Best board for horn sections?

[El Lobo]

Everybody understands that a trumpet, trombone, and a couple of saxes is a horn section.

A point of agreement: Chicago and BS&T notwithstanding, I've always preferred horn band instrumentation to be one trumpet, one 'bone, and two saxes. It provides many more voicing options.

Agreed. Tenor and bari sax preferred.

 

[Reezekeys]

Or, in the case of a band like AWB... just tenor and alto! I had the pleasure of playing with Roger Ball a few nights ago. He's the original alto player with the band and is responsible for what are, imo, some of the most unique horn arrangements in r&b/funk music. The best way I could describe it is a jazzier version of Pee Wee Ellis's arrangements for James Brown- short syncopated stabs, but with jazz-inspired voicings (Roger likes minor 2nds a lot)! Anyway, here I go further diverting this thread topic... please resume your regularly scheduled program now, thank you.

[lsj]

want horns, try Yamaha psr-970 or Yamaha genos. in my opinion, no other keyboard comes close.

[AnotherScott]

All the big three plus Kurz have good enough samples. I've built some good big sections on the Kronos but Yamaha does the best articulations for the stuff I play.

I agree, there are good samples to be found in Yam/Roland/Korg/Kurz... the differences (both among brands and also within specific models within the brands) go beyond the samples to things like

 

... whether the sounds you're looking for are there "out of the box" or if you need to spend time building them

 

... the availability of the articulations... legato/staccato phasing, swells, falls, shakes, etc., some more important than others (at least to some)

 

... the playability of those articulations... what can be automatic, or velocity based, or pedal or switch based, etc., and how natural these manipulations feel

 

 

 

[mate stubb]

My normal prescription is, for normal band horn sections, avoid that massed brass patch in your board, and build layers from suitable individual instrument patches. Then play a real sax or trumpet with it to seal the deal.

[El Lobo]

(Roger likes minor 2nds a lot)!

b9s?

 

[Reezekeys]

Actually I meant MAJOR seconds, not minor, sorry. Person To Person is a perfect example of what I'm talking about re Roger's horn arranging. The horns voiced in 2nds are in the verses â the second half of bars 1, 5, 9 and 13 (every four bars). The stabby horns are in there too. These don't sound anything like EWF, BS&T, or even James Brown - not to me anyway.

 

[video:youtube]

[Quai34]

In a rock situation band, I use a combination of the Nord Samples and Patches from my XV5080, I have the SRX-10 brass extensions.... The "key" is to layer different bards, so, you have different sound/sample and it makes it fuller...But I never had the time to tweak them but I always have in mind my courses in year 3 and 4 of arrangements when I learnt how to arrange horns... Well, I was the only guy who had a day job so, writing them like that was tough for me but I remember the basics...Get in your head the range of each instrument, decide which one will do the lower note, which one the middle note and wich one the upper note and build your chord like that....

For my current Funk/Pop band, we play more Chic/Nile Rodgers than AWB or James Brown....I had chosen two songs from EWF and after having ask few guys on Nord Forun how they do it with only one keys, especially as the horns are strong, they all said they have a horns section, well at least, one sax and one trumpet to do it....

So, I gave up, I like EWF too much for taking the risk to not do justice to them... Hey, and there is strings plus AP plus EP plus....

But when I bought my XV, the Integra had just been realesed.... The XV5080 plus extension was a cheaper solution and 10 years after I still don't regret it...

But I never had to play 60% of my parts being brass.... It will be a good challenge, but a real challenge, we are not brass players though....

That's why I left my previous rock band because at the end of the day, the guitarist who was pissed off that I was ask No more songs with keys, was choosing songs were I had "stuff" to do....like e 3 mn solo sax....or full big band brass.... And was never choosing it for gigs because , well, it's not guitar....

[Bobadohshe]

Everybody understands that a trumpet, trombone, and a couple of saxes is a horn section.

A point of agreement: Chicago and BS&T notwithstanding, I've always preferred horn band instrumentation to be one trumpet, one 'bone, and two saxes. It provides many more voicing options.

 

Much rather 5 horns than 5 please. 2 trumpets. Way better lead capabilities with trumpets able to play octaves.

 

2 Trumpets

Bone

Tenor

Bari

 

I wrote my entire album with that instrumentation pretty much

[stoken6]

The great Dave E told me that it"s the players not the instruments. I"m enjoying arranging for the trumpet/alto/tenor/bone lineup I"m working with at the moment.

 

But Bari is a cool instrument to have in your section.

 

Cheer, Mike

[rickp]

It seems to me any board has an area of weakness, but sometimes an acceptable cure is available from third parties. 'B"s Knees' allowed my S90ES to be a single board solution many nights with a few of its organ patches, even garnering some compliments from musos very familiar with Yamaha"s organ shortcomings. If I had an MODX or Montage, I"d buy the version for those boards in a heartbeat.

 

As others have mentioned, that same board (which accepts a breath controller) and its Motif brethren can generate very convincing brass sounds, pulling off 'Make Me Smile' with smiles. No such joy with my Stage 3. I"m wondering if a third party offering like this one (Link) might be the bee"s knees for my Nord"s brass woes. I think I"ll try out a few before I declare the Nord a total brass loss.

[Mark_OA]

Probably not what you're looking for, but I want to mention the Dexibell Classico L3 for the very good picolo trumpet sound. Only.a bit shrill in the higher notes.

[El Lobo]

But Bari is a cool instrument to have in your section.

Agree. Playing bari is fun.

 

[AnotherScott]

I"m wondering if a third party offering like this one (Link) might be the bee"s knees for my Nord"s brass woes. I think I"ll try out a few before I declare the Nord a total brass loss.

No matter how good, under their current architecture, a Nord brass sample simply doesn't have the ability to offer top tier horns compared to the others. There is no ability to trigger different samples at different velocities, no comparable alternate articulations, etc. They can be good enough for some things, but if the question as to what handles this best, it's going to lag most of the other stuff that's been mentioned.

[Fusker]

All cleared up?

 

Every brand mentioned to go with the 'don"t do horns with anything but horns' responses. Given that playing horns on keys is what you"re asking about, I"d definitely fall in the Yamaha camp.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

There's always the opposite question: how to cover organ parts from your horn section.

 

Chris Brouwers from Turkuaz has that figured out, though.

 

[video:youtube]

[t9cstudio]

I just went & still going through the NS3 + Horns exercise. Once I heard Roland's SRX-10 sample set, I purchased the Integra 7. I 'm thrilled with all the articulations available for sections and solo instruments and have setup programs with the Extern section to put those sounds under the NS3's control. I have big issues, though with what I thought would be a perfect controller for the i7 - the A-500. It can only change midi channels by rotating the Value encoder, even though it's excellent software allows you to program all of the buttons with Ch/MSB/LSB/PC, it can still only transmit on the channel selected by the Value encoder. That sucks big time! All those buttons and you can't use them with the Integra (requires a different channel for each part in a Studio Set). So, at least the NS3 can handle that part, and I just midi'd a A49 into the Nord to play the Integra via the Extern section programs.

 

[psionic11]

That sucks big time! All those buttons and you can't use them with the Integra (requires a different channel for each part in a Studio Set).

 

Within a Studio Set, you can change each part's MIDI channel, and in fact its keyboard range as well. In other words, you can layer several parts all on MIDI channel 2, have them only in a 2 octave range, then set another group of 3 instruments on MIDI channel 3, and have that overlap the high octave of the channel 2 group, etc.

 

Better yet, you can individually EQ each part, and also set up velocity ranges if you want. Have that high piccolo trumpet only pierce through when velocity is higher than 120, for example. Hope that helps.

 

[Reezekeys]

the A-500. It can only change midi channels by rotating the Value encoder, even though it's excellent software allows you to program all of the buttons with Ch/MSB/LSB/PC, it can still only transmit on the channel selected by the Value encoder. That sucks big time! All those buttons and you can't use them with the Integra (requires a different channel for each part in a Studio Set). So, at least the NS3 can handle that part, and I just midi'd a A49 into the Nord to play the Integra via the Extern section programs.

I have an A800 which is the same as your 500 but with more keys. The buttons/sliders/knobs/pads can be individually programmed to transmit on any midi channel â sounds like you knew that but your saying "all those buttons and you can't use them with the Integra" raised some doubts. You are correct that the keys' midi transmit channel must be changed with the value knob but you do know that there is a "split" and "dual" mode allowing the A-series boards to transmit on two midi channels at the same time, either layered or zoned? That might help your situation.

 

The other possible solution is what I did with an older Roland module: a JV1010. I used it for a while before I got my laptop rig fully configured. I played multiple parts, split and layered, assigning buttons to turn them on & off and sliders to control their volumes, all with the keyboard transmitting on a single midi channel â using sysex! It's doable if you put your nerd cap on and refer to the back of the Roland manual, which should have the hex messages spelled out. The Roland A-series' controls can be programmed to send Roland sysex messages. Just something to think about â you can do a lot of cool stuff with sysex, if you invest the time.

[harmonizer]

I am not sure I understand your statement about requiring a different channel for each part in a Studio Set. When I set up a Studio Set in my Roland FA-07, whose Studio Set support is similar, all the parts in a Studio Set use MIDI channel 1, and I achieve any independence I need between the parts by setting up different lower and upper range for each part, with separate transpositions as needed based on octave shifts and/or transposition by half steps. One of the simplest things to do is to set up the sound of a tenor sax and trumpet playing an octave apart (trumpet above, sax below). This is a common voicing in horn section parts which accompany pop/rock songs. You would only need to allocate about 2 octaves of space on your keyboard for this, because the commonly used range of the tenor sax for these horn section parts is 2 octaves. (While it is true that the non-altissimo range of a sax extends from a Bb on the low end to the paml key F that is 2.5 octaves above, in a 2-part horn section you will be using 2 octaves of that.)

 

The rest of your MIDI keyboard's range can be used for other split or harmonization possibilities. But if you want to set up some other harmony voicings, it gets more complicated because harmonies in horn sections rarely maintain a common interval between any two horn parts.On your Integra you can set up just about any custom splits and transpositions that you could ever imagine (I have done these), but they take a bit of time, and in most cases such a Studio Set with customized splits for harmonized horn parts will be usable for just one song.

[jerrythek]

I agree with psionic11: the Funk and Soul Brass expansion brings the Kronos into excellent standing for horn section work. I will still build up sections from individual instruments, not always relying on their presets. I also use the EXs-3 expansion at times....

 

Yamaha has something really cool going on in their Tyros/Genos products with their Ensemble feature. It has a mode that will split up sounds intelligently based on the number of notes you play. So layer a trombone, tenor sax and trumpet, and then when you play a 3-note voicing the bone takes the lower note, the sax is in the middle, and the trumpet on top. Voila - perfect Chicago voicings. That is the issue that we all have to deal with using our workstation synths... we can't actually assign a specific instrument to a note within the voicing, so we are always getting an incorrect, homogeneous blend of all the instruments.

 

For some tunes with very simple stabs I have experimented with stacking the instruments onto a single note, and using transpose to make the voicing. But that is a limiting way to play. I wish more instruments had the "smart voice allocation" concept of the Tyros/Genos... so you could do it with the sounds you like.

 

But I still will play with horn section sounds using this limited approach, because it still serves to song well. The audience/band members hear brass/saxes etc. doing the right thing, albeit not perfectly.

 

So one "slightly biased due to previous affiliation" vote for the Kronos.

 

Jerry

 

The Kronos has very decent horns, especially with expansion pack Funk and Soul Brass EXS16. Since I have an original model, I had to buy it, but since the Kronos 2 and all later models, the sound pack is included.

 

Here's some sound demos:

https://shop.korg.com/Kronos/EXS-16

 

[t9cstudio]

I have an A800 which is the same as your 500 but with more keys. The buttons/sliders/knobs/pads can be individually programmed to transmit on any midi channel â sounds like you knew that but your saying "all those buttons and you can't use them with the Integra" raised some doubts. You are correct that the keys' midi transmit channel must be changed with the value knob but you do know that there is a "split" and "dual" mode allowing the A-series boards to transmit on two midi channels at the same time, either layered or zoned? That might help your situation.

 

The other possible solution is what I did with an older Roland module: a JV1010. I used it for a while before I got my laptop rig fully configured. I played multiple parts, split and layered, assigning buttons to turn them on & off and sliders to control their volumes, all with the keyboard transmitting on a single midi channel â using sysex! It's doable if you put your nerd cap on and refer to the back of the Roland manual, which should have the hex messages spelled out. The Roland A-series' controls can be programmed to send Roland sysex messages. Just something to think about â you can do a lot of cool stuff with sysex, if you invest the time.

 

I'm not looking to layer or split anything. I want to hit a button that I preassigned a part in a Studio Set and it switch to that part. Nothing else. Sorry, but I have already fried my feeble brain and don't want to kill it entirely programming sysex msgs. I've found my solution via the NS3 Extern section, which will do what I want, just a slight more inconvenient at the moment, but I'll soon be setting up the parts in Song Mode and use a dual footswitch to go back & forth.

[t9cstudio]

I am not sure I understand your statement about requiring a different channel for each part in a Studio Set. When I set up a Studio Set in my Roland FA-07, whose Studio Set support is similar, all the parts in a Studio Set use MIDI channel 1, and I achieve any independence I need between the parts by setting up different lower and upper range for each part, with separate transpositions as needed based on octave shifts and/or transposition by half steps. One of the simplest things to do is to set up the sound of a tenor sax and trumpet playing an octave apart (trumpet above, sax below). This is a common voicing in horn section parts which accompany pop/rock songs. You would only need to allocate about 2 octaves of space on your keyboard for this, because the commonly used range of the tenor sax for these horn section parts is 2 octaves. (While it is true that the non-altissimo range of a sax extends from a Bb on the low end to the paml key F that is 2.5 octaves above, in a 2-part horn section you will be using 2 octaves of that.)

 

The rest of your MIDI keyboard's range can be used for other split or harmonization possibilities. But if you want to set up some other harmony voicings, it gets more complicated because harmonies in horn sections rarely maintain a common interval between any two horn parts.On your Integra you can set up just about any custom splits and transpositions that you could ever imagine (I have done these), but they take a bit of time, and in most cases such a Studio Set with customized splits for harmonized horn parts will be usable for just one song.

 

If there's a way to make all parts of a Studio Set use the same channel in the Integra, I haven't found it anywhere. I'd be happy with that. Maybe they learnt something and applied it to the FA series.

 

[AnotherScott]

Yamaha has something really cool going on in their Tyros/Genos products with their Ensemble feature. It has a mode that will split up sounds intelligently based on the number of notes you play. So layer a trombone, tenor sax and trumpet, and then when you play a 3-note voicing the bone takes the lower note, the sax is in the middle, and the trumpet on top. Voila - perfect Chicago voicings. That is the issue that we all have to deal with using our workstation synths... we can't actually assign a specific instrument to a note within the voicing, so we are always getting an incorrect, homogeneous blend of all the instruments.

Yes. Super cool feature. It would be great to see that in something under $5500. ;-) I wonder if there are VSTs that will do this?

 

[jerrythek]

I do believe that some Kontakt libraries can do this... but I can't recall which...

 

Jerry

 

Yamaha has something really cool going on in their Tyros/Genos products with their Ensemble feature. It has a mode that will split up sounds intelligently based on the number of notes you play. So layer a trombone, tenor sax and trumpet, and then when you play a 3-note voicing the bone takes the lower note, the sax is in the middle, and the trumpet on top. Voila - perfect Chicago voicings. That is the issue that we all have to deal with using our workstation synths... we can't actually assign a specific instrument to a note within the voicing, so we are always getting an incorrect, homogeneous blend of all the instruments.

Yes. Super cool feature. It would be great to see that in something under $5500. ;-) I wonder if there are VSTs that will do this?

 

[cphollis]

OP, here. Fabulous discussion, all, so many thanks!

 

At the end of the day, I think it's gonna be a MODX. Not because the horns are awesome (although adequate), but because it's Not A Nord. Completely different end of the gene pool, which is useful. Dang, does Yamaha know how to cram a bunch of potentially useful functionality into a mid-range keyboard.

 

Again, we're talking low-fi bar band stuff, so I can't take the whole topic too seriously. Although the high-end arranger boards seem to have this horn thing figured out. Plus a mongo boatload of other stuff. Just too much unwanted frippery right now. For example, I plowed through the Tyros manual and came away a bit dazed.

 

So, I'm planning to start with a near-new MODX, in a few weeks and -- if needed -- move upwards from there. For less than a grand, I can attempt to support this specific band sound. If the band thing works out to be $$$, more money can be spent as appropriately. And if the band thing doesn't work out, I have a fascinating board to play with, right?

 

Even on my horn-challenged Nords, I'm getting good at learning to play horn parts that don't enitirely suck. Very different keys and arranging technique, which is sorta fun.

 

Add it to the ever-growing list -- another thing to get better at.

[AnotherScott]

At the end of the day, I think it's gonna be a MODX. Not because the horns are awesome (although adequate), but because it's Not A Nord. Completely different end of the gene pool, which is useful. Dang, does Yamaha know how to cram a bunch of potentially useful functionality into a mid-range keyboard.

Pretty much can't go wrong there. A lot of my gigs this year were done with a Nord Stage 3 + MODX7.

[Mighty Motif Max]

I'm a fan of the Montage/MODX horns. To my ears they're a sizable improvement over the Motif-series horns (even the XF), and that's just the presets. Since you're going to be running separate boards and all live, the MODX should be a nice fit. I also like the keybed of the MODX7 (should be the same as the 6); I'd say it's perfect for horn lines.

[CEB]

Preface: I don't gig with the MODX. Just play it a lot in the shop.

 

Unless you are already running a good software app to run you patch changes, the MODX Live Sets are a step up from the Nord as far as patch control. I THiNK it will transmit on 8 channels simultaneously. The Zone Master function will be your friend. Korg Set List in the Kronos still smokes Live Sets IMO but for the money the MODX is a serious live board. But that is just me and depends on the gig. I need to switch sounds fast. Sometimes multiple Combis in the same song. Compared with MODX the old Yamaha Master Mode was a joke..... But in the day Master Mode was a Godsend.

[Outkaster]

It's how you play they also not just the sound. I do this a lot in bands.