Big Fish Audio | Virtual Instruments Magazine Chris Meyer | Symphonic Manoeuvres Product Review
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Symphonic Manoeuvres | Virtual Instruments Magazine

Reviewer: Chris Meyer Back to Symphonic Manoeuvres product details

Big Fish has done a surprisingly good job at adapting their normal popular music construction kit template to this longer orchestral format. The two DVDs composed by Stephan Sechi and Kostas Varotsis contain 15 kits each with folders named by theme, tempo, and key, repeated in WAV, AIFF (Apple Loop), and REX2 formats.
Inside you will find a minute-long demo mix of the elements, and then the components used to construct it. This usually includes several mixed orchestral phrases as well as the percussion phrases, plus any additional main instruments such as bass, synths, harps, and other lead instruments. Some also contain soloed percussion lines including cymbals, tablas, djembes, anvils, talking drums, and more as called for by the piece.
In addition to several typically 4-8 bar phrases of each main part for variation, there is often an intro and ending hit for the main components. Musical styles represented are heavy on the action/chase/confrontation and cinematic/mysterious/tension genres; the sound is full with strong brass and strings, plus the occasional exotic element.
I rarely need to score anything longer than a television show intro, but I often look for rhythm loops and thematic stings that are out of the ordinary - and on that front this collec•tion is a winner. The rhythm lines break out of the typical blues- or jazz-influenced veins most popular music is based on, and there are a trio of kits in non-4/4 time signatures (hurray!).
If you're one who buys your loops by the pound, this collection is also an exceptional value, holding the line at $99.95 for 2.37 gigs (per single format such as AIFF) of 24-bit 44.1kHz samples. Big Fish's license agreement is pretty standard: you can use it to create your own original pieces; you can’t use it stand-alone as a finished work or library.

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