writing horn parts?

Mike,

If you go to the Garritan forum for Garritan Pocket Orchestra, there is a whole tutorial on writing parts.

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=77

There was also a tutorial about jazz parts that I can't find at the moment. The tutorial is geared more toward orchestra, but the principle still apply. What I do is think of the brass melody that is counter to the songs main melody. I pick one instrument for that melody line, then build the rest of the parts around that. One jazz trick is to avoid 5ths in your triad, say 1st, 3rd and 7th. Try and keep each instrument in the middle of it's range. Examples would be trumpets and octave above saxes and trombones at the base. You can double up on certain notes with two different instruments, but try to pan them away from each other.

Another really important thing is to make sure the instrument don't start at the same time or have the same duration of note. I will nudge them either way. Also, if you can use the pitch control, you can detune the notes ever so slightly at the start and end of the note and make it more realistic. Below is a song I did with Garritan Jazz and Big Band. It has 3 trumpets, 3 saxes and 3 trombones in a traditional style. There is also a trumpet shake that was from Dimension Pro.

The song is Brand New Love Affair.

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6491631

The best thing to do is experiment. Leave out 1st and do 3rd and 7ths and 9th. Listen to songs that are similar to what sound you want.

Scott

I found the Jazz link.

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57204

It was on a different Garritan forum page.

Have fun with this.

Scott

There is probably about a 99% chance that whatever you write will be completely playable, as long as you stay within the instruments ranges.

Don't know about 99%. Shakes are pretty hard for trumpets (at least for me) especially in lower ranges.
Large skips are hard at faster tempos, especially slured, etc. Some valve combinations make some trills sound very rough (Ab and low B to C# for example). Of course the better the player, the more things are 'completely playable'.

May I ask, what's a "shake"?

A 'shake' is what is at the 0:15 second point in boogielicious' song 'Brand New Love Affair'.

Thanks for those descritpitons.

FWIW, I'm on a 56k Modem... I went to listen to your tune, but cab only use download... the streaming just will not work at 56k. :-(.

best regards,
mike

Thank You Paul,

You guys are great!

ORIGINAL: sleepymike

I was working on a reggae song recently with a horn part - trombone, tenor sax, trumpet. The trombone and sax sounded great but when I added the trumpet, the three together sounded metallic and fake. The solution wound up being - as boogielicious said - starting the trumpet before/after the other two. Drag the notes a little behind/in front of the beats and add in a couple of little grace notes on the trumpet part and it sounds awesome. Good luck.

That rule applies to any ensemble. Human players don't play exactly in time or exactly with each other. An easy technique, if you're copy/pasting, is to go ahead and copy/paste everything and then use the quantize feature to randomize the attacks. Depending on the tempo, set the quantize strength to 92-95%. That should move notes both forward and backwards just a bit which will fatten up the sound and make it more realistic. You might need to adjust the percentage amount to taste, but those numbers should get you in the ballpark.

the way you built off the triads is one of the most common methods, or the melody

have fun, then hire some real instrumentalists

ciao

The double bass is one in Garritan Jazz and Big Band. You can play with the attack and finger noise to get it pretty realistic. It took a lot of tweaking to get the brass sounding the way it ended up. I had to use the Dimension Pro shake because I could never get Garritan JABB to make it sound right.

Thanks for the compliments.

Scott