Big Bang Orchestra: Izar

Introduction

Welcome to the Vienna Symphonic Library's series of Synchron Instruments! As the name says, Big Bang Orchestra furnishes you with a selection of full-orchestra articulations, at the same time allowing you (if you haven't done so already) to explore our powerful Synchron Player software. If you're looking for that extra dramatic effect or want to highlight a passage in your composition, this bonus library could be the solution, or at least point you in the right direction.

BBO Hercules and BBO Izar feature low brass and low brass clusters, respectively.

About Presets

Big Bang Orchestra makes use of our Synchron Player's unique features, and offers several Mixer Presets in five categories: Room Mix, Stereo Decca Tree, Surround to Stereo, Surround, and Processed. The Mixer Presets in each category are Close (Dry in the Room Mix), Classic, Wide, Distant, and Ambient. The Processed section offers "Big" versions of these Presets.

The BBO expansions also provide you with "Wet" Mixer Presets in each category, as well as more choice in the Processed section. These additional Mixer Presets may vary according to the respective libraries' requirements.

About Patches

Patches can be used to build your own custom Presets and shape them according to your specific requirements. Big Bang Orchestra does not contain so many Patches, so the possibilities are somewhat limited. Still, if you want to get into creating Presets of your own, please refer to the Synchron Player manual, which will be helpful in case you encounter any problems.

About Pitch

For designating pitch, the Vienna Symphonic Library uses International Pitch Notation (IPN), which was agreed upon internationally under the auspices of the Acoustical Society of America. In this system the international standard of A=440 Hz is called A4 and middle C is C4. All pitches are written as capital letters, their respective octave being indicated by a number next to it. The lowest C on the piano is C1 (the A below that is A0), etc.

The Synchron Player software allows you to set middle C to C3, C4, or C5 according to your preference.

Selecting another setting than C4 will of course also change the play ranges and keyswitches accordingly.

Walkthrough Videos

Included Presets

BBO Izar enriches BBO Hercules with a wealth of three-note cluster articulations. The basic articulations are the same as those of Hercules, but there are no additional contrabass tuba variants, and instead of the legato section (which doesn’t make much sense with clusters) there is a duplicate of the long notes. This allows you to switch between the articulations of BBO Hercules and BBO Izar without having to adapt any keyswitches. The upper range of the articulations is a whole tone lower than those of BBO Hercules, as the two highest notes are always part of a cluster.

If you own both BBO Hercules and BBO Izar, you can make use of a special Preset calles Low Brass XF Clusters (Hercules XF Izar), which offers an additional Dimension for crossfading between Hercules and Izar articulations with the help of Dim.Ctrl/A (CC1, modwheel). In this way you can determine the amount of cluster tones added to the base note.

  • Range: G1–D4 (glissandos less according to interval)
  • Articulation Keyswitches: C5–F#5

Short notes

Bold and agile.

  • Bold/agile: C6/C#6

Long notes

Long notes with and without fff layer, soft, marcato, and espressivo. Except espressivo.

  • Type keyswitches: C6–E6

Marcato

Marcato attack can be added gradually to the basic articulation with the help of Dim.Ctrl/A (MIDI CC1, modwheel).

Dynamics

Sforzato, sforzatissimo, swells short and long, soft and very soft swells, and soft diminuendo..

  • Type keyswitches: C6–F#6
  • Without/with contrabass tuba: C1/D1

Flutter & trills

Flutter tonguing, half and whole tone trills.

  • Type keyswitches: C6–D6

Fast repetitions

Staccato repetitions at 120, 140, and 160 BPM. These are already prepared for timestretching, i.e., all Patches have the original tempo they were recorded with entered as their source tempo. This allows you to adapt your repetitions automatically to the tempo of your project with only two mouse clicks.

  • Tempo keyswitches: C6–D6

Glissandos

Glissandos, minor and major second, and fourth, up and down. Please note that the actual playing range is diminished by the glissando interval – for instance, minor 2nd upward glissandos can only be played up to D#4 where E4 is the target note, downward ones down to G#1 where G1 is the target note.

  • Interval keyswitches: C6–D6
  • Up/down keyswitches: A0/B0