In the year of the Great Pandemic, a cinematic pop quartet called the Sons of Serendip, consisting of cello, harp, piano, and a vocalist, found themselves in quite the predicament. Due to the social distancing decree, enacted by the kings and lords across the land, they found it difficult to procure performances. In need of means to maintain their livelihood, they turned to recording, licensing, and scoring. In their research of said means, and software instruments to realize their new venture, they serendipitously stumbled upon the great Sir Christian Henson of Spitfire Audio and his bold project, The Piano Book. You see, Sir Henson was of the school of thought that the common good could best be attained not only by providing the hungry with fish, but teaching them how to fish. More concretely put, providing software instruments only gets your pupils so far; but teaching how to create them enriches the entire community. And so, under his remote tutelage, the Sons of Serendip sat out to create their own software instruments for their projects, the first of which is the one now in your possession: Micah’s Choir.

I, Cordaro, the arranger for Sons of Serendip, called upon Micah, a theologian by training, musical empath by blood, and a phenomenal cantor to boot, and asked him to channel his being into 4 dynamic layers of bleeding heartache; to reflect the pain latent in recent global affairs. Due care was taken to not numb or sterilize the pain, but to allow each note and layer to have its own idiosyncrasies. Simply move the modwheel and you will feel the ache in each layer. And to honor the current zeitgeist, a time where many find it hard to breath, the sighs and gasps for air that followed each note were assigned to release triggers. Play the note at high velocities for a quick jolt of ache. Play the note at low velocity for more of a growing throb.

And to pay homage to the isolation in which we find ourselves, move the lever called “Reverence.” In the words of the great Blaise Pascal, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Let the reverberation of an empty impulse reflection bring you to reverence and solemnity as you do your part to solve the ache in the world.

(Note: I’ve also included a “monolith” file in case there is any confusion in opening the instrument. With monolith, you do not need to worry about file paths, etc.)