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Heavocity Intimate Textures in orchestral (non-hybrid) contexts

ism

Senior Member
A question that's comes up in various forms on various threads often phrased as Heavocity's Intimate textures' vs the Spitfire Olafur Evo, Orchestral swarm LSO etc.


The understanding I've come to in a general comparison is that the Spitfire libraries (and now Time Macro) are orchestral libraries, and while they might also occasionally find use in more hybrid, sound design focused work, then really fundamntally work as orchestral libraries in fully orchestral - if not necessarily 'high classical' - composition.

But there's a variant of this question that I think has its own particular subtitles that I though might merit a more focused thread - particularly for someone like my self who already has the Spitfire libraries.

Which is: what's the value of Intimate Textures for orchestral ( or neo-classical or indy-classical, or nuanced-classical, or whatever you'd like to call it), non-hybrid compositions?

Lovely as the Heavocity demos are, they're all firmly hybrid world. I have a number of gravity packs and they're wonderful sound design libraries, but the focus is very much on sound design. Which is how I originally convinced myself that I didn't really need this.

But then @johnbusbymusic on this thread:

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/agitato-sordino-legatos-november.75220/

Posted this piece (and its equally brilliant sequel):



Which makes very convincing, highly textural, but I think still unequivocally orchestral (as opposed to hybrid) use of this library. I suppose you could argue that this sits on the edge of sound design/hybrid on some technical level, but I'd argue (subjectively of course) that the overall emotional effect resides firmly within the orchestral realm.


It's not that IT would ever replace, for instance, the Olafur evos for me. But it is doing something unique here, and it's a subtle enough effect that I don't think you could ever quite replicate with the more orchestral-focused spitfire libraries.

If nothing else there's something really interesting here that I'd like to get a better sense of.

So wondering if anyone else has any experience in orchestral, non-hybrid use of IT? If other such examples IT as orchestral instrument exists, it might be fun to collect references to them on a single thread.
 
Intimate Textures has lots of patches that are useful complements to the Spitfire and OT Time Macro stuff, and I like the sound, which is rougher and more brittle than SF or OT. The hybrid materials are only a portion of what IT does and they have lots of other interesting longs with string techniques. IT has posed challenges in mixing, at least for me at my skill level. But I'm also still figuring the library out. (I bought it at the previous 50% Heavyocity sale back in the summer I think but have not had much chance to work with it—another reason not to buy libraries just because they are on sale!)
 
I have IT and will picking up RT soon. I have said this before I believe on this forum: all the sounds are actually possible with strings (obviously not the texture designer). The Vln/Va/Vc patches have minimal processing at best, they are what a small string section can do in a dry room. So yeah, they are great for layering, especially the sul tasto patches. The "droplet" patches sound great but they have the "bow drop" baked in, so that might be a problem, but the sul tasto and pont. patches are natural. The pont spic. is nice for layering with other libraries to give some bite.

It might take a bit of knowledge about strings to grasp IT better. The usual "warmth" that people associate with strings tends to come from vibrato. The sul tasto patches don't have any vibrato. I still find them very warm, but as a string player it's a sound that I am used to. And people might be comparing this sound to 60 string players in a glorious hall. This is a dozen players in a dry room. Personally i love the sound.

The demo mp3s for RT sound even better than IT, I am looking forward to picking it up.
 
any further thoughts? Really thinking about picking up IT while on sale (I missed the SA The Ton bundle with EVO 3) and looking for something that can add a little more motion/character/organic feel to strings such as OT Time Macro & The NI Symphony Strings. I've heard a comment or two that they sound screechy and robotic, but from all the demos they sound nice. Just not sure how hard it would be to mix with other non-NOVO strings.

Thoughts?
 
No conclusion, but a few more thoughts.

In particular, while I'm sure this lib does lots of sound designy thinks up to and including screechy and robotic, John's demo above quite definitively shows that it can also do orchestral texture.


But it strikes me as a qualitatively very different kind of texture that you'de get with, a spitfire evo, for instance. I did pick up evo 3, which is a whole other category of texture in itself, qualitatively different from the Olafur evos, so I'm trying to get my head around that also.


But what I've started thinking is that the IT texture, when used like this, is qualitatively much closer to (kind of surprisingly) Time Macro - most obviously the Col Leg patches. For instance in this little noodle the Col Legs briefly become audible, and its a very nice effect if used in moderation - here starting at ~0:53:





Which is qualitatively different from how I'd approach textures of Chamber Evolutions, or Orchestral swarm - although perhaps the form a spectrum of colours of textures.

And I'd argue this is true, in less obvious ways, of much of Time Macro, where often you can't quite hear the nature of the texture until you create a quite moment in the mix, and hen you hear that it's not just a choir patch (for instance) but a choir patch with some subtle textural qualities.

It can be very subtle, but it's definatly a thing.

So I remain very curious about how much IT can achieve this kind of textural quality also - so thanks everyone for you thoughts.
 
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No conclusion, but a few more thoughts.

In particular, while I'm sure this lib does lots of sound designy thinks up to and including screechy and robotic, John's demo above quite definitively shows that it can also do orchestral texture.


But it strikes me as a qualitatively very different kind of texture that you'de get with, a spitfire evo, for instance. I did pick up evo 3, which is a whole other category of texture in itself, qualitatively different from the Olafur evos, so I'm trying to get my head around that also.


But what I've started thinking is that the IT texture, when used like this, is qualitatively much closer to (kind of surprisingly) Time Macro - most obviously the Col Leg patches. For instance in this little noodle the Col Legs briefly become audible, and its a very nice effect if used in moderation - here starting at ~0:53:





Which is qualitatively different from how I'd approach textures of Chamber Evolutions, or Orchestral swarm - although perhaps the form a spectrum of colours of textures.

And I'd argue this is true, in less obvious ways, of much of Time Macro, where often you can't quite hear the nature of the texture until you create a quite moment in the mix, and hen you hear that it's not just a choir patch (for instance) but a choir patch with some subtle textural qualities.

It can be very subtle, but it's defiantly a thing.

So I remain very curious about how much IT can achieve this kind of textural quality also - so thanks everyone for you thoughts.

Ism, this track is beautiful! Great stuff
I need to check out time macro.

So this is the first sketch I did with IT out of the box.
This is 3 patches and I panned the violins stereo field slightly to the left and the celli slightly to the right.
No reverb processing, just loaded up the patches.
So, you can use these for textural effects and also as a small in your face string section

https://www.dropbox.com/s/23dnaockcstvpq1/HO-IT-Sketch.wav?dl=0
 
So this is the first sketch I did with IT out of the box.
This is 3 patches and I panned the violins stereo field slightly to the left and the celli slightly to the right.
No reverb processing, just loaded up the patches.
So, you can use these for textural effects and also as a small in your face string section

https://www.dropbox.com/s/23dnaockcstvpq1/HO-IT-Sketch.wav?dl=0


Very nice - thanks for sharing that. Still processing what I make of this use of textures, but my first reaction is that's is much more similarly o the Olafur chamber evo that I would have thought. Except drier and scratchier - maybe what I'd imagine a LASS evo would sound like. Also interesting to compare with how you're really reigned in the effect to get a much more subtle textural quality on you Autumn pieces.


Very helpful. Not just in evaluating Intimate Textures, but in getting a sense of all the different colours of the textural that we now can have at our fingertips. Exciting, but confounding.


And hey - if anyone else would care to share even very early, very raw experiments, sometimes these at least as instructive as finished compositions.
 
I'm happy to see this thread. I want to pick up IT on the sale but was not quite sure if it would hit the EVO territory or not. Looks like it might be what I want. Good deal at half off.
 
Very nice - thanks for sharing that. Still processing what I make of this use of textures, but my first reaction is that's is much more similarly o the Olafur chamber evo that I would have thought. Except drier and scratchier
I agree with this assessment. I characterize the sound as brittle—I think the basic articulations are less pliant than the Olafur stuff though the sound design tools make them very versatile in their own way. I have not yet found the sweet spot for mixing.

Edit to add: I should make clear that I have no regrets in this purchase and find it to be a good complement to the stuff in Time Macro, Tundra, Olafur Chamber Evo and the various other Evos I have.
 
I agree with this assessment. I characterize the sound as brittle—I think the basic articulations are less pliant than the Olafur stuff though the sound design tools make them very versatile in their own way. I have not yet found the sweet spot for mixing.

Edit to add: I should make clear that I have no regrets in this purchase and find it to be a good complement to the stuff in Time Macro, Tundra, Olafur Chamber Evo and the various other Evos I have.
Yeah, the mixing is my biggest question mark. Obviously in some territories it could stand alone, but I would likely be mixing this with other strings, so I have no idea how that'd go. Or if that's even a good idea [god im such a noob]
 
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I'm a major noob so it'll be really rough around the edges, but I can

Sometimes I think rawer experiments, noodlings, sketches can be even more value that finely honed composition. Or at least differently valuable.

(Or in any event, most of what I share in these pages is based on this theory)
 
Even though it doesn’t actually use intimate textures (or even strings), I’m cross posting this piece:




From this thread:

https://vi-control.net/community/th...swagon-spitfire-ot-heavocity-soundiron.78179/


the conceptual link being that I’m using a Heavocity library (Vocalize 2) against non-hybrid orchestral libraries.

So in this sense it’s a part of the same love for Heavocity as hybrid-in-the-edge-of-orchestal, and my puzzlement on how to use these hybrid libraries in non-hybrid ways.

Pretty sure I haven’t quite pulled it off in this piece, but it was a fun attempt.
 
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