Native Instruments has introduced Session Horns, a new Kontakt instrument that features the sound of a four-piece horn section.
Notable for its pristine and authentic sound, SESSION HORNS is designed to allow producers of all levels access to high quality horns, and includes a number of features that make it a highly creative and usable tool for a large variety of musical styles.
SESSION HORNS is based on four meticulously sampled instruments: a tenor sax, a trombone and two trumpets, playable either as a standard instrument or using the included musical phrases. All instruments were sampled in a wide range of articulations, including specific samples to reproduce the authentic sound of typical legato horn lines. Furthermore, the unique Smart Voice Split automatically allocates each note of a chord to the corresponding brass instrument, just as an arranger would. This results in a realistic, professional sound that avoids the ‘cluster’ effect that plagues many software-based horn productions.
The detailed sample base was used to construct over 170 ultra-flexible playable phrases, which draw their inspiration from contemporary pop, funk, reggae, indie, and neo soul productions, and are suited for use in a variety of production contexts. The Animator in SESSION HORNS provides producers with an inventive tool for jamming ideas and coming up with musical phrases. Using one hand to play a chord and selecting phrases with the other will generate harmonic horn accompaniments in real time, without the need for advanced production or composition experience.
Developed by renowned sampling specialists e-instruments, SESSION HORNS is a KONTAKT Instrument that can be used either in KONTAKT 5 or the free KONTAKT 5 Player. It joins SESSION STRINGS and SESSION STRINGS PRO in offering professional sounding studio ensembles that put usability first.
Session Horns is available to purchase for $119 USD / 99 EUR.
More information: Native Instruments / Session Horns
Cinesamples has announced Monster Low Brass, its first CineBrass Bonus Patch.
Cinesamples Monster Low Brass bonus patch for CineBrass PRO.We assembled a team of Hollywood’s finest brass players for an ensemble containing seven trombones, one contrabass trombone, and two tubas. The results include an Articulations patch with short and long notes, and Scoops, Clusters, and FX patches with a wide range of effects representative and distinctive of the low brass family.
These patches feature our new interface design, first introduced with CineWinds CORE, which includes built-in effects the Settings tab, Mapping presets (in the Articulations patch only), and five mic positions — Full Mix, Close, Room, Mid Room, and Surround.
CineBrass PRO users can download this bonus for free by visiting the Monster Low Brass download page. Don’t own CineBrass PRO? Find it now at the Cinesamples store.
More information: Cinesamples / CineBrass PRO
Loopmasters has announced the release of Latin Horns, a collection of fresh new samples dedicated to the highlight of Latin Music, The Horn Section.
With tight syncopated hooks played with staccato precision and harmonic phrasing, Latin Horns is jam packed with exciting fresh horn arrangements guaranteed to add Latin fire to your productions.
Featuring a three piece line up of Trumpet, Trombone and Saxophone containing 104 different ensembles, each instrument has been recorded separately with a full mix loop also included for maximum flexibility. Only high end recording equipment and state of the art Ribbon microphones have been used to seize every nuance and ensure the full Latin spirit was captured.
Recorded at tempos of 125, 126, 128 and 130 in a wealth different keys and a wide range of playing styles from short punchy riffs to full long developing melodies, Latin House is at home in Latin Productions but will also fit comfortably in any modern dance production, from House to Dub, Broken Beat, Nu Disco, Jazz and more.
Latin Horns comes in at 1.42Gb and contains 104 Different Horn Ensembles with a total of 416 Loops and 417 Rex 2 files with Apple Loops version sold separately.
The Latin Horns sample library is available to purchase for £24.95 GBP.
More information: Loopmasters / Latin Horns
Cinematique Instruments has announced Low Banda Brass, a sample library for Native Instruments Kontakt including 2 instruments: a single tuba (F tuba) and a single bass trombone.
Low Banda Brass – Tuba and Bass Trombone instrumentsBoth instruments cover the lowest range of the brass family and stand out with a deep and powerful sound. Currently these two instruments enjoy great popularity – mostly used in Banda Music which is a brass-based form of traditional central American music consisting of a variety of forms, including rancheras, corridos, cumbias, baladas, and boleros. Low range brass is also frequently used in Mexican pop & rock, cumbias as well as polka and traditional German/Austrian music. Whatever you do the Tuba and Bass Trombone, are perfect tools to lend your music a unique sound basis and add roaring power from down below to your productions.
To keep the data small and the price reasonable we set the focus on the main playing techniques: long, short and staccato notes. In order to achieve a unique, realistic and organic sound we spent a lot of time finding the right microphone setup. We decided on a ribbon and two condenser mics as well as an additional bass drum microphone which was located close to the bell (used for “Tuba Short div” patch). We recorded up to 5 velocity layer in 3 round robin variations. In order to keep a very authentic sound and feel we decided to keep the tuning as natural as possible. The result is truly impressive and we are now proud and excited to present the Low Banda Brass to you. All rounded up with he CI typical easy mapping and scripting and as always a real stylish design. It is enormous fun to play and you will quickly create fast rhythmical patterns as well as long dramatic melody lines.
Low Banda Brass enriches your music with a realistic, organic and unique, deep brass sound.
Low Banda Brass is available to purchase for 37 EUR.
More information: Cinematique Instruments / Low Banda Brass
Samplemodeling has announced the release of The Trombone, a Kontakt 4 Player powered virtual Trombone instrument.
The Trombone family expands Samplemodeling™ technologies beyond the original limits. An entirely new class of Harmonic Alignment has been developed, allowing continuous transition across virtually infinite dynamics, at the same time perfectly preserving the peculiar, “spiky” waveform of this instrument. Multi-microphone anechoic recording, coupled to a specially devised “early reflections” impulse response, allowed to reproduce the full, rich timbre of the instrument including its radiation pattern, adding at same time a virtual space to the anechoic sound.
The Trombone features
- The base material of the instruments (two Tenor, one Valve and one Bass Trombone) consists of 714 MB of samples, chromatically performed by a professional trombone player over a very wide dynamic range.
- All samples are unlooped, and have a minimum duration of 8 sec.
- As “The Trumpet”, the Trombone engine is structured according to an adaptive model, based on the performance “fingerprints” of the real instrument. The purpose of the model is to minimize the differences between the real phrases and those played by the virtual instrument.
- Proprietary modal resonance IRs, innovative techniques for sample modulation, and advanced AI midi processing are used for real time construction of all articulations and morphing across dynamics, vibrato, legato, portamento, trills, vibrato-like endings, shakes and so forth.
- Pseudo-random detuning, based on real performance-derived trends, is another outstanding new feature of The Trombone, adding further realism.
- The slide effect has been perfectly reproduced by a novel application of the “Harmonic Alignment” technology. Ultra-realistic slide effects can be obtained by proper use of the pitchbend, but are also automatically activated by overlapped legato. As in the real instrument, a continuous glissando effect will be obtained if the portamento interval is within +/- 3 semitones.
The Trombone is available to purchase for PC and Mac, priced at 149 EUR excl. VAT. All registered owners of any Samplemodeling instrument will be entitled to a 10% discount when purchasing The Trombone, a special offer that is valid until July 31, 2010.
More information: Samplemodeling / The Trombone
Arturia has released version 2.0.5 of Brass, a virtual brass instrument plug-in for Windows and Mac.
BRASS 2.0 is a new kind of virtual instrument based on a physical modeling technology. It emulates a Trumpet, a Trombone and a Saxophone. All the characteristics of the real instruments have been analyzed and modeled through extensive research at world-renowned IRCAM institute. Arturia has partnered with this highly skilled team of researchers to bring this groundbreaking technology to the musician, in the form of a software instrument. BRASS is an extremely expressive, flexible and controllable instrument, and thus a fantastic alternative to loops or music libraries.
Changes in Brass v2.0.5
- MIDI control tab was redesigned in order to show MIDI activity meters for each instrument and a Breath Control gauge.
- EWI-USB configuration dialog problems were fixed.
- RTAS graphical bug(screen doubling or ghosting) on Mac OSX was fixed.
- The saxophone problems encountered in Fruity Loops were fixed.
- Other minor bug fixes.
Brass is available to purchase for PC and Mac (VST/AU/RTAS/Standalone), priced at $249 USD / 229 EUR.
More information: Arturia / Brass 2
