This is perhaps a novice question, but my backround as a player is keyboards, so it should be understandable why I am uncertain about this matter.
I just bought Chris Hein's Horns Compact to use in some of my arragements, and with just a few hours spent I am already convinced that this product will make a huge difference to the quality of brass instruments I plan to use. In fact it has so many features that I am a bit lost in how to use them to my advantage. Therefore the question.
Sometimes I need a portamento effect applied to a brass part. I can use standard MIDI controllers for to achieve portamento effect (#5, #65, #84), but some guidelines I've found on the net recommend not to use default portamento controllers if the VST instrument has a native sample-based way to implement it, it should give a better quality. But I haven't found "portamento" mentioned in the list of available CHH Horns Compact articulations, so it must be using different terms or ways to achive the same. Does somebody know? Or are the some synonyms that mean the same? The same question goes to glissando - AFAIK brass instruments distinguish between portamento and glissando, is there a standard way to to achive it or this is proprietary for every VST instrument?
Thanks in advance.
The best technique to apply portamento to a brass VST instrument
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- KVRer
- 13 posts since 2 Nov, 2015
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
Well, it gives you 'doit' and 'fall' which fall into the category 'portamento' but these are probably only of short duration. The manual says nothing about portamento. So, you're probably stuck with pitchbend. I've not used this particular library. The Samplemodeling things have a sort of intelligent pitchbend - I've used it with the Tenor sax - which pretty much works (convinces, where this is not usually very true), along with something I would more call glissando which is set with the default portamento time = CC5. So you can hope for the best.
Technically, portamento is a pitch bending move, glissando means discrete pitches lie within the move. As to brass, we have a distinction here between valve or slide type. Slide trombone, there is a kind of mixture available. The distinction is kind of blurred here. You'd have to fake that on trumpet. The trumpet portamenti are done with a combination of valving (eg., half-valving) and 'lipping up (/down)'. The famous clarinet lick at the top of Rhapsody in Blue was written as glissando but it's done as portamento by everyone. I don't know if there is anything in the CHH Compact that CC(5) would apply to, you'll have to experiment.
http://andrewhugill.com/manuals/trumpet/effects.html
^ See glissando; a distinction is made here, and 'lip glissando' is described as harmonic series, which seems right and everyone can agree is a glissando. The "doit" is shown as a combination of half-valve and lip. 'Doit' - the definition tends to be, it doesn't end in a specific pitch.
Technically, portamento is a pitch bending move, glissando means discrete pitches lie within the move. As to brass, we have a distinction here between valve or slide type. Slide trombone, there is a kind of mixture available. The distinction is kind of blurred here. You'd have to fake that on trumpet. The trumpet portamenti are done with a combination of valving (eg., half-valving) and 'lipping up (/down)'. The famous clarinet lick at the top of Rhapsody in Blue was written as glissando but it's done as portamento by everyone. I don't know if there is anything in the CHH Compact that CC(5) would apply to, you'll have to experiment.
http://andrewhugill.com/manuals/trumpet/effects.html
^ See glissando; a distinction is made here, and 'lip glissando' is described as harmonic series, which seems right and everyone can agree is a glissando. The "doit" is shown as a combination of half-valve and lip. 'Doit' - the definition tends to be, it doesn't end in a specific pitch.
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
It just depends on the instrument, what was recorded, what was scripted. For instance, there is definitely a better quality pitch bend in Samplemodeling's Mr T tenor sax, and setting two pitches (far enough apart to really make obvious) start and target using their portamento (here you can define your own CC in place of) I'd have to call gliss. I don't know the technology behind what they did for pitch bend. Hang on, I just got hip to what the CCH Compact manual is saying, there is a pitch bend menu for Doit and Fall. So I suppose that's your portamento. You'd want control of the time it takes to get to target, but I don't know.VagifAbilov wrote: I can use standard MIDI controllers for to achieve portamento effect (#5, #65, #84), but some guidelines I've found on the net recommend not to use default portamento controllers if the VST instrument has a native sample-based way to implement it, it should give a better quality. ... is there a standard way to to achieve it or this is proprietary for every VST instrument?
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 13 posts since 2 Nov, 2015
Thank you very much for excellent answers. Hight appreciated. I am just starting with using sampled brass instruments, and I believe I understand better the principle behind their control.
Cheers
Vagif
Cheers
Vagif