Westwood Instruments VIOLA UNTAMED v1.0 KONTAKT
Often described as the string instrument with the closest sound to the human voice, VIOLA UNTAMED is here to do the talking in your music. The 4th instalment of our Untamed series, we’ve recorded 3 octaves and 333 unique, individual improvised performances. From soulful and fragile murmurs to impassioned and feverish cries. Not for the traditionalist, and not for the faint of heart. This is for fans of alternative scores and inspired by composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Jed Kurzel and Jonny Greenwood.
With the same unique feature-set as the rest of the Untamed series, including Storms; a powerful articulation which can creates crescendos, from a solo performance to a frenetic ensemble. As well as all of the this, there are 9 other classic long and short note articulations which complement the other instruments in the series.
It’s here to inspire your writing and is really at home with minimalist compositions where tone and sound do more talking than melody.
USER INTERFACE
Everything to hand
As with all our custom designed interfaces, we want you to have a logical and clear layout with everything to hand.
To help you easily understand the instrument, you can hover over any control and instructions appear in the info panel of theKontakt wind
STORMS ARTICULATION
This isn’t a swarm,it’s a storm. Storms allows you to fade from single fragile notes to a frenzy of Violas.
Great for creating tension before launching your score into a chaotic crescendo.
Subwoofer not included
Included in the instrument is a trick we’ve been using for a long time with strings; sine waves. Adding a simple sine wave thickens up the natural sound of strings. We call this Glue as it fills in the gaps and cements the mix.
To give this the Westwood edge, we sampled every pitch of a sine wave across the 3 octaves of a viola through 1″ reel-to-reel tape. This takes away the sterile nature of a pure sine wave and makes it feel more organic. There’s two versions to use; one at the regular pitch and an “8vb” version, which pitch shifts the wave an entire octave down.
PULSE
To add movement to an otherwise static signal, the Pulse section brings a sense of underlying motion.
You can control the intensity of the pulse and the rate which is synced to the tempo to your composition.
EFFECTS
We’ve added a low pass filter which you can use to smooth off the top end for a deeper and more subtle sound.
Use the “Grit” control if you need to roughen up the sound.
DYNAMICS
Control the dynamics independently or with the expression so the level rides in tandem with the main performance.
There’s also a master volume control so you can precisely blend in the amount you need.
What’s included
Improvisations A1
Improvisations A2 (Alternative start)
Improvisations B1
Improvisations B2 (Alternative start)
Improvisations C1
Improvisations C2 (Alternative start)
Storms
Glue
Glue 8vb
Normale
Flautando
Sul Pont
Tremolo
Circular Bowing
Spiccato (6 round robins, 3 velocity layers)
Pizzicato inc. Bartok (6 round robins, 4 velocity layers)
You can use the interface to easily combine any number of articulations to create interesting textures and some unusual combinations. We love the sound of several of the Improvisations together, which feels like a small chamber sized section of Violas all doing their own thing whilst flowing in and out of unison.
This instrument is only compatible with the full version of Kontakt 5.6.8 and above.
It will not work with the free Kontakt Player.
Demo Preview: