Horn Section

Horns are particular hard to get close to the sound, if they dont sound good, the tune sounds like a cheap toy. I used DimPro a few times but if your doing melody lines with them they sound **** so cant help you.

JimYoYo gets good sounds from brass, but as far as Im award he uses Kontakt to do it.

Cian

If its a horn section then i would suggest you layer up 4  tracks or more... if you are using dimPro then tweak each track' synth slightly different.. this will give you the fatness you are looking for

the horns in most of the synths are crap. They sound too midi for anything realistic.  

The better way is to look into the horn Specific packages that are available. The ones with articulation that mimics real players. Those are the better sounding ones, but they are not cheap. I can't recommend any specific one because I generally do not use horn in my music so it's not something I am very familiar with. 

Google search for horn and brass synths and you will find a number of packages.....some are instrument specific...such as SAX only or TRUMPET only.... others are full brass sections and are aimed at a specif genre..... so look around on the net. 

I use Band in a Box but.... the downside to band in a box is that you can not tell it what to play...as in a specific melody. this is an example of BB horns in a tune>>>  http://www.soundclick.com...134&songID=9012413  Articulation is pretty good but the melody is more of a jam...... it works great for fills and jamable stuff.... not so much if the horns need to play the melody. 

I used Garitan personal orchestra through NI for an orchestral backing on an early version of a project i am working on. I think this is a pretty good package and cost about £120. Everything sounded quite good apart from the horns which were a bit rubbish. We ended up getting a guy to blow down this shiny brass thing and recorded it, much better, but maybe not an option for you.

Would be interested if anyone has had a any success in this.

my go-to set is Supersection, regrettably no longer marketed.

Nothing like it seems to exist anymore.

Be that as it may; the secret for realism lies in the arrangements. See Jeff's post.

daveny5

I use Band in a Box but.... the downside to band in a box is that you can not tell it what to play...as in a specific melody.

What you can do with BIAB is export to a MIDI file and load it up in Sonar and add whatever other tracks you want to it. 

kind of..... but not in any useful way.... 


Sure, you can export to midi and edit.... BUT.... you can not export to.... or convert to midi from a real track, which is what I have in the song I referenced. Which means, when you convert to midi in BB you get midi sounding tracks that are only as good as the synth you now use to play them. 

I have tried to convert to midi from real tracks and while I believe there is a function that supposedly lets you get a midi track.... it is not articulated or humanized in any manner. 


BB is amazing for what it is and what it does, but that is the one drawback to using it. You can not tell it to play a specific melody. 

Yes, I just double checked to see. You can enter a melody into Band in a box via notation. You can record a melody via MIDI (or audio, obviously). You can also Import a MIDI file to melody. Not sure why you claim it is a limitation.

OK... let me splain this again. 

Yes you can do what you say...easily. 

However, take a project in BB..open it in real band to render the real tracks. Now you have a "you got what the program decided to do" scenario. It is a great track most of the time but it will not be what YOU might want.  If you decide to render that to midi so you can edit it, that can be done BUT it is not possible to get the midi track to sound anything like the rendered one. I have tried several different ways to accomplish this...all without success. I can get a midi track but it is not even close to what the real track sounds like, it is a very midi sounding track. 

I wanted to do some editing to a real track that BB exported as audio on a piano sample. Convert to midi did convert it to midi, but it sounded nothing like the original. My plan was to apply a synth piano sample I have to get a better sounding piano part but with the notes and articulations in the original rendered part..... could not make it happen. 

I have tried, I have called BB support, and posted in their users forum and no one had a satisfactory answer. Tech and the advanced users agreed with me, that what I wanted to do was not currently possible in any way in the current versions of BB. 

However, take a project in BB..open it in real band to render the real tracks.

I didn't mean to imply that you should convert audio to MIDI. I just meant to export the MIDI tracks generated by BB to a MIDI file and load that into Cakewalk. 

Guitarhacker


OK... let me splain this again. 

Yes you can do what you say...easily. 

However, take a project in BB..open it in real band to render the real tracks. Now you have a "you got what the program decided to do" scenario. It is a great track most of the time but it will not be what YOU might want.  If you decide to render that to midi so you can edit it, that can be done BUT it is not possible to get the midi track to sound anything like the rendered one. I have tried several different ways to accomplish this...all without success. I can get a midi track but it is not even close to what the real track sounds like, it is a very midi sounding track. 

I wanted to do some editing to a real track that BB exported as audio on a piano sample. Convert to midi did convert it to midi, but it sounded nothing like the original. My plan was to apply a synth piano sample I have to get a better sounding piano part but with the notes and articulations in the original rendered part..... could not make it happen. 

I have tried, I have called BB support, and posted in their users forum and no one had a satisfactory answer. Tech and the advanced users agreed with me, that what I wanted to do was not currently possible in any way in the current versions of BB. 

Herb,


Maybe you should explain that real tracks in BIAB is "audio only" clips created by BIAB based on the chord arrangement styles chosen. IOW, it is not MIDI playing a VSTi.  These audio clips are from a library of pre-recorded audio of a "real" player.

A good listen with headphones of some of the the Earth, Wind, and Fire tunes in the '80's reveals a single trumpet backed by mulitple synth sounds.

Headphones are very useful critters.

Listening to the Beatles white album with headphones was a wonderful learning experience. Especially Dear Prudence.

Guitarhacker


OK... let me splain this again. 

Yes you can do what you say...easily. 

However, take a project in BB..open it in real band to render the real tracks. Now you have a "you got what the program decided to do" scenario. It is a great track most of the time but it will not be what YOU might want.  If you decide to render that to midi so you can edit it, that can be done BUT it is not possible to get the midi track to sound anything like the rendered one. I have tried several different ways to accomplish this...all without success. I can get a midi track but it is not even close to what the real track sounds like, it is a very midi sounding track. 

I wanted to do some editing to a real track that BB exported as audio on a piano sample. Convert to midi did convert it to midi, but it sounded nothing like the original. My plan was to apply a synth piano sample I have to get a better sounding piano part but with the notes and articulations in the original rendered part..... could not make it happen. 

I have tried, I have called BB support, and posted in their users forum and no one had a satisfactory answer. Tech and the advanced users agreed with me, that what I wanted to do was not currently possible in any way in the current versions of BB. 

OK, now I get it. Nothing personal but you didn't explain things well (putting a capital on RealTracks would have clarified a little). I've used BIAB for almost 15 years, currently using BIAB 2010 which had no RealTracks. After your post, in confusion I checked out PG's site and found out what you were referring to:
 
Quote:
What are RealTracks? RealTracks replace the MIDI track for that instrument, and can be controlled just like the MIDI instrument (volume changes, muting etc.). They follow the chord progression that you have entered, so you hear an authentic audio accompaniment or solo.
RealTracks are not "samples"... They are full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars at a time, playing in perfect sync with the other tracks.
 
Of course there is no simple way to accomplish what you want. You cannot take a four bar recorded audio sequence and alter it as you would MIDI, that's just not realistic. You could "REX" the whole thing and mangle it, or throw it in AudioSnap and mangle it, or GrooveLoop it and mangle it by dragging notes aroung and shifting their pitch, but it likely won't sound very good and nowhere near as fluid as an actual performance. Perhaps if you spent crazy time and effort, but still questionable as to the end results. Pay someone $50 to come in and play the part if it really matters to you; for that matter upload the audio and see if someone in the Songs forum will record a MIDI performance of said audio. Unless BIAB shifts to using true individual note multi-sampling you will never be able to edit audio performances the way you suggest, and, if they did then the performances would never sound so fluid and, well, "real".
 
This is a case of pick your poison, so to speak. You cannot expect to have a program "play" real(istic) human lines as you hear in RealTracks and also be able to edit the performances on a note by note level. The reason the performances sound so real is because _they are_ real! Leaves users with a choice - better sound or the potential to edit. Welcome to the world of Loops. Simply put, BIAB is triggering pre-recorded audio loops played by session musicians.
 
I'm quite sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know but at least other readers may now understand your dilemna.

bapu

Guitarhacker


OK... let me splain this again. 

Yes you can do what you say...easily. 

However, take a project in BB..open it in real band to render the real tracks. Now you have a "you got what the program decided to do" scenario. It is a great track most of the time but it will not be what YOU might want.  If you decide to render that to midi so you can edit it, that can be done BUT it is not possible to get the midi track to sound anything like the rendered one. I have tried several different ways to accomplish this...all without success. I can get a midi track but it is not even close to what the real track sounds like, it is a very midi sounding track. 

I wanted to do some editing to a real track that BB exported as audio on a piano sample. Convert to midi did convert it to midi, but it sounded nothing like the original. My plan was to apply a synth piano sample I have to get a better sounding piano part but with the notes and articulations in the original rendered part..... could not make it happen. 

I have tried, I have called BB support, and posted in their users forum and no one had a satisfactory answer. Tech and the advanced users agreed with me, that what I wanted to do was not currently possible in any way in the current versions of BB. 

Herb,


Maybe you should explain that real tracks in BIAB is "audio only" clips created by BIAB based on the chord arrangement styles chosen. IOW, it is not MIDI playing a VSTi.  These audio clips are from a library of pre-recorded audio of a "real" player.

Bingo! Some serious players I might add. Not that they don't have a sense of humour...

NP! I haven't done much with RealTracks so its possible I was off base. 

I wouldn't mind hearing someones fat Brass arrangement using only TTS-1.  Just for curiousity sakes.  Sometimes I have been pleasantly surprised by the sounds achieved with lower priced librarys in the hands of talented midi orchestrators.

Take Garriton for example, out of the box I think it sounds aweful, but in the hands of a knowledgable Garriton user, it can sound pretty decent.

If you are simply adding a brass or string section "pad" to your arrangement, you can easily get away with Garriton out of the box or even TTS-1.   Layered, panned, verbed...etc.  But if you are doing a big band swing song with lots of neat brass articulations, you will have to invest in a decent library to be realistic.  Chris Hein horns sound amazing in the demo's.