Symphonic Choirs newbie question about latin lyrics

[CosmicD]

I'll receive SC any moments now and I just have a vague understanding that if you want to use lyrics in symphonic action scores that latin is the main thing to go to.

If you don't know latin and you want some simple lyrics and translate them with google translator in latin, I guess that's pretty childish right? But I hear that sometimes in movie they use simplified latin just because it sounds cool but isn't always gramatically correct.

Are there people here on this forum who can help out with correctly translating an idea in latin ? It's never like a full song's worth of lyrics, just 2 phrases or so that covers the project's theme.

The collegues at tonehammer have this limited SA, DUS, or MUS, words to build songs with but does that make sens to do it this way ?

[jphilpit]

EWQL Symphonic Choirs has some Latin phrases that you can add to your text with a single mouse-click. See the manual for details. If you need standard Latin phrases translated into English, use the Web: type the phrase into a browser and you'll usually get lots of hits with translations and/or explanations.

One of the reasons Latin is used a lot in movie scores and games is that most people don't know what the words mean. It's sometimes better to have plausible sounding sung speech without the baggage of meaning. Plus, it sounds better when sung than Vulcan or Wookie.

If you think you want to translate real English sentiments into Latin, such as "When you stole my Cadillac I knew you didn't love me anymore," I'd advise against it. EWQLSC is at its best when it provides the sense of people singing without having to make every word understandable. After all, when you listen to a choir in a movie score, can you ever really understand what they're saying, even when the producers hired a real choir?

[CosmicD]

ah yeah you always have an "emulation" going on in your ear and it approximates what it really means right. And even with scores like ave satani I've seen quite some discussion on internet about wrong interpretation of latin, but I guess that's to make it sound good and all you really hear is A E A A I,

So It's maybe not so nonsensical that some libraries only have A's or EE's or OO's or like Requiem have short words that don't make any sense... At least with SC I could maybe go a bit advanced if required.

[wcreed51]

Be sure to watch Nick's tutorials...

[TGV]

You can simply type Latin words in Word Builder, so if you want your choir to sing "su da mos", just choose latin, type it, and play a few notes. If you want it to sound like pig latin, just make up latin sounding words. E.g. "sudamos" isn't Latin, but only Spanish speaking people will know. There is also a vast amount of Latin literature on the net, so you can make your choir sing Ovid or Caesar. Imagine your choir singing very loud "de bel lo gal li co"!

[jphilpit]

You just don't want your choir singing "veni, vidi, vici" when you want it to sound like love music.

[peter5992]

Here's a useful site:

http://www.yuni.com/library/latin.html

It is best to stay away from well known phrases like Kyrie, unless it is specifically religious; and you don't want to unnecessarily offend anyone (although it is a dead language, it is still used in catholic masses) or get into a discussion about Latin grammer. Go for "plausible nonsense".

[jphilpit]

For the record, "Kyrie" is actually Greek, but your point is still very valid.

[askipper]

Originally Posted by wcreed51

Be sure to watch Nick's tutorials...

+1

Read the manual too. Only took me 2 months before I did! Why do I do that???

[prof.amici]

It's a bad practice to insert words without sense... I hear incredible nonsenses: who knows Latin is horrified! Tonehammer Requiem (that I tested some time ago) is the incarnation of this bad practice to use the choir only for effects with wrong words, specially with the soloists: in this case would be better to avoid words IMHO. EWQL Symphonic Choir is better: you can sing what you want: I used complex latin textes with good results and satisfaction.
So, if you need something good, use pieces of latin textes from some source (latin Bible, Seneca, or textes form other compositions, Symphony of Psalms, Requiem...) or if you need (SHORT, please...) phrases that you couldn't find ready on the web or in other works, type here and I will translate for you...
Best regards... Ave atque vale!