Orchestral tools SFX User Manual

Capsule User Guide

Berlin Woodwinds - SFX

www.orchestraltools.com

Collection User Guide

CONTENT

I About this User Guide 3

II Introduction 4

III Recording and Concept 6

IV Berlin Woodwinds - SFX 7

V Integrated QuickHelp Texts 8

VI Blending With Other Libraries 9

VII Common MIDI CCs 10

VIII Maximum Voices 11

IX GUI Overview 12

Preset System .............................................................................................................. 12

UI Views ...................................................................................................................... 14

Performance View ................................................................................................. 14

Mixer View ........................................................................................................... 15

Settings View ........................................................................................................ 18

Controller Table View ............................................................................................ 21

X Single Articulation Patches 23

Standard Articulations ................................................................................................ 23

Sustains ...................................................................................................................... 26

Time Machine-enabled Patches ................................................................................... 27

XI Multi Articulation Patches 28

Multi Slot View ............................................................................................................ 28

Multi Locked View ....................................................................................................... 33

XII Getting Help 34

Rev. 2 017-10- 2 5

Collection User Guide

XIII Appendices 35

Controller Table - Annotated List ................................................................................. 35

New Features .............................................................................................................. 46

Configuring Kontakt's Outputs .................................................................................... 49

Rev. 2 017-10- 2 5

Collection User Guide

Collection Name

Collection

Capsule

Kontakt

BWW D | Berlin Woodwinds - SFX

1.1

2.5

Full 5.5.1+

I About this User Guide

This document serves as the User Guide for all Orchestral Tools collection releases marked with the Capsule logo on our website. These collections are powered by our Capsule scripting framework, developed in-house for best speed, resource use and usability. This guide is constantly updated as new collections and updates are released. Please make sure you are using the most recent version, which you will automatically receive when installing updates. You can also download the most recent version in our Helpdesk.

This document is a special version of the User Guide that only contains features applicable to the collections listed below. You can download the full User Guide that applies to all Orchestral Tools collections in our Helpdesk.

The following table lists all collections covered by this User Guide with their current Capsule version as well as the minimum Kontakt version. Please note that collections each require their own Capsule version and need to reside in their own folder! We strongly advise to keep all collections apart in separate folders to avoid issues. If in doubt, send us an email and we will be happy to help you out!

Important

This User Guide does not cover downloading, installing and registering Capsule-powered collections. These topics are explained step by step in the respective Installation Guide, which is linked to in your download email (the email containing your download code/serial number). You can also find it in our Helpdesk.

About Kontakt

While all features specific to our collections are described in this User Guide, a basic familiarity with how NI Kontakt works is expected. For general information how to configure and use Kontakt itself, please refer to the Kontakt User Manual.

| About this User Guide |

Collection User Guide

II Introduction

Welcome to the Orchestral Tools Capsule User Guide!

Capsule (Control And Performance Symphonic Utility Engine) is Orchestral Tools‘ groundbreaking scripting technology powering a growing number of collections.

Capturing details, the creation of emotive tools with a maximum of efficiency and a dedication to the sound led us to the Berlin Series. An ambitious project over many years with the vision to create the most complete and flexible Virtual Orchestra. Capturing the beautiful details, gestures and colors of a symphonic body inspired us to new innovations in the industry. Recorded in Berlin, we took advantage of the unparalleled acoustics of the room - not too wet to stay flexible and focussed or to dry to be able to create a fully blendable orchestral body where all the single instruments and sections come together to a single entity. We engaged renowned musicians from the most

famous orchestras in the world and conceived a whole new workflow, which will instantly support you realising more realistic results in a shorter time.

After years of development we were the first to present the Adaptive Legato Concept. Capsule senses the speed of your playing and does not only switch automatically between 3 available legato slots, but also adapts all important controllers and variables in the background to offer you the most fluid legato you ever played. Entering the world of Orchestral Tools also means to be on board on a journey infused with new ideas and the introduction of tools never built before. The Runs Builder lets you create the most convincing fast runs based on pre-recorded micro runs. These are just a few examples of our investment into the future of orchestral sampling.

Using our extensive set of articulations efficiently is fundamentally important. That´s why we didn’t just develop yet another tool; we conceived a radically new workflow which will instantly support you:

The Control And Performance Symphonic Utility Engine.

Capsule keeps all our different colors with care and integrates perfectly into Native Instruments´ Kontakt at the highest possible system efficiency. We simply improved everything. A for a long time desired multi articulation facility exists now in parallel to fully flexible single articulation patches.

You can easily apply True Legato to any long notes of your choice. There is so much more potential in these brilliantly sampled collections to exhaust. So why simply switch between articulations, when you are able to blend them? Like a painter mixing colors to create new shades, you can easily do the same with articulations. Doing this in a time-efficient way leads to a wholly new technique:

Polyphonic Keyswitching enables you to stack different colors over each other. Simply press up to 4 keyswitches simultaneously and choose how you want to blend or switch the chosen articulations. Choose between equal power crossfading, velocity switching, MIDI controller switching or open up a whole new world of sounds with our 2D equal power morphing. With an assigned midi CC this is even easier to do. You don´t need to waste time anymore setting up complicated sample mappings. Your samples are now intuitively and easily playable.

| Introduction |

Collection User Guide

We redefined the way how you mix within a Capsule Patch. With the innovative Auto Gain the overall volume stays at the same level while you morph between the different microphone positions. A feature that helps you to keep the natural orchestral dynamics in balance. Fast tools like the chaining option or the purge all function will support you to find the sound and timbre to your personal taste in a faster and more elegant way. Every channel can now be routed to an output of your choice.

To allow all these articulations to stack, switch and morph, we completely overhauled the Berlin Series. A dedicated team re-arranged the natural orchestral dynamic balance between all Berlin instruments and articulations, matched the mic position volumes to each other and developed a new approach to set up the release samples in a more natural and organic way. Now each articulation sits wonderfully and convincingly in the best-balanced room you ever heard.

One of our key visions for the Capsule is to save time, especially when composers build their own templates. Capsule‘s Controller Table holds all assigned elements and midi controllers in a dedicated list. Once you have set up a custom controller table, you can save it in a preset on your computer to share it between different Capsule instances. It has never been so fast and easy to set up your Berlin Orchestra.

Flexibility in Capsule’s single articulation patches is just paramount. Now you can create your very own Round Robin rules. With only one click you can use the neighboring zones to triple the available number of Round Robin samples to add a more organic feel and to avoid any kind of machine gun effect. Also each Round Robin can be controlled individually. Turn off specific dynamic layers to adjust the dynamic range to your needs or apply our new Niente option to any articulation, where the dynamic range starts with completely silence. This is an important feature especially with strings, where a tone can evolve from total silence as well as for use with a breath controller. Almost every feature here is available for each articulation in the multi articulation patches as well. But of course, you don't have to change anything. We already designed a very playable and optimized setup for you. Just load a patch and play.

Orchestral Tools is a sampling project driven by a few composers like you with their vision of a growing orchestral palette. We develop Expansion Sets for all our Main Collections which will extend your personal library in an organic way. Orchestral Tools is a growing project - always up to date. We constantly work on existing collections to make them even better and to unleash their full potential. Maybe it is the whole package of an unparalleled sound, innovations, captured details and intuitive handling which has made our products standard tools for many composers over the world.

| Introduction |

Collection User Guide

III Recording and Concept

We are happy to have found a sonic home for our collections at the Teldex Scoring Stage in Berlin. 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 our work to a new level of orchestral sampling.

The quality of a sampled collection begins with the recording. Every Orchestral Tools collection is recorded at 96khz with state of the art equipment. The full editing and post-production process uses these 96khz recordings without downsampling. We very rarely denoise our recordings and never treat them in any other automated way. If tuning is needed, it is done by ear without resorting to tuning algorithms. Only at the very end, right before the samples are mapped into their instruments, the content is converted to 48khz for best use of resources.

Our goal is to provide a set of tools that easily adapts to any workflow and creates a coherent sonic

representation of the orchestra. The main way we achieved this is by recording every instrument in its orchestral position. All collections come pre-panned and pre-mixed with their respective volumes

balanced. If there are multiple types of the same instrument, they are recorded in slightly different positions, yet still in their general section area. The different snare drums in Berlin Percussion, for example, have been recorded slightly spread over the general "snare drum area" within the percussion section. This allows you to have a very wide and full sound when combining multiple instruments.

We deliberately choose to also record non-traditional instruments as belonging to a symphonic setup, like electric guitars and a drumset in our Metropolis Ark Series. Modern media scoring introduces a host of new instruments into the established orchestral lineup and we feel these instruments deserve the same care and precision in fitting them into the symphonic sound as their traditional counterparts.

All collections feature a number of microphone positions commonly used in orchestral recording. The position of these microphones is identical in every collection, which means that for example the Tree is much nearer to the string section that it is to the percussion section (because the percussion section is situated at the back of the orchestra). This enabled lively acoustics that come pre-mixed for the respective stage position. The choice of mic positions also depends greatly on the instrument. Some instruments, especially in the percussion section, benefit greatly from a M/S position to enable accurately positioning the sound source.

Wherever possible, similar instruments use the same mapping scheme so it is usually possible to transfer MIDI data from one instrument to another easily. This is especially important and useful for percussion.

| Recording and Concept |

Collection User Guide

IV Berlin Woodwinds - SFX

The woodwind section allows for a nearly limitless amount of effects and interesting playing techniques. After focusing on core articulations with Berlin Woodwinds and its Additional Instruments, it was time to delve head on into Woodwind SFX. Berlin Woodwinds - SFX adds SFX patches for a number of woodwind instruments, including Fluttertongue Legato, bendings, whirling effects, wind noises and lots of rips and special runs. An added bonus are the comprehensive selection of Flute Ensemble SFX as well as the special Low Bassoon Ensemble which provides a truly deep and resonant low layer to your compositions.

Instrumentation and Recording

Berlin Woodwinds - SFX adds six new instruments or ensembles with assorted SFX to your woodwind arsenal: Piccolo, Flute, Flute Ensemble, Clarinet and Bassoon all bring extensively sampled FX to the table. The Low Bassoon Ensemble (3 Bassoons and 3 Contrabassoons ins octaves) adds a completely new colour to the Berlin Woodwinds lineup and includes common standard articulations. All these are divided into patches containing a single articulation as well as multi articulation patches. You will find all patches inside the Instruments folder. The collection contains the following instruments, as they appear in your instruments folder:

25. Piccolo SFX

26. Flute SFX

27. Flute Ensemble SFX

28. Clarinet SFX

29. Bassoon SFX

30. Carver's Low Bassoon Ensemble SFX

Note that the instrument numbering continues the sequence from the Berlin Woodwinds Main Collection.

This structure is identical for Single Articulation, Multi Articulation and Time Machine-enabled patches.

All instruments within a section are different instruments played by different musicians, not just additional recording passes.

You have free choice between four microphone positions, Close, Tree and Surround, as well as an A/B setup.

These microphone positions are switchable in the GUI and can be controlled via MIDI CC. Additionally, all core articulations have been recorded with multiple velocity layers for realistic dynamics. All samples have their natural panning.

| Berlin Woodwinds - SFX |

Collection User Guide

V Integrated QuickHelp Texts

To help you use these collections to their fullest potential, we have integrated QuickHelp texts for nearly all UI elements. These texts feature short descriptions of the relevant feature. You can find more detailed information in this User Guide.

The texts are displayed in Kontakt's Info Pane. To show this pane, click on the Info Button in Kontakt's toolbar. Hover over an interface element to see its associated QuickHelp text.

| Integrated QuickHelp Texts |

Collection User Guide

Kontakt Master Volum e

VI Blending With Other Libraries

We have spent considerable energy on making our collections 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 adjustable microphone positions in the Mixer View. The Tree/Room position is recommended for composing, providing a nice balance between presence and ambience. Surround and AB are much more reverberant and best used to add character to the sound. Using the Close position solely allows you to shape the sound even further by using your own reverb - at the expense of losing the natural sound of the Teldex stage. 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 our collections. 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 the patches, you can either raise the volume of individual patches or raise Kontakt’s master volume slider.

Volume Range Slider

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 thought about this and have a solution: The volume range slider in the Settings View allows you to set the overall volume range of your instruments between the lowest and the highest velocity. If the Volume Range setting is at 0, the samples will have their recorded dynamic range. Move it to the far right and the lowest velocities will be very quiet while the highest velocities will be pretty loud, giving you the full possible dynamic range. By default, this slider is set to give you some nice dynamic range compared to the raw samples while at the same time not leaving you with almost inaudible 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 our collections with your other libraries with ease - but then why would you want other libraries?

| Blending With Other Libraries |

Collection User Guide

VII Common MIDI CCs

We have taken great care to not clash with your existing MIDI CC allocations for all collections. Most CCs used by Capsule are standard CCs and should work well with your current setup. Nevertheless, the 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. A number of additional CCs are used for internal calculations. These CCs are shielded to the outside so you do not need to worry about them.

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 Main Knob. You can change this CC in the Controller Table view.

CC 11

All patches have CC 11 (Expression) set to control the general patch volume. You can assign this CC freely in the Controller Table.

CC 7

In all patches, CC7 is mapped to the Kontakt volume slider. Use CC7 for balancing the collections in your template. You can assign this CC freely in the Controller Table.

CC 3

This CC controls the vibrato mode (select patches only). You can assign this CC freely in the Controller Table.

CC64 (Sustain)

All Longs patches (as well as of course Longs articulations within Multi Articulation patches) use CC64 to hold currently playing notes after you have let go of their respective keys. In the case of retriggered notes (for example when a new chord uses notes already present in an earlier chord), the note(s) common to both chords will be faded out and retriggered. This allows you to play repeated chords and chord changes in a very realistic manner. This feature works automatically and does not need to be activated. You can assign this CC freely in the Controller Table.

CC115

Capsule uses CC115 internally to purge samples. Do not assign this CC to any function and make sure it is not sent automatically by any MIDI device. Do not delete this CC115 assignment in Kontakt's AutomationMIDI tab, otherwise the patches will not work correctly! There is also a warning shown in Kontakt's automation tab. Heed it! CC115 sent by any outside device will be ignored by all Capsule patches.

| Common MIDI CCs |

Collection User Guide

Max i m um Voi ce s

VIII Maximum Voices

Every patch in Kontakt is assigned a maximum number of voices it is allowed to play. If that number is exceeded while playing, Kontakt will automatically stop the earliest played voices still sounding.

Kontakt reserves a bit of system memory for every possibly playing voice. That means that if this number is set far higher than needed, superfluous memory will be used. By default, all Capsule patches have been set with a default maximum voice limit tailored to how the particular patch is generally used. That means that Legato patches will have a higher value than for example Trills. Multi Articulation patches have a rather high value to enable complex articulation routings.

If you use a lot of microphone positions (esp. in Berlin Percussion) and/or have a very dense orchestration, you might encounter dropped notes. In this case just raise the maximum voices limit in the Kontakt patch UI. Experiment with the setting to find the sweet spot for your applications. After you have found the value that works for you, just save the patch and it will be recalled every time you load this patch.

| Maximum Voices |

Collection User Guide

De fault

Pre se t

IX GUI Overview

Capsule collections have two distinct types of patches, Single Articulation Patches as well as Multi Articulation Patches. Both share some common features and UI elements, but they differ in one big respect: While the Single Articulation Patches feature one articulation each, the Multi Articulation Patches allow you to combine multiple articulations in groundbreaking ways thanks to the power of Capsule.

The following sections show the general UI for both patch types with detailed explanations of the features these patches offer. Note that not all features apply to all patches. If you do not see a particular UI element, the patch does not support this particular feature. Note that screenshots show various products depending on which collection is best suited to show that particular feature. Also things might look a bit different on your screen if you have changed the default settings of patches.

9.1 Preset System

Capsule features a powerful preset system, which allows you to transfer values and settings between different articulations and instruments.

The preset system intelligently applies your settings when you load a preset in any single or multi instruments and will only restore the settings that actually apply to that instrument. All instrument as well as mixer settings will be recalled. So you can for example set up your perfect microphone mix with the Soft Low Layer option in one patch and reload the same setting into any other patch of the same collection.

Note that the loaded articulations of Multi Instrument Patches are not recalled by design to avoid wrong assignments.

Default Preset

There is one default preset, which you can save and load with one click by clicking the respective buttons in the GUI. This default preset is shared by all Capsule patches within a collection. This means you can set any patch up the way you want it and use the same settings in any other patch just by loading the default preset. When saving or loading the default preset, a confirmation message will be displayed in the Patch InfoView area in the Performance View.

| GUI Overview |

Collection User Guide

Individual Presets

You can also create individual presets that can be saved under a unique name and loaded any time. Saving and loading works the same way as with the default preset. Just click the respective button at the top right of the UI. A standard Save/Load dialog will appear giving you access to your file system. You can store these presets anywhere you like; they do not need to be in the collection folder.

| GUI Overview | Preset System

Collection User Guide

Views

Sele ctor

Transpose

9.2 UI Views

All patches within the our collections use a tabbed UI separated into four pages, or "views", as we call them. This section describes these four views along with all their features. Individual features may only be present in certain instruments.

9.2.1 Performance View

The Performance View features the most commonly used controls for each patch. In Single Articulation Patches, you will find the Main Knob with its velocity layer display here, as well as Con Sordino, Auto Sustain, vibrato style and other important settings (depending on the instrument). In Multi Articulation Patches, the Performance View is where you load and customize individual articulations, set your control preferences and switch between the selected articulations.

The look of the Performance View differs greatly from patch to patch, and even more between Single and Multi Articulation patches. This is why this view is covered in the respective sections later in this User Guide in detail.

Transpose

All patches have a < TR > transpose section in their lower left.

This feature allows you to transpose the playable range of the whole patch without affecting keyswitches and other non-playable keys.

The transpose controls are very useful if you want to either shift the playable range to conform to a different tuning system (or to play in your favourite key together with instrumentalists when using Capsule live). This feature is also well suited for stacking custom ensembles with octave-shifted instruments, for example Violins I and II in octaves.

| GUI Overview | UI Views

+ 35 hidden pages

Orchestral tools SFX User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

I About this User Guide

II Introduction

III Recording and Concept

IV Berlin Woodwinds - SFX

V Integrated QuickHelp Texts

VI Blending With Other Libraries

VII Common MIDI CCs

Max i m um Voi ce s

IX GUI Overview

9.1 Preset System

9.2 UI Views

9.2.1 Performance View