Berlin Woodwinds.pdf

M a n u a l

w w w . o r c h e s t r a l t o o l s . c o m

About Berlin Woodwinds Berlin Woodwinds is our third library and marks a giant milestone both for our company well as our users. Our first full-section sample library focused on core articulations as well as a large amount of trills and tempo-synced runs, Berlin Woodwinds is your go-to solution for orchestral woodwinds. All recorded runs are completely identical to the string runs in Orchestral String Runs, our critically-acclaimed first product to make combined string/ woodwind lines dead easy. Berlin Woodwinds has the Trills Orchestrator, bringing trills up to the interval of a fifth to your compositions at a level of realism never seen before. Our very own Runs Builder lets you create custom-built runs as you need them without having to make do with just a handful of pre-recorded runs. A large selection of recorded Scale Runs and figures in all keys provide sweeping epicness to your compositions. We chose to record both portato and staccato articulations at two different lengths to give you full control over the sound of your woodwinds. BWW has fully customisable dynamics, allowing you to integrate the library seamlessly into your templates playing nice with other woodwind libraries you use. One of the things that really make woodwinds shine, is the right room. We are very happy to have had the chance to record Berlin Woodwinds at the Teldex stage in Berlin/ Germany. The large recording stage at Teldex looks back on a long tradition of many well known and Grammy® award winning recordings. Famous orchestras, like the Berlin Philharmonics and great film composers from the USA and Europe trust and love the wide and clear acoustics of this room. One of the best sounding scoring stages in Europe, this room together with a fantastic complement of legendary microphones catapults Berlin Woodwinds to a new level of orchestral woodwind sampling. A big thank you to all of our customers! Only the huge success of Orchestral String Runs and Symphonic Sphere made it possible to embark on recording this huge library. Your continued support enables us to keep exploring our dreams of innovative sampled instruments! All the best wishes! Hendrik Schwarzer and the whole Berlin Woodwinds team

______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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Credits Produced by OrchestralTools.com Schwarzer & Mantik GbR

Created and Produced by Manfred Mantik, Hendrik Schwarzer Concept, Scripting and Mapping Hendrik Schwarzer Mixing / Mastering Manfred Mantik

Editing Manfred Mantik Jan Lepold Gernot Lange Peter Ulrich Daniel Wilhelm Sebastian Zangar Alexander Ketel Dennis Schuster

Tuning Fernando Aguila Garcia Tobias Escher Manfred Mantik Gabriel Gudenus Lukas Knöbl Wolfgang Liebig

Quality Assurance Jan Lepold

Manual Tobias Escher

Conductor Bernhard Fabuljan

Recording Engineer Tom Rußbueldt

Recorded at Teldex Berlin

Thanks to all our beta testers! ______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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BWW 101 Instrumentation and Recording

Berlin Woodwinds contains twelve instruments or instrumental sections, which are divided into patches containing a single articulation. You will find all of these patches inside the Instruments folder. The library contains the following instruments or sections, as they appear in your instruments folder: 00. Piccolo 01. 1st Flute 02. 2nd Flute 03. 3rd Flute 04. Flutes 8va (Ensemble) 05. 1st Oboe 06. 2nd Oboe 07. English Horn 08. 1st Clarinet 09. 2nd Clarinet 10. Clarinet Ens (Ensemble) 11. 1st Bassoon 12. 2nd Bassoon All playable articulations are listed in the articulations chart: http://www.orchestraltools.com/downloads/BWW_Chart.pdf All instruments within a section are different instruments played by different musicians, not just additional recording passes. You have free choice between three microphone positions, Close, Room and Mix, the latter being a memory-friendly premix of the former. These microphone positions are switchable in the GUI. Additionally, all core articulations have been recorded with multiple velocity layers for realistic dynamics. All samples have their natural panning. You can combine articulations with the Articulation Performer (separate free download) to control multiple articulations from a single track with powerful usability features. BWW was recorded at Teldex Stage Berlin/Germany with high-end Neumann microphones like the legendary M50 tube microphone.


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Tempo-synchronisation and NI‘s Time Machine

All pre-recorded runs, the Runs Builder and figures are synchronized to your host tempo. This marks the next step in flexibility in professional sampling. For Berlin Woodwinds, we recorded all tempo-synced runs and figures at different tempos, with the script of the instrument deciding in realtime upon the sample to use. The chosen sample is then stretched to your host tempo by means of Time Machine 2 (Close and Room microphone positions) and Time Machine Pro (Mix). Note that when using extreme tempos not playable by real musicians, you will hear artifacts and the playback will not be clear. If you use the auto tempo mode in BWW, the script will default to half tempo. A 16th run at 200 bpm is not actually playable in reality there is no recorded sample for this tempo range. The script would then stretch the fastest available sample too heavily, resulting in a bad sound. The auto tempo feature will play the run at half you host’s tempo and the result will sound much nicer. Be mindful of your tempo when writing with runs. Not every run is compatible with every tempo. If you use the Runs Builder or the Scale Runs (or any runs for that matter) in their natural tempo range, meaning: at a speed actually playable by real woodwinds, you will get the best results. Please note that Kontakt 5’s Time Machine Pro, with a vastly improved time-stretching algorithm compared to Time Machine 2, only works in the Runs Builder if the Mix microphone position is used, but not for Close and Room! This is due to Time Machine Pro’s limitation in polyphony, which makes it impossible to use it with double the number of samples, as would be required when using the other microphone positions. So for more extreme tempos always make sure to use the Mix position for best results. Runs, Figures and Runs Builder Blocks

To make Berlin Woodwinds seamlessly integrate with our own Orchestral String Runs, the complement of Scale Runs, figures and Runs Builder blocks is identical to the complement present in OSR. This allows you to play runs from both libraries at the same time without timing issues or note collisions. You can easily double a string run with flute section - all notes will sound perfectly together.


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Blending With Other Libraries

We have spent considerable energy on making Berlin Woodwinds fit into your existing workflow and make it work together effortlessly with other libraries you are using. 1. The right reverb You can control the amount of room information with the three adjustable microphone positions in BWW’s interface. More Room = more softness, wideness; more Close = more detail, more key noises. Using the Close position allows you to shape the sound even further by using your own reverb. In general we suggest the use of an unobtrusive final reverb on top of the samples to blend everything nicely together in a coherent space and to allow for spatial positioning of instruments within the mix (or, in plain words: to move instruments further back or to the front in the mix). 2. Volume Control via Kontakt We have chosen to not normalise the audio samples used in Berlin Woodwinds. This means that all samples are at their natural volume, making some instrument ranges much quieter than you may find in other libraries. This is intentional to give you the full dynamic spectrum. A piccolo is pretty loud in its highest register, whereas a flute is very quiet in its bottom range. If you want to raise the overall volume of BWW’s patches, you can either raise the volume of individual patches or raise Kontakt’s master volume slider:


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3. Volume Range Dial Dynamics is what makes an orchestra sound good. And incidentally, it is also what makes many mockups sound bad. A piano can be really quiet and a forte can be really loud, not something in-between. Because there is a fixed amount of velocity layers in any sample library, it can happen that a real musician could play that piano part much quieter than your samples do. On the other hand, having the quietest samples at too low a volume can make a library hard to use. We though about this and have a solution: The volume range dial allows you to set the overall volume range of your instruments between the lowest and the highest velocity. Move the dial all to the left and you will have the original dynamics as recorded. Move it to the far right and the lowest velocities will be very quiet while the highest velocities will be pretty loud, giving your the full possible dynamic range. By default, this dial is set to give you some nice dynamic range compared the raw samples while at the same time not leaving you with almost silent low velocities. Experiment with this setting and use it in your templates to bring out the full dynamic range of your orchestrations! The volume range feature allows you to blend BWW with your other woodwind libraries with ease.


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MIDI CCs used by Berlin Woodwinds

We have taken great care to not clash with your existing MIDI CC allocations for Berlin Woodwinds. Most CCs used by the library are standard and should work well with your current setup. Nevertheless, BWW’s scripts internally use a number of additional CCs, which are also available to you as a user in case you want to adjust settings. Most CCs are user-assignable, so you can change them if you like. Here is a list of all CCs used by default and their use: CC 1 The modwheel controls morphing through the velocity layers if the X-Fade mode is activated on the BWW knob. You can change this CC (right-click). CC 11 All patches have CC 11 (Expression) set to control the general patch volume. CC 22 This CC controls the vibrato mode (select patches only). This CC is user-assignable. Internally, the Articulation Performer script uses three CCs. Most of the time, you do not need to do anything with these, but if you want to influence the instrument directly, you can experiment with them. CC 107 Controls the volume of individual articulations. Managed by the script by default, but overrideable by the user. CC 108 This CC is used to slightly detune individual articulation for a „humanized“ ensemble sound. Seldom used for BWW, or for woodwinds in general, so for the most part you can totally ignore it. CC 109 The Articulation Performer manages system memory with the aid of this CC. Use with caution. From great power comes great responsibility!


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GUI Overview Articulation Patches vs Trills and Runs Builder

BWW has three types of patches with some differences in their GUI: 1. Articulation Patches and 2. Trills Orchestrator These patch types use a similar interface and represent the bulk of BWW’s content. This section will describe the common GUI features of these patches in detail, while additional sections dedicated to the two patch types will show you what makes them unique. 3. Runs Builder This patch type represents a breakthrough in sampling and was first introduced in Orchestral String Runs. BWW’s Runs Builder patches use a completely different GUI to the other patches in the library. All features of this patch type will be described in detail in the corresponding section of the manual. General GUI

This sections shows you the user interface of Berlin Woodwind’s articulation and Trills Orchestrator-powered patches. This is how these patches look like, with all interface elements labeled:


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1. Instrumentalist picture 2. BWW Knob 3. Volume Range dial 4. Volume Curve button 5. Release Samples toggle and dial 6. Microphone positions Microphone Positions

All patches in Berlin Woodwinds have three adjustable microphone positions. You will find rotary encoders with on/off buttons for all positions at the bottom of each patch:

If you switch off a position, its samples will be purged from memory. Conversely, as soon as you switch a position on, the samples will be loaded. Close Increase the amount of the Close knob if you want to have a more direct sound with less response of the room. Raising the volume of the Close mics will also increase the playing noises made by the musicians, giving added realism for intimate settings. Room Increase the amount of the Room knob if you want to have as much room information as possible. The reverb will increase while the direct sound decreases. Mix The Mix position is a mixture between Close and Room. This position has a rather direct sound, but also features a lot of room information for realism. Note You do not need to think about adjusting the mic positions if you do not want to! When you load any instrument into Kontakt, the microphone knobs will be set to wellbalanced standard positions. The Room/Close and Mix positions exclude one another to avoid phasing. If you activate the Mix positions, Room and Close will be deactivated and vice versa. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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BWW Knob

The BWW knob is a key component of using the library. It allows you to select one of two ways to control the velocity of played notes: 1) Velocity (how hard you press the keys on your MIDI keyboard) 2) X-Fade (lets you control the volume via the modwheel) Legato and sustained articulations as well as portato are by default set to X-Fade (modwheel). Staccato and Staccato Short use Velocity by default because they are much more easily playable this way.

You can re-assign the CC used for the X-Fade setting by right-clicking on the BWW knob and assigning a new CC by moving your corresponding fader/encoder or whatever input source you are using. In the lower third of the BWW know, the current velocity layer is displayed. As you morph through the layers, this value will change to reflect the active layer. If no text is visible, you are in the middle of two layers. Note that this display represents the actual recorded samples. So if you have p / mf / f in the display, that not only tells you that there are three actual layers per note, but also which one is currently active. This is a huge help when creating realistic mockups because you are told by BWW that “right now those flutes are playing mf“. When the display says mf, what you are hearing is the actual sound of the flutes playing mf, not just a random sample lowered or raised in volume! ______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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Release Samples

Most patches in Berlin Woodwinds have release samples, which will be triggered when you release a key. This even includes Staccato and Portato Long patches! Release samples are switched on by default. You can switch them on or off by pressing the Release Samples button. The button lights up when release samples are active. With the Release Volume knob you can control the volume of the release samples that get triggered when you release a key. Increase the value of the knob if you want to increase the volume of the release samples, decrease the value and the volume of the release samples will decrease. All Trills Orchestrator patches have a knob at the bottom left to adjust the release volume. To switch the release samples off, move the know all to the left. Volume Curve and Range

You can adjust the volume curve of a patch directly in the BWW interface: Clicking on the Vol Curve button opens a bar chart where you can set your desired velocity curve by clicking and dragging in the chart window. Note that this setting is only applied to this particular instance of the patch, so if you want to permanently change the volume curve you need to re-save the patch. The volume curve also affects the X-Fade mode using the modwheel. This means that you can fine-tune the behaviour of the modwheel to allow for unique dynamic control, for example for creating terraced dynamics.

The Volume Range encoder sets the dynamic range of the patch. You can find a detailed description of what this control does in the section “Blending With Other Libraries“.


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Wind Noises

Like a real flute player, you can add more or less air and wind noises on staccatos notes. Press the Wind Noises button to switch them on. The button will light up and you can adjust the volume of wind noises with the encoder dial. This knob can be controlled with any MIDI CC of your choice via MIDI learn (right click on the dial).


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Articulation Patches Berlin Woodwinds has a broad range of articulations across the whole woodwind section. While all of these patches use the general interface described in the previous section, some have additional features accessible in the GUI, which will be explained here. Instrumentalists

All standard soloist articulation patches prominently feature a picture of the instrumentalist playing the instrument during the recording sessions for Berlin Woodwinds. We feel that the instrumentalist is of tremendous importance because obviously s/he shapes the sound and in effect creates what you hear when using BWW. In a way these fine musicians now play on your cues, so for us it seems only fitting to show you their faces! Legato and Sustain

Berlin Woodwinds has true legato (interval sampling) for all instruments and sections. To achieve the highest level of realism and detail, we have recorded every interval up to an octave. That means you will hear the natural transitions from one note to another. Every true legato patch is sampled with three dynamic crossfade layers. The legato and sustain patches both feature adjustable vibrato and key noises. Vibrato By default, CC22 switches between normal vibrato, no vibrato and progressive vibrato. These three vibrato styles use dedicated recorded samples and have not been created by manipulating existing audio material. You can see which vibrato style is active by looking at the interface. The highlighted button shows the currently selected style:

If you would like to use a different CC to control the vibrato style, double-click on the CC number and enter a new one. Make sure not to use any CC already in use. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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Key Noises We have recorded key noises for every note individually, which you can add to your performance in the interface. Click the Key Noises button to switch this feature off and set the volume with the rotary encoder. Legato Volume Legato patches have one additional rotary encoder that lets you control the volume of the legato transitions between notes. We have found that quite often, sampled legato instruments tend to have very pronounced transitions, whereas when listening to real instruments playing legato, the connection between notes is much more subtle. We have opted to recreate the natural sound of legato instruments as close as possible, so the transitions in BWW may be much quieter compared to other libraries. You can adjust the volume of these transitions with this control, though.


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Double and Triple Tongue

Berlin Woodwinds has recorded double tongue and triple tongue samples for most instruments. In a painstaking process we recorded real double and triple tongue notes and made them react to your playing speed. All patches have samples for slower passages as well as samples for faster passages. You can switch between the two modes by pressing the corresponding button. This button, like all controls in BWW, is automatable via MIDI CC. Right-click on the button to assign a CC. Double Tongue Play a note and the first note sounds. Release the key and the second note is played. Basically you only need to play every second note, with the gap between notes determined by how long you keep the key pressed. Triple Tongue Playing triple tongued notes requires a bit of practice, but it is easily worth it: Press a key and the first sounds. The second note sounds when you release the key and BWW will automatically sound the third note after an equal period of time. This is very useful for playing triple-tongued triplets!


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Trills Orchestrator Patches One of the most powerful tools in Berlin Woodwinds is the ergonomically playable Trills Orchestrator. We say ergonomic because you do not need any keyswitches to change between different trills, you just play them. Depending on the instrument, you can play looped trills up to a fifth, one-shot semitone and wholetone trills (just one single trill) as well as identical sfz trills. Our custom script manages the biggest collection of different trills and interval tremolos ever created and it is a huge time-saver! Choose the interval to be trilled between by just pressing the starting and final notes. Read more about the use and features of the Trills Orchestrator on the following pages. Graphical User Interface (GUI)

At the right of the GUI you see a helpful tool for your orchestrations: The notation view, a huge timesaver if you want to notate trills in your written scores. It shows you every trill you are playing, regardless of the number of notes you play. Just like in all other instruments, there are three knobs and buttons for the microphone positions: Room, Close and Mix, as well as a knob for the Release Volume. Last but not least, every Trills Orchestrator has a Mode Change Function.


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How to play the Trills Orchestrator

We were looking for a way to make this instrument easily playable. After testing a few options we discovered “rolling up” the chords is the best and easiest way to play trills without keyswitches. All you have to do is press a starting note and then the final note of your trill and the Trills Orchestrator will trill between these notes. The Orchestrator allows you to trill between more than just two notes; flickering chords are possible and easy to play. Just roll off the whole chord and the Trills Orchestrator will trill between the notes you are playing. You can trill between up to 20 notes, the problem is that you will not have enough fingers to do that ;-) Look at the filename of the patch to see which intervals are playable: 2ndFlute_TO_Trills_HT-4th for example tells you that trills up to a 4th are playable. Note The starting note must always be lower than the final note. While you are playing, the delay between the start note and the end note can be very short, you can “roll up” the chords very quickly. But it is important to always roll them up; pressing two or more keys at exactly the same time will not work. The Mode Change Function

Every Trills Orchestrator can run in two different modes: End Tone = Start Tone In this mode every final note is automatically a new starting note if you press more than two keys. For example: When you trill between C and D, the C is your starting note and the D is your final note. Now you can use the D as another starting note. Just press any other key, an E for example. Now the Orchestrator trills between C and D and also between D and E. So the D is automatically a final note as well as a starting note. Start Tone = Always New In contrast to the other mode, in this mode you cannot trill between odd numbers of notes like 3, 5 or 7 for example. Why? Because you cannot use the final note of a trill as a new starting note. With the example before: You trill between C and D. If you press E now, the E is your new starting note. The Orchestrator then waits for an additional note. Now you need to press one more note, lets say an F. The Orchestrator then trills between C and D, and between E and F, but not between D and E.


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Note Just find out which mode is good for your current needs and choose accordingly: If you want to play flickering chords for example, choose the End Tone = Start Tone mode. If you want to play two different trills, each between two notes, you should choose the Start Tone = Always New mode. Tip You can blend the sfz trills perfectly with the irregular trills to achieve a sharp attack at the beginning of a long sustained trill.


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Runs Berlin Woodwinds puts a strong emphasis on idiomatic woodwind writing. No one will argue that runs are an important part of what a woodwinds section tends to do, so we felt we really needed to nail that bit. For this reason, you get a large complement of runs to choose from in the Scale Runs patches, you can play your own runs with the help of the Runs Transitions patch and, last but not least, we also created a woodwind version of our Runs Builder. Orchestral String Runs was our first commercial library and we tried out many things to come up with the best sounding and most flexible solution. With the experience gained in creating OSR and OSR2 and the feedback received from of our customers, who sent us e-mails with ideas and suggestions, we improved these run algorithms dramatically over the course of many updates. Now we can all use the best of it in Berlin Woodwinds. Scale Runs

The Scale Runs patches contain full recorded runs in all major and minor keys. All runs have been recorded at different speeds and are tempo-synced to your host. Please refer to the included Scale Runs Chart for information about the different types of runs available. Scale Runs patches have a toggle that lets you choose between major and minor runs. You can assign this toggle to a MIDI CC by rightclicking on it to control it from within your sequencer. C0 to B0 on your MIDI keyboard act as keyswitches to switch between keys. The tempo mode slider with the auto tempo button is controllable via an assignable MIDI CC (right click - by now you should know this by heart) and lets you adjust playback of the samples between half tempo, double tempo and regular tempo as well as half triplets and double triplets. The current selection is shown below the slider. As an example, if you have a host tempo of 200bpm, a 16th run would be way too fast. Change the setting to half tempo and the run will essentially play as an 8th run. If you have the auto tempo button switched on, BWW will adjust this slider automatically to find the ideal solution. To control the slider manually, switch off the auto tempo button. All Scale Runs use NI’s Time Machine Pro to sync to your host tempo, regardless of the mic position(s) used. This means unrivalled fidelity and complete freedom in choosing your tempo. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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Runs Transitions Patches

The Runs Transitions patches (also called Playable Runs, because that is essentially what these patches allow you to do) are based on the same technology that powers legato instruments and use very fast legato transitions between notes. They are available for both solo instruments and ensembles. We have sampled transitions between notes up to the interval of a fifth, so you can play runs leaving gaps between notes if you want. Now it is finally possible to play completely unique runs on a MIDI keyboard and hear the “glue“ in between individual notes. Just play your run and BWW will do the rest! Runs Builder

The Runs Builder, which is available for the Clarinet Ensemble (a3) and the Flute Ensemble in octaves (a2+Flute 8va or Piccolo in the higher register), allows you to create custom runs by combining several groups of notes. Within these groups, which are all real recorded samples, you can hear the natural connection between notes - the “glue“, which brings these real recorded short phrases combined as a bigger run into your sequences.


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Playing the Runs Builder First you need to select the key by pressing the corresponding keyswitches. Then you select a slot via keyswitch. If you have switched Auto Tempo off, you need to select a tempo mode with the Tempo Mode slider or MIDI CC. All contents and settings of the slots will be saved with your sequencer project file or in any Kontakt instrument/multi you save. Slots & Articulations When you load the Runs Builder into your Kontakt instance, all slots will be empty and basically nothing will be loaded into memory. Now you can click on any empty slot to select it. This slot is now activated, easily visible by looking at its highlighted border.

To fill the slot with an articulation, just click on any of the available articulations in the lower left of the interface. The articulation will be loaded into RAM and its picture is displayed in the slot.

When a slot is activated (white border), you can play the articulation currently loaded in that slot on your keyboard. You can change the slot in realtime using keyswitches. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Berlin Woodwinds - Manual!

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Every slot has its own keyswitch. The keyswitch controlling a slot is displayed above the corresponding slot. To clear a slot, select it and press the articulation button again. There also is a Clear All button next to the articulation buttons. Tempo Mode Slider You will find a Tempo Mode slider underneath every slot. This slider is controllable via any assignable MIDI CC (just right click) and lets you adjust playback of the samples between half tempo, double tempo and regular tempo as well as half triplets and double triplets. The current selection is shown below the slider. As an example, if you have a host tempo of 200bpm, a 16th run would be way too fast. Change the setting to half tempo and the run will essentially play as an 8th run. If you have the auto tempo button switched on, BWW will adjust this slider automatically to find the ideal solution. To control the slider manually, switch off the auto tempo button. Keyswitches C0-B0 = changes the key (e.g. F Major, C Major, etc.) C1-A1 = activates individual slots Scale Use the Scale slider to select the scale you would like your run to be in. You can assign a CC to this slider by right-clicking on it.


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ERLIN WOODWINDS

recorded at the Teldex Studio stage


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Berlin Woodwinds.pdf

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