Symphonic Manoeuvres | Recording Magazine

Big Fish Audio's Symphonic Manoeuvres is an audio loop library showcasing recordings of thirty orchestral pieces in the style of contemporary film scores. Installation is easy: simply drag and drop the files you want onto your computer.


Format breakdown

The 24-bit, 44.1 kHz samples are provided in three formats: WAV, AIFF Apple Loop, and REX2. All 489 of the loop samples are available in the WAV and Apple Loop formats, but as the manual states, "none of the orchestral files were suitable for REX files." Consequently only the 234 auxiliary-instrument loops are available in REX format.

On your hard drive, the files will occupy 2.37 GB of space if you transfer either the WAV or Apple Loop files, or a mere 363.1 MB if you transfer only the REX files. However, keep in mind that if you are working with the REX files but also want to use the non-REX orchestra loops, you will need to pick and choose what you want from the other folders.

A demo version of Ableton Live 5.0.2 is also included. (The included Mac version is not a Universal Binary application.)


Organization

The content is separated first into folders by file format, so if you want to work with Apple Loops, you simply copy the Apple Loop folder from each DVD to your computer. Within these folders are subfolders for each song, clearly labeled with the info you need to know - the folder labeled "26 120 E Cornered (3-4)" indicates that "Cornered" is the twenty-sixth song, the tempo is 120 BPM, the key center is E, and the meter is 3/4.

Within each song folder, the audio files are clearly labeled as well: "06 congas intro.aif" is the opening figure of the sixth song's conga drum part. This is followed by "06 congas-a.aif" and so on, allowing you to quickly identify the initial linear context of your source files even after you've dropped them into a new context.


In use

There are fifteen tempi used on Symphonic Manoeuvres, ranging broadly from 65 to 190 BPM, with the majority falling between 90 and 135. Ten key centers are represented, the most popular tonics being C, E, and G. While all of this variety is indeed excellent from the standpoint of versatility, it also means that combining loops from a variety of songs will inevitably require more stretching and transposition than is needed for, say, dance loop collections that cling to BPMs between 120 and 130.

Though the increased potential for manipulation artifacts is quite reasonable given the admirable focus on diverse options, it becomes a bigger problem if you want to use calm passages within a fast tempo - almost every song has dramatic ostinati, and the few exceptions tend to have noticeably slower tempi.

Certainly its abundance of hard-driving, rhythmically propulsive material is where Symphonic Manoeuvres truly shines. Recorded in a large and pleasantly reverberant hall, the orchestra sounds clear, clean, and vibrant. As with any orchestral performance, there are momentary lapses of tuning and rhythmic unity - most notably in the brass section - but due to their brevity this arguably adds realism and character more than it detracts from the utility of the loops.

In most cases the traditional orchestral instruments are supported by appearances of electric guitar, bass, harp, synthesizer, drum set, and/or hand percussion. Each song is about a minute long, and many cinematic, rhythmically insistent moods are represented. The songs have been broken into "construction kits", meaning that the component fragments can be reordered, rearranged, and looped in various ways to form new structures. Auxiliary instruments are available as isolated layers.

Unfortunately, the orchestra was recorded as a whole rather than multitracked, and consequently has not been broken out into component layers. This is certainly the biggest complaint I had with Symphonic Manoeuvres, as it leaves you stuck with fairly thick and active textures any time you use the orchestra. A few songs have no auxiliary instruments added, and thus no elements that can be broken out at all from the texture. The isolated harp loops are also flawed by easily audible bleed-through from the harpist's headphones. Luckily this is not the case with any other instruments.

While the above problems can be frustrating, my experience with the collection was overwhelmingly positive. It is surprisingly easy to use these loops to make exciting music appropriate for the next spy thriller, action blockbuster, or science fiction extravaganza.

I tested the long-term versatility of Symphonic Manoeuvres by recombining loops from more than half of the songs, rarely placing loops from the same song anywhere near each other. The results quickly won me over. The whole library is consistent enough that all the loops I tried sat well together, and there are many isolated orchestral hits and percussion flourishes to help hide the looping seams. Subtle motives reoccur across the songs, increasing the sense of unity. The more I rearranged the material, the more I was impressed with how well it all integrated - and how much the result conveys the energetic vibe of a big-budget adventure film score. You can hear an example of a song I constructed entirely with these loops on Recording's website, on the Downloads page.


Summary

While the construction kits would be far more versatile had the orchestral instruments been recorded in smaller groups, Symphonic Manoeuvres nonetheless delivers an array of cinematic, ostinato-driven orchestral loops that complement each other even when drastically recombined.

Given the low price of this set and the propulsive power of the arrangements, Symphonic Manoeuvres is an ideal purchase for anyone in need of loops with the intensity of a Hollywood blockbuster.