St. Helen’s Cantores

“After the buzz of making my first instrument – my singing radiator – I thought it might be cool to make a choir from the students who go to school at St. Helen’s in Oxfordshire where I work. We recorded it one lunchtime in our beautiful school chapel with the intention of doing “Mms”, “Oohs”, “Aahs”, and then some blowy wind-type effects… but we only managed “Mms” and “Oohs” in the time available. We’ll need another session.

I used a Rode NT4 stereo condenser in front of the choir and an Olympus LS-5 at the rear of the chapel to pick up some reverb, and then mixed these together. The chapel is next to the kitchen so there’s some weird external extractor fan I needed to get rid of using iZotope RX7. I also, de-rumbled the samples and comped them using Adobe Audition. Then into Logic to filter out some resonance and added some Space Designer splosh.

Needless to say, this isn’t supposed to compete with SA’s Eric Whitacre’s library! I quite like the odd creak as a singer moves against a bench mid-take, or the faint whooping of another student realising it’s sausages for lunch in the corridor outside. Stick it in your DAW with a rich churchy reverb and it sounds awesome. If someone wants to have a go creating an EXS24 version, be my guest!

I guess I love the idea of the perpetual wheel of these young singers just starting out in life, and already contributing to the artistic community many of them hope to go on and be a part of. The world needs more music in it, and it’s with great pleasure that we offer you guys this humble little choir library.”