It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s… Hollywoodwinds!
Our friend, and beta-tester for HWW, John M. Davis recently pieced together one of the finest synthetic mock-ups ever heard – a stunning representation of John Williams’ Trip To Earth from Superman.
John Williams – Trip To Earth From Superman (Mock Up)
You can immediately hear HWW and Cineharp featured very prominently in the arrangement and the stunning amount of realism they bring. The old trick of adding 1 live player on a synthetic track to make it come alive seems to work just as well by instead adding Cineharp and HWW. Although we must be sure to point out that not all of the winds in this cue are HWW, all are excluding the 3 solo wind instruments, it is easy to pick them out and how well they mix and function in context with other libraries.
You can browse through some of the images here to get an idea of how John assembled this piece. Note that the majority of the woodwind writing is done with the Tutti patch (that nice balanced ensemble sound) with help from the octaves patch where Williams had orchestrated woodwind octaves and then runs where needed (etc..) . John used a thoughtful combination/alernation of most of the non texture patches to lay the ground work for the woodwind section.
This is exactly how HWW can be used most effectively, instead of doing all the lifting with one patch (say tutti or Major Scales) alternate back and forth between different patches as needed, sometimes combining them for extra emphasis. You can also get an idea of the power of the uniform ensemble sound provided by HWW. Using the tutti voicing will yield much better results then by trying to combine separate woodwinds from another library.
Try listening once while watching this screen grab of just the HWW.
You can see here John’s use of Custom Stage/Close Mic mixing, even having slight differences to compensate for different levels of ensemble saturation during the mix.



















Nice! When’s that update coming for HWW?
Hey Peter. Soon! I know, that’s a lame answer. But we’re double-triple-checking everything.