What best emulates brass?

[Senator]

What does everybody use to emulate their brass sounds?

 

So far the best I've heard are CD Roms like the Quantum Leap collection. Is there a hardware box with sounds of this standard?

 

Thoughts?

 

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Ed

[Botch.]

I still have my original Proteus, mainly for the brass sounds, they kick!

[Gav_dup1]

Quantum Leap Brass is a great library for Brass sounds. Mix it together with the Siedleczek Advanced Orchestra library and maybe the Miroslav library and you have pretty much any articulations you're going to need to create convincing brass performances.

I find that it's handy to keep some orchestral module sounds around to "pad" things with. (Things like E-MU Virtuoso, or Korg Trinity, etc...) You definately cannot think about orchestration the same way with MIDI as you do with a real orchestra. Samples often need 'help' to sounds authentic.

All in all though I would say that QL Brass is about as good a place as you can start.

Gav

[Mark Zeger]

Originally posted by botch@netutah.net:

I still have my original Proteus, mainly for the brass sounds, they kick!

 

My Proteus was the best $1000 I spent in the past 10 years (yeah, I paid list at a time when they were very new and scarce). I lost track how many times I've used "Velocity Falls" and the French horn section programs. I just got a Proteus 2000 and it has more great brass emulations not found in the original including sampled trills, growls, etc.

 

A used Proteus 1 is probably $100-125, money well spent. I'm assuming you're looking for pop/rock/jazz brass sections. For orchestral samples, it's the Proteus 2. Those tend to sell for a little more than the P1 on the used market.

 

Layering makes a big difference in emulating brass sections. I often build brass parts from different sound sources, and sometimes record individual parts separately. It helps to steal ideas from Chicago, EWF and TOP records too.

[Jaydubz]

LOL ~ The old Proteus I! I've still got mine in the rack, and yes, I paid a grand for it too, way back when!

[dansouth]

It depends on your taste and the type of music you're trying to do. I've gotten a lot of compliments from things I've done using sounds from the Roland Orchestral expansion card (SR-JV80-02). On the other hand, I took one listen to the Emu Virtuoso-2000 and sent it back. The fact that the demo sequence is cartoon music gives you an idea of its shortcomings.

 

I also despise the Siedleczek stuff. Two volume levels, ff and pp, with nothing in between. Wavering pitch in the pp samples. No trumpets above high C. Rough transitions between sample stretches. I paid nearly a thousand bucks for this piece of shit, and I'm STILL fuming.

 

The Kurzweil K series instruments are capable of good brass sounds that fit some contexts. Ditto the Studio Essentials card for the Triton, but I would NOT use these samples for classical music. They're more geared toward soft jazz and adult contemporary.

[b3fiend]

I also build my brass sections around a real brass section... mixed individual samples from different instruments, with each sample given its own flavor of volume, attack times, etc.

 

The biggest challenge is the STYLE of playing it. I have found that brass sounds much more convincing by playing slightly 'sloppy' (missed notes, slightly missed beats, slightly rolled chords, etc)

 

If it is played too perfect, even the best brass patches will sound like a keyboard player trying to cover brass...

 

-Gregg

[Timo]

*Korg Z1*, or Korg Trinity/Triton MOSS expansion board.

 

The MOSS expansion board on my Trinity is really good. It physically models Brass, Strings, Woodwind, Plucked, Bowed etc., and also Analogue emulation, and tonnes more.

 

The Korg Z1 is the full-hardware synth for this purpose, using two MOSS boards in sync.

 

The pitch bends on the Brass are really good - ie. not smooth like normal, but the pitch jumps a few notes each time, *just* like a real trumpet etc.

 

Timo