It has been one year already and I would say that our company has had much luck and success. We are and have always been a small Bulgarian company (even though the entire production of a single library sometimes spreads out across the globe) and we started with nothing - just a few recordings that we made in 2012 in a Bulgarian hall in the middle of the night. It was not without issues and problems though - the moment we launched our website our server crashed and our company's bank account was blocked due to "suspicious activity" - as there were 33 transactions in one hour the day Storm Choir 1 came out!

One year later we have finished a few other products and we have successfully made an IndieGoGo campaign that helped to record Storm Choir 2! In all my honesty I can say that we should feel grateful and we thank you for your support! 

 

The extra funds that we received helped us record extra material - which we will give more details of in the near future. We had some of the best singers in Bulgaria who worked day after day to present the best results for the session. We were recording Storm Choir II in our newly renovated space, the Sofia Session Orchestra Hall, for more than ten days, in addition to pickup sessions where we recorded further material a short while later.

But just before we started the crowd funding campaign we knew that the next level to attain for Storm Choir would be to present more dynamic layers, more syllables and fluid true legato. Sampling voices is much different than sampling instruments, so we tested different techniques to see which one worked best - in both notation and performance. . This is a short excerpt from a pre-alpha women ah legato patch from a while back. We're certain the final legatos in Storm Choir II will be fun to play.

 

We didn't make it to our initial Storm Choir 2 timeline (December 5, 2013) but to assure you - our post-production continues and we aim to release it modularly over the first several months of 2014. The first module is wrapping up currently while the others are in progress. The original plan was to release one big library, but the decision to release modularly means that you'll be able to get your hands on the content sooner and kick off 2014 with the beginning of the Storm Choir II journey.

In 2013 we also had the great pleasure of having new and enthusiastic team members - people like David Healey, Henri Vartio (who was with us from the beginning), Michael Morone, Lyubomir Iliev, Elan Hickler and others. Casey Edwards came to us with his unique vision for aleatoric samples which resulted in AMS: Low Brass - the first part of the series, which provide unique control over the FX. Good news is that we finished recording of AMS: Horns, so this is what will come soon too.

And to finish 2013 and begin 2014, we put together a sequel of "Thunder" (in case you are wondering what that picture above is) - and this time it is large drums, played in Sofia Session Orchestra Hall. We plan on recording all our future libraries there because it is a very dry and present hall that can offer lots of post-production options. 

A big thank you goes to Dimiter Dimitrov and Boris Penev from Primal Consultancy about their amazing work on our new website - and especially to Dimiter, who was patient enough to constantly support us this one year! 

Kindest regards and best wishes for the new year,
George