Review: Novella Blackwater by Westwood Instruments
Westwood Instruments pay homage to the modern Western and Americana with their most ambitious release to date, in the shape of Novella Blackwater. Featuring an inspiring chamber string ensemble at its core, the library opens out to reveal a wide vista of guitars, trumpet, piano, percussion and plenty more. Blackwater is a toolkit of brave ambition and vast scope that is not just perfect for the intended genre, but also boasts a wide appeal for more general scoring and songwriting.
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Review: Novella Blackwater by Westwood Instruments
This is the second Novella toolkit from Westwood Instruments, following on from the contemporary cinematic and folk-tinged Origins last year. Blackwater certainly has a more genre focussed approach, yet it never gets too niche. It shares the same recording space as Origins, The Nave studios, which means we have a varied blend of cinematic lushness and intimate detail. Superbly curated strings lead the charge here, backed up by a large posse of solo instruments. Each of the fifteen patches showcase a range of articulations, from bread and butter styles to experimental and unusual techniques. The engine is as impressive as the samples and ensures playability is at the heart of the library, with innovative dynamics features, tempo-synced rhythms, multiple attack options, and timbre shifting textures.
To be honest, the wonderful branding of this library both intrigued me immensely, but also made me question if it would be that useful for me. On the face of it, this might appear to be a niche product for only scoring modern Westerns. It does indeed tick that box with aplomb and is arguably the world’s leading scoring product for contemporary Americana, however Blackwater is so cleverly designed that it can be far more also. A good proportion of the content here, like the amazing strings and guitars, is simply superb for all sorts of modern scoring and also excellent for songwriting. A prime example of this is how they did not go fully down the tack piano root, which can be a little clichéd, and instead gave us drum sticks on the strings for something similar, yet new and displaying greater flexibility. Similarly, the Mandolin is not your typical mandolin sound at all. Certainly, there are some instruments here, like the trumpet and harmonica, that feature clear western soundtrack trademarks, but even those include more unusual articulations which extend the end use beyond that particular genre.
I think the toolkit approach really helps to make each component sit nicely with each other with minimal fuss and the quality throughout, from the recordings to the beautifully designed interface, is at the highest level. Westwood should be congratulated for a pioneering approach here that has achieved something really unique, with relatively small disk space requirements and at an attractive price point. The strings alone are worthy of the special Novella loyalty intro pricing if you ask me. Blackwater is really deep; there’s so much on offer and many patches could stand alone as small individual libraries of their own! Above all, it has a timeless feel, with an adventurous spirit that simply makes it inspiring and exciting to play. For me, Blackwater is one of the best libraries of the entire year.
Novella Blackwater normally sells for $349 from Westwood Instruments
Facts
32.6GB download via Pulse
Activated in Native Access
15 patches each with numerous articulations
5 mics and 1 production ready mix
Works in the free Kontakt Player 6.6.1 or higher
NKS compatible
Novella Blackwater normally sells for $349 from Westwood Instruments
