New Jazz-Brass-Library

[Chris Hein]

Hi,

I finaly finished my website for a new Jazz-Brass-Library.


http://www.chrishein.net

This Sample-Library will be available in November 2005
as a kontakt-player-instrument for Mac & PC.

There will be: Alto-Sax, Tenor-Sax, Trumpet and Trombone.

Main Featueres: 4.000 - 6.000 samples per instrument,
Up to 20 velocities, up to 44 playing-techniques all in one preset with keyswitches,
35 midicontrollers, some new developments like growl-control, air-stream-control,
keys, spit, deadnotes, real-vibrato, legato mode and breath release-trigger

If you have any questions, suggestions or wishes, tell me.
I´m still working on the library.

Chris Hein

[GIRO]

WOW!..........Cool!
That's nice... Like that bass too!

[TotcProductions]

Very nice sir. welcome to the community as well.



Holy shit, giro, you're from freakin jersey!?!?!?!?!? I never knew....I live in sayreville....quite a ways south of you i believe....but closer than most.
lol, felt the need to blurt that out!

peace!

[Rajah]

Wow

[benjamind]

Sampled brass is good, but Yamaha VL70-m with the Patchman Turbo VL chip installed is PHENOMENAL.

[mahtazz]

put on one for me!!

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, probably the individual samples are sounding very good (at least from what I can tell by the "velocity check" page), but the demos and/or programming are plainly horrible.
Sorry to say so, but listen to, say, "DonnaLeeSaxSolo" and you'll wish for *any* cheap GM expander as it'd do a better job on the legatos and bends.

I'm not sure why it is so lousy, it's either that the patches aren't programmed carefully enough (do they for instance use Kontakts "round robin" function? It doesn't sound as if they were...) or that the demos are just recorded/programmed plain bad (which they defenitely are).

When you compare to, say, Garritan brass or the demos available for KAB, you'll notice that the demos are programmed with MUCH more attention to detail, whereas these demos just sound like a SMF slapped into a sequencer.

Seriously, you need to work on those demos, otherwise they'll scare people away. The legatos are just, uhm, I dunno...

[topaz]

I have to agree, that is realy very bad indeed.

but listen to, say, "DonnaLeeSaxSolo" and you'll wish for *any* cheap GM expander as it'd do a better job on the legatos and bends.

[Sascha Franck]

Ok, by now I've listened to all the demos. Some of the section stuff is OK in context, but that's about it.
Also, you should't use "different brass libraries" in the background - that's got some potential to fool people into thinking it's all coming from your library.

But, and that's the main culprit, you *need* to go back into legato programming. Each and every halfway faster run is sounding just plain awful and comes through as an offense to anybody who ever listened to the real deal. I'd say implementing "round robin" would allready help to get (partially) rid of the machine-alike sound of those runs.

Then please take a look at some instrument schools or whatever. In, say, the trombone demos there's a lot of things not even the most gifted real trombone players would be able to play at all. Have some real players crosscheck the lines you're using.

In addition, when doing demos, you shouldn't use some strictly quantized stuff such as in the Donna Lee versions.

As said, I'm sure there's some potential in the samples themselves. But the programming (of both the patches and the demos) seems to lack of anything making those instruments sound halfway realistic.

[Chris Hein]

Hi Sascha,

Most of the Alto-Sax Demos where some tests I did during the sampling progress.
Donna Lee was taken from a midifile. I even don´t know who played it.
The original version uses a vibraphon.
I recorded it in February 2005. At that time, the Alto-Sax had 1.800 samples.
I was never satisfied with that song. Everything sounded too clean.
Thats the reason why I rerecorded more than 2.000 samples.
Now we have 5 different sustain-patches to choose from.
Some are very short (0.5-1sec) I called them "Dirty-Notes"

Here is a new version, I did today, ecpecially for you Sascha:
http://www.wizardmedia.de/audiodemos/al ... LeeNew.mp3
http://www.wizardmedia.de/audiodemos/al ... axSolo.mp3
And here is the original midifile:
http://www.wizardmedia.de/audiodemos/al ... n-lee2.mid
Maybe you can play a better sax.


But, yes, you are right, the attack is the biggest problem in saxophon.
Recording every transition is not an option. The library would have over 100.000 samples.
No computer can handle that at the moment. Even kontakt can hold only 4.000 samples in one patch.
I don´t like round robin, since you loose control.
In my Alto-Sax you have about 150 different samples per note to choose from manualy.

The song with the "different brass libraries" in the background is taken from my
upcoming musicalshow "Der Zauberwald".
I just switched of the vocals and played my brass-sounds over.
I think, thats the way people gonna use my sounds.
Chris Hein-Horns does not cover all brass needs.(At the moment)
It contains four solo-instruments and you should mix it with other librarys.

I hope, I will be able to do some better demos, when the library is completly finished.
As a keyboarder I promise to you, I try to learn how to play brass-solo. (':help:')

Chris Hein

[Waywyn]

i didn't have much time to listen to all the examples but i have to say that this is the best big band brass library i heard so far.
i know that there are always issues with legato and certain playing styles but please tell me any other big band lib which sounds currently better than this!!

even like chris said, the demos are sometimes midi files and experiments i guess somebody who is really into big band brass programming would beat the sh*t out of these samples.

i think all in all he did a brilliant job.

ps: donna lee is from charlie parker

[Sascha Franck]

Most of the Alto-Sax Demos where some tests I did during the sampling progress.

Ok... in that case you should update them with better versions.

Donna Lee was taken from a midifile. I even don´t know who played it.
The original version uses a vibraphon.

Uh-Oh. You can't just take *any* MIDI file and expect it to sound good, especially in case it's even been written for another instrument.

Here is a new version, I did today, ecpecially for you Sascha:
http://www.wizardmedia.de/audiodemos/al ... LeeNew.mp3
http://www.wizardmedia.de/audiodemos/al ... axSolo.mp3
And here is the original midifile:
http://www.wizardmedia.de/audiodemos/al ... n-lee2.mid
Maybe you can play a better sax.

Thanks. The tones are sounding better now, but the legatos and bends are still horrible.

And no, I can't play a better keyboard sax. But I do know what saxes sound like, I'm playing with a bunch of sax players 2-3 times a week.

The song with the "different brass libraries" in the background is taken from my
upcoming musicalshow "Der Zauberwald".
I just switched of the vocals and played my brass-sounds over.
I think, thats the way people gonna use my sounds.
Chris Hein-Horns does not cover all brass needs.(At the moment)
It contains four solo-instruments and you should mix it with other librarys.

Ok, point taken.

i didn't have much time to listen to all the examples but i have to say that this is the best big band brass library i heard so far.
i know that there are always issues with legato and certain playing styles but please tell me any other big band lib which sounds currently better than this!!

Err... sorry, but did you take a listen to KAB or the Garritan Jazz demos?

If so, we must have a completely different perception of what horns are supposed to sound like.

Anyways, a few suggestions for Chris:

- Do yourself a favour and don't promote the library with demos like that.

- Get better demos. Either do them yourself or get someone experienced in writing for horns to do some. Give him/her the library as some sort of payment. Business as usual...

- Work on the legatos. There's a few things that might help, such as using round robin to switch through slightly different articulations. You may also consider defining a condition, so on legato notes the attack of the following notes isn't fully triggered. Not sure whether this is possible in Kontakt 1.x, in Kontakt 2 it should probably be.

- Probably work on the bends. Not sure what would be the best solution. Of course having each and every bend sampled would be ideal, but perhaps you could get away with less.
MIDI pitchbend is sometimes working for trombones, for saxes it almost never seems to.


Sorry if my comments are sounding a bit harsh, but I'm sure there's some rather high potential in your samples, it's just that the demos (and probably the patches as well) don't do them justice at all.
Just listen to the competitors and you'll know what I mean... (and fwiw, Garritan Jazz is even cheaper, plus it contains a few more instruments).

[Waywyn]

And no, I can't play a better keyboard sax. But I do know what saxes sound like, I'm playing with a bunch of sax players 2-3 times a week.

we don't have to forget one important thing. of course most or everybody of us knows who real players sound, but we are talking of libraries here. if i am listeing to the beautiful portamento strings of VSL, still they don't sound real and every violin player would probably laugh his azz of by hearing them in a piece.

i didn't have much time to listen to all the examples but i have to say that this is the best big band brass library i heard so far.
i know that there are always issues with legato and certain playing styles but please tell me any other big band lib which sounds currently better than this!!

Sascha:
Err... sorry, but did you take a listen to KAB or the Garritan Jazz demos?

hehe, err, no i don't know KAB, but don't even come close to me with the Garritan stuff even if there is some stuff which sounds cool, i don't like the sound. it is really amazing what he did with his new violin so i really wonder why he didn't apply this technique to his new big band stuff. i heard those demos and they sound really horrible to me.

If so, we must have a completely different perception of what horns are supposed to sound like.

yes and i am pretty happy because it is so with every instrument and every library ... if not, everyone would nearly do the same or similar music

as for orchestra horns, look around, how many people like and use VSL, EWQLSO, SAM etc. ... to certain people some of those libs don't sound nice, while others love 'em.

[Sascha Franck]

hehe, err, no i don't know KAB, but don't even come close to me with the Garritan stuff even if there is some stuff which sounds cool, i don't like the sound.

You know, I'm not talking about the sound per se but about the realism of the demos. There's no such thing as bad legato "artefacts" to be found in them. I don't even think there's much to argue about that fact.

it is really amazing what he did with his new violin so i really wonder why he didn't apply this technique to his new big band stuff.

As a wild guess I'd say the violin features about the triple amount of samples, if not more.

[Markleford]

As a wild guess I'd say the violin features about the triple amount of samples, if not more.

Actually... less!

The upcoming Solo Stradavarius library uses a phase-aligned technique dubbed "sonic morphing", which interpolates across the axis of various performance parameters.

I'm also very eager to hear this applied to other instruments in the future, particularly saxes.

- m