New From Vienna: Synchron World Percussion

US Vienna Symphonic Library releases ethnic percussion library including 500+ MIDI loops 04/04/24

The Vienna Symphonic Library has released Synchron World Percussion, a collection of ethnic drums and percussion instruments, recorded in the large hall of Synchron Stage Vienna. They say that the all-new library not only offers percussion instruments from West Africa, the Middle East, and Brazil, but also invites music creators to delve deeper into each region's traditional rhythms with its comprehensive selection of over 500 MIDI loops. Here's the details direct from the company...

All drums and percussion instruments were recorded in the large hall of Synchron Stage Vienna and therefore blend seamlessly with all the other sampled instruments captured in this scoring stage. Users may choose between mixer presets "Close", "Classic", and "Ambience". What's more, the "Ensemble" mixer presets give the listener the feeling of standing in the middle of the percussion ensemble.

The musicians who played on Synchron World Percussion are themselves world-class, being highly sought both regionally and globally: Ibou Ba from Senegal, Hamidreza Ojaghi from the Kurdish region of Iran, and Luis Ribeiro from Brazil.

The Vienna team not only recorded a wide variety of single hit samples for this Collection, but also invited each musician to perform a variety of typical rhythms from their part of the world. The loops can be played and pre-auditioned in the Synchron Player's MIDI Loop Player, and from there dragged into the user's DAW, thus affording a measure of freedom regarding tempo, dynamics, length, and arrangement. Of course, the loops can be edited to taste and for the project at hand.

All the grooves share the common trait of being used originally for celebrations, be it in a spiritual way or for dancing. All of them come from long cultural traditions and are handed down from one generation to the next. They rarely get transcribed. And many are quite complex. For example, less than half of Persian grooves are in 2/4 or 4/4. There's even a traditional celebratory groove in 22/8, which was masterfully played by the outstanding Hamidreza Ojaghi.

The MIDI loops are not only available for each individual instrument, but also for entire ensembles, e.g., djembe, sabar, talking drums, doum doums, shekere, etc., all performing together a Senegalese festive groove. The ensembles are pre-configured groups in Vienna Ensemble projects and correspond to the MIDI loops that you can drag into your DAW. (Vienna Ensemble is the free mixing host that comes included with every Synchron Collection.)

In order to capture the performances in the large Stage A, Vienna's recording engineers used multiple high-end microphone arrays, affording an abundance of options for creating an individual sound. The Full Library features three different sets of close microphones with condenser, tube and dynamic mic options, a pair of mid mics, as well as the Decca tree with additional surround and high surround outriggers.

Pricing and Availability:

Currently available at an introductory price of €185 for the Standard Library (reg. €245), and €280 for the Full Library (reg. €380). The difference between the Standard Library and the Full Library is the number of available microphone positions.

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