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Strezov: why the weird syllables

bill5

Senior Member
Anyone else not getting it...in Essentials and Storm Choir (and I suspect others?), they insist on forcing these weird syllables on you vs common ooh and ahh (etc) sounds. If they offered that additionally, great, but ONLY that? ?? I was all set to buy Essentials till I saw that...
 
IMO when you're composing with nonsense syllables, it doesn't really matter what they are. As long as you have enough of them that you can vary it up, one syllable is pretty much as good as another. The Strezov choirs (Wotan, Frayja, and Arva, at least; not sure about Storm Choir) give you aahs as legatos, and with the syllables, you don't really need separately sampled oohs and aahs because you can set a start offset to clip off the samples' starting consonant to get a vowel sustain.

I expect the reason that recent choirs in general have focused more on syllables than on oohs and aahs is because the essence of choral music is text. And gibberish text sounds more convincing as choral music than constant vowel sustains. I'm inclined to regard this move away from ooh/aah sustains as progress, but your mileage may vary.
 
Yeah we'll agree to disagree. Not everyone is interested in composing with nonsense syllables. Again if it was an extra tossed in, fine, but omitting the basic sounds is IMO quite a step backward. It'd be like offering a new orchestral library...and omitting sustains.
 
Yeah we'll agree to disagree. Not everyone is interested in composing with nonsense syllables. Again if it was an extra tossed in, fine, but omitting the basic sounds is IMO quite a step backward. It'd be like offering a new orchestral library...and omitting sustains.
As @pmcrockett has said, I highly recommend playing around with what the engine allows you to do with these syllables, cutting into the syllables, crossfading etc. You can really get a lot of stuff out of it and it usually sounds good even if exposed.
 
Sorry if you were aware of this and only referring to the non-legato performance patches, but Choir Essentials does have legato “ahh” patches for all sections.
 
For epic action music, I think the nonsense syllables work better because you kind of want those hard consonants in staccato rather than just the ahs in legato. My biggest complaint is they don't use the same syllables consistently through the different choirs. Just sounds weird to me.
 
As @pmcrockett has said, I highly recommend playing around with what the engine allows you to do with these syllables, cutting into the syllables, crossfading etc. You can really get a lot of stuff out of it and it usually sounds good even if exposed.
But here we're talking about the full choirs, right? (Freyja, Wotan, Storm Choir)

I think the essentials don't offer that much tweakability and they don't have legato on the syllables either.
 
For epic action music, I think the nonsense syllables work better because you kind of want those hard consonants in staccato rather than just the ahs in legato. My biggest complaint is they don't use the same syllables consistently through the different choirs. Just sounds weird to me.
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. But last time I used both choirs together I just exported my syllables and tweaks from Freyja and imported them in Wotan. Out of the box it sounded close enough and when it's not super isolated, I think nobody would notice.
 
Sorry if you were aware of this and only referring to the non-legato performance patches, but Choir Essentials does have legato “ahh” patches for all sections.
My bad then, but it's still lacking other basics...and frankly I've no interest in mucking around tweaking/chopping sounds when it should be there right out of the box. It's just an odd thing to omit such basics IMO.
 
When we talk about the full Strezov choir libraries (i.e., not the Choir Essentials), I believe they just built them in a way so that the "Syllabuilder" patches are the main feature of the libraries. Wotan didn't even include Aah/Ooh/Mmm legato patches when released, they were only added in an update.

I also think that it's really easy to get vowel legatos from the Syllabuilder. You can use the sample offset to skip the beginning of the syllable and then use the legato on the vowel.
Relevant walkthrough parts are



and



This way, you can mix syllables with vowels without leaving the Syllabuilder patch... This is quite a clever solution in my opinion.

This is only for the full libraries though. In the Choir Essentials, you only get the Aah legatos and some syllables without legato and without tweakability (at least not in their Kontakt UI)... But then, it's an Essentials library and you get sounds from 4 libraries that would cost 9-10 times as much when purchased individually (outside of sales). However, if you want more vowel legato patches and don't care for the syllables, the Choir Essentials library is probably not the right choice for you.
 
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