Yiddish

Traditional Yiddish Female Vocals

“Music from the heart and soul of an ancient culture ”

2013
Yiddish

Sonokinetic specializes in in-depth musical history heritage exploration since 2008.

With “Yiddish” we fulfill our premise to capture part of the Jewish music culture and
complement our signature sampling line with this very recognizable musical style.
Different from the mystical Sephardic “Voices of Israel” and our cross-over to the
Yemenite style, “Yiddish” brings a more Jewish-European oriented style which found
its roots in the high-german and Ashkenazi language.

This library is a very specific and authentic representation of its promised title, a
niche in ethnic music that hasn’t been covered in sampling before. With “Yiddish”,
Sonokinetic BV is very proud to present to you a continuation in our proven concept
in vocal cinematic performance sampling. You can expect the same dedication to
high-end sample quality, software performance, instrument handling and
documentation that is present in all of our vocal products. This collection will fulfill
your professional media-scoring needs when working within this thematic color, style
or genre. We hope you will let this breathtaking musical performance and dramatic
cinematic vocal fx collection inspire you and show you new compositorial ways.

While in ‘Voices of Israel’ (and Yemenite too in a way) we have shone a light on one
side of Israel’s musical culture, the diversity of styles available in that part of the
world and the very particular flavour of this one impelled us to musically revisit Tel
Aviv, and employ producer Hagai Davidoff to find and record a Yiddish vocalist for us.

As we have worked with Hagai before on ‘Voices of Israel’ and ‘Yemenite’ we knew
we could count on him to come up with a great performer, and he found her in Rahel
Jaskow. Very adept in this particular historic style and a veritable encyclopedia of
little-known facts of Yiddish culture and music, Rahel was the perfect choice to
cement this musical heritage into a composing tool for the rest of us. Rahel picked
the 10 stunning royalty free songs and the 4 poems that comprise the product, and
she improvised an improvisation section and Fx section to match.

Again Sonokinetic sticks with its unbeatable pricing module and high quality sampling
standards.
This is an absolute giveaway and hard to resist library if this is what your project
needs.
We’re proud to release “Yiddish” and let her spread the inspiration of the Yiddish
female vocal sound and the rich culture that is Yiddish folklore music.

We again push the limit trying to capture the magic of very particular music styles
with this wide selection of easy to use vocal performances and fx samples, and in
doing so providing you the possibility, when need arises, to compose in true Yiddish
fashion and blow away your clientele with tracks containing truly professional
sounding vocals.

We wish you the best inspiration and creativity.

With warm regards,

The Sonokinetic Yiddish Production Team

Contents

-­‐ One Kontakt 4 & One Kontakt 5 patch spanning:

o 4 Main categories in traditional Yiddish style:
§ Traditional Songs
§ Improvisations
§ Poems
§ Effects
-­‐ Automatic BPM group selecting (HOST slave)
-­‐ Tempo synced by time machine
-­‐ Use of Sonokinetic Intelligent Time Machine functionality
-­‐ 10 copyright-free traditional songs
-­‐ 10 sets of Improvisations
-­‐ Voice fx: whispers, soft speech, typical Yiddish words
-­‐ Kontakt 5 with Timemachine Pro settings (64Bit)
-­‐ 4050+ samples. (1,19 GB sample content) in ncw format
-­‐ All songs, poems and words in English translation (pdf).
-­‐ Royalty and copyright free content license.
-­‐ Yiddish Reference manual (pdf).
-­‐ Artwork: “Yiddish” dvd cover. Designed by Pavel Fuksa
-­‐ Video tutorial: “Walk Through” hosted by Reuben Cornell

Format: All files in 44.1 kHz, 24bit ncw format.

Programmed for Kontakt 4.2.4. & Kontakt 5 (FULL VERSION ONLY! not compatible with
the free Kontakt Player!)

*limitations of a vocal cord limits the amount of song options in keys outside the
cantors range
 THE MAIN INTERFACE

The main GUI for Yiddish consists of four main buttons to choose between Poems, Songs,
FX and Improvisations. There are also controls for ITM, phrase X-fade and up to 10 phrase
selector buttons. Phrase length, original root key, BPM and stretch are also displayed.

Vocal performance Buttons:

With the four main buttons you select a specific voice performance type for your session. You
can choose between Poems, Songs, FX or Improvisations. Yiddish loads only the samples
that are needed for the part of the instrument you choose to use and the rest are purged from
memory once you select another category.

Songs are based on traditional songs, selected for their text content and complementary
character. Improvisations are delved from hours of creative inspired chanting and filled with
decennia of musical cultural heritage of the singer. Poems and FX fill this collection with
creative vocal sounds and FX of spoken words and typically usable voice performances like
whispering, hissing, calling and breathing.
Songs & Improvisations:

To the left of the interface are the Phrase Selector buttons. For
the Songs and Improvisations you can choose up to 10 different
sets of phrases. When you pick a particular Song or
Improvisation using these buttons, the available root keys are
displayed as red keys from MIDI key A0 to G#1. It’s worth noting
that not all songs are available in every single root key. This is
due to the natural limitations of vocal performance and realistic
time stretching. The playable range is indicated by the blue keys
and varies depending on which Song or Improvisation you
choose.

With Improvisations only, the green keys towards the top of the
keyboard trigger short phrase end note samples at an
appropriate pitch.

Available song / improv keys Playable range End notes

Poems:

There are 4 phrase selector switches for the various poems. As

these are not pitched there are no red keyswitches, simply a
playable range of blue and green keys. The first set of keys
(blue) is spoken, the second set (green) whispered.

Playable range

FX:

The FX simply has a playable range of blue keys with no phrase selector buttons, all available
effects are mapped across the keyboard.

TRANSLATIONS can be found in the 2.Additionals/Documents/ folder.

Harmonic Key and BPM:

The Yiddish collection spans the full harmonic range and

supports all tempi. When a harmonic key is chosen by a key
switch (red on the keyboard as above) it displays this on the
right hand side of the interface. Underneath the root key is
displayed the original recorded tempo of the sample.

Click the ‘BPM’ button to display the percentage stretch of

the sample relative to the Kontakt engine. You can use this
to ascertain whether the samples are being stretched to
either an agreeable or undesirable degree.

ITM:

ITM stands for Intelligent Time Machine, 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 vocals within Yiddish sound perfectly in time even in
extreme tempi without the user having to think about it. ITM happens
under the hood and our goal is for you to not even notice it is there.
Activate ITM with the button shown here.

Wave Orb:

When composing, we found it particularly intuitive 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 each phrase. Hence the
“Wave Orb” that shows you the remaining length by
steadily following the phrase progression, filling the
sphere from blue to silver as the phrase progresses.
Phrase X-fade:

A new feature of Yiddish, additional to some

other Sonokinetic vocal libraries, is the
introduction of a phrase crossfade function.
This control can be turned on and off either
with the button on the interface or by using
MIDI keyswitches C2 and C#2.

Activating the X-fade function allows vocal phrases to blend into one another and can help
achieve a more natural sounding performance. As the slider is moved to the right, the cross-
fade time between the ending of one phrase and the beginning of another is increased.
Careful use of this control will solve any issues you may have with phrases being cut off
abruptly. When Phrase X-fade is active the instrument will perform in a sort of ‘legato’ mode,
so you will not be able to play multiple phrases simultaneously.

MOD wheel:

As will many other Sonokinetic libraries, the MOD wheel can be used to offset the start-point
of any played sample. Note that the X-fade function must be OFF in order to use this feature.
Push up the MOD wheel to offset the start point of any played phrase, pushing the start of
playback further into the sample.
About the artist

Rahel Jaskow lives in Jerusalem, Israel, where she works as a singer and translator.
Her CD, Day of Rest (available at CD Baby), won the Just Plain Folks Award for Best
Ethnic Album in 2001.

About the studio engineer

Hagai Davidoff is a critically acclaimed composer, producer, and arranger specializing in

orchestral and acoustical simulations. He also produced Yemenite sample library for
Sonokinetic.
For more information check our website:

www.sonokinetic.net

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…or if you have any questions about Yiddish or any other Sonokinetic product, send us a
support query at:

http://support.sonokinetic.net/support/home

All the creative best,

Sonokinetic BV