Ive been looking at some soundfonts for sax and trumpet(mainly muted trumpet)Can someone give me their opinion of some of the best and hoping free soundfonts to use for jazzy styles of music(Ive looked at the soundfont threads, just hoping someone can help me with what they use).Also advice on making them sound realistic and naturally flowing in a song.
Thanks

Good brass stuff is really hard to find. I found one AWESOME Tenor Sax but I can't remember where (Hammersound? maybe). Its quite large, 20+ mb, but its got multiple velo layers and sounds just great. I never did find that great a trumpet sf2.

Personally if I wrote more sax stuff I'd just buy Tubilesax from Dash though.

As for realistic sequencing, if you are expecting to do fancy doits, falls etc. you'll struggle and have a hard time. Its possible to fake this stuff with the pitch wheel and clever modulation sometimes, but its alot of work and often sounds fake. Use brass sf2s for simple lines, otherwise look into an expensive library like Quantum Leap Brass - which has samples falls and other articulations. Hope that helps

Although I still believe sampled sax to be a mortal sin, I found a relatively nice one in the Xioad bank ('Musima sax' I think it was called). There are also some great DS-404 brass/woodwind instruments on the ftp.computermusic.co.uk site. Also some of the Iowa University brass/woodwind samples have been turned into .gigs and put on Post Musical Instrument's site. Check Northernsounds.com for details. You could convert these instruments to SF2 with EXSC2 or Awave Studio.


Any word on Yellow Tools Candy? Haven't heard a single demo yet. And the TubileSax demo mp3s sounded awful to me.

Other interesting brass sets are Dan Dean Solo Brass or Sam Project (more for ensemble stuff tho - solo stuff soon). VSL Sax sounds pretty terrible to my ears unless played with a wind controller - very formal classical sound - no expression. Physically modelled brass/woodwind still sounds the best to me for solo stuff.

Maybe one day I'll pull my finger out and knock up a physically modelled brass VSTi. Doubt I could sell it though, due to patent issues, and it's a lot of work to get right.

big fan of LeSax ...
use it quite a bit ...

mhm

as a sax player I don't have that problem, but trumpet and trombone are also hard to fake (although no that hard if I mix it with my recorded tracks.

SampleTank's got a few of those in, but it's pricey. Maybe a sampletank free or something?

That brass libraries mostly suck for pop/rock/whatever-not-classical work.

k

soulata wrote:

mhm SampleTank's got a few of those in, but it's pricey. Maybe a sampletank free or something? k

Yeh I'm using the sax from SampleTank2 XL. It is not a stand alone but goes quite well as an accompaniment. The trombone is nice too.

And yes it is pricey. I dont think ST will give those away free.


Allen

griels wrote:

Other interesting brass sets are Dan Dean Solo Brass

Have it, love it, but it's fuckin' EXPENSIVE for most people. You can get the Lite Version for like $200, but I think the full version is still $480ish? I like the stylin' carrying case the discs come in though. Never received a sample library that way before. BEAUTIFUL though, and worth it if you got the cash. No trumpet mutes though from what I remember. You have Vibrato and Non-Vib as seperate banks for both the trumpet and piccolo trumpet though. Project Sam Trumpets do have mutes though, but that's ensembles, not solo.

Good, free, and samples usually don't go in the same sentence though, but, again, depends on your taste and if you're acustom to caviar or peanut butter and jelly.

Devon