Westwood Instruments Novella Origin & Novella Blackwater

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.5/5 Stars

Unique, but designed to fit together, Westwood Instruments’ Novella series provides diverse toolkits for scoring and songwriting. Origin’s 38.7GB brings strings, alto choir, electric guitar, cotton‑draped piano, synth sounds and a drum kit, while Blackwater’s western‑inspired 32.6GB includes strings, gut violin, electric and acoustic guitars, mandola, harmonium, trumpet, harmonica, piano and percussion. These libraries are inspiration machines and get you writing — fast.

Origin’s strings feel bright and sharp; the Improv and Sul Pont articulations are vivid, with harmonics poking out here and there. The Random Rebows provide some lovely movement, and the Short Picks sound crisp — a great alternative to normal pizzicato. Blackwater’s lush‑sounding strings come with the ‘Motion’ function which moves through dynamics for you, so you can play two handed with swelling movement. The Drifting Tremolo allows morphing between normale and sul pont measured tremolo performances. Origin’s Vivid Legato has some moving texture in each sustain, and is great in combination with conventional longs. I prefer Blackwater’s slightly more agile legatos, though. Blackwater also comes with a gut violin — a raw, open sound; great for writing brooding melodies and for folk productions.

The libraries’ guitars have a lovely tone, though on the Sustains I would have liked more round robins. Each of Blackwater’s acoustic strummed instruments comes with four rhythmic loop options, which are great cue starters. My favourite of the guitar sounds on offer in Blackwater are the Splangs and Slides, providing slow strummed chords and bends that summon Americana immediately, while the Wends in the nylon acoustic provide beautiful textures of random plucked moving parts.

Origin’s alto choir provides some beautiful, haunting improvised textures with vowel morphing, alongside some crisp short ‘nahs’ and ‘ohs’. The Wanderlust synth fits into Origin’s moody aesthetic, while Blackwater’s harmonium sounds soulful, and the ability to dial in the mechanical sounds is welcome. The harmonica is great. The Wild Longs have fun bending to the extreme, and the trumpet gives us three distinctive longs, alongside some great ‘motifs’ — jumping up fourths/fifths, for example. Giddy up!

Blackwater’s Hickory piano is ... a brilliant sound based on drumsticks hitting the strings.

Origin’s Cotton Upright piano sounds gorgeous — nostalgic and mellow. Using the Transpitch feature to transpose the samples from two to 12 semitones down provides really moody results. Blackwater’s Hickory piano is the exact opposite, a brilliant sound based on drumsticks hitting the strings.

Origin’s drum kit sounds cinematic, and is especially great for quiet, ticking parts, while Blackwater’s percussion section includes a jaw harp among a grab bag of oil drum hits, snares, toms and cowbells. Mashing the keyboard in anger produces some great results.

Verdict

Both libraries run in Westwood’s familiar engine (in Kontakt Player Version 6.6.1 or up), which includes delay, EQ, and velocity sensitivity and round robin customisation. Whether you’re scoring to picture or want some unique sounds, the Novella series provides a diverse range of options to expand your palette at a very reasonable price.