Plasuma!!!

Well, what do you know, I must be using the same notes as everyone else. Here's a procedure, if that helps: 1) Watch the video, spot cues, hits and make notes on points of interest. 2) Figure out a good tempo for each cue. Line up hit points. 3) Determine a mood for each cue, outline harmonies and textures that make sense with what you're seeing and should feel. Start picking instruments. 4) Collect written / sequenced materials for composition: melodies / figures and flourishes (stabs, runs, clusters, etc.). Finish picking instruments. 5) Chop the video up into more manageable slices by the cue; always give yourself a couple measures to lead in before the cue actually starts. 6) ??? 7) Profit.

My apologies. I'm having kind of an off day today, what with the being bagged and dragged into a foreign place to... socialize...

I don't disagree with that, and it was probably a little harsh of me to be so short about the library on its own, but I've found replacements in Silk and some libraries from the likes of ToneHammer / SoundIron / 8Dio and some others which I think sound much better than the few instruments from Ra that I did use. If your music tends to include a lot of the instruments on offer, by all means, Ra is great! I just don't personally use them much, and the ones I often wanted to use lacked flexibility to the point of regret / needing a better solution. It certainly doesn't help that it's all trapped in PLAY. I imagine the Kontakt version of Ra would be a godsend, if that's what you're using.

Chimpazilla beat me up and made me do it, I'm here against my will. But yes, the Complete Composer's Collection is a pretty good deal if you pick and choose the right stuff. I have some minor regrets in what I've purchased, so they're not all great, but I love and regularly use a majority of the products. My strategy for purchasing the CCC assumed that I would also purchase EWQLSO separately in its entirety during a sale to save money, and it worked, but I believe they may have fixed the "exploit" I used. More on this later. Products to avoid and reasons for doing so: Voices of Passion - this is a very limited-use library, and the legato patches are very synthetic. You should only want this if you plan to use the instruments as ethereal drones or have a use for the now-overtapped phrases. The phrases certainly are great, but everyone's heard them numerous times in other places already, so you have to like them to make this purchase justified. Goliath - a general "everything" library that contains a handful of good, timeless and somewhat useful instruments, but too many dated or unusable sounds to be considered worth the price. In my experience, more can be done with the Kontakt factory library, so unless you've heard a patch in a demo somewhere that you absolutely cannot live without, skip it. Ministry of Rock - the focal point of the library being rock makes this all the more confusing, but the guitars are barely usable. The only good things about this library are the drumkits, but they're not recorded dry, so they can be troublesome to fit into existing productions. The guitars themselves aren't horrible and can be useful in many circumstances where you wouldn't need a lead, but they take some tweaking to sound right and aren't nearly as dynamic as, say, Electri6ity, Orangetree guitars, or even Shreddage 2. Ra - a somewhat disappointing sampler of everything one might consider "ethnic". I've rarely used this for anything but percussion, and even then, everything it contains is easily covered by other libraries I have and prefer for a cleaner sound. This was one of EastWest's earlier projects, and it shows in both recording quality and usability. Avoid it unless you really want some specific instruments it contains and can find nowhere else. Products that are good, but not necessarily definitive: Stormdrum 2 - all very wet percussion, but even so, the sound is unmistakably epic. You could easily fill out your percussion battery with this library alone, and the experimental sounds are pretty nice for flavor, but there are so many "epic percussion" libraries out there with a more controllable sound that you should have to think and listen before you decide you want this in your bundle. The pro expansion doesn't add much, but if you're dead-set on getting this library in the CCC, you may as well throw it in to get the whole package. Symphonic Choirs - recorded in the same hall as EWQLSO, it's great if you need choirs to accompany that library. The star of the show, WordBuilder, while absolutely amazing in concept, is unwieldy and unstable. You can manage to make fairly realistic phrases, but not without practice and some investment of time for every word, and that's no guarantee that PLAY won't crash while you're in the middle of editing a line. There are other alternatives on the market, such as VOXOS and the SoundIron / 8DIO choirs, but they don't even remotely offer the functionality of the very robust, albeit shakey WordBuilder. The expansion adds "angel" and "demon" patches, which are women's and men's choirs respectively, but I have not found them to be very useful. Symphonic Orchestra, PLAY Edition - this is a complete orchestra in a box, and was the crowning achievement of EWQL up until the Hollywood series was released. For orchestral applications, I'm lucky enough to have the entire bank of Hollywood series instruments at my disposal, and I supplement them with percussion from this library. They work quite well together in this respect. By itself, the sound is still great and the patches are usable enough to make somewhat believable recordings, but the big issue with this edition of the EWQLSO is the engine it uses. PLAY is not very flexible when it comes to scripts and customization, and a "Pro" version of this platform, which was touted to provide the features desired, has been promised for many years and has not yet seen the light of day. The library itself hasn't seen a script or patch update in a very long time, and, as such, you are restricted to 2006-level technical understanding of sampling in practice. This is to say, without spending eight or more hours just tweaking MIDI CCs, you will not likely get the sound you desire for a piece. It sounds great, but without the flexibility of Kontakt, it's unwieldy and time-consuming to make sound real. This being contrary to other libraries that use PLAY, such as the Hollywood series, which have been continually updated and offer patches with a variety of scripts that make them sound great out of the box. The Platinum edition is a must-have if you're serious about sound quality, as the additional microphone positions over the Gold edition can help make your mix cleaner. Do not bother with the Platinum "Plus" edition, however, as the "Plus" only adds optional lower quality samples that were made to accommodate the memory limitations long-obsolete machines. Products that are stellar: Gypsy - most people just get this library for the violin, which is pretty great, but I find myself using something else from this library in almost every production. The accordions, guitars, and trombone are very handy for small ensembles where some atmosphere with intimacy, jollity, or mystique is needed. Silk - while at first sight this seems like a big Eastern instrument sampler, which is the general truth, it also contains some instruments such as the E Cello and 30-piece Persian string orchestra, which sound great just about anywhere. Unlike VOP, every instrument is incredibly dynamic, even with the lack of true legato. In a pinch, the pre-recorded phrases can be a life saver for whenever you need a hint of the far east. Fab Four - it's the sound of The Beatles, sure, but there are so many timeless instruments from that era contained within that I think the name doesn't do it justice. Drums, guitars, oddball song-specific patches - all of it useful. This is an ideal replacement for the things MOR offers whether or not this era appeals to you. Pianos - I could not live without this library's Bechstein. There are only 4 different pianos in this library, but the depth of detail surpasses every other piano library I've heard, even VSL's Imperial. I suggest the platinum version for multiple microphone positions to mix, but gold can do just as well. The biggest issue with this library is the amount of memory it requires to run, and so I often find myself using a smaller piano patch from another library in composition to later swap for one of the 4 from this library in the final mixdown. Symphonic Orchestra, Kontakt Edition - if you should be lucky enough to get your hands on the Kontakt version of the Symphonic Orchestra (somehow, as it's not available in the CCC or officially anywhere), you'll be treated to all the flexibility that platform offers. Custom scripts, sample editing, all that wonderfulness makes the library competitive with modern ones without too much effort on your part. The aforementioned 'exploit' concerning my purchase of EWQLSO took advantage of one of their sales, which included hefty discounts for new purchases and license upgrades. I already owned the CCC, which ships on a hard drive that contains all of their libraries included in the Terapack, even the libraries for which I did not have licenses (including EWQLSO). In the store, there was an option at the time to purchase a new version of EWQLSO Gold as an "upgrade from Terapack" for around $100, so I made the purchase and received the activation code very shortly thereafter. To upgrade from Gold to Platinum cost only $150 during this sale, so I purchased that immediately after I had my code. The 'exploit' here was that the Platinum version was priced at $350 as an upgrade from the Terapack, and I saved $100 by jumping up the ladder. I also saved $40 over the price that it would have been in the CCC itself, so that was quite a find. Keep this as a mental note: during the very common soundsonline.com sales, the best price might not always be the most direct. I hope this information helps.