Brass and Woodwind software

[Bassist30]

Looking for brass but sometime soon woodwind software as well. Anything you feel has legit brass sounds and yet at a fair price and why? Also who do you buy from?

[seamonkey]

What do you mean by legit brass sound?
Are you looking for riffs, loops to fit into your songs?
Or do you expect to play midi and sound like brass and woods?

If you play keys, then you probably already know that brass and woods have many sample libs, Kontakt, Garritan, but just pressing keys doesn't do it. You need to play with the articulation and know a few standard riffs.

Turns out the loops are a very good way to go. Horn players record them with articulations. DAWs like Ableton let you put together loops into into very convincing tracks. Ableton lets you adjust the tempo, pitch etc. to fit your song.

Loops come in styles, and there are many different styles. It depends on what style you're looking for to pick a good loop lib. They are usually very affordable. You can mix loops with samples, and the samples will sound better. For example if you need to work in a measure to walk up to a new key you can usually do this by having loop before, a measure of samples to walk up to the new key and then start looping again. It's a very good use of both.

[KrisHayes]

Really like the new Session Horns by Native Instuments.

[silky smoove]

I own Session Horns, but I only use it for writing horn parts. The sounds are terrible, the articulations are clunky, and there aren't enough round robins to avoid hearing specific samples repeated frequently. Compares to something like Chris Heins Horns, or Mojo Horns, it sounds really really really bad... It also costs a fraction of those, so it comes down to what you can afford. Ultimately I'm not happy with my purchase of Session Horns.

To the OP: What type of brass and woodwind are you looking for? Full sections? Solo performances? Loops? Playable instruments? Without knowing your answers; Have a look at the Albion and Sable packages from Spitfire Audio. They have a lot more than just brass and woodwind a, but I've found them to be exceptional for my stuff.

[Bassist30]

I'm looking for non looped horns. Something if I play the riff on the piano or my AXON AX-100 hooked up to my bass. I never really used looped sections. I guess I wouldn't be against it. Just that I'm basically looking for real horn sounds that I can play via midi. But again if it includes riffs I wouldn't mind. I also use Cubase 7. Ableton? can that be used with Cubase?

[seamonkey]

These sound great
http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/products_trumpet.php
http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_saxophones.php
You'll need to practice

[Troph]

Originally Posted by seamonkey

These sound great
http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/products_trumpet.php
http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_saxophones.php
You'll need to practice

Yeah, I looked for this exact thing about 12 months ago, and came to the conclusion that there are only like 2 products on the market which can produce a passable trumpet, for instance. The SampleModeling.com Trumpet was one of the two. The other I can't remember right now, but was significantly more expensive anyway.

Regardless, both of them only worked well if you are a good MIDI wind controller operator, which I am not. I purchased an Akai wind controller just to try out the Garritan software synths, and I am just not skilled enough with the wind controller to produce anything passable. But it's possible, as my friend is a saxophone player and he was able to get an "OK" sounding trumpet out of the Garritan software when we set the Akai up to use saxophone fingering. But it still sounded artificial... not as good as the SampleModeling demo. I never dropped the $175 on the SampleModeling trumpet to see whether it would sound much better...

For the fun of it, I also tried just playing the Garritan trumpet using a MIDI keyboard, and it sounded positively awful. The problem is that you have to be able to modulate the volume (breath) somehow while at the same time bending pitch on note arrival and departure, all while playing the correct notes. I found that I am not skilled enough to do this with a keyboard...