In a recent article, I gave my opinion about Native Instruments Komplete 9 package. In this article I’m going to share my thoughts on the suite of products offered by East West Quantum Leap. While these can be purchased together in the Complete Composers Collection, they are, for the most part, all separate products and can be purchased individually just as the products in Komplete 9 can be as well.
As is true of the Native Instruments suite of products, EWQL has just about everything covered. But their real specialty, in my opinion, is the orchestral stuff. You would be hard pressed to find better. So let’s start there.
You have individual products and various grades for each product ranging from Silver to Gold to Platinum to Diamond. Yeah, it gets a little crazy and personally, I think this is a money making scheme. Yes, there is a difference between each package but I’m not sure those differences warrant four different products for each one. I think two would have been sufficient. But hey, it’s business and I guess they know what they’re doing. Anyway, that’s my only complaint about their products. The Native Instruments products don’t mess around with that nonsense.
But what about the sounds? I guess that’s what’s really important in the grand scheme of things? Well, if you want what I would call passable sounds for your orchestral scores, you want to at least go with their gold packages. The Silver just don’t cut it as far as articulations go. The biggest difference between gold and platinum are the mic positions. You don’t get the full suite with the gold packages and that is a bit of a problem if you need the close mic position. If not, you’ll be fine.
East West gives you the following main packages
Hollywood Strings
Hollywood Brass
Hollywood Orchestral Woodwinds
Symphonic Orchestra
Symphonic Choirs
Of the five packages, the oldest is the symphonic orchestra package. The string, brass and woodwind sounds are not as good quality wise as the Hollywood packages. But it’s an inexpensive solution to getting everything. Plus, it comes with percussion and cymbals that you can’t get anywhere else. So if you need things like Timpani, Cymbals and even a harp, then this package is a must have. The sounds are more than the serviceable if not top notch.
As far as the Hollywood sounds, they are all excellent. The Brass and Strings I feel are a notch above the woodwinds but not by much. The articulations that comes with these sounds are staggering in number. And that may be one of the few “problems” with these packages.
Let me explain.
If you’re not familiar with the various play styles of each instrument, especially the strings, you will have a difficult time picking the proper articulation for your project. Some of them have very subtle differences.
For example, let’s take the Hollywood Strings package.
You have 3 different articulations for the basic strings. They are all different round robins. The first one is NV, NV, NV, VB where NV stands for non vibrato and VB stands for vibrato. The second one is NV, NV, VB, VB. The third one is NV, NV, VB, MV where MV stands for molto vibrato. The differences between these three patches are subtle but noticeable.
And then of course you have Marcato, Pizzicato, Staccato, and so on. A solid knowledge of scoring for strings will help a lot if you’re going to, first of all, pick the right articulation and ultimately make the best use of it.
In short, if you take the time to really go through the package and play with all the articulations, you’ll get a pretty good feel for how to use them in a production. The realism, when used correctly, is scary good.
And this carries over to the brass and woodwinds as well. All these packages really capture the sound of a symphonic orchestra.
Obviously, a package this in depth is going to have a huge learning curve, and it does. So if you’re looking for something that you can just take out of the box and start playing with, you probably want to look elsewhere unless true realism isn’t what you’re after. Yes, the sounds are great. But it’s how you use them that really determine whether or not your music is going to sound like a real symphony orchestra. That just doesn’t happen out of the box and not without some degree of scoring chops.
As for the other EWQL products, they are a lot more forgiving.
If you’re looking for an all around package to cover the full range of musical genres, then you will want to pick up Goliath. While this doesn’t specialize in any one area, it does contain sounds for rock, pop, orchestral and even world music. It comes with a pretty decent grand piano too. If money is tight and you need to cover multiple genres, pick up Goliath. You won’t be sorry. The sounds are good. Not off the charts great like the Hollywood series, but good. With some processing and good composition skills, this package can pull off some great sounding demos and even finished products.
If world music is high on your priority list, you will want to pick up the RA and Silk packages. They have a number of regions covered especially China and India. The sounds are crystal clear and very authentic sounding. These instruments are recorded with the same great technology that the Hollywood series is recorded with. Yes, all instruments are real samples. There are no synthesized sounds. Even the synth sounds of Goliath are sampled from the actual real synthesizers.
For some killer hard rock and even pop rock sounds, there is Ministry Of Rock 2, which is essentially bass, drums and guitars. These all sound amazing.
If you need some good sounding pianos, the Pianos package is good. Not great, but good. I think the pianos are a little dead sounding compared to some other pianos. But with a little EQ and processing they sound much better. If you get Goliath, it’s probably the one package you can do without.
You absolutely want to check out the Symphonic Choirs if you need choir background vocals. I could write a whole article on this package alone. It needs to be heard to be believed. Yes, it’s that good. And the Word Builder puts it over the top.
Finally, Voices Of Passion is a neat little package with vocals from around the world. It’s really kind of a niche thing and you probably won’t use it as much as the other packages. But if you need the effects, it’s worth the price.
It goes without saying that all of the above products take some study to use to their potential. But I can’t say enough about them. I’d be totally lost without these VSTs. I use them for all my orchestral and classical stuff and even some rock. Oh, by the way, if you want to recreate the Beatles sounds of the 60s, get their Fab Four package. It’s probably the most fun to use of all of them.
Bottom line: This is great stuff. You won’t be sorry. I recommend getting the Complete Composers Collection. That way you save a crap ton of money buying all these things separately.
Well worth every penny.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim