Orchestral Tools Low End Orchestra

The well‑travelled Berlin sample hunters go off the deep end with a collection of bass‑heavy ensembles.

Orchestral Tools have literally come a long way since the 22‑year‑old composer Hendrik Schwarzer flew to the former Soviet city of Minsk to record 50 string players for his inaugural Orchestral String Runs library (see SOS September 2011). 15 years on, this independent German company continue to rack up the air miles, dispatching a team to LA to sample a Steinway piano, hopping over to Estonia to nab a chamber choir, and setting up camp in London’s AIR Studios to record their excellent Beaufort cinematic brass collection.

OT’s latest adventure sees them return to AIR’s Lyndhurst Hall to capture the sumptuous low‑pitched sounds that enrich orchestral scores, including two instruments which as far as I know have never been sampled. Requiring 165GB of disk space once installed, Low End Orchestra works exclusively with Orchestral Tools’ Sine Player, a free, 64‑bit plug‑in and standalone application for macOS and Windows.

Bass Intentions

Working from the initial concept of an orchestra consisting only of bass‑heavy instruments, OT’s creative team of Marc‑Till Till, Philipp von Hören and Alex Lamy developed a blueprint for a new orchestral seating plan and experimental articulations incorporating real‑life spatial motion. The library draws inspiration from unorthodox scores such as Jonny Greenwood’s Norwegian Wood and Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar, The Da Vinci Code and The Dark Knight.

So, the die was cast. Low‑end instrumentation: no violins, violas, trumpets, French horns, Bb clarinets, oboes, concert flutes or piccolos. New layout: strings arranged symmetrically, brass lined up across the whole room, low woodwinds seated in instrument families. Movement: performances that shift from side to side, forwards and backwards. How’s all that going to work? Pull on your wetsuits, strap on your breathing apparatus and join me as we plumb the bottomless depths of Orchestral Tools’ Low End Orchestra.

Low Strings

Right off the bat, LEO smashes traditional norms with 22‑ and 16‑player cello sections and a heavyweight ensemble of six cellos and 12 basses playing in octaves. A programmed Full Strings ensemble layers 16 cellos over the latter section, generating enough low‑end power to stir your heartstrings and rattle your subwoofers.

LEO’s symmetrical orchestral layout: a central triangle of six cellos positioned in front of 12 basses, flanked L‑R by eight cellos, eight low flutes, eight low clarinets and eight more cellos. Four contrabassoons line up behind the basses, with 10 low brass players arranged in a wide arc at the back.

Such large sections provide ample scope for spatial sound performances (identified by X, Y or XY prefixes in their names). Split into two widely spaced sections, the 16 cellos ‘X sul tasto — con sordino wave’ long notes shift restlessly from side to side like a drowsy giant bee in search of a flower, while the subtly overlapped crescendos of their ‘Y gravity sustains’ are a beautiful hovering stereo presence. In a less soothing vein, the nervy tremolos in the cellos’ ‘XY sul pont trem swells’ introduce a hint of menace.

Seated in a wide semicircle, the 22 cellists serve up more heady atmospheres: the sensitively played ‘XY desert shimmer’ conjures visions of mirages and heat hazes, ‘X glissando wave slow’ is a glacial layering of sustains and ghostly pitch swoops, and the lush, surging ‘X crescendo wave’ artics increase the drama. The action hots up with the cellos/basses ‘Y gravity waves’, featuring a tempo‑sync’ed 16th‑note pulse passed back and forth across the section in a musical Mexican wave.

OT also recorded a healthy...