Welcome to another edition of THIS THING RULES! I’ve got a bunch lined up right now that I’m trying to get to, and since I don’t have time for long introductions… Let’s get right into it!
Gaia is a new expansion pack for Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere by SubsonicArtz. You may remember SubsonicArtz as the maker of the Pulsar Project expansion pack for CL-Projects’ Hypernova, which I reviewed in a previous THIS THING RULES entry. As usual, lets listen to a demo I created specifically for this review, “The Secret Reason.”
SubsonicArtz says that they were inspired by “the sounds of nature like the wind in the trees or birds” and a desire to “celebrate the beauties of our Home.” As you can hear in my demo, the sounds of nature are extremely prominent, and the collection of instruments included are absolutely gorgeous. These sounds are ambient, atmospheric and new-age… I think they hit the mark.
Digging deeper into “The Secret Reason,” I’ll go over some of the sounds that I used. The first patch I loaded up was called “Burn All You Can.” For someone with my sensibilities – how could I possibly resist a name like that? The patch is a wonderfully layered instrument that feature crazy compressed Tribal sounding drums with a background of feedback. In a word… It’s awesome. I built from there with “I Gave You Birth,” which is a piano instrument with an ambient background of pads and more feedback. These are the kinds of sounds that fit perfectly with the kind of music I love making – a blend of electronica, new-age and alternative.
Other stand out sounds that I used in this composition include that spine tingling choir sound called “The Last Snow,” and a great arp called “Running Mustang.” There are some seriously great names in this collection haha. Probably my favorite, a cool background effect called “The Cave of Hypnos.” I feel like I need to step up my song-naming game after reading these names haha.
I should also mention that the drum beat and the bass line I made from other software. While Gaia is an excellent package with some really beautiful sounds, it doesn’t have a lot in the world of percussion or bass. Not that it needs to. This is a focused collection that shines in exactly the areas it set out to. Aside from what I used, there are 136 total patches separated into Arp/Rhythms, keyboards, pads/strings, FX/Noises, Textures and Human Voices. All of these sounds have been programmed to make use of the modwheel to further enhance the sounds.
SubsonicArtz Gaia is an excellent package. It’s available now from the CL-Projects store for $15.99, which is an absolute steal for such beautiful sounding additions to the Omnisphere library.
One last note: I am certain I’ve used the same piano melody in another track… But for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is… If you’ve listened to enough of my music to catch it, e-mail me and I’ll send you a prize (to be determined, but I’m pretty sure it will be an MP3 or two haha).
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David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.