ETHNOWORLD 3 - A Review

·Aug 12, 02:55 AM

REVIEW – ETHNOWORLD 3 COMPLETE produced by Marcel Barsotti and Best Service. 4 out of a Possible 5

Reviewed by: Gregory Chmara Sr.

I am an admitted human musical sound collecting freak (or devoté). I often enjoy listening as much (and sometimes more) than creating.

Here’s what I mean:

Once, while Copenhagen, I dropped everything to enjoy a musical saw and guitar duo appearing live in a doorway on the street where I was walking.

I was impressed with the precision of a balalaika orchestra I had heard in St. Petersburg, Russia, but it was a group of new balalaika enthusiasts with a couple of accordion players at a festival in Tucson, Arizona that got my feet and heart involved.

I have come to enjoy the rhythmic sounds of the Pascua Yaqui ankle bells made from dried nut shells as they perform the Deer Dance. I also have one of the few copies in Vinyl of “African Sanctus,” a mass that includes chants, calls and instruments from all of Africa.

The Hidden Gardens of Seoul, Korea close to everyone except women and musicians once a year. The musicians play for the women as they picnic and drink Makle, a mildly alcoholic beverage. I was privileged to demonstrate my alleged skills on a tambor-like drum while accompanying skilled Korean string players in traditional songs one of those days.

My musical journey started playing in acoustic folk groups in the 1960’s. We used live instruments such as the frettless wooden banjo, zither, dulcimer, ancient recorder and shawm to bring “color” to our voice and guitar work.

So you can guess I waited for Marcel Barsotti’s “EthnoWorld 3” (EW3) with great anticipation. I was sure it would be a treat for my for ears and virtual instrument.

My test system is an iMac (a 1.8Ghz G5 2GB RAM, all sounds stored on an external hard drive, MIDI input is through an M-Audio Keystation Pro-88 hammer-action keyboard. I use an Edirol USB Audio Interface output through a Mackie mixer to 1000W QSC Amp and Renkus-Heinz speakers.)

“EthnoWorld 3, Complete,” came on a DVD surrounded by colorful packaging. The disc was in a slim paper envelope wrapper. The label on the disc envelope contained the serial number and is the only place the number appeared—- so save it, you’ll need it to register.

A very concise set of installation instructions was included as was a complete, colorful and comprehensive brochure listing and showing the instruments sampled.

Installation was easy, but time consuming for me. The DVD reader in my iMac I seems to have one speed—- slow. At just over four gig, loading the library and instrument took about 20 minutes. If you have a faster DVD reader, I am sure your results will be better.

EW3 includes a Kompakt Instrument Player from Native Instruments. While I have read many complaints about the NI registration process, I zipped right through it on line with no real problems. I had the stand-alone working within minutes of completing the install and registration. (Last year, I had one problem registering an NI instrument and a fast phone call to NI’s US support line had me up, running and happy in less than ten minutes.)

Visually EW3 on screen is interesting: the Kompakt player has been recolored from the traditional green and black used in other library packages. But this colorization has not solved one problem I face with the Native Instuments’ Kompakt instruments.

I am older and wear trifocal glasses, especially if I want to see anything clearly. The Kompakt interface was designed by younger genius types with very good eyes. This has left the pull down instrument choice boxes small and requiring small type titles. Without craning my neck to get close to the screen I find it hard to navigate through the drop-downs. NI has started to fix this with Kontakt 2, but I wish they would retrofit Kompakt instruments.

First, I decided to try to audition all the sounds before I went to bed. I quit at 2 am, badly needing some sleep. I realized I could not reach the goal at one sitting. There are so many rich sounds/samples/loops and licks in this collection—and extra variations—I could not finish. You would need to be an insomniac to get through it all in one sitting.

I guess it is safe to say that this is one of the reasons I chose the EW3 package at its affordable “price per sound.”

My opinion is that EW3 not only demonstrates a journey through the musical instruments of various ethnic groups, but unknowingly has included an excellent mini-history of where sample making for the modern world has been and where it is going.

While I was contrasting the samples originally in Volume One with some totally new additions in Volume Three, I discovered I could hear the startling upgrade in recording, mixing, looping and mastering technology that has taken place. This improvement came during the relatively short period surrounding the development of virtual instruments and these ethnic components.

Most of these samples have a great and controllable “live” feel and an ambiance that thrills a user who appreciates ethnic sounds. To my ears Volume 1 stuff that was was state of the art when it came out remains great, but Volume Three is “Priceless.”

This is not to say that every sample is perfect for my current use “as is.”

For instance, to me the “wrist jingles, low” samples sound like they were processed down from higher pitched sounds using early, more primitive sound shifting methods than recently available.

It is either that or the mic tech was too shy to get too close to the belly dancer wearing the jingles as he revorded them. I have heard too many dancer’s jingles to find this one believable in its naked, unaccompanied form. However I am just as sure it will be totally useful to me in a scoring situation. I may even tweak it to get it close to camel bells, on a very small camel.

After all, isn’t playing with the samples the name of the game in Ethno-technical instrumentation anyway.

Enough joking, though—the rest of this library is serious, high quality, and broad ranging.

One complaint I had before EW3 was about finger cymbals. This simple instrument is called many things in many different cultures. Previous libraries seemed only present one “ching” as the single articulation.

I can no longer gripe now that I own EW3. The “china finger cymbals” features five articulations, and the “Iran finger cymbal” set has 25 additional articulations. These cross many cultural lines. and are clean, clear and real samples. You can almost see the dancer using them.

Now, let me confess I may be one of the few Polish people in the world who loves bagpipes. I do not care whether the pipes are from Scotland, Spain, Ireland or Greece. The scurr of the pipes is hard to capture. In many other collections it is a chore to create a proper drone sound.

EW3’s “Uillean Pipes Licks” feature a great drone and a series of licks that can be sequenced into new tunes. Or you can take the drone from that group then use keyed pipes from other parts of thr Uillean library to write your own melodies. Then, if you run the tune loud enough and you will scare an enemy into retreat—play soft enough and a Gaelic baby will slip into peaceful slumber.

To me the loops and licks in EW3 show what I label a part of the long the journey to accurate and real virtualinstrumentation for ethnic instruments,

Not too long ago the technology needed to create great sound sets was not ready. The programming of layers, controls and responses was not capable of creating specific instrumental nuances.

For instance, look at all the problems getting to good playable, nuanced sax sets and styles in just one library. Yellow Tools’ Candy is an excellent example of what can be done with a proper sampler, but it has taken a lot of development time, effort and money to get it sounding right.

Until recently virtual ethnic instrument playability and nuances had to depend upon loops/licks and “construction sets” to preserve instrumental integrity and subtlety. This allowed developers to get nuanced ethnic sounds into our virtual instruments at an affordable price.

EthnoWorld 1 and 2 used this type of development step to wonderful effect. These now integrated earlier volumes work very well if you need to shortcut composing “mood” or “place” pieces. They help when you don’t have the time or budget to get the specific instruments played or recorded in real time. This is often the case working on a deadline in film or commercials scoring when you require a generic sounding scene setter.

EW3 has expanded these sounds to use as an instruments for quite a number of solo lines, capturing many essential nuances with up to date programming solutions. You can use this potential in combination with the earlier work for fuller creative strokes.

I think a great example exists in “metal instruments.” I really enjoy how the new technology works in the bass kalimba set and its pressure response.

Anyone who has played with a kalimba knows that funny gronk sound you get when you push or pull a tine too far. Just hit your keyboard key hard in “bass kalimba” on in EW3. Yes, you too can have that gronk—a nuance often forgotten. (Well, since many people consider an overpressure note on a sakuhachi dramatically musical, why not some on a kalimba.)

I love the fact that this library is NOT top heavy with samples from any one culture. There is no nationality or sound type overpowering the collection.

Personally, I would like to see the addition of bull roarer and dig from Australia—and more trance droning sounds, particularly for use in New Age music. But they are not included at this time.

I can heartily recommend this library for the fussy, but budget conscious user of ethnic sound.

I wonder what a little virtual processing or scripting in Kontakt 2 will do with this wonderful library while expanding its useful useful range into new genres.

EthnoWorld 3 Complete is in stock at AudioMidiMall —call for the best price. That’s where I got mine.

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