Greg Adams Big Band, anyone tried it?

[Mr. Tunes]

just wondering if anyone's picked up this library yet? I know they also released First Call Horns. I'm getting a bit *horny* lately and am curious to hear how the Adams library has turned out.

[Yossarian]

The demos sound impressive but then they should, considering they are sampled phrases rather than multisamples. With some good pitch/time software you should be able to get good results, though obviously not as flexible as multisamples.

Quite a few horn libraries coming out now. I just bought KAB which is very good and Big Fish audio have just come out with First Call Horns (which they offer in a bundle with Geg Adams, BTW). Then we have the upcoming stuff from Garritan and FableSound.

I also recently saw a video demo on NorthernSound for an upcoming library from WizardMedia which looked interesting. Apparently it will be bundled with a ribbon controller:

http://www.wizardmedia.de/trombone/Trom ... _Large.mov


/Yoss

[Mr. Tunes]

it's just funny cause the sample companies exhausted every other area of sampling EXCEPT horns. so finally we're seeing a ton of products dedicated to them.

is WizardMedia making just a solo trombone library? i cant navigate their site cause i dont speak deutch. i assume it is just solo bone if they are bundling a ribbon controller with it, all the other horns dont slide around like that. the demo was fairly impressive but the parts that were not convincing were the fault of the player dude with the lighter next to his keyboard.

i looked at the greg adams library cause i'm usually just looking for horn stabs, not even that much phrasing. looks like a quick and dirty way of getting some horn toots

[Ben H]

As far as I know wizardmedia will have trumpet, trom, alto and tenor saxes.

There are some unofficial links to demos posted on the NorthernSounds site but you cannot actually find links to them on the wizardmedia site because the library is not ready yet.

[plasticmoonrain]

The new issue of Future Music (US) gave Greg Adam Big Band an excellent review.

I think it's the issue with Danger Mouse on the cover.


Drew

[Dr.Wu]

i tried it and in a word its crap.
1.most of the riffs are not played by actual sections but are bits and pieces of some sax and trumpet solos.
you can have a field day to frankensteiner the original take back together again if thats what you consider fun.......
2.There are many bad intonations probs in some of the polyvoicing stuff like chords etc.
3.A good lot of the sectionsriffs has no tempo indication.
That means that not only they dont change their tempo in sync to the song but you also cannot transpose them in Logic or Garageband!

4.The sections are sampled close mike and ambience-easy way to double the number of phrases that you can put on the front cover.

5. Only about half of the material is actually coming from Greg Adams. The rest is ina folder called "other session"

6. The phrases are coming from recording sessions from certain songs which makes most of them very specific and non general. Very hard to do anything else with them but reassemble the original song

7. The single shot samples are one big unorganized mess. Good luck making your own sampler instruments out of those because thats what you have to do anyway if you want to use those samples since there are no preconfigured instruments on the disk.

on the bright side the recoding quality is ok and so is most of the actual playing. Its just that the selection makes it pretty unusable in my opinion.
Maybe in Melodyne someone could get more out of this.

I am a die hard Tower of Power fan and i really wanted to like this collection but just like the drum CD from David Garibaldi that has ironically also been released by Big Fish this is a big letdown.

Good thing i took the time to really test it before not buying it!

are you with me?
Dr.Wu

[Mr. Tunes]

are you with me?
Dr.Wu

i'm with you buddy! a poorly organized sample collection can sometimes hurt more than one expects. for example, an example i always go back to is this Cratedigging and Cornerstones, two of my favorite loop cds cause no one has them. there are some great beats but the odd one was not properly edited on a grid to the tempo it says it was at. so, when my sessions start train wrecking i get really angry cause i didnt plan on spending an extra half hour fixing it the six loops i threw in there. yeah it's only a half hour but the person i'm working for needs the piece tomorrow right? i dont want shoddy libraries thanks

by your mini-review i suspect some similar illnesses of this library. i would like to do this research on my own but unfortunately here in canada the music stores seem to not want to stock random libraries like this out of fear that they wont sell. to make matters worse, they would never let me demo them. if i had more cash lying around i would've bought the thing without even posting.

i'm making a bigger effort these days to find original players and doing it the real way. aside from the odd difficulty with conducting sessions, it seems to give the best results (duh!!!). unfortunately, the *really* good players cost money but i was darn lucky to get a PHd-grade flutist for free a few weeks ago. i think to some extent a bad player would beat the pants off a midi track

[Mr. Tunes]

The new issue of Future Music (US) gave Greg Adam Big Band an excellent review.

I think it's the issue with Danger Mouse on the cover.


Drew

hmm when did this come out? i have Revenge of the Synth and Killswitch engage(recording rock guitars). did i miss an issue?

[plasticmoonrain]

Mr. Tunes:

Yes, there's a new issue out with Danger Mouse on the cover. As a matter of fact, there are two really interesting articles in it: 1) the great Joe Gore devotes his column to EQ-ing guitar tracks, and 2) an interview with the guys behind LCD Soundsystem (it's the first behind-the-scenes interview I've read in a long time in which the profilees don't discuss the usual equipment -- it's very unconventional and creative).

If you don't get the UK magazine Computer Music, then there's a special treat in this issue of Future Music -- they reprint their recent extensive mixing guide to various instruments. They sure do love their Sonic Maximizer.

Whoops -- I realized that I went on a bit about this. That's because they have that Greg Adams review in it. Anyway, carry on!


Drew

[Mr. Tunes]

haha no worries i like magazine chat. originally i thought Future Music was going to be the one for me, and then this guitar issue didnt have much to offer. but i'll give her one more chance with danger mouse. the cds arent all that great. they're just a way of justifying a higher price.

Keyboard mag is a real snoozer now . I picked up Electronic Musician this month and it was great! If i had big bucks i'd buy all the magazines every month (and greg adams without posting). a long time ago i wanted to publish my own webzine. i think i'll get back on that next month now that i'm graduating and will have more headspace to take on these sorts of things.