How to resolve AdBlock issue? Spitfire Audio announces availability of OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT
Sample library and album namesake with associated SA Recordings label
Picture: Adrián Santos Gallego
Spitfire Audio announces the availability of OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT - following the the expertly curated sound of OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - OPW as the second sample library from the inquisitive musical mind of contemporary composer, producer, and artist Oliver Patrice Weder, this time taking the intimate composing toolkit concept into new realms, thanks to recording a wide variety of instruments and techniques (comprising chanting solo and trio vocals, breathy woodwind swells, circular breathing techniques, personal piano sounds, delicate percussion, and shimmering organic and electronic loops) in the remarkable setting of a reverberant pool house, carefully sculpted to blend together perfectly, presented in Spitfire Audio’s award-winning, easy-to-use plug-in with a range of bespoke controls, effects, and reverbs to add a much-sought-after human quality and fragility to music as transcendental textures suited to intimate film scores and contemporary classical or ambient tracks alike - as of August 23…
Who better to formally introduce the OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT sample library and album namesake - capturing the peace and stillness of the stunning reverberant pool house in which they were recorded just outside of Madrid, and to which the two-pronged project owes its notable name - than its creator, contemporary composer, producer, and artist Oliver Patrice Weder: “I was really lucky to spend lockdown with my family in a countryside cottage, surrounded by an evergreen holy oak forest. As it happens, this place has a covered swimming pool, and, as I was walking in there, the sound was just immediately beautiful. I wasn’t sure what to record in there until my good friend and brother-in-law came over and kind of jokingly sang some opera. I was, like, ‘Wow! This sounds gigantic and so beautiful - how about singing something really soft and fragile?’ I was already conceptualising and kind of starting to write my next album, so thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to have very angelic and gentle voices recorded in there, capturing the peacefulness and sensitivity of the surroundings.’ There are lots of windows in the pool house - you can see all these trees and the forest right from the pool, so that was a really inspiring situation. I felt I was a little bit in a bubble, and I could concentrate on my family and my art, and I really feel that you can hear that in the coherency of the sound and the ideas in the album and in the sample library as well.”
With that in mind, album and sample library were created in perfect harmony - hardly surprising since Oliver Patrice Weder also acts as lead composer at sound-specialising music technology company Spitfire Audio. “When I started writing for the pool house, I already knew that this was going to make a fantastic toolkit, and also being a film composer I could put my head into the end user - what would be important for the user, and how would they want to use it,” he continues.
Creatively, OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - OPW - Oliver Patrice Weder’s first sample library for Spitfire Audio and associated London label SA Recordings-released album - was inspired by constant movement and travelling, yet its followup is a tribute to peace and stillness. Saying that, then, residing at the core of OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT are male vocal swells, longs, and vowel sounds performed by Madrid’s Club del Rio, blending beautifully with woodwind duo Zopli2’s breathy alto flute and bass clarinet swells and visceral playing techniques, including circular breathing. Better still, this is accompanied by Oliver Patrice Weder’s very own personalised piano sounds created from a mellow-sounding Sixties-vintage Petrof treated with felt and tape, synthesiser loops from his classic Roland Juno-6 analogue polysynth fed through various effect pedals and electronic manipulations, and a unique selection of toys and percussion hits and loops - including a steel tongue drum, toy piano, recorder, and kaval (Bulgarian flute) - to provide gentle rhythm and momentum.
Moreover, 40 exclusive presets - namely, 6x Gentle Breeze, 4x Percussion, Pianos (Double Felt & Taped), 7x Solo Voice, 10x Synth Loops, 5x Toys, and 6x Vocal Trio - are accessible via Spitfire Audio’s award-winning, dedicated plug-in, the easy-to-use GUI (Graphical User Interface) of which includes a range of specially curated built-in effects - think 13 specially curated IR (impulse response) reverbs - and controls, providing a wealth of complex sonic possibilities to drastically control and manipulate each of those presets - namely, dynamics, expression, REVERB, ATTACK, RELEASE, STRETCH (to control the speed of the sample playback), DISTORTION (to take the organic-sounding samples in a totally different direction), variation (to switch between different variations of the sound), and tremolo, as well as KEY RELEASE, DELAY, PEDAL VOL (volume), and PEDAL DYN (dynamics) controls on the two piano presets. Put it this way: while the dynamics fader moves the microphone signal from close to room for the organic patches and also controls the arpeggiator speed for the synth patches, each sound is also velocity sensitive for further tone variation.
It is only fitting for Oliver Patrice Weder, therefore, to have the final say on the seriously satisfying result of the two-pronged project in question: “The record and sample library both have a very clear sound palette - I was working towards a timbre, rather than songs. I was primarily in search of ‘the sound’ that would reflect my feelings, surroundings, and imagination.” Indeed, it is clear to anyone listening to the album and playing with the sample library that he has succeeded on all counts - with a little help from that stunning-sounding reverberant pool house just outside of Madrid. Perhaps ‘pooling’ resources paid dividends in the case of the OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT sample library and album namesake.
OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT is available as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible plug-in supporting Native Instruments’ NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) for Mac (OS X 10.10 - macOS 11) and Windows (7, 8, and 10 - latest Service Pack) that loads directly into any compatible DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for a price of only £29.00 GBP/$29.00 USD/€29.00 EUR - from Spitfire Audio's website.
Oliver Patrice Weder’s The Pool Project album is available to pre-order on its own as a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl album for £20.00 GBP - with an estimated release date of November 30, 2021 - or bundled as a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl album with the (already-available) OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT sample library for £43.00 GBP; it is already available to digitally download in MP3 or WAV / FLAC formats for £6.99 GBP or £7.99 GBP, respectively, or in WAV / FLAC format bundled with the OLIVER PATRICE WEDER - THE POOL PROJECT sample library for £30.00 GBP directly from SA Recordings. (Please note that purchasers of either bundle will receive a sample library download code via e-mail within 48 hours.)
Spitfire Audio’s namesake Spitfire Audio application allows anyone to buy now and download anytime, and is available for free on the website below.