AKAI.
THE LONDON CHOIRS

If you've ever worked with a large choir or listened to one, you know that,
with rare exceptions, part of the sound is often a liberal and possibly indiscriminate
use of vibrato. Now, vibrato is an essential part of a singer's tone and phrasing, and
it definitely has its place in ensembles as well as solo singing. But where samples are
concerned, having vibrato is almost as limiting as sampling a Hammond organ through a Leslie:
When you play more than one note, the vibrato rates will be out of sync, and you can never
get the vibrato to match your phrasing.

Which is why Spectrasonics traveled to England, a musical culture with a long tradition of
controlling and even eliminating vibrato when singing. All of the multisampled oo's, oh's,
ah's, ee's, mm's, and vowel combinations sound clear and intelligible, whether sung by full
choir, or men alone, or women alone, or whether piano, forte, or with crescendos and decrescendos.
Now, keep in mind that this is an 80-voice choir, but there's hardly a trace of vibrato in the bunch.
Combine this sonic purity with the beautifully blendable bunch of samples. I found all of the
multisampled patches on this disc to be very musical when I used them on polyphonic (that is,
contrapuntal) material. The gentle attacks made them less successful when I played in a block chord
style, but there are patches on the other discs that may help you if you need this kind of sound.
The crescendo/decrescendo patches are quite musical, but unfortunately you can not change the rate
of crescendo or decrescendo, since it is part of the performance. On the many patches, the mod wheel
is assigned to volume or dynamic crossfades, so you do have a ready-to-go alternative for controlling
dynamics.

On this disc, technical editor Mitch Gallagher noticed two of the very few audio blemishes to be found
anywhere in this set. "Some of the full-choir samples have an overtone ringing prominently," he points
out, "especially at higher velocities. It's annoying with single notes; when playing chords it's almost
offensive." While I, too, heard the harmonics, I felt that it was more in line with the overtones
produced when a group of singers are singing well in tune with each other.

And if you really do need that vibrato texture, there are two such programs, one with light vibrato,
the other with heavy vibrato. The whistling and staccato patches are great, too - imagine, 80 people
whistling the same pitch! What a cool sound.

Download File Size:466.71 MB

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