Sine vibes
>The Nordic or ‘wintery’ sound has, of course, become a thing in recent years thanks to a glut of Scandi-Noir TV dramas. Usually comprising (in equal parts) beautiful landscapes, gritty inner cities and plots so twisty you need a slinky to navigate them, they feature ‘cops on the edge of the law’, ultra violent murders and stunning, often low-key scores. These (the scores, that is, not the murders thankfully) have almost created a genre of music in themselves. Not particularly defined, they can be anything really – moody, terrifying, a whisper of pad here or orchestral tension there – as long as they ladle on the atmosphere and drama, and make you feel inadequate about living in a rain-soaked city in the UK. It was a bandwagon that even we jumped on – yes, we know, amazing right? – last year with our own Scandi Noir sample sound packs, which still remain among the most popular downloaded collections we’ve ever produced.
Orchestral Tools’ SINE player is a standalone or plugin ‘instrument’ although really a shell like Kontakt that allows you to manage your Orchestral Tools libraries.
Once you purchase a library you can browse all of the instruments within it in their various articulations and room mic positions. You can then choose to download individual parts of an instrument, or the whole thing, which is a neat way of avoiding downloading chunks of content you’ll never use.
The professionals [like we’re not?! – Ed] have quickly climbed on board too, including the likes of Spitfire (whose Albion Tundra is described as an orchestral library ‘on the edge of silence’), Loopmasters et al. Now Orchestral Tools are in on the action, but rather than get their usual (and rather brilliant) local Berlin orchestra to try and recreate some Nordic chill, they went up north to track down the real thing. And Tallinn: Baltic Voices and Strings, is the result.