Recorded in Seattle:

Seattle has long since become the recording center of the A-list video game/trailer soundtrack world. As it happens, the VOXOS sessions were recorded following Bungee’s Halo Reach sessions and proceeding Blizzard’s monumental World of Warcraft; Cataclysm. The musicians involved in this project are constantly participating in such high profile acts as these. In fact, some of our men sang on the famous Gregorian-style intro to the original Halo videogame for XBOX. Bastyr’s main stage chapel offers one of the highest quality recording venues in the country. Its unique acoustic signature is akin to Symphony Hall in Boston and the retired Paramount Scoring Stage in Los Angeles. An extremely flattering hall for vocalists and instrumentalists – contributing to the familiar Hollywood style reverb bed without the tasteless metallic tinge and never ending ring- out that the majority of cathedral’s give. Combine that with the highest end recording gear available and the table is set for excellence.

Children’s Choir/Boy Soloist:

To really get an accurate representation of Los Angeles style soundtrack choirs, we had to include a boys children’s choir and soloist. The 15-piece boys choir covers roughly the range of the Altos transposed up by a major third. Our solo boy was captured from C3 to A4. With an amazingly transforming tambre – the purest sound imaginable in his soprano and a charming inward sound in his lowest third. These children possessed amazingly mature musical discipline, excepting guidance from the booth and their choir master in the same professional manner as the other sections. This was quite an achievement considering that they were all under 12 years of age.

We were amazingly fortunate to have children who have sang on a wide variety of soundtracks themselves, they needed no explanation about wearing headphones or being still while the tape is running. They were true professionals of the scoring stage.

Hand Sculpted Scripted (true) Legato:

As one of our trusted colleagues once stated: “There are no shortcuts when it comes to legato.” Our true sectional legato covers the full ranges of the Sopranos, Altos, Tenors, Basses, Boys and Soloists. After much trial and error, we were able to formulate a recipe for recording legatos in the most musical and accurate manner possible. It may not be evident while playing the patches how many samples you are triggering back and forth but it is mind blowing when you stop and look at the audio files involved in one patch, at one microphone position. On the surface things seem simple, but much is going on under-the-hood.

During programming all 35,000 samples and transitions are meticulously tightened by hand. This process takes fresh ears and cannot be rushed or automated. The charming human inaccuracies which give live performances vibe and soul also cause issues when aligning samples during programming. We have, without exaggeration, been tweaking the legatos for over six months – still making final tweaks the moments before delivering to Native Instruments for encoding. It needs to be perfect or its not going out the shop door.

The Voice Leading Legato Engine – Live SATB representations from one midi track

They call it voice leading for a reason. From day one, composers of all styles are taught the value and importance of proper voicings. It all begins with SATB, the notable 4 part chorale diagrams in music textbooks all over the world. It is the basis of all chorale writing, the foundation of jazz ensemble writing – the glue of all composing. It was something we had to address, and address from the point of view of a composer under the anxiety of an approaching deadline.

The included SATB Voice Leading Engine can take incoming midi data sent from a piano track and assign the proper notes to each section automatically. Resulting in properly voiced chords with full legato from one track. No settings, its all intelligently scripted and prepared. This is a monumental time saver.