Please note:
The Sonokinetic license agreement allows this product to be used to produce library or production music.
A traditional Kurdish female vocal performance by Rojin Ülke
Please note this product has been programmed for Kontakt 4.2.4. & Kontakt 5 (not compatible with Kontakt Player!)
A traditional Kurdish vocal performance by Rojin Ülke which will give you some serious musical muscle and bring a voice to your music like you haven’t heard before.
The proven concept of vocal performances based on copyright free songs, improvisations, in all keys and multiple speeds combined with cinematic vocal fx like poems, shouts, whispers and much more, is now crammed into just one instrument patch.
This sample library features an alto – soprano voice, using traditional Kurdish melodic phrasing. Improvisations make up a large portion of this collection and are based on the same principles as the traditional copyright free songs but this time with a cinematic approach. This collection consists of hundreds of unique and authentic melodic phrases, improvisations and spoken words. As far as tradition goes, Sonokinetic keeps its tradition alive by providing you with word-by-word translations, with lots of traditional texts translated to English for the first time.
This is the second volume Sonokinetic have released in the “Vocal Signature Sampling Line” and with that they feel they set the mark to beat. Yemenite, Rojin and Aliye are a trinity to recon with and we hope to inspire composers and producers to colour their musical creations with this highly exclusive sound material.
Content
One Kontakt 4 & One Kontakt 5 patch spanning:
4 Main categories in traditional Kurdish style:
Traditional Songs
Improvisations
Poems
Effects
Full key range, with up to 7 different songs per key*
2000+ samples. (1,26 GB sample content) accessible AIF pool
All songs, poems and spoken words in English translation (pdf).
Royalty and copyright free content license.
Rojin Reference manual (pdf).
Artwork: “Rojin” dvd cover. Designed by Pavel Fuksa
Video tutorial: “Walk Through” hosted by Reuben Cornell
Format: All files in 48 kHz, 24bit aif format.
Programmed for Kontakt 4.2.4. & Kontakt 5 (not compatible with Kontakt Player!)
*limitations of a vocal cord limits the amount of song options in keys outside the singers range
Technical Details
The Main GUI
The main Rojin GUI consists of an instrument group selector on the left, a sample behavior control in the middle, and a performance control unit at the right.
Vocal performance Selector: is a section in which you select a specific voice performance by clicking the button. By default we saved the instrument to load the “Songs” patch. It purges only the samples that are needed for the part of the instrument you choose to use. Songs are based on traditional Kurdish songs, selected for their text content and complementary character for cinematic use. Improvisations are delved from hours of creative inspired chanting and filled with decennia of musical cultural heritage of the cantor. Poems and fx fill this collection with creative vocal sounds and fx of spoken words and typical very usable voice performances like whispering, hissing, shouting, calling and praying.
For the songs we designed a Song Selector (picture left) option. When a harmonic key is chosen by pressing the corresponding keyswitch (Red: see keyboard explanation) the box displays the available songs for that particular key by displaying a group of switches in the main instrument panel. The amount of songs available in each key differs, due to the limitation of the singer’s vocal range and the setting of the songs. The amount will vary between 2 to 7 available songs in any key. The number indicates which of the 10 songs is available for each switch. You can select a song by either clicking its switch in the interface or pressing one of the keys marked green on the Kontakt keyboard.
When you select one of these switches a message will appear in the activity monitor on the leftmost bottom corner of Kontakt, displaying the name of the song linked to that switch in that key, allowing you to look up the translations for the song. Translations are found in the 2.additionals/documents/translations folder.
Harmonic key and Time
The Rojin collection spans the full harmonic range and supports all tempi from 30 to 300 BPM. When a harmonic key is chosen by a key switch (red on keyboard) it displays this in the box at the top left of the ‘wave orb’. Below that the tempo, set by the host (DAW or Kontakt Stand alone) is displayed.
Wave Orb
Taken from the concept we introduced in the Tigris & Euphrates IR sphere we developed a new way to display the length of a phrase. We found it particularly intuitive when composing, to see what length a phrase would be. Since not all phrases are cut out with computer science in mind, they are more focused on musical and artistic expression, there’s a lot of variety in length and duration of a phrase. Hence the “Wave orb” that shows you the remaining length by steadily following the phrase progression, filling the sphere with a transparent ‘hour glass’ like substance.
Reverb Function: This instrument comes with a built-in quick Reverb. It’s meant to quickly position your instrument in the mix and as such is non-editable, apart from wetness. When you need deeper control we suggest you use an external reverb, but we like the idea of being able to quickly add a bit of room without divulging from your workflow or being distracted by many options in the composition stage. For this easy control, we created a click-drag function on the middle glass orb. By dragging it up and down you can adjust the amount of reverb globally applied to the instrument, to turn it off, when you use an external reverb, just dial the control all the way down. The exact amount of reverb is displayed in the bottom left, and this and the orb control will remain in view until any next action.
Keyboard mapping:
Red keys are key switches to select a harmonic key (for Songs and Improvisations). They range from C to B. The yellow key displays the activated key switch.For Poems the red keys let you select a different poem. And in FX it toggles between different types of vocal sound effects.
Cyan keys are used to switch between songs available in the selected harmonic key, the currently active switch will be displayed in green. When any other mode than ‘Song’ is selected, these are not needed and will disappear.
Blue keys mark the available amount of phrases per song, per harmonic key.
The blue keys at the end of the keyboard will trigger phrase endings. (There are actually 6 different endings for each song or improvisation, which are mapped chromatically to the keyboard. From these, the first 4 are also used by the auto-ending function, the last 2 endings are longer endings, which can only be triggered manually by pressing the assigned key)
Performance Control
For this instrument we provide you with a default setting of “Time machine” and “Auto endings” to Off.
Note: The Auto Ending and Time Machine buttons are only active for Songs and Improvisations, for Poems and Fx they will be greyed out and non-active.
Auto Ending: A melodic phrase is different from a melody. Melodies are built from phrases. So to perform a correct musical vocal melody it is essential to have an option to end a phrase with a proper and logical finish. This can be automated by pressing the “Automatic Ending” knob. It will trigger a random ending (samples found at the utmost right of the keyboard marked in blue).
Time Machine: Tempo syncing made possible by the intelligent new engine “Time machine” by Native instruments created a massive amount of options for the composer. In each key and tempo “Rojin” provides you with a proper amount of musical material to choose from. We initially build this instrument on the Time machine Pro settings available in Kontakt 5 and up. But we also provided Kontakt 4 patches.
ITM: ITM stands for Intelligent Tempo Mapping, and it’s a function we developed in-house to make the instrument adapt in a natural way to tempi ranging from 30 BPM to 300 BPM. Because it doesn’t sound natural when a sample is stretched beyond certain limits, we chose to go to a half-time feel when the tempo is set above a set limit, and to double-time feel when it’s set under a particular limit. This effectively makes the instrument sound good and perfectly in time even in extreme tempi like 280 BMP or 40 BPM, without the user having to think about that. ITM happens under the hood and our goal is for you to not even notice it is there, Rojin will just sound like you would expect in any tempo.
