Realitone Sunset Choir

The Mix setting lets you control spread and pan. The Reverb control allows you to go from absolutely dry to full cathedral.

Realitone’s Sunset Choir is an absolute tour de force.

California‑based Realitone have expanded their catalogue of vocal libraries with Sunset Choir, their largest choral ensemble yet. Recorded at United Recording’s Studio A, on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, the library captures the sound of 10 male and 10 female ensembles (recorded separately), along with up to six soloists performing vowels and consonants across a wide range of articulations. The library is available in two editions: Ultimate and the more condensed Lite, both built around Realitone’s Sunset Engine, seen previously in their Sunset Strings offering.

Layer & Blend

The powerful engine allows fuss‑free blending of two sample layers, with the option to add independent attack and release variations, leading to multitudes of combinations made possible by changing any one single element. The Top and Bottom Layers contain the same list of articulations, ready to be used individually or paired in any combination of your choice. There’s not much by way of restriction except that you can’t load two identical samples in the two layers at the same time.

The articulations cover choir staples like sustains and legatos — for expressive swells and smooth connected passages — and elements that add movement and texture like repetitions and atonal soundscapes. The sustains are divided into four subcategories: Standard, Extended, Evolves and Atonal. Standard contains dynamic and vibrato variations; Extended features trills, tremolo, murmurs and pitch drift; Evolves transitions between vowel sounds; and Atonal taps into the potential of the human voice as an instrument of disquiet with sirens and three flavours of chatter.

Legato comes in three categories: True, Scripted and Polyphonic, all customisable using a vowel sound of your choice. True Legato features real interval samples and is triggered by playing overlapping notes. Polyphonic also uses real transition samples, triggered when you release notes and play new notes within the time set by the Release Window knob. I imagine this legato will get a lot of use because it instantly delivers that lush choral sound at the press of a key: you play a chord, release a few (or all) notes, and play multiple new notes; it’s immediately smooth, rich and emotional. The legatos are clean and play without glitching, so you can write harmonies with ease and create a full sound without too much under‑the‑hood programming. Both True and Polyphonic Legato allow adjustment of the transition length in the mp and forte patches with a Legato Offset knob, speeding up or slowing down the transition to your taste. For much slower legatos, just choose the dedicated Slow/Very Slow Legato patch. Scripted Legato, according to the literature, “fakes the transitions between notes [to] allow for legato‑style playing on articulations that don’t include real transitions”.

Expression control can be assigned either to CC11 or the mod wheel by clicking on the button next to the Expression parameter. When set to mod wheel, adjust the strength knob on the right to set the range of expression, with middle placement working best for a smooth soft‑to‑loud dynamic.

Layer blends can be controlled in three ways by the mod wheel: Crossfade, where the Bottom Layer fades into the Top Layer; option two, where the Top Layer fades in and out while the Bottom Layer stays consistent; and a third setting where both the Top and Bottom Layers remain at equal volume.

Attack & Release

While the articulations listed above are expressive and versatile, the fun really starts when you begin incorporating the library’s myriad attack and release samples into the mix. The architecture of the attack and release samples features more than just basic envelope shaping. Sunset Choir features 95 variations for attack samples and 105 variations for release samples across five categories — Standard, Quick Bends, Slow Bends, Consonants (common to both attack and release), plus Converge (for attack), and Scatter (for release).

Volume, Pitch, Attack and/or Release for each layer can be independently controlled.

It may seem obvious, but it’s still striking to hear how simply modifying the attack and/or release sample alters the feel of the main sample layers significantly. Explosive attacks like the evocatively‑named Jungle Accent instantly make things feel percussive; Grace Note Up adds motion and colour; a scattered release takes a beautiful, unified choral sound and scatters the voices as they fade, adding movement and, depending on your arrangement, a sense of unease to the piece — perfect for horror scores.

Rhythm & Repetition

While soaring, emotional passages are what choirs naturally lend themselves to, Sunset Choir also offers tools for rhythmic vocal support in the Shorts, Rhythmic and Repetition categories. Vocables like the ensemble and solo Bop, Dum, Dee, Doot; whispered Tickitahs and Chickitahs; and sequences of Nananahs, Wananahs and Dabadahs add texture, rhythm and, if you so desire, a playfulness, expanding the scope of the library to styles like bebop and contemporary a capella pop. In the Rhythmic section, you can modify existing rhythms or create entirely new patterns instantly using the 16‑step sequencer style grid found below the sample name.

Combine sounds from this section with Consonants from the Attack and Release menus and you could almost build words, even though Sunset Choir doesn’t expressly offer word‑building features. Again, there’s a playfulness to this that the library excels at. It was incredibly easy to create the word ‘booze’, for example, by layering the following — Attack: Consonant B on an Oo sound; Top Layer: Short Swell; Release: Consonant S, again on an Oo sound. Where could this possibly fit? In a country song, of course! A glorious harmony of voices for a song about the genre’s oft‑referenced main character — whiskey.

Also on offer are operatic bursts, plaintive wails, stomp clap hits, and, of all things, phrases from Shakespeare, which could be great fun when layered into the background, giving your piece a sense of mystery or an Easter egg quality to it, if you like that sort of thing.

There are other, less unserious combinations you can put together to create fresh sonic textures: for example, an ‘Eaow’ from the Repetition section combined with a natural breathy release evokes a drone‑like string instrument of some sort. The library provides you with tools to be as serious or whimsical as you like, which may not be technically relevant but certainly feeds the creative spirit.

Range Finder

The playable ranges for the male and female ensembles are more compact than some other libraries but for modern film and pop compositions, it should do just fine. The natural recorded range for men is C1‑G3, and for women, F2‑A4, both of which can be extended, giving you stretched ranges of C1‑C4 for men, and C2‑C5 for the female ensemble. There are no dedicated SATB patches but you could create your own using multiple instances of the instrument.

A useful setting is the Range Crossfade parameter, found to the right of the keyboard that displays the playable ranges of the male and female ensembles. When enabled, it sets up a subtle crossfade in the section where the two ensembles overlap, making for a smoother transition as you play across the range. It’s one more feature that ensures that there are fewer elements to tackle at the mixing stage. Also useful are the separate volume controls for men and women, allowing you to custom blend the voices for your arrangement.

You can create up to six user presets that are then automatically mapped to corresponding keyswitches indicated by yellow keys on the keyboard, allowing you to switch between articulations with ease as you play.

Sound & Playability

A word about mic positions: the default is a Mixed mic position, combining the various mics used during the recording. The mix is good enough that this will work perfectly for most users. If you do want more control, you’ll find it in the Sunset Choir Ultimate — Mics nki, where you can adjust the Close and Far mics to your liking. This version takes up 113GB when installed, but if you have no need for individual mic positions, you can just as easily delete the nkx/nkc files to save on disk space.

Right out of the box, the library works wonderfully with arrangements across a variety of musical genres. While testing, I created vocal parts to fit existing orchestral, rock, pop, country and even electronica pieces. Aside from minor volume adjustments, the sounds from Sunset Choir fit right in with all the songs in terms of texture and tone. I tried a variety of patches under several tracks and the difference in feel with the choir parts versus without was staggering. Keep in mind, these are songs mastered for commercial release with arrangements that are already locked in, and yet the choir parts fit right in and enhanced the song in every instance. I’m afraid there could be a danger of wanting to add choir parts from this library to all your music when you hear how much of a lift even a single held chord gives.

Playing along to existing pieces really shaped my understanding of how this library could be used. When testing the library standalone, I built elaborate layers and created passages with multiple melodic and rhythmic movements. When playing along to an existing song, however, I ended up doing very little to accompany the track. In both cases, the library added value to the piece, which leads me to surmise that it’s definitely not a one‑trick pony and can be a useful tool for composers working in varied genres and at various skill levels as well.

The sound is gorgeous out of the box, it blends well with other instruments even in complex arrangements, and is suitable for a variety of genres.

Conclusion

Sunset Choir is an impeccably‑crafted library that is a delight to play. The sound is gorgeous out of the box, it blends well with other instruments even in complex arrangements, and is suitable for a variety of genres. The learning curve is simple and the well‑designed UI has all the controls on the main page itself, letting you quickly and easily shape your sound, audition samples, and make adjustments without losing creative momentum.

The variety of the samples on offer lets you create grounded, real‑world choral pieces and experimental otherworldly arrangements through creative sample selection and layering within the library itself.