Spitfite Audio British Drama Toolkit
British Drama Toolkit comes with 10 Main NKIs as well as individual NKI instruments for the accented & each articulation. British Drama Toolkit is a Kontakt Player Instrument and compatible with Full Kontakt or FREE Player 5.6.8+ British Drama Toolkit sells for $199 from Spitfire Audio. Demos of British Drama Toolkit by Spitfire Audio.
British Drama Toolkit is a new library with a well-known set of instruments but with new approach and innovative sets of articulations.
- Publisher: Spitfire Audio. Website: spitfireaudio. Format: KONTAKT FULL & K’ed 5.6.8+. Quality: 24 bit 44.1 kHz stereo. Description: Less theory, more feelings. The Contemporary Drama Toolkit is a ready-to-release sound kit professionally crafted and created by award-winning composer Samuel Sim and our team of composers.
- The critically acclaimed British Drama Toolkit provides an instinctive yet intense connection to the heart of your composition. Created in collaboration with composer Samuel Sim, it features an ensemble dedicated to the emotionally potent sound he is lauded for — but also presents a unique way of interacting with the players, which sets this instrument apart from anything we have created to.
by Alex Arsov, Sept. 2018
The Spitfire fellows have yet again concocted a special, niche library that brings a bit of a different approach to the way we usually deal with orchestral libraries / instruments. First of all, instead of the mod-wheel, here it is the velocity that defines the character of the sound. And secondly, the whole sound of the library is far more oriented toward emotional expression instead of just being precise, steady, highly controlled and raw.
For this specific instrument, the Spitfire team joined forces with well-known “drama” composer Samuel Sim, building an ensemble that would allow you to easily fill out a score with drama and emotion, all with minimal additional programming. In the package we get violin, viola, cello, double bass, bass clarinet and clarinet along with flute and piccolo.
The main difference between this and some other libraries that offer a similar set of instruments lies in the clever programming, as most instruments are divided into three basic velocity-dependent layers, where lower velocities provide very gentle and emotive textures, giving an evolving, not so exact playing technique, like various unpredictable bow ricochets, constant fluctuations in timbre on strings or some breathy notes in the case of wind instruments. Of course, all those unpredictable fluctuations remind me of some evolving pad sounds on old analog gear, the major difference being that in the case of this library we get a similar feeling to real instruments that also sound like real instruments. This is something that is definitely impossible to recreate with any other normal sounding traditional orchestral library. I like the fact that the Spitfire team managed to program these instruments without giving you the sense of loop repetition. This is something that is not so hard to achieve with electronic instruments, but becomes quite tricky when it comes to live instruments. They already achieved a similar perfection with Alternative Solo Strings, and now with British Drama Toolkit.
Long Soft notes are triggered by playing midrange velocities. They are still emotive, with vibrato toward the end tone, but more or less no other playing techniques are involved. The tone in general is far more controlled and normal. Nothing out of the ordinary, but works well in combination with textures.
As mentioned, the whole point of this library is to build a dramatic piece of music while playing live and without any additional editing. I tried at first with my small, cheap keyboard, but it proved to be almost impossible to control velocity in a precise way, so I got out my main, large keyboard that I use for orchestral things and it worked like a charm, playing textures softly with left hand and working on a lead line with right. Those textures sounds so unique that I’m sure they will find their way into many arrangements.
The higher velocity range is reserved for Long Loud samples, which are quite nice. At some point we can also play some shorter notes with this articulation, but it is not the same as it would be with staccato articulation. Those Longs also have vibrato toward the end of the tone, same as we can hear on the Long Soft range, but still, it would be fine to have an additional range of key-switches for different articulations specially built just for this upper velocity range, allowing us to change articulations on notes above texture range. It would be a dream come true to have pizzi, staccato and similar articulations along with long textures.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like most of the Spitfire libraries (and I have plenty of them). They all sound rich in timbre, and are very playable, but those longs are not quite there. They sound great, but I want a bit more diversity and control for building my lead line. Actually, it goes for all instruments in this collection, except Piccolo. This is the only instrument where short notes have a nice attack and decay.
Structure
Other than that, everything else is just perfect. Every instrument comes with a variety of variations, some of them include different playing techniques in some articulations. Maybe we should call those presets and not articulations, as some of them contain three different sample sets, one for texture range, another for soft, and a third for loud range. So, instruments also have presets where only loud ones are presented, but not the same as they are in the basic preset. The same goes for those that combine only Soft and Loud without having textures. I really love the fact that with every Spitfire library you get your money’s worth and then some. On the surface there are always essential things, but when you take a shovel and start digging deeper into the subdirectories, or even just going through all the articulations / presets inside every single instrument, there are so many variations and useful things that it’s almost hard to believe.
No matter that I would like to see additional articulations on lead Loud parts for all instruments, the one fact remains: all those instruments, various strings and winds, offer sounds and playing techniques that are almost impossible to find in other libraries that cover same set of instruments. Even if you find similar playing techniques, this one sounds far less predictable and obvious, less tamed and therefore more raw and alive than all those perfectly controlled ones. Of course, as always, a combination of both worlds gives the best results, but this library is not aiming to be your one and only, as it is made with one purpose: to provide a different approach and a different angle, offering emotional results at your fingertips. If you are a professional media composer this one could really add some unique emotions that you don’t have in your arsenal.
This is the first library I’ve had from Spitfire with reduced number of controllers. We get two microphone positions along with reverb and expression controllers, and that’s almost it. Of course, some more specific ones can still be found, being slightly hidden inside the GUI, mainly the same as in all other libraries. There are various different ways to switch articulations, or controllers to set the width of a stereo image, and other similar things that are reachable through some smaller buttons on the main interface.
Final Thoughts
One way or another, this is a great addition to my cinematic arsenal, definitely the one that can add some emotional impact and break the monotony with its evolving textures. I’m becoming a bit short on disk space, but this 7 GB of emotion will not hurt my disk. All you need is a Kontakt Player – and love, of course. Especially considering the more than reasonable price of €199 EUR.
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