels should transfer to most musical contexts without much issue, though the fade in may need adjustment.

I have particular trouble with L and N sounds. It's difficult to find a balance between almost silent and obnoxiously sticking out. Vary lengths and try fading them in and out until you find something that works.

There is a difference in release sound on phonemes between just cutting them off and fading the volume down to 0. In the former case, there is a release tail of sorts, and in the latter the sound completely stops. Each has its appropriate uses; just be aware that there is an audible difference. If you have, for example, an ending vowel that has too abrupt a cut-off for its musical context, check to make sure it's not getting faded to 0 in the wordbuilder.

Be especially careful about repeated notes at the same pitch. The phoneme release tails discussed above can be overlapped into the next note, but any other overlap produces audio glitches. As such, if you need close repetition on a single pitch, you're usually best off ending the syllables involved by cutting them off to get a release tail rather than fading the phonemes to 0. You could also maybe use separate tracks and instances of Play to alternate notes without fear of overlap -- I haven't tried this but I assume it would work.

It is possible to route each sonic element of the choir to a different output within Play. You may, for example, route consonants and plosives separately from vowels so you can de-ess them in the DAW.

Your CC1 data ought to be fairly smooth. Especially at low levels, even tiny changes are audible, and large, quick changes can sound very bad. It may not even be worth recording notes/CCs live because you're just going to need to edit CCs and note positions with extreme precision after the fact anyway. Don't try to make too many fine-grain adjustments with CC1; draw volume automation for the syllable in the wordbuilder instead.

Pay attention to big-picture musical phrasing. It's easy to get too caught up in the details of Votox programming. Sometimes words that sound good on their own sound terrible in their musical context. The problems will usually be 1) your attack or release consonants are the wrong volume, 2) a syllable has a vowel that sticks out as unnatural in the overall timbre of the passage, 3) the overall syllable attack is too hard because your vowels have the wrong fade-in length, 4) the pacing and rhythm are bad because your attacks/releases aren't the right lengths in the wordbuilder or you haven't adjusted the MIDI note positions to account for attack/release.


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## Robert_G (Jun 13, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> Full text of the piece:
> _It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._
> 
> This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time). The piece was written for and originally performed by a real choir, so nothing about the composition was tailored to Hollywood Choirs. This mockup was the first time I'd used the library and I made a lot of mistakes in the process that had to be repeatedly fixed at the same time as trying to figure out a proper workflow, so if I attempted another project of this scale it would go a lot faster.
> ...




First and foremost....what an absolute gorgeous choir piece. I love hymns. Could never dream of composing that for my church. Its obvious how much work you put into that. With that said, I've never heard HW choirs sound this good. You put the EW demos to shame. Congrats.

As for giving me incentive, 30-40 hours just for the word rendering....no thanks....you have great patience...which I don't have.....at least not to that extent.

Again though...what a fantastic piece....thanks for sharing that.


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## Casiquire (Jun 15, 2019)

Real choirs of large size are also unintelligible. I think it takes a ton of work but the results aren't bad as long as you have a feel for how difficult a choir actually is to understand.


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## pmcrockett (Jun 15, 2019)

It's really a shame that there aren't more training resources available for learning the wordbuilder. The manual is extremely helpful and well-written for what it is, but it doesn't do (and shouldn't be expected to do) much more than cover the technical details of how the program functions. And the capabilities of the wordbuilder are so open-ended that knowing _how_ it functions doesn't intuitively lead to good results.

If you search "hollywood choirs wordbuilder" on YouTube, it's just a bunch of reviews in which people trying the software for the first time stumble through presets and shuffle Votox letters at random. I've been toying with the idea of doing a proper video tutorial myself, focusing on advanced wordbuilder use, but video-making is a little outside my wheelhouse and would probably end up being a larger time investment than I'd be able to commit to it.

But it's definitely a niche that hasn't been filled yet.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jun 17, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> It's really a shame that there aren't more training resources available for learning the wordbuilder. The manual is extremely helpful and well-written for what it is, but it doesn't do (and shouldn't be expected to do) much more than cover the technical details of how the program functions. And the capabilities of the wordbuilder are so open-ended that knowing _how_ it functions doesn't intuitively lead to good results.
> 
> If you search "hollywood choirs wordbuilder" on YouTube, it's just a bunch of reviews in which people trying the software for the first time stumble through presets and shuffle Votox letters at random. I've been toying with the idea of doing a proper video tutorial myself, focusing on advanced wordbuilder use, but video-making is a little outside my wheelhouse and would probably end up being a larger time investment than I'd be able to commit to it.
> 
> But it's definitely a niche that hasn't been filled yet.



I see what you mean, but I don't think the technology for a perfectly programmed choir is even close, the technology just isn't there yet. Wordbuilder is nothing more than a novelty. You could spend days, and countless hours trying to make the choir sing phrases exactly how you want them to, just not going to happen. In my ten years of using this library, I have never programmed anything other than the included phrases. Why? Because WB a huge time waster. And really, the average listener isn't going to notice if the choir is actually singing certain phrases. Even in huge trailer cues, they are shouting "gibberish", but it sounds epic when mixed in with the orchestra.


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## MauroPantin (Jun 17, 2019)

If you go under the hood you can create some really decent results. I tried it once for mocking up a few seconds of the Lothlorien LOTR cue. I did it with Symphonic Choirs and the Wordbuilder. It took forever but you can get it to play ball, and (I suppose that) if you do it enough it probably gets easier. 

A few pointers I remember:

- The best way to input text is with the Votox language. The other two (english and phonetics) don't really seem to work well. As presented in the manual, Votox is the "native language" for the WB and thus, your best bet to associate the sounds that come out with what you write in.

- The time editor is the key to making the choir "speak" properly. There is a learn function in the WB for Hollywood Choirs that was not there for SO when I used it for that small experiment. It's worth exploring... But you still have to touch up the automation and be mindful of velocity and volume for each sylablle.

It's up to you to decide if it is worth the effort, of course. I think it is quite powerful but you really have to roll up your sleeves and get in there. If there is no budget for a real choir and you need some stuff to be said it is a great library to get it done.


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## MartinH. (Jun 17, 2019)

Wolfie2112 said:


> And really, the average listener isn't going to notice if the choir is actually singing certain phrases. Even in huge trailer cues, they are shouting "gibberish", but it sounds epic when mixed in with the orchestra.



Can confirm, played 140 hours of Skyrim without noticing Jeremy Soule used the same choir library that I have (Requiem Light, though I don't know if he used light, pro, or the version before they split up) with its rather recognizable phrases.


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## DSmolken (Jun 17, 2019)

What's the usual thing to do with mockups for choral pieces that are to be sung by a human choir? Just hire one human singer to record each part solo, use an "ah" choir to lay out the melody, or something else?


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## JohnG (Jun 17, 2019)

DSmolken said:


> What's the usual thing to do with mockups for choral pieces that are to be sung by a human choir? Just hire one human singer to record each part solo, use an "ah" choir to lay out the melody, or something else?



Mostly other people seem to use "ah" based on my orchestration experiences. 

For my own music, I use EW choirs (Hollywood now) and just slap in some pre-built phrases, either Latin from the program or I recycle nonsense syllables I've used in some other project. I find using that conveys more accurately the blurry-but-I-can-hear-they-are-singing-words feel of a real choir.

FWIW, in general the live choirs I've used in the trailer music / epic / big stuff context are not necessarily more intelligible than Hollywood Choirs.

Kind regards,

John

[note: I have received free products from East West]


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## pmcrockett (Jun 17, 2019)

Wolfie2112 said:


> I see what you mean, but I don't think the technology for a perfectly programmed choir is even close, the technology just isn't there yet. Wordbuilder is nothing more than a novelty. You could spend days, and countless hours trying to make the choir sing phrases exactly how you want them to, just not going to happen. In my ten years of using this library, I have never programmed anything other than the included phrases. Why? Because WB a huge time waster. And really, the average listener isn't going to notice if the choir is actually singing certain phrases. Even in huge trailer cues, they are shouting "gibberish", but it sounds epic when mixed in with the orchestra.


I agree that in practical application, Hollywood Choirs isn't always a great choice for a lot of media uses -- as you mention, the effort-to-results ratio is too large for contexts where words don't matter at all, and that describes a very large percentage of media work.

But it's also true that media work is an anomaly in that it is one of the very few social/historical contexts in which the words of vocal music don't matter. In most cases of vocal music, the words do matter quite a lot. And a words-based choral library's lack of suitability for a type of work that generally doesn't even involve words isn't the end-all-be-all of that library's overall worth.

Certainly, the tech for fully convincing _automatic _wordbuilding doesn't exist and likely won't exist any time soon. But speaking as someone who has, in fact, spent days and countless hours trying to make the choir sing phrases exactly how I want them to, I disagree with the notion that the tech to do wordbuilding well _at all_ doesn't exist. It does exist, but like any high-level artistic trade discipline -- CGI effects, orchestration, music engraving, orchestral mockups in general, and so forth -- it has to be done manually by people who know what they're doing.

My own feeling about Hollywood Choirs based on what I've done with it so far is that I'm constrained more by my own lack of experience than by any inherent limitations of the library. And even as things stand now, I feel the library is capable of a capella choral mockups (see the piece I posted above), which is not something I or anyone else ever would have said about its predecessor, Symphonic Choirs. Hollywood Choirs isn't perfect as as a replacement for the real thing by any means, but that's true of almost all sample libraries. I do feel that it's absolutely viable for mockup work in the same capacity that other sample libraries are, albeit with a greater time investment.

And that's really what fascinates me about Hollywood Choirs. More than any other library I've used, I feel like it can do more than people are attempting to do with it -- as though people were dipping into Maya, realizing that 3D modeling is actually really difficult, and declaring that CGI is a lost cause because it's not automatic enough. And so the massive time investment involved in plumbing those depths doesn't bother me all that much, because for me, seeing just how far I can push the library is the whole goal of using the library.

And when I inevitably need a low time investment choir for a media track, well, that's what I have Lacrimosa and Oceania for.


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## DSmolken (Jun 18, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> Certainly, the tech for fully convincing _automatic _wordbuilding doesn't exist and likely won't exist any time soon. But speaking as someone who has, in fact, spent days and countless hours trying to make the choir sing phrases exactly how I want them to, I disagree with the notion that the tech to do wordbuilding well _at all_ doesn't exist.


Speech synthesis tech exists and is convincing enough that a few months ago, I didn't realize an online training course was machine-narrated until another section had a human narrator with a good deal of background noise. That, since the eighteenth century beginning of the technology, has always been about reassembling words from phonemes and the transitions between them, and is pretty well understood.

Applying that tech to singing is lagging somewhat behind, but timing works OK, and several synths have functional English to phonetics dictionaries for solo vocals. Latin would be easier than English, because it's pretty much one set of rules with no need for a real dictionary, with only a few words like "nihil" being exceptions (the "h" is normally silent in standard choral Latin, but in "nihil" it's not). In theory, this could also be applied to sampled vocals.

It's really applying this to choirs where things really fall behind, or perhaps haven't really been tried yet, because recording a choir for weeks would just be enormously expensive, and it would take weeks to get enough data for a chromatically sampled choir. If you want to sing English words with consonant clusters, like "astray", that stuff really adds up.


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## lutzek (Jul 31, 2019)

Yup. I just noticed, that it is quite hard to use it, when I tried to write a piece where choir should sing each syllable every eight note at 130BPM. The problem is, that I'm not a native speaker, so I'll never be able to hear as much as you can. 

Is there any other solution like i.e choir-style vocoder?


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## I like music (Aug 1, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> Full text of the piece:
> _It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._
> 
> This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time). The piece was written for and originally performed by a real choir, so nothing about the composition was tailored to Hollywood Choirs. This mockup was the first time I'd used the library and I made a lot of mistakes in the process that had to be repeatedly fixed at the same time as trying to figure out a proper workflow, so if I attempted another project of this scale it would go a lot faster.
> ...




Wow...


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## LudovicVDP (Aug 1, 2019)

pmcrockett said:


> Full text of the piece:
> _It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._
> 
> This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time).





1: WOW !!!!
2: "40 hours..." Ok, I'll pass. For me who can only compose in the evening/night, that means way too many days "just" for a choir. 
3: WOW though...


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## bigcat1969 (Aug 1, 2019)

Just a note that Dominus can give you some very nice Latin results.


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## jbuhler (Aug 1, 2019)

bigcat1969 said:


> Just a note that Dominus can give you some very nice Latin results.


It’s excellent within the syllables it has available, but the syllables are limited even if you are just working in Latin. It also works best with flowing lines at a moderate to slow tempo.


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## I like music (Aug 1, 2019)

jbuhler said:


> It’s excellent within the syllables it has available, but the syllables are limited even if you are just working in Latin. It also works best with flowing lines at a moderate to slow tempo.



Yep. Beyond moderate and flowing, it breaks down. Actually, break down might not be the right wording, since I think they were clear that it wasn't designed for anything quicker than that (especially for fast melodic turns) but then I don't suppose many choir libraries can pull that off? I still need more time with it to really test it out.


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## woafmann (Jan 14, 2020)

Wow, *pmcrockett. *Your piece is out-of-this-world beautiful! I have HW Choirs and I honestly can't even begin to fathom how long this took you to get such excellent results. Thank you for sharing your tips. Priceless!


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## jim476 (Jan 17, 2020)

pmcrockett said:


> Full text of the piece:
> _It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._
> 
> This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time). The piece was written for and originally performed by a real choir, so nothing about the composition was tailored to Hollywood Choirs. This mockup was the first time I'd used the library and I made a lot of mistakes in the process that had to be repeatedly fixed at the same time as trying to figure out a proper workflow, so if I attempted another project of this scale it would go a lot faster.
> ...



Very helpful. Thanx for taking the time that EW should have done in the first place.


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## onfireee (May 12, 2020)

pmcrockett said:


> It's really a shame that there aren't more training resources available for learning the wordbuilder. The manual is extremely helpful and well-written for what it is, but it doesn't do (and shouldn't be expected to do) much more than cover the technical details of how the program functions. And the capabilities of the wordbuilder are so open-ended that knowing _how_ it functions doesn't intuitively lead to good results.
> 
> If you search "hollywood choirs wordbuilder" on YouTube, it's just a bunch of reviews in which people trying the software for the first time stumble through presets and shuffle Votox letters at random. I've been toying with the idea of doing a proper video tutorial myself, focusing on advanced wordbuilder use, but video-making is a little outside my wheelhouse and would probably end up being a larger time investment than I'd be able to commit to it.
> 
> But it's definitely a niche that hasn't been filled yet.



That would be AMAZING! I haven't found a good wordbuilder tutorial yet.

VERY beautiful piece too. It's quite moving and well done. Sounds fantastic!


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## MusicLabor (Jul 14, 2021)

pmcrockett said:


> I agree that in practical application, Hollywood Choirs isn't always a great choice for a lot of media uses -- as you mention, the effort-to-results ratio is too large for contexts where words don't matter at all, and that describes a very large percentage of media work.
> 
> But it's also true that media work is an anomaly in that it is one of the very few social/historical contexts in which the words of vocal music don't matter. In most cases of vocal music, the words do matter quite a lot. And a words-based choral library's lack of suitability for a type of work that generally doesn't even involve words isn't the end-all-be-all of that library's overall worth.
> 
> ...


I so much appreciate your thoughtful and informed comments. I just purchased Hollywood Choirs and was feeling a bit discouraged and exhausted after diving in for two days and being confronted with the sheer depth of this software and library. Your composition was astonishingly beautiful, but the craftsmanship and effort you gave to the mock-up itself is utterly inspiring. For me, that kind of a result is more than worth 40+ hours. Great if you could get a real choir to perform it, but most of us don't have access to that. Many thanks to you for sharing so generously.


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## DSmolken (Jul 14, 2021)

MusicLabor said:


> For me, that kind of a result is more than worth 40+ hours. Great if you could get a real choir to perform it, but most of us don't have access to that.


And on a very boring level level, I wonder if getting a choir to perform a piece would also take 40+ hours of contacting people, finding available timeslots to rehearse and record... not even counting the choir members' time. Probably not 40+, but I would guess it'd take me 6-10 hours of just dealing with logistics.


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## Casiquire (Jul 14, 2021)

pmcrockett said:


> I agree that in practical application, Hollywood Choirs isn't always a great choice for a lot of media uses -- as you mention, the effort-to-results ratio is too large for contexts where words don't matter at all, and that describes a very large percentage of media work.
> 
> But it's also true that media work is an anomaly in that it is one of the very few social/historical contexts in which the words of vocal music don't matter. In most cases of vocal music, the words do matter quite a lot. And a words-based choral library's lack of suitability for a type of work that generally doesn't even involve words isn't the end-all-be-all of that library's overall worth.
> 
> ...


I agree with every single part of this with the small exception that i still don't really hear significant improvement between SC and HC. But otherwise, yes to all of this!


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## adrianoc (Feb 4, 2022)

pmcrockett said:


> Your CC1 data ought to be fairly smooth. Especially at low levels, even tiny changes are audible, and large, quick changes can sound very bad. It may not even be worth recording notes/CCs live because you're just going to need to edit CCs and note positions with extreme precision after the fact anyway. Don't try to make too many fine-grain adjustments with CC1; draw volume automation for the syllable in the wordbuilder instead.


This is a really useful thread, particularly this post. I've got a _very _basic question if anyone would be able to help on using midi CCs please.
I've just got Hollywood Backing Singers so am having my first "fun" steps with wordbuilder..... I'm not expecting miracles, but I'm trying to draw in volume and expression parameters into my DAW but am unable to do so. Any tips as to what I should be doing here please?
Is wordbuilder for controlling everything bar the meldoy, can you only control them "live", is it all within wordbuilder somewhere? 

Cheers!


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## Bee_Abney (Feb 4, 2022)

adrianoc said:


> This is a really useful thread, particularly this post. I've got a _very _basic question if anyone would be able to help on using midi CCs please.
> I've just got Hollywood Backing Singers so am having my first "fun" steps with wordbuilder..... I'm not expecting miracles, but I'm trying to draw in volume and expression parameters into my DAW but am unable to do so. Any tips as to what I should be doing here please?
> Is wordbuilder for controlling everything bar the meldoy, can you only control them "live", is it all within wordbuilder somewhere?
> 
> Cheers!



I wish I could help properly, but I don't know how to use Wordbuilders tools. But I do know that in my DAW (Studio One), any programmable!/automatable parameter can be added to the list of parameters for automation in the DAW. I would expect (most) other DAWs to be able to do this, so that may be worth looking into.

Or perhaps I've misunderstood.


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## zdogg (Jun 8, 2022)

pmcrockett said:


> Full text of the piece:
> _It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._
> 
> This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time). The piece was written for and originally performed by a real choir, so nothing about the composition was tailored to Hollywood Choirs. This mockup was the first time I'd used the library and I made a lot of mistakes in the process that had to be repeatedly fixed at the same time as trying to figure out a proper workflow, so if I attempted another project of this scale it would go a lot faster.
> ...



First time on this sight, looking for Wordbuilder tips. Astonishing Piece. Can it be purchased?


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## pmcrockett (Jun 9, 2022)

zdogg said:


> First time on this sight, looking for Wordbuilder tips. Astonishing Piece. Can it be purchased?


Are you interested in the printed score or the project file?


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## cedricm (Jun 9, 2022)

pmcrockett said:


> Full text of the piece:
> _It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy._
> 
> This was done entirely with Hollywood Choirs. I'd estimate that it took me maybe 30-40 hours to do the mockup (not counting composing time). The piece was written for and originally performed by a real choir, so nothing about the composition was tailored to Hollywood Choirs. This mockup was the first time I'd used the library and I made a lot of mistakes in the process that had to be repeatedly fixed at the same time as trying to figure out a proper workflow, so if I attempted another project of this scale it would go a lot faster.
> ...



30 hours seem fine to me if the next choir project takes you 10 hours then the next 5.
It isn't if it still takes that many hours each time.
As for me, I don't understand what a real live choral sings most of the time.


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## dhmusic (Jun 9, 2022)

cedricm said:


> 30 hours seem fine to me if the next choir project takes you 10 hours then the next 5.
> It isn't if it still takes that many hours each time.
> As for me, I don't understand what a real live choral sings most of the time.


lol those 30 hours are likely after you've gotten very comfortable with the process. I think it's awesome they put that much time into their piece, no?


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