Your score in an instant
Immerse yourself in a new world of brass and reeds — a stunning sound palette of 99 patches, brought to life with our unique and intuitive Layers technology. Instantly sparking inspiration on first play, it’s every composer’s dream — the ability to finish a whole cue within a single patch. Made in collaboration with award-winning composer Samuel Sim, intricately workshopped techniques from a range of solo brass and woodwind instruments (including saxophones, recorders and flugelhorn) are presented in various combinations, each offering a full spectrum of emotion and expression.
For anyone looking to embrace a new approach to scoring — and a fresh alternative to string instruments — this sophisticated toolkit offers instant creative freedom. Brass & Reeds intuitively matches the intensity at which your fingers hit the keyboard by selecting from three different velocity layers, layering textural beds with characterful, emotive lead lines — unlocking a world of sound in every patch.
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- Download user manual
- Compatible with NKS
-
Spitfire Audio App required
Listen to British Drama Toolkit: Brass and Reeds
Leave Me Guessing - Homay Schmitz
Bravery - Oliver Patrice Weder
Cassiopeia - Paul Thomson
Wrong Suspect - Homay Schmitz (Combi saxes and Flugelhorn only)
Trailer Music - Homay Schmitz
Contextual
A world of emotion in every patch
Recorded in Castlesound Studios in Edinburgh, Scotland, this comprehensive toolkit features an intimate selection of solo brass and woodwind instruments — from contrabassoon, saxophone and flugelhorn, to recorders, and more. Discover carefully curated Combi patches (curated combinations of instruments, split into various layers across the keyboard) — a great place to start sketching cues, Ensembles (full section ensembles) and solo instruments, meticulously crafted by Samuel Sim and the Spitfire Audio team. These less commonly found instruments offer a fresh alternative to strings, taking your scores to a new place — soft saxophones to create jazz-influenced, Noir scores, with the distinctive timbre of tenor and flugelhorns offering a subtle alternative to low strings.
Brass & Reeds features the UK’s finest players performing a range of uniquely workshopped techniques – including Shorts, Longs, Recorder flutters and chiffs, Tuba multiphonics, Saxophone growls and rich Cor Anglais swells. The fluidity and unpredictability of the breaths between the notes and re-articulations offers a genuine sense of reality, with notes firing off each other in different ways, to add nuance, depth and humanity to your scores.
In contrast to our epic orchestral libraries, the immediate and intimate sound of a smaller band more effectively reflects the introspective moods, character and emotion found in TV and film drama — but these sounds can also be layered with bigger libraries to complement epic soundscapes, or processed and warped to create unique textures.
Unique Layers technology
Our inbuilt Layers technology is unique to the British Drama Toolkit series, allowing you to compose, arrange and complete a cue in one pass. Since faders are not required (although Expression, Attack and Release controls are available within the plugin, as well as velocity sensitivity control via the Dynamics slider), you have the flexibility to play with both hands to achieve a beautifully intricate, dynamic and musical sound — improvising and sketching on the fly as you would on a piano.
The magic begins as soon as your fingers hit the keyboard. Depending on the intensity at which you hit the keys, the plugin selects from up to three velocity layers (Texture, Soft & Loud), with varying expressive performances within each layer. It’s a unique experience, offering ultimate creative control as well as the opportunity to listen and move intuitively, responding to the varying lengths of notes and subtle shifts present within each technique.
The velocity layer grid comprises three distinct layers:
- Texture - pads, textural beds, subtle movements, pulsing repetitions and re-blowing
- Soft - muted tones, suited to subtle moments or moments of dialogue
- Loud - characterful, expressive lead lines with a soloistic feel
This is a great library! It sounds very live and intuitive to work with.
Ruth Barrett - Victoria, Law & Order, The Durrells, Bodyguard
Samuel Sim
Composer Samuel Sim has won multiple awards for his deep, gritty TV and film drama scores — with credits including epic Netflix seriesThe Dark Crystal, the BBC’s Showtrial, and The Spanish Princess. Writing scores often requires a huge amount of music, working to tight deadlines. Teaming up with Spitfire Audio, Sim’s unique vision was to create a toolkit that removes the barriers between musical ideas and their realisation. Since velocity sensitivity can dramatically amplify the character and emotion of your music by creating nuanced and realistic sounding performances, one patch is capable of a huge range of expression — allowing you to respond instinctively to the drama, rather than get sucked into what Sim calls “the vortex of the computer”. The result is a living and breathing palette of sounds designed for those looking for that spark of inspiration, with the tools needed to get your ideas down quickly – ready for wherever your imagination may take you.
What's Included
Instruments
Combis
- Double Reed Ensemble
- Contrabassoon
- Cor Anglais
- Oboe
Recorder Ensemble
Saxophone Ensemble
- Bari/Bass Sax
- Alto Sax
Brass Ensemble
- Tuba
- Bass/Tenor Trombone
- Tenor Horn
- Flugelhorn
Presets
Double Reeds
Double Reed Ensemble
- Long — A full combination of textural, soft and loud dynamic layers with a variety of performance styles.
- Soft — A softer combination of performances featuring textural and soft layers.
- Swell — A long and dynamic swell articulation.
- Performance — A dynamic, performable combination of short articulations which fade into held longs.
- Rounded Short — Layers of short articulations performed with a rounded envelope.
Contrabassoon
- Long
- Soft
- Swell
- Chatter — A single layer performing a random 'chattering' effect.
- Layered Chatter — A combination of a 'chattering' effect with a long textural layer.
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Cor Anglais
- Long
- Soft
- Swell
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Oboe
- Long
- Soft
- Swell
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Recorders
Recorder Ensemble
- Long
- Soft
- Bend Vib — A soft articulation with gentle bending vibrato throughout.
- Chiff — An alternate variation of longs with a powerful chiff in the top layer.
- Flutter — A single layer performing a random 'fluttering' effect.
- Layered Flutter — A combination of a 'fluttering' effect with a long textural layer.
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Saxophones
Sax Ensemble
- Long
- Soft
- Chatter
- Layered Chatter
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Bass/Bari Sax
- Long
- Soft
- Chatter
- Layered Chatter
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Alto/Sop Sax
- Long
- Soft
- Growl — An alternate variation of longs with a powerful growl in the top layer.
- Chatter
- Layered Chatter
- Performance
- Performance Soft — A variation of the performance patch with a softer combination of shorts and longs.
- Rounded Short
Brass
Brass Ensemble
- Long
- Soft
- Performance
- Brassy Performance — A performance patch with a brassy short articulation at the front.
- Rounded Short
- Brassy Short — An extended, short articulation with a wide brassy shape.
Tuba
- Long
- Long Soft — A softer combination of performances featuring textural and soft layers.
- Multiphonics — A soft articulation with gentle multiphonics scattered throughout.
- Chatter
- Layered Chatter
- Performance
- Brassy Performance
- Rounded Short
- Brassy Short
Bass/Tenor Trombone
- Long
- Soft
- Swell
- Long Sfz — An alternate variation of longs with a powerful sforzando in the top layer.
- Performance
- Rounded Short
Tenor Horn
- Long
- Soft
- Performance
- Brassy Performance
- Rounded Short
- Brassy Short
Flugelhorn
- Long
- Soft
- Swell
- Performance
- Brassy Performance
- Rounded Short
- Brassy Short
Combis
Textural beds combined with lead lines.
- Brass and Reeds
- Brass and Oboe
- Brass and Cor Anglais
- Brass and Alto Sax
- Reeds and Flugelhorn
- Reeds and Saxes
- Saxes and Oboe
- Saxes and Flugelhorn
- Brass and Saxes
- Brass and Recorders
- Reeds and Brass
- Reeds and Recorders
- Saxes and Brass
- Saxes and Reeds
- Saxes and Recorders
Mics and mixes
Close
Close intimate mix capturing every detail of the instrument.
Tree
Medium distance signal with added depth.
Testimonials
As with so many of the Spitfire Libraries I can definitely see this providing inspiration and helping to get an idea off the ground in a hurry. The textural beds with their pulsing repetitions are hugely useful in the way that previous Spitfire string textures have been at holding tension in a scene. The recorder patches are a welcome addition - it’s so great to have a fresh take on these often neglected instruments!
Ben Foster, Happy Valley
Whether you’re scoring a film or scouting for evocative textures, Spitfire has a dramatic new proposition to capture your imagination.
Music Radar
FAQs
Does Brass and Reeds share content with the first British Drama Toolkit?
No, these are two independent libraries.
Is Brass and Reeds an update to my current British Drama Toolkit?
No, Brass and Reeds is a brand-new library in the Drama Toolkit range.
It installs uniquely to its own folder, and loads in its own plugin separate to the two Kontakt drama toolkit releases.