In the first of my series of articles looking at my personal favourite orchestral sample libraries, their pros and cons and how and why I use them, we start with orchestral woodwind. But before we get into that, a brief recap…
As I mentioned in my introductory article, when using libraries each has their own individual fingerprint, strengths and weaknesses so I tend to blend them in order to get a unique sound.
When deciding on what to blend, I look for usability, great-sounding recordings, the flexibility of sound and how easily my computer will cope with the strains of running the sound library in question.
I also focus on the sound of the acoustic in which the samples are recorded, as they give the sound it’s character. If you haven’t read my article How To Choose Orchestral Sample Libraries - An Introduction, then use might want to bookmark this page, go and read my introduction and then come back to this page.
With that done, let’s talk woodwind samples:
I have tried a number of libraries and just to reiterate what I said in the previous article, the following is NOT an exhaustive list of available options - it’s just what I choose to use, and an explanation of why.
CineWinds Core + Pro
Spitfire Symphonic Woodwinds
Hollywood Orchestral Woodwinds
To give you an idea of the differences between these libraries, here’s a recording of a snippet from “Mercury” - part of the Planets, by Holst. It’s woodwind intensive and fast-moving.
Thanks to my assistant Mark Fabian for creating these audio examples for me.
With most of the examples, we will be including EXS versions as a reference, but this became almost impossible with the Woodwind demo we chose, as the EXS just couldn’t handle it sensibly!
CineWinds Core + Pro
CineWinds Core + Pro has become my go-to library. There are a number of reasons that I particularly like the CineWinds series.
It’s housed in Native Instruments Kontakt and works in either the full or the Free “Player” version.
CineWinds is part of a larger Cine Orchestral series covering the whole orchestra called Cine Symphony.
Actually, I had a bit of a false start with CineWinds. When I first bought it, the samples were very hissy and it was a big enough problem for me to avoid this library. But it’s recently gone through a 2nd round of editing and has been demolished - meaning it’s back in my main orchestral template with avengance.
CineWinds is a perfect example of a functional GUI that I can quickly understand, playable samples that are easy to manipulate and enough choice that I can create the sound to feel like it’s in the right “space” for my project.
All the Cine orchestral family are recorded in the MGM scoring stage at Sony Pictures. It means that the raw recordings have a beautiful ambient smoothness to them. They are coloured with a gorgeous room and neither too dry nor too ambient - but if I dial in more ambience its a usable reverb.
In the mixer tab, I can choose from using a full mix (which is a blend of the three mic recordings on offer) or I can choose to load up one or more of those mic positions and blend them to taste. I often add a bit more close-mic than the default, to give. a slightly more detailed sound.
Conclusion
The reason I like CineWinds is that (as mentioned) I can play most any phrase I’m looking for with realistic phrasing by using just two tracks per instrument and it’s both playable and beautiful - with not much learning time involved.
The Pro part of the library (an additional library purchase) adds on extra instruments to the woodwind section eg bass clarinet, contrabassoon…. and they work equally in the same way as the core library, meaning no extra learning.
Additionally, CineWinds have done a good job in recent updates with their new ensemble patch (meaning you can play chords and hear a woodwind choir ring out), as well as having more control over vibrato.
PROS:
Beautifully recorded and well edited.
Simple (ish) GUI, but with enough choice.
Playable out of the box without needing too many keyswitches. Good use of sustain pedal and modwheel for quick manipulation of sample transitions and lengths.
Good support and helpful walkthrough videos to get started (and go deeper).
CONS:
Not many! It’s taken a while for the sounds to be denoised, but they finally got around to it. Occasional note hangs and bugs but mostly it’s pretty much got everything I need.
It’s fairly pricey though at $750 for the two parts together.
Spitfire Symphonic Woodwind
Spitfire Symphonic Woodwind is one of the larger Spitfire Orchestral series, which have all been recorded in the hall at Air Studios, London - to provide an acoustic cohesion to the series as a whole.
It was originally released as a BML series (British Modular Library) but has been updated and modified since.
Like CineWinds it’s a Kontakt library which works in either the Player or Full version of Kontakt.
Like most Spitfire products, it’s beautifully thought out and I do have it in my template, but one of the problems for me is that I just don’t find it intuitive. You really do need to spend some time learning it (for example the UACC Keyswitching technique, that changes articulations by changing the velocity of the Keyswitch. This should work in theory but I just can’t quite get used to it, as I can’t play it in real-time!)
It does have a bewildering array of articulations and if you are prepared to spend some time exploring, you can get incredibly detailed renderings of passages, not possible in most libraries. The short articulations are also presented with plenty of “round-robin” samples. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s alternative recordings of the same note or articulation to avoid a “machine gun” effect of hearing the same recorded sample multiple times in a row.
It also features the Spitfire Ostinatum. This is akin to an arpeggiator on a synth, where you can program the rhythm and play phrases to be output in this rhythm. Very cool - but somehow I never use it…..
Ostinatum Picture
Like CineWinds, you are given three mic positions (Close, Tree & Ambient) and you can dial in a touch of one with a hint of another as the want takes you. As Air Studios is a big old place, you’ll need to access the close mics on a regular basis unless you only ever use Spitfire products to match to.
Conclusion
Unlike CineWinds, it’s not quite so simple to change from short samples to long ones, and if I had one gripe, I wish they had a more playable option to work with… maybe a stripped back version of each instrument (like the performance legato patches on their string libraries). I know they have given us ways of programming this, but it doesn’t come as standard and it means I don’t do it!
The bottom line though is that they feature both solo and a2 or a3 versions of most instruments - meaning you can render both solo and ensemble passages with a level of realism that few other libraries give you.
Do I use it? Yes, I do… but I use CineWinds slightly more regularly unless I need to get a bit “further under the hood” of a recording.
PROS:
Meticulously recorded by some of the best players in the world (in London)
Recorded at Air Studios in one of the world’s great studios.
Works seamlessly alongside the rest of the Spitfire orchestral series.
Carefully thought out microphone options and key switching techniques
Huge instrument and articulation options
Easy access to changing vibrato settings and length of short notes
CONS:
It’s absolutely huge - about 72gb for your hard drive!
Fast passages are awkward to play - it can be sluggish.
No pre-recorded runs
Expensive - £549
EastWest Hollywood Orchestral Woodwind (Composer Cloud)
If I were buying samples on a budget and needed the best bang for my buck, the composer cloud by EastWest is the place to start. In this HUGE bundle, you pay one monthly fee and then get instrument libraries in almost every conceivable genre. It can be hit and miss sometimes, but in the case of Hollywood Woodwind it’s definitely headed towards the hit category.
It works in the East West Play engine and doesn’t have to be registered to an ilok - a definite plus.
Conclusion
The Hollywood “team” have taken a very detailed approach to supply samples of individual instruments rather than ensembles. Almost every conceivable orchestral woodwind instrument is represented (including things like Eb clarinet) and it means you can stand out from the crowd by virtue of unusual doublings.
I really like the fact that there are lots of staccato and staccatissimo options, meaning that you never feel like you’re listening to a replay of a sample.
I also particularly like the fact that you can use the mod wheel to add or subtract vibrato - which is not present in all libraries.
I don’t find the play engine as intuitive as the CineWinds GUI, but for £20 per month do I use it? Of course! It’s got some great sounds, and if I had to start somewhere with a detailed woodwind library this would be MORE than enough to keep me going for quite a while.
PROS:
Ridiculously affordable - £20 per month for the whole composer cloud collection with endless instruments.
An extensive articulation list (even if you don’t go for the more expensive “diamond bundle”
Recorded carefully and without noise at the MGM scoring stage.
Full range of the entire woodwind (and extended woodwind) family in both solo and a2 / a3.
CONS:
Brighter and drier sound than the others - needs some treatment
Not quite as intuitive as CineWinds
Fewer articulations and mic positions in the Composer Cloud “Gold Edition”
Very few ready-made ensemble patches
A bit of a memory hog.
My Woodwind Desert Island Choice
My Desert Island Woodwind choice would be CineWinds Core + Pro, but Spitfire has some patches that I use on an extremely regular basis and they do blend well together!
What Is Next?
Next in the series, we’ll take a look at the Brass.