The Best Ways to Voice High Woodwinds? (and Why Should You Use Woodwinds?)

[@deedub760]

I love how you didn't waste any time addressing the topic. You got right into it. Thank you. Great information, too.

[@btidelius7344]

Paul, this is I would say one of the most clear, inspiring and useful series on the tube right now. We all know the marketing side of a business like Spitfire, and we realise that this is a part of all that is needed to keep thing working for you and your team. But the way you do it is a treat, a win-win that really shows your commitment and love for music. We are many thats is looking forward to the next episode. Many thanks, MOMA, Stockholm Sweden.

[@peekpen]

Thank you for inviting us in on your process with cinematic woodwinds.

[@sheldonmercury9252]

Very useful. I have looking for exactly this. Was writing a piece and got stuck on the woodwind section because I couldn't get it to sound quite right. Now I know how to approach the problem. Thank you very much Paul. For this and everything else that you all do at spitfire

[@waynebacer6235]

This video series is great Paul, keep em coming.

[@matiassantana4596]

Man, you are amazing! Thanks for these videos.

[@PaulThomsonMusic]

Thanks Matias!

[@nedfo72]

This is awesome, Paul! Thank you for including the project session. I love writing for woodwinds. Such important "spices" for the orchestra I'm loving this whole #oneorchestra thing

[@d_lydian]

This series is an absolute gem, please keep that up. I appreciate your effort very much Paul, thumps up!!!

[@radcliffechris]

Paul! This was extremely helpful for me. Definitely speaking a musical language I can understand. :)

[@PaulThomsonMusic]

Thanks Chris - glad it was useful!

[@Carsons12]

Really love these type of tutorial videos which related to orchestration as well as your Basic Instinct video.

[@yvanroustan4426]

These videos series are great Paul ! more please !

[@davidandronicomusic]

This is SO great! Thank you Paul!

[@wakitakiwakitaki]

Thanks, Paul!

[@samshrimpton407]

Knew I had an upcoming woodwind section to write, so I've been saving this. Awesome video Paul! Thanks for making these. Really getting a lot out of this voicing series!

[@marcolyott]

Paul ,this is brilliant! Thank you so much and looking forward to the next video in this series, most excellent.

[@jonasdenolf4831]

Thanks for this tutorial! i think these tutorials are great for every composer, thank you so much. Keep making these!!

[@carlstephenkoto619]

I need to spend some serious time listening to all these combinations. But what a great lecture! I need to go back and do the "strings" lecture soon. Thanks a million Paul!

[@secretreleases]

Thank you for that kind of high quality content you keep providing!

[@XeNoS_Music]

Incredible video thank You Paul ! ,...Im looking forward for more, especially brass :)

[@orrinbynum5978]

Mr. Thomson this video was very helpful to me as well. I really enjoyed watching you. Can you please make a Video on how to voice the French horns, trumpets, and the rest of the lower end woodwinds section please. Thank you so much. I look forward to your next video.

[@OliKember]

Loved listening to this audition process. Many thanks for doing this!

[@jammusique]

Interesting Paul ! That great that you think about these things, and that you share this here. I can tell you're passionate about this, so take a look at The Rite of Spring (Stravinsky), the opening of the 2nd part (rehersal number 79) Where he's got 2 clarinets above 3 flutes (all separate lines) and below the flutes, a piccolo clarinet (yes, you read correctly ;) It's a beautiful effect ! Cheers

[@Mrjononotbono]

Absolutely love these videos you do Paul. Thank you.

[@AlistairMelville]

Paul, very much appreciate the Logic File. This is so handy for all of us who are new to this. I guess the Brass and Percussion will be next? I really do feel that this is what #ONEORCHESTRA is all about. Many thanks.

[@colinwight6995]

Very interesting, helpful, informative & very useful - thanks Paul! Will you be doing a session on voicing low woodwinds?

[@BluemountScore]

The BBCSO woodwinds are great. My favorite section of the library.

[@WillWilson]

I always struggle with Woods! This is great thanks. Looking forward to the brass ;) PS the BBCSO Oboe is beautiful!

[@JayKay0245]

Really informative Paul, thanks

[@BillyPalmerMusic]

I've been making an effort to polish my woodwind writing and this was super helpful!

[@mybiggrin]

This melody is very Stravinsky. Thank you for the tips and insights.

[@jimsanger]

Really useful, woodwinds get so underused compared to strings. I recently did a film with the British Drama Toolkit woods and the director loved the mood it created.

[@pjdahmen]

Great tutorial

[@PaulThomsonMusic]

Thanks Paul!

[@redlester]

Brilliant stuff Paul, really useful. It’s really interesting when you take it up the octave! (Sorry, couldn’t resist 😉 )

[@chrismeyers7487]

Ah! Thank you, Paul!!!!

[@dafingaz]

Another great installment!

[@RenevolutionAccount]

great Video, thank you Hello Paul, I am a big fan of your videos. It would be great if you made a video about : The Best Ways to Voice BRASS? (and what IS BRASS voicing?)

[@benjaminduk5764]

Paul would you be able to get someone at Spitfire to convert your Logic project to a Cubase project so that us Cubase users can also benefit from studying your files please :D

[@mirzaaljic]

I use Cubase and this would be awesome. But what I'm doing instead, I am following the video and then recreating the project along the way and slightly tweaking it for my own purpose. I find that to be more engaging and actually feels like live practice.

[@Nicolas-et8hf]

Will you do a brass video?

[@simonturner1]

Ok, that was interesting.

[@klavierunterricht-bergstra2187]

great content

[@OliKember]

As per your frustrations with the MIDI ending up randomly named as you drag them around, you can quickly rename the MIDI block based on the track they're sitting on. Shit Alt N in Logic. Also, if you hit Shift Alt C the MIDI blocks change colour to the track colour they're sat on. Very handy stuff and part of my muscle memory now.

[@AdrianVeale]

Oliver Kember That’s such a useful tip! Thanks Oliver.

[@OliKember]

@@AdrianVeale Pleasure! Love finding out a new tip too. :)

[@whaleguy]

Hi Paul, could you provide the midi files for download so that those of us who use other sample libraries can listen and follow along :)

[@kristoffersundberg123]

+1, but also for those of us who use the same sample library but a different DAW (or you could just dump silly Logic and come join us cool Reaper kids! ;) ).

[@carlstephenkoto619]

I linked the files in my post above.

[@whaleguy]

@@carlstephenkoto619 YT marks any posts with links as spam. Your post isn't visible. Please post it again but put spaces in between so that YT doesn't mark it.

[@PeteCalandra]

Great vid Paul. I also learned a cool new word today: completist ☺️😊

[@nowomannotie]

It's actually spelt completest

[@PeteCalandra]

W W thank you. I should have googled the spelling..

[@nowomannotie]

@@PeteCalandra I just listened again and I have changed my mind. You are right I think , completist as in obsessive.

[@PeteCalandra]

@@nowomannotie It's good to know both... :)

[@natemurphy7272]

thats interesting

[@moviekidtechlife]

Paul please let us know where you got the mouse wrist support things from ... they look great

[@synkrotron]

www.brownmed.com/product/imak-ergo/wrist-cushion-for-mouse/

[@moviekidtechlife]

Legend I hope they ship to the uk though !

[@synkrotron]

@@moviekidtechlife would probably cost a bit... www.brownmed.com/faq/

[@renatozanardo9648]

Hi Paul, I have existentials doubt about a composition I'm still doing. How can I make you listen it?

[@keiththeodosiou]

Thanks Paul, very informative indeed. So many combinations is mind boggling :)

[@paradis3r3gain3d]

Very interesting and useful demonstration, thank you. However, as a clarinet player, I would just say that these samples are a very long way from reproducing how a clarinetist would approach blending with the rest of the woodwind section or indeed the orchestra as a whole. The clarinet is one of the hardest instruments to sample convincingly simply because there are so many different possible colours (not merely dynamics and articulations) within a given note and as a player you're continuously bending the sound to fit the musical context. (Obviously every player does this to some degree but the options for the clarinet are vastly more extreme.) So while all the advice here is super-useful in terms of scoring for samples, if you assume that this accurately reproduces what the clarinet section can do (and how it can blend), you're missing out on a lot of colour possibilities. (PS. the chalumeau range is not the area you describe - you're talking about the throat notes and the chalumeau is everything below that. Also the clarion range is very, very different from the chalumeau range and it's really important to understand the difference in colour and power. Again samples never seem to be able to convey that very significant difference, for reasons I have never understood.)

[@PaulThomsonMusic]

Thanks Simon - blimey that’s a bit of a clanger re the ranges.. I’ve played the clarinet since I was 10! Totally agree - samples will only ever be an imitation of the beauty of a fine player. Although - I’d challenge you and say the Oboe is harder to sample!!

[@paradis3r3gain3d]

@@PaulThomsonMusic I've done a lot of KZbin tutorials and I wish my worst clanger was as mild as that! Thank you so much for everything that you guys do - the products are inspirational in themselves but the videos take it to the next level. Funny you should say that about the oboe though - as someone who doesn't play the oboe it's always struck me as an instrument that samples really well ... unlike the clarinet which frequently sounds like either an oboe (how is that possible?) or a flute, but never really much like a clarinet. Perhaps the answer is that you're never going to love the sampled sound of an instrument that you have played for a long time.

[@charlesgaskell5899]

Very interesting! There was at least one combination (oboes at the top of their range, flutes at the bottom of their range, in octaves) where I disagreed with your assessment and really liked the sound. But I guess different people have differing tastes. You describe the clarinet as the "cello" of the woodwind section, but shouldn't that honour really belong to the bass clarinet (with whom it shares an almost identical range)? I would have the clarinet more as a viola instrument... And now I must watch the video again, I'm interested to see how many times you say "interesting"...

[@AGVersace100]

the sound might be good, the point though is that flutes don't have much power down on the bottom of the range while oboes do. It is difficult to make the two sound even without the oboes overpowering the flutes.

[@carlstephenkoto619]

I exported the Logic midi regions to midi tracks. You should be able to just drag the 10 tracks into your daw (worked in Reaper 5) and use whatever libraries you have (I used Spitfire Studio WW since I don't have BBC yet). If you want to move the tracks around like Paul did, you'll need to split the tracks into regions again. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hJjA34rpkiTkL1AutKIeJvMhw7HgxJ6j?usp=sharing

[@MePeterNicholls]

9:00 Ennio Morricone ;)

[@alainthiry3965]

thank you. just at 30min too confusing for me who play what notes...

[@MePeterNicholls]

“A toir” please 😝😜

[@N-JKoordt]

Very nice - more thorough than Adler.

[@nicholas72611]

Good video but I disagree so much

[@theonewithoutidentity]

I'm having a hard time focusing on what's happening when you keep switching between the camera and DAW. I think it would be better to just keep the video focused on the screen the whole time and occasionally view the keyboard as you're playing.

[@agorgedslug]

This is great information Paul. I'm sure you're aware yourself that your choice of adjectives is very limited and starts to sound rather forced. I.e. "Ok that sound was INTERESTING, now while we've STILL GOT THAT SOUND IN OUR MIND'S EYE, etc. As you start to become more comfortable with the series I'm sure this will go away :-D

[@novanova1644]

The sounds are very UNATURAL, even tacky. The real wood instruments are much warmer and breathy...