New Software Review: Eric Whitacre Choir by Spitfire Audio
The Eric Whitacre Choir marks Spitfire Audio’s first foray into sampling the human voice—is it the right choir library for you?
Spitfire Audio has become one of the industry’s leading creators of sample-based virtual instruments. You have heard their sounds in countless movies, television shows, video games, and on the radio. They’ve tackled numerous sound sources that include huge symphonic orchestras, swarms of mandolin players, flute consortiums, cinematic pianos, and one of my personal favorites, a massive collection of pitched glassware (with and without water).
Over the past two decades, there’s little Spitfire hasn’t dared to touch. There is, however, one notable exception: the human voice. In 2015 when I asked Christian Henson, Spitfire’s co-founder, about a recommendation for a choral library, he responded with a single sentence, “They all leave something to be desired.”
Three years later in 2018, Spitfire joined the ranks with the Eric Whitacre Choir. Given the opportunity to both review the product as well as speak with Spitfire Audio co-founder, Paul Thomson, I was excited to dig deeper and see what this exciting new collection was all about.
A Deeper Look
Before diving into the details of the Whitacre Choir, it’s important to note that part of the challenge in creating a choir library is just how dynamic and variable the human voice can be. It’s extremely difficult to capture the intricate elements of a choir, or that of a choir’s individual sections. The various ways the human voice can be manipulated when singing different notes or connecting different notes all add to the complexity of creating a playable instrument that still feels organic and natural.
Of Spitfire finally deciding to take on this challenge, Thomson notes, “A lot of the time there are two things that drive us —one is to make a better tool for doing something, and the second is to create something that has never existed before. In [the] Eric Whitacre Choir, we were able to achieve both of these ambitions: the singers are the key to the sound and clarity being better than any other choir we’ve used, and Eric’s creativity and ingenuity that won him a GRAMMY among many other plaudits. [These are] the key[s] to doing something genuinely new; a lot of these sounds and articulations have simply never been recorded before.”
An instrument. This is an important word in what the Whitacre Choir aims to be. Spitfire states very clearly in their release video that the Whitacre Choir is not meant to replace a live choir, but rather to provide new tools to our creative palettes. The team at Spitfire decided that there is no point in recording words or syllables with the intention of creating a sung lyric. It’s the phrasing that makes choral music effective, and if you remove that from the equation, you’re left with just an oddly random collection of notes. So while many choir libraries have tried (and often struggled) to incorporate language into their instruments, Spitfire instead opted to focus on the sounds and textures of the human voice. With the Whitacre Choir, they’ve zeroed in on creating a new “section of the orchestra.”
In Paul’s own words, “Choir is so much more than just latin phrases, ‘epic shouts’ and plainchant. The textures and colors that Eric is able to create with his incredible group of singers are a huge expansion in the ability to create emotion in your music. That was our primary drive in creating this library.”
The choir was meticulously recorded with Eric Whitacre limiting the sessions to only two hour blocks, so that none of the singers experienced any vocal fatigue during the recordings. When your performer is also the instrument, it’s critical that they are kept comfortable and able to perform.
Features
Renowned for his choral work and his “Virtual Choir” project, Spitfire appointed Whitacre to supply the vocalists and conduct the choir for this ambitious project. The product is actually made up of two distinct plugins. The first consists of the choir’s “normal” techniques, including long notes, short notes, humming, and various vowel sounds. The second plugin is the Evo Grid version, which contains a variety of evolving, long, drone-like tones.
The choir weighs in at 279GB (uncompressed) and is comprised of 22 singers performing 170 unique techniques, with 111 distinct evolutions. The choir consists of 6 sopranos, 5 altos, 5 tenors, and 6 basses. They were recorded in the legendary Lyndhurst Hall at Air Studios in London. A wide array of microphone placements were used to capture the choir, which allows you to mix and blend the sound between close, decca tree, ambient, wide outriggers, mid stage, and distant gallery mics. This provides a great deal of control over how you can place your choir in your mix.
Both plugins are housed in a sleek and stylistic interface that’s easy to use and wonderfully efficient. While a vast majority of Spitfire’s instruments are hosted in Kontakt, the two Whitacre instruments are standalone plugins that break out of the traditional Kontakt format.
While discussing the benefits of creating a standalone instrument, Thomson remarks, “We’ve been working on the technology that powers this plugin and our Hans Zimmer Strings plugin for four years now. The huge pro is that we have control over every aspect of it, and can refine the code until it elegantly does everything we need it to—and no more—no need for extraneous code that is of no use to the product. This makes [for] a very lean codebase. We [also] worked for 6 months with the Design and User Experience agency UsTwo (creators of the incredible Monument Valley iOS app among other successes) with regular groups of user testing from all walks of musical life, to create an intuitive, beautiful, and creative plugin interface that solves all of our team’s gripes with commercially available solutions.”
Whitacre Choir Plugin
Inside the Whitacre Choir plugin, the choir is divided into 5 main sections, which are further split into various sub-categories of performance styles. The 5 core sections are Tutti (the entire choir), Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass. This allows you to work with the individual sections for more distinct SATB arrangements and counterpoint compositions, while also giving you the option of working with the entire choir as a whole.
With this library, Whitacre and Spitfire focused intently on capturing the unique sounds and textures of the human voice as opposed to a language-based approach.
After selecting a section or the entire choir, the patches are divided into categories of performance techniques that include various combinations, such as all long notes, all short notes, all rhythmic techniques, and all legato. Individual vowel techniques are also available, including all “Ahhs,” “Ohhs,” and “Hmms.” This helps limit how much RAM you’re using by leaving out performance techniques that you don’t need. Of course, you can also select “All in one” and load the entire catalog of techniques, if you so desire.
Once a patch is selected, you can choose which technique is being performed by clicking it with the mouse, or with programmable key switches which are set to the C-2 octave by default. A group of 13 faders allows you to engage and mix each microphone placement. Additionally, faders for each section (only used on multi-section patches), provide volume control of the close-miking of each section. Along with all of the mic signals, there are three stylistic stereo mixes that can be used to reduce the substantial memory requirements of a single patch. This is helpful because every mic you add to the signal also increases the amount of voices, and thusly memory used. All of these faders can control the patch as a whole, or a single performance technique inside that patch.
There’s a simple but lush sounding reverb that can be added to the signal as well. On an FX page, you are given control over Expression, Dynamics, Vibrato, Release Trigger, Tightness, and the patch’s reverb. Tightness effects the “togetherness” of the short note patches, and Release effects how the choir releases long notes. Additional sampler functions like control over the round robins, voice layering, and tuning are also included. Consistent with all of Spitfire’s instruments, you control the dynamics of the performance with the mod wheel, however, this can be changed to any MIDI CC you prefer.
Whitacre Evo Grid Plugin
The second plugin included in the Eric Whitacre Choir is the Evo Grid. The Evo Grid is a concept that Spitfire developed for composers to work with long sustained notes in a way that keeps them sounding both natural and also interesting. Instead of a sample droning on infinitely, the Evo Grid consists of distinct performances of long notes that have some form of evolution to them over time. These variances can be subtle like a unique vibrato or dynamic change as the note extends, or something more dramatic like microtonal pitch changes between singers or bursts of vowel changes.
The Grid, much like a virtual “peg board,” is divided horizontally by 9 note groupings each consisting of 6 notes on the keyboard, and vertically by the 51 distinct evolutions. You can then place a “peg” in each note grouping’s column. This means that as you play various notes or chords across the keyboard, you can have countless combinations of evolutions happening at the same time, or have multiple groups play the same evolution. Each technique has its own volume control and panning placement.
Like the Whitacre Choir plugin, the Evo Grid choir is divided into individual sections and a full choir option. The performances are also divided into groups that include dynamic evolutions, episodic evolutions, clashing evolutions, and more. You can use a randomizing feature that will select techniques across the entire spectrum or within a single stylistic grouping. Every time you scramble it, you get a distinct and new sounding patch!
All the same mic placements as the Whitacre Choir plugin are available here to create the perfect tonal mix. Unique to the Evo Grid plugin is a very useful ADSR envelope for the main amp output, and two additions to the reverb found in Whitacre Choir: a delay module that ranges from .01ms to 2.9s, and a tape saturation with HF roll-off and warmth control to add more options for processing the long sustained notes.
In Use
Both the sonic qualities and playability of the two Whitacre plugins are undeniable. Spitfire has created a unique and beautiful instrument that brings out the lush textures a choir can impart on a piece of music. The legato patches allow for easy creation of quick 4-part compositions, and great care was clearly taken in how the individual notes connect to each other.
The vocal melisma (how a singer connects a single syllable across multiple notes) is completely natural and fluid. The Tutti patches allow for quick choral parts painted with a wide brush stroke, while the individual patches allow for precise control over how the choir is performing your arrangement.
The almost absurd amount of mics provided allows for a choir that can feel both distant and haunting or bright and clear. The dynamic range of each technique is remarkable, and it never feels like you are simply riding a volume knob. There is a distinct characteristic shift as the dynamics are increased, which is especially noticeable on the humming patches—a personal favorite of mine. The seamless switch between vowel sounds is so fluid and provides easy control over the techniques you’re using. I found it most useful to have a second keyboard or surface within reach to control the key switches, so I didn’t have to shift the keyboard’s octaves while composing.
All that said, the Whitacre Evo Grid might be the true gem. The unique (and countless) combinations of techniques spread over the keyboard led to some of the most interesting and wonderful choral patches I have ever heard. The ability to “shake it up” and see what you end up with creates such an engaging workflow, and when you get something you like, it’s easy to adjust the individual techniques associated with a given range to even further suit your needs.
It’s exciting to simply play any chord and just listen to how it evolves over time. The Grid imparts smooth voice leading to your performances as the harmonies continue to evolve and play off each other. It’s easy to get lost inside the Grid as you experiment with the sonic textures that arise from each unique combination.
Both instruments, while geared more towards the scoring world, can easily find their way into any genre of music. Because the same space was used for Spitfire’s other libraries, the Whitacre Choir plugins fit in effortlessly with Spitfire’s various brass, string, or symphonic offerings. The patches also sound great in Electronic and Pop music. I found blending them with pads from other synths added a wonderful depth to the initial tone, and you can even create some intense pulsing or stuttering gated-rhythmic ideas by using an expander and keying the choir from an external source.
To Be Critical
The Whitacre Choir is an unquestionably great sounding instrument that leaves very little to criticize. The patches sound fantastic, the level of control is massive, and the detail that was taken in creating this instrument marks a strong launching point for Spitfire to enter the world of vocal-based virtual instruments.
It’s important to be continually mindful of CPU usage as the library is large, and every mic placement enabled can tax your RAM substantially. Printing or freezing each part once you’ve got it down can help alleviate this issue. Using the pre-mixed stereo options are also helpful in reducing excessive memory use.
The ability to create user presets that include just the techniques you’d like within a patch would be a welcome addition. Because you can’t turn an individual technique off, or unload it from memory, any techniques inside a patch that you aren’t utilizing are needlessly taxing your CPU. I hope this is something that’s addressed in future updates of the software.
Summing it Up
Spitfire Audio’s Eric Whitacre Choir is a sonically rich choral instrument that will provide an exceptional tool to both composers and producers alike. Priced at $599, it’s geared towards music professionals who are looking to expand their creative palette with the beautiful tones and textures of the human voice. The beautiful, sad, haunting, sometimes terrifying sounds that a group of professional singers can create in the hands of Eric Whitacre shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it’s truly a joy to have that at your fingertips.
As Spitfire’s first foray into the choral world, the Whitacre Choir is a fantastic accomplishment that certainly raises questions of what kind of innovations we might see from them in the future. Spitfire also has a deep history of taking their own samples and creating new and interesting sounds from the original organic sources. When I asked Paul Thomson if they had any plans to further develop the sounds they captured here, he simply replied, “All I’ll say is.. we love mangling things!”
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[…] Spitfire Audio has become one of the industry’s leading creators of sample-based virtual instruments. You have heard their sounds in countless movies, television shows, video games, and on the radio. They’ve tackled numerous sound sources that include huge symphonic orchestras, swarms of mandolin players, flute consortiums, cinematic pianos, and one Read more… […]