Description

Thank you for taking the time to check out Sofia Woodwinds. I’ve been working on this library for a few years and it’s gone through many iterations to get to this stage.

The library includes 13 woodwind instruments from piccolo to contrabassoon. Each instrument was recorded at 3 dynamic levels which you can smoothly crossfade in real-time or control through note-on velocity.

My approach to sample editing is to be as minimally invasive as possible, I want to maintain the integrity of the samples and keep them as fresh and alive as when they were recorded. I use the lowest amount of processing I can to tidy up any rough edges and create consistency across each sample set. This approach leaves the samples more organic and better suited for further processing, allowing you to combine them with other libraries or effects and blend them into different contexts.

Built for performance

I designed Sofia Woodwinds from the ground up with the intention of allowing you to perform. Every articulation, transition, and dynamic is under your control.

The library’s scripting interprets your performance to provide the most suitable legato transitions without you having to worry about pacing your playing or compensating for lag.

Each instrument has been set up to sound lovely out of the box and if you’re a tweaker there are fine tuning controls for almost every element of the library. Here are just a few of the more detailed controls you might like to use:

You can control the sensitivity of every continuous controller.

Play with the 5 parameters of vibrato – intensity, rate, pitch, gain, and timbre.

Adjust the crossfade time, pitch variance, and gain of legato transitions.

Control the speed of formant correct glides.

Breath Control

Performing virtual woodwinds with a breath controller feels so natural. Sofia Woodwinds includes a dedicated breath controller mode. When enabled you’ll be able to control when notes start, when they end, and their dynamic using your breath controller. If you have a more advanced controller with bite or tilt sensors you can connect these up to other parameters such as vibrato or flutter tongue.

Speaking of flutter tongue

With the exception of the oboes and contrabassoon all of the instruments include real flutter tongue samples. Using a continuous controller you can seamlessly transition from sustain samples to flutter tonguing. This is a great way to draw attention to a line and make your composition stand out.

Trills

The unique scripting gives you the ability to retrigger notes and produce real time trills of any tempo, duration, or interval. You’re not trapped trying to lock pre-recorded trills into your sequence. You play them to fit your music.

Repetitions

Through a combination of 4x recorded round robin overlay samples and a multitude of randomised elements Sofia Woodwinds give you a fresh sound on every key press. Playing at a higher velocity triggers the overlay attack samples that can be used to add punch and variety to the start of any phrase.

Microphone Positions

Recorded by Four For Music at their beautiful scoring stage in Sofia Bulgaria. Each musician was recorded in their standard seating position on the scoring stage. With 3 classic microphone positions you can place these instruments in almost any context. From delicate duets to bomnbastic epics, Sofia Woodwinds gives you the flexibility to blend into any ensemble.

The library’s interface offers you access to each set of microphones allowing you to control their volume, panning, width, and delay. You can purge any mic you wish in order to reduce the already low system resource footprint. When used as a multi-out plugin each channel can be routed to its own output.

Feature Summary

13 Individually sampled instruments Piccolo, 2x Concert Flute, Alto Flute, English Horn, 2x Oboe, 2x Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, 2x Bassoon, Contrabassoon

Independent plugin built with HISE (no player required)

Low CPU and RAM usage

Resizable interface with 4k support

26000 samples – 16GB Uncompressed 24bit 48KHz Recorded by Four for Music



3 Crossfadable dynamic layers

Up to 4x round robin + auto variation engine

3 Microphone positions Close, Decca Tree, Hall/Wide

Performance generated articulations Playable legato, glides, trills, vibrato

Crossfadable flutter tongue (for some instruments).

More information…

If you’d like to know more about Sofia Woodwinds please listen to the audio demos, watch the videos, read the FAQ and detailed user manual. If you have any further questions please send me an email through the contact page.