When you have so many Woodwinds that you have to separate them into Flutes and Reeds, you know you have a lot of Woodwinds. The Flutes contain 5 Recorders covering the SATB range along with a high Tabor Pipe and a Traversiere.
The Sopranino Recorder is the highest of the Renaissance flutes though a shriller recorder has been added to the family in modern times (thanks Wiki). At the highest couple notes, it does venture into piccolo level shrillness. The mid and low part of the range sound pleasant though thin as expected from a high recorder.
As with most articulations labeled Sustain, this is actually Legato and as usual Legato is a better choice anyway, so I wouldn't bother making a separate Sustain. The Staccato Articulation has a solid 4 round robins as is usual in this package and are crisp and quite short.
One glitch, though Whole tone Trills are listed as an articulation there are no samples for them and nothing will happen if you pick them in the Articulation Creator. Speaking of the Articulation creator, be sure to use it to try the halftone trill and tongue articulations.
The Soprano Recorder gets us down to more standard SATB range. As with its higher sister, this Recorder sounds a bit shrill high and better a bit lower. Looking at the old Spectrotone chart it says that Flutes tend to be 'Warm' in the lower registers and 'Brilliant' at the higher registers. My ears are ringing somewhat from the 'Brilliant', so I agree. In general use a higher Recorder and go lower in its register rather than going higher pitched on a lower Recorder.
The Soprano Recorder has the Wholetone Trills along with Halftone Trills and a Tongued Articulation, so again check out that handy Articulation Creator. A note that the bottom couple notes seem quite a bit softer to me than the other notes, so hit them good and hard.
In general the scripted vibrato works pretty well, but to me it sounds somewhat odd in the higher Flutes. This is partly because there is a bit of a quaver in the longs anyway so you are kind of adding quaver to quaver.
The Alto Recorder has a haunting tone that could be good for anything from a haunted house to the lonesome wail of a lonesome medieval Shepard missing his lonesome family. While the lower register is still a bit stronger, the upper sounds more plaintive than shrill.
As is usually the case in this package, the mics for the Recorders are well positioned and work well separately or together. You get the distinct feel of either playing the instrument yourself or giving the performer far too little personal space on Close. Far feels like you are at the back of a good sized chamber. If you are going to close exclusively mic, you might consider going to a smaller room size than the default Large Chamber Reverb. At Alto and below we lose our trills so you will have to trill by hand.
The Tenor Recorder is an interesting mix. At low register it sounds very somber while at the mid range and up it starts becoming more cheerful and having quite a bite on the attack. That bite makes for a good sharp Staccato. The scripted Vibrato seems to work better down here at the Tenor / Bass end of the Recorder range.
Finally for the Recorder line comes the rumbling Bass (sort of). It does go down to E2 but that is really closer to Baritone with a good range than a Bass. Then again I've listened to too much George Younce across the years to consider any instrument that doesn't go down to a note that ends with 1 a real bass. The Recorder just doesn't have a lot of power by its nature and down at the low end that is really obvious. You can see why the Double Reed Woodwinds became the bass end of the section in the modern orchestra.
The Recorder line is interesting because it is more like the String family in the modern orchestra than the Woodwind family in a sense. The orchestral woodwinds have a wide variety of tones and come from different woodwind families. Since Recorders all come from the same family as do the Strings, there is much more consistency through the range.
My favorite of the Recorders is the Alto which is interesting to me as my favorite Saxophone is also the Alto though that might just be coincidence. I've always tended to think of recorders as toys, but these recorders can produce some very nice sounds especially if you use the correct ranges.
While the Recorders might be one family, there are still two cousins in this directory, the Tabor Pipe and the Traversiere. The two are significantly different creatures.
The Tabor Pipe sounds like what I think of when I hear the words 'Fife and Drum'. In fact the handy little description that Fluffy Audio includes on the interface says it was commonly used with a drum as dances and such. With only three holes it has only a bit over an octave range and gets very shrill at the top end of that range. If you are making a game about American Independence and show that famous drum and fife picture, use this instrument. I have no idea if it was used in an Italian Revolutions.
The Traversiere on the other hand is the predecessor to the flute and has a lovely tone. It also answers that classic question of why do you call a Flute a Woodwind when it is made out of Brass? The Traversiere is made of wood, and probably will float, and it does have a bit different feel to it than the modern Concert Flute. It seems more mellow that a regular flute and not unexpectedly a good medieval or fantasy fit. If a film were about stoned Dwarves wandering around aimlessly, the party minstrel should be playing this.
It is the most modern sounding of the Flutes. Combined with the Dulciana, the predecessor to the Bassoon it would give you something like the start of a more modern woodwinds section.
The Alto Recorder and the Traversiere are my favorite instruments here. The Recorders in general sound decent, but you can tell that Woodwinds have definitely improved with time and its kind of hard to get too excited about instruments that feel something like toys when compared to modern instruments. Many of these instruments do sound better together. When I used a couple Recorders and mixed in a Lute that definitely seemed to perk things up.
I did notice that it seems like recorders can't quite hold the tonal or volume consistency as well as we might be used to with a flute on a long note. This is why I don't think Vibrato is needed for these instruments. This isn't a fault of the sampling as best I can tell. I've listened to some other virtual recorder and virtual flutes in the same orchestral set and the recorders had the same mild consistency issue while the flutes were rock steady. Of course if recorders and flutes sounded exactly the same we wouldn't need a pack of medieval recorders.
Related to this, it seems like many of the wind instruments start a touch flat, say 8 cents and then work up to the pitch in a second or so. In slow legato pieces this sounds fine, after all legato is chopping the first half second or so off anyway, but in fast pieces it can make for a flat sound. In a faster piece you might pitch shift up say 5 cents. I've been told that the human ear has a greater tolerance for sharp than flat notes so this might improve the sound a bit. To pitch shift 'cents' in Kontakt, hold down shift while moving the 'Tune' knob to the right.
Next - Reeds
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