Expansion B

SOLOISTS

M a n u a l
V e r s i o n 1 . 0

w w w . o r c h e s t r a l t o o l s . c o m
About Berlin Woodwinds EXP B
Berlin Woodwinds marked a giant milestone both for our company well as for 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. Expansion A added three completely new instruments to the
woodwinds line-up, namely Eb Clarinet, Bass Clarinet and Contrabassoon and built on
the foundation laid by BWW.

One area where we felt BWW could be improved was solo lines and generally every kind
of very expressive, lyrical passages that are very exposed in the orchestration. Our
research showed that these kinds of lines work very well with dry recordings, so we
captured the instruments for EXP B at the Teldex Booth. Coupled with special impulse
responses courtesy of Samplicity, the Solo Flute, Solo Alto Flute, Solo English Horn,
Solo Oboe and Solo Clarinet will fit perfectly with the main BWW library and EXP A.

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
as a living and breathing foundation on which we can expand - this EXP B bringing
expressive, shapable solo woodwinds into the BWW line-up. Your continued support
enables us to keep exploring our dreams of innovative sampled instruments!

All the best wishes!

The whole Berlin Woodwinds team

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Berlin Woodwinds EXP B 1.0 - Manual 2

Credits
Produced by OrchestralTools.com
Schwarzer & Mantik GbR

Created and Produced by

Manfred Mantik, Hendrik Schwarzer

Scripting and Mapping

Stan Berzon

Mixing / Mastering

Manfred Mantik

Editing Tuning

Tobias Escher Tobias Escher

Quality Assurance Manual

Jan Lepold Tobias Escher

Conductor Recording Engineer

Bernhard Fabuljan Tom Rußbueldt

Recorded at Teldex Berlin

Thanks to all our beta testers!

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Berlin Woodwinds EXP B 1.0 - Manual 3

Installation Notes
After downloading the library, the Continuata system should have extracted everything
automatically. If you can read this manual, that means that extraction was successful.

BWW EXP B works as a standalone library, so you do not need to have the main BWW
library to use it. It is, however, possible to install BWW EXP B into the BWW directory.
Please see http://forum.orchestraltools.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45 for instructions.

There is no further installation or activation required. Please note that Berlin Woodwinds
- Expansion B contrary to the main BWW library requires a full Kontakt 5.2.1 or later to
run. It is not compatible with the free Kontakt Player!

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Berlin Woodwinds EXP B 1.0 - Manual 4

BWW EXP B 101
Instrumentation and Recording

Berlin Woodwinds EXP B contains five solo instruments, which are divided into patches
containing a single articulation type. You will find all of these patches inside the
Instruments folder. The library contains the following instruments, as they appear in your
instruments folder:

Solo Flute

Solo Alto Flute

Solo Oboe

Solo English Horn

Solo Clarinet

You have free choice between two microphone positions with different sonic
characteristics. These microphone positions are switchable in the GUI and are assignable
with a MIDI CC.

BWW EXP B is panned center by default, so you can adjust the panning to your liking.

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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 Teldex IR reverb controls in
the interface.

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. 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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GUI Overview
General GUI

This sections shows you the user interface of Berlin Woodwinds EXP B‘s articulation
patches. This is how these patches look like, with all interface elements labeled:

1. Instrumentalist picture
2. BWW Knob
3. Teldex IR Controls
4. Mic Position selector

Microphone Positions

All patches in Berlin Woodwinds EXP B have two switchable microphone positions.
These positions offer different sonic characters and you should experiment in your
projects to see which fits best. You can switch between the two positions with the
selection buttons (assignable to a MIDI CC by right-clicking) in the lower right of the
interface.

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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 uses 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. For wind controllers, you will most likely need to set it to
CC2 (Breath Control).

Instrumentalists

All 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!
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Berlin Woodwinds EXP B 1.0 - Manual 8

Teldex IR

During the production of BWW EXP B, we teamed up with Samplicity to provide users
with a way to seamlessly put the solo woodwinds into the large Teldex stage as a perfect
complement to the main Berlin Woodwinds library and the Expansion A.

On the right of every patch, you will find the Teldex IR controls. The large Teldex IR
button switches the reverb on or off.

Use the Dry, Pre-Delay and Wet encoders to adjust the amount of reverb to your taste.
We have chosen default values that should work fine for most applications, but feel free
to experiment.

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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.

Legato & Sustain

BWW EXP B features an adaptive legato script. While you play, the instrument analyses
your playing style and adjusts the transitions automatically. This allows for very
expressive playing at any tempo. With the exception of Flute and Alto Flute, all legato
patches feature two distinct legato styles:

- Slurred Legato, where all notes are connected.

- Re-tongued Legato, where the note is played anew after the transition, emphasising it.
This style allows you to play re-tongued legato passages without time-consuming work
in the piano roll.

You can switch between the two styles in the GUI. Right-click to assign a MIDI CC.

The Legato Volume encoder lets you adjust the volume of the legato transitions. By
default, it is set to a medium value that should work fine for most situations.

Breath Noise

For added realism, press C0 to insert a breath noise in any legato patch.
Tip: Sing the phrase you are about to play - and when you need to breathe, so probably
does the instrumentalist. This is the right place to insert some breath noise.

Important:

When playing a slow passage followed by some faster notes, sometimes the slow
transition of the last slow note will be cut off. This is because the script is not able to look
into the future, so it has no way of knowing beforehand what the user is going to play
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Berlin Woodwinds EXP B 1.0 - Manual 10

next. You can easily manually work around this issue by manually moving the first note
forward slightly in the piano roll/key editor of your sequencer.
It is also possible to in a way teach the script by playing for a while. It will adjust to the
musical content of what you are playing.

While the script can not look into the future - you can! So we have inserted a keyswitch
at D0 which will enable a special Automatic Fast Mode as long as you hold down the
keyswitch and bypass the issue this way. Remember to use it and you should not
encounter any cut notes.

Playing and Reverse/X buttons

The legato script uses keyboard velocity to determine the phrasing of a

line. If you play rather soft, the notes will have a slight decrescendo; if you
play with higher velocity, the script will use samples with a slight
crescendo. This approach allowed us to record natural phrasing directly
into the samples. Note that this cresc/decresc effect is very subtle - you
won‘t hear big chances in dynamics.

The cresc/descresc switching is also available in the sustain patches.

An important part of playing BWW EXP B instruments expressively is using variations

in dynamics. This done by moving the modwheel (CC1). Coupled with the phrasing
control described before and the adaptive legato script, you can play BWW EXP B very
expressively.

In the right of the interface directly above the mic position selector, there are two buttons
labeled REVERSE and X. These allow you to alter the way the script reacts to your
playing:

- Reverse: By default, low velocities result in a decresc phrasing and vice versa. Press this
button and the script will react in the opposite way to suit your playing style.

- X: Press this button to treat the velocity of the first note in a sequence as usual (i.e. low
velocity = decresc), but any following note with the opposite setting (i.e. cresc in this
case). Note that this setting is influenced by the REVERSE button.

The combination of these features will result in very convincing woodwind lines - make
sure to practice using this script!

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Berlin Woodwinds EXP B 1.0 - Manual 11

Portato / Marcato

The Solo Flute, Solo Alto Flute and Solo Clarinet feature short and long portatos. Play
with low velocity for the short portatos, play harder for the long portatos. You can see
which samples are currently used while playing on the right of the interface.

The Solo Oboe and Solo English Horn have an additional Marcato articulation with a
much sharper attack.

Trills

The Solo Oboe, Solo English Horn and Solo Clarinet have a full complement of semitone
and whole tone trills, both espressivo and with short attack. Use the key switches C0 and
C#0 to switch between semitone and whole tone trills.

If you play with a soft velocity, accelerating espressivo trills will be played. Play harder
and regular short attack trills will sound.

Grace Note Sustains / Changing Note Sustains

The Solo Flute, Solo Alto Flute and Solo Clarinet have recorded Grace Note sustains.
Play the grace note first (for example G3), keep it pressed and play a semitone or whole
tone below (F#3 or F3, in this case) - much in the same way as the Trills Orchestrator
script from BWW.

The Solo Oboe and Solo English Horn have been recorded with half step
and whole step changing notes, both up and down. First play the root note
and hold it. Then play the changing note either a semitone or a whole tone
below or above. Use the Speed encoder to adjust the speed of the changing
note.

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