What do you get when you leave someone with zero knowledge of sampling out in a bus stop on a rainy day, with just their phone, and then manipulate the recording with no idea what the result is gonna be? You get, Rain Choir!

I recorded the original sample in a bus stop in Greater Vancouver, Canada, and did not think much of it at the time. Months later, after watching a video by the amazing Venus Theory on creating tonal sounds from any recording, I found the inspiration to make my first ever sample library. And after going through my field recordings, I found this recording again. I set out to do aggressive harmonic EQing based on a fundamental frequency (D3), and adding all kinds of modulations, comb filtering, formant shifting, reverb, compression, and probably more that I’m forgetting. Just mindless sound design to hopefully create something usable. And finally, I was left with a decent starting point for Rain Choir.

I then went on to have my first scripting experience to get this library to work. There are 3 knobs, Expression, Tone, and Reverb. There is also full ADSR control for tweaking the sound to your liking. By default, it sounds like a choir (hence the name, hah!) but I reckon some other sounds might be possible as well. Only one way to find out! I have also included a menu, for if you prefer having velocity tracking (Full velocity range) or not (Vel. mapped to Expression).

As mentioned earlier, Rain Choir is my first ever sample library and I’m rather happy with it. I hope you enjoy playing this library as much as I enjoyed creating it. I’d love to hear any music that you make with Rain Choir, or your thoughts on it! There may also be a Kontakt version soon, if I’m able to do it 🙂

PS: Huge thanks to fellow samplist, Marco Ianello for his assistance on the scripting of this library, without him I would not have known where to start with scripting, and also make sure it was ready for submission.
UI background photo by Amadej Tauses (Unsplash license)

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Contributors

Soroosh Mohassesi

Sampling, editing, programming