EastWest Hollywood Orchestrator Action Pack Free Update for Opus Edition

Play a chord and hear a full orchestration in real time?!

EastWest’s Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition is the latest iteration of their fabulous sampled orchestra library. They’ve been improving their orchestras constantly over the past couple of decades – including starting over from scratch with new recordings, adding to the orchestra, introducing a major new version of their player… and most recently the Hollywood Orchestrator.

To understand what the Hollywood Orchestrator addition to the sample library collection does, imagine a pattern sequencer that plays full orchestrations. Only you play the chords, and you can determine things like the voicings, turn sections on and off, and so on. And the parts are editable.

The first time I tried it, I just cracked up! It produces library-quality cues in real time. Obviously it’s not going to produce unique music if you use it that way, but it’s way ahead of simple loops.

And you can turn off the MIDI performances and just use it as a real time arranging tool, which would probably be especially useful for live performance. It can do things your fingers and hands couldn’t reach to play live. Maybe you want to play a woodwind ensemble, for example.

Check out the video demo. I predict that you’ll have several reactions.