Orchestral Tools / MIRRORS

[Piet De Ridder]

Co-developed with Slate + Ash, Orchestral Tools have released MIRRORS, a Kontakt-library that "explores both experimental analog synthesis and traditional orchestral sampling. The collection originated from synthesized source material from our Bristol-based collaborators—glitched textures, fractured oscillations, and hyper-processed ambiences. Together, we then put these sounds through a prism of orchestral performance, recording their precisely orchestrated mirror images, all with unwavering attention to the minutest details.

SLATE + ASH created the source material for MIRRORS under the guiding principle of making sounds that evoke a distinctly acoustic feel. With their labyrinth of patch cables, modular devices, and analog synths, they tapped into more organic soundworlds, sculpting breath-like fluttering, microtonal harmonics, and warm tones that evolve over time.

Hugh Brunt of the London Contemporary Orchestra then re-orchestrated these sounds for live performance, capturing all the minutiae—every texture, swell, and flutter, and even the synthetic idiosyncracy of pitch stretching. This called for traditional strings, brass, and woodwinds, but also out-of-the-box instrumentation like verrophone, bowed crotales, or even rustling plastic bags. With Brunt conducting, and additional aesthetic guidance of composer-producer Yair Elazar Glotman, we recorded the orchestral ensembles at Teldex Studios in Berlin with our typical attention to detail and fidelity.

The end result is a Kontakt-only collection, featuring a custom-built engine, with 45 mirrored presets of curated sounds, one half orchestral and the other synthesized. Also included are 100 sound design presets, which you can use to create your own custom sounds. 3 mic options allow you to add further close or room sounds, with everything in the mix sitting beautifully on the Teldex Scoring Stage, where all the synthesized samples were reamped."

Introduction price: €169 (regular price: €239 ).




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[Lawrence]

I listened to the demos of this, and it sounds good.

It seems like there are a lot of variations of this nowadays…mutating/morphing sounds to create ambient soundscapes.

I imagine most of us have a few. Does this break new ground for anyone?

[RobS]

It’s an interesting concept, though I don’t see an application for myself… even imagine I could sorta do it with my libraries, less detailed probably

[Guy Rowland]

It’s an interesting concept, though I don’t see an application for myself… even imagine I could sorta do it with my libraries, less detailed probably

This one looks and sounds very well done. But I guess it's doing something I often do manually - pick a good semi-acoustic patch from something like Fables or Arkhis and then double it with a gorgeous synth. Having it under the one hood, the crossfading etc is nice, but I did a cue only last week where I effectively did exactly this on two patches fed by the same midi and simply rode the faders. Fun!

I'll look out for a future sale though.

[RobS]

It’s an interesting concept, though I don’t see an application for myself… even imagine I could sorta do it with my libraries, less detailed probably

This one looks and sounds very well done. But I guess it's doing something I often do manually - pick a good semi-acoustic patch from something like Fables or Arkhis and then double it with a gorgeous synth. Having it under the one hood, the crossfading etc is nice, but I did a cue only last week where I effectively did exactly this on two patches fed by the same midi and simply rode the faders. Fun!

I'll look out for a future sale though.

exactly