Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars
If your music composition involves genres that span the fantasy, medieval, Celtic or otherworldly, then you will undoubtedly be familiar with Zero‑G’s various Ethera and Element series of Kontakt‑based sample libraries. The latest addition to this collection is Ethera Gold Odyssey, a further collaboration between Zero‑G, Xfonic and Stefano Maccarelli. While all of the current titles are designed to work within this musical world, each has its own theme and the tagline for Odyssey— Angelic Voices — provides a pretty accurate description of what this latest Ethera title provides.
The vocals for this stage of the Ethera’s journey are provided courtesy of soprano Sarah Claudia Mueller and, if the extensive sampling conducted for Odyssey is any indication (the library runs to just over 8GB), then she has a truly wonderful voice. On the technical front, the full version of Kontakt (6.8 or later) is required. Once installed, the 27 multisampled instruments fall into four main groups; true legato, vocal phrases, polyphonic syllables builder and texture designer.
In terms of the sampling technology (and, I suspect, the bulk of the sample content), the true stars of the show are the two true legato instruments; Angelic True Legato and Odyssey True Legato.
The Angelic option provides a lighter (yup, angelic!) vocal style with just a hint of breathiness to the voice. On the surface, this is a very straightforward instrument featuring two articulations based upon ‘ah’ and ‘uh’ vowel sounds, with keyswitching available between them. However, it only takes about half a dozen key presses to realise just how beautiful these samples can sound; this is pretty heavenly stuff.
As with other Ethera titles, Odyssey provides an impressive set of vocal phrases. In this case, they are housed in a single preset, with keyswitches to move between groups of phrases and an additional key range that contains vocal drones. Again, the scripting provides some useful performance options including sync to host tempo and a legato option that allows you to effectively join parts of separate phrases together. I’m not sure what the total phrase count is but it must run into the hundreds. They are instantly gratifying and sound fabulous.
Actual angels who do vocal session work are hard to come by but Sara Mueller — via Ethera Gold Odyssey — can get you wonderfully close.
If you are an existing Ethera user, you will have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Odyssey. Yes, this is a sample library series with a very particular musical theme, but for any composer looking to add some atmospheric vocal parts to their fantasy‑inspired film, TV or video game scores, all the Ethera titles are a great source of inspiration. Actual angels who do vocal session work are hard to come by but Sara Mueller — via Ethera Gold Odyssey — can get you wonderfully close.