Star Wars fragment with Garritan Brass...

[AndreasvanHaren]

I hear so many times that the Garritan brass isn't that good so i wanted to test this. I recorded a short Star Wars fragment with plain brass settings:

Horn 1, player 1/2/horn 1 solo

Trumpet 1 player 1, trumpet 2 player 2, trumpet 2 player 3

Trombone player 1, trombone player 2 - bass trombone 1 solo

Tuba 1 solo.

https://www.box.net/shared/85p9fd9zrf

Any coments?

[Jeff Turner]

I hope I don't draw the ire of forum members for saying this, but I do think that the brass is the weakest link in GPO. For my tastes, it just didn't have the aggressive quality that I like in brass. I think the SAM brass samples were a huge improvement. I don't even bother using the original GPO brass any longer. Maybe I'm just impatient, because with enough midi editing, I"m sure they can be made more aggressive. But I'd rather spend my time writing rather than editing data to change the timbre of a sound.

[Michael A. Wiktor]

With all due respect I agree w/ Jeff. Not sure if the sound quality/timbre of the brass changes w/ velocity, but it does lack that clean, crisp, "raspy", quality when played aggressively.

M

[swinkler]

I too agree.

I believe the timbre does change with velocity. There's also the use of the overlay samples, but I'm with Jeff; I'd rather write and tweak the notes than the timbre

With the example in this post, I thought the articulations could use some work. For the most part the notes seemed to be full value when in reality I think the players would shorten them a bit. I think this has as much to do with the aggressiveness or lack of as anything.

[boulifb]

I agree too with what has been said.

It must be more aggressive. You should apply the aggressive layers patches to accented notes. The layered notes should be the same as the principal notes. Aggressive layers are additional layers to the original notes.

This should make a bigger sound.

Check here. This is a full orchestral version and it has been done exclusively with GPO4 only.

Good luck.

Fred.

[sd cisco]

Andre;
If I was working on this and I had reached the point you have reached, I would suspend judgment until I had added percussion and some heavy double basses, for gravitas. I would make the notes in the opening bars shorter and brighter in relation to what follows. What follows sounds way bigger, so there is room to do that to the intro. Brass and percussion are naturals together, more so, I think, than strings and percussion, and since this is brass, I could not resist adding cymbals and timpani. That would be my comment.
I don't know what the established conventions are here, when it comes to Star Wars music. Is it considered best practice to try and match the original version, or to work up your own arrangement??

Thanks for posting!

Best regards,
sd cisco

[DPDAN]

This is a perfect example of how important "round robin" samples are.
These samples just can not do repeated notes and they are not anywhere near "CON Ballso"

VAR1 and VAR2 really help, but nowhere as much as round robin.
All "serious" sample libraries should have gobs of round robin samples.
I think as long as we are using samples, it is the only way.
Dan

[FLWrd]

It also shows the importance of staccato samples. In Fred's version, the strings play very convincing staccato notes, but it's very hard, if not impossible, to reach that sound with just the legato patches. I think the trombones can be pushed a little harder (highest velocity, make notes very short, and add quick CC1 decay), but the brass samples are more tailored towards slow melodic lines and sustaining chords.

[Michael A. Wiktor]

Does the GPO brass samples have both legato and staccato samples?

[DPDAN]

Does the GPO brass samples have both legato and staccato samples?

no...........