Swing More Brass

Moving on to even more ways to blow your brains out using Swing More.

Tenor Trombone - Basics kicks in with 2300 samples in 600 megs compressed. It has 4 articulations Staccato, Marcato, Sustain and Fall. There are three mic positions Direct, Ambient and Wide. I suspect these three mic positions will persist through the entire Brass section, if that changes I'll let you know. Staccato and Marcato have 3 round robins, Falls 4 and Sustain doesn't have any. Staccato has 3 velocity layers while everything else has 2.

The Sustain has some vibrato baked in and is somewhat strident. The Marcatos have a nice overall sound and I think are the best of the four. The Staccato just sounds like an OK short note. The Rips for some reason are far louder than the other articulations.

Where the Trombone fails is in tone and dynamic range there just isn't that soft gentle tone that sounds like the player is barely blowing up to the nasty blowing the instrument away sound. This is more of a range of medium soft to medium loud.

I've listened pretty extensively to the solo trombones in Swing More, Session Horns Pro and even more orchestral trombones like the ones in Bravura Scoring Brass, Symphony Essentials and even the older Kirk Hunter Orchestra. The trombone in Swing More sadly seems to have less life and be less expertly played than the others. Aside from the Symphony Essentials Trombone, the others seemed to be more heavily sampled and often have better legato.

Session Horns Pro seems to be the closest direct competitor to the Swing More Brass. When I compare the trombones, the SHP just seems brighter and more lively. It also has many more options. If you want to blend in with Swing More, need more mic positions or happen to like the sound of this Trombone, you might use it. Other than mic positions, I can't see any advantage to using it over the Session Horns Pro which just seems like a vastly superior solo instrument.

The Tenor Trombone - Longs has a shade under a 1000 and 700 megs of samples. There are 3 articulations, Fast Vibrato, Slow Vibrato and No Vibrato. The Slow and No have 3 velocity layers and the Fast has 2.

As you would expect this sounds similar to the Sustain from the Basics patch, but the good news is that the Non Vib articulation does lose the Vibrato almost entirely and the Fast and Slow Vibratos are what you would expect. As a more focused patch this hangs together better than the Basics.

Tenor Trombone - Shorts is very similar to the Basics patch simply replacing the Sustain with a one velocity layer, 3 RR Flutter. So the stats and comments are mostly the same as for Basics. There are 2300 samples and 400 megs compressed.

One oddity is that the patch adds a fourth Staccato round robin but it is noticeably quieter than the other three. You are better off using the Basics Staccato as it is more consistent. The new articulation is the Flutter which is really loud even more so than the Falls. To me the tone of the Flutter was poor.

Tenor Trombone - Wah is an interesting patch. As you would expect from the name it has a Wah sound for either a short or a long period of time depending on the velocity. This seems like a rarer articulation and is fun to play with.

The long is stacked on top of the short and each has a single velocity layer. There are 4 round robins and the usual 3 mics. The only negative is that there is no real volume control since Velocity controls whether long or short plays and the modwheel controls the filter. I added in a modwheel volume control which to me improved the patch. I wish it had shipped that way.

Tenor Trombone - Legato Multi-Dyn has 2500 plus samples and 800 plus megs. The slow and no vibrato articulations have 3 velocity layers and the fast vibrato articulation 2. The patch gets its name from the no and slow vibrato having p, mf and ff velocity layers.  All the transitions are sampled both up and down for every transition from a single step to an octave. All three articulations use the same transition samples which works fine for on and slow vibrato but sounds a touch odd for the fast vibrato.

As with all legato patches it take a bit of getting used to as you want to hold both notes for part of a second to ensure a smooth transition. While not quite to the level of the best samples legato, it definitely sounds better than the fake legato that I use in my instruments.

Tenor Trombone - Legato Versatile replaces the p, mf and ff layers with Bend on the top velocity and either Staccato or Marcato on the soft velocity and a single velocity layer legato in the middle velocity range. It weighs in at 2800 samples and half a gig.

This is a strange but fun patch. The bend makes its only appearance and is a cool effect as it bends up and down fairly effortlessly unlike the falls which seem more forced. It would have been a natural addition to the Wah patch as they sound like cousins. You do have to strike your key firmly to get the bend to trigger as it is at the very top of the velocity range.

The Vibrato articulations have the marcato while the non vibrato has the staccato. Since I prefer the former to the later, I think slow vibrato is my favorite here and one of my favorites in the Swing More trombone line.

Trombones in Octaves is one of those funky patches that gives Swing More some of its unique flavor and value. It seems to have two Trombones playing an octave apart. At higher velocity are the Falls and at low velocity the Crescendos. I can definitely see these being useful in the right situations as the whole thing has a distinctive sound that I don't recall hearing in another Kontakt instrument.

The falls and short crescendos have 2 RR and the long crescendos have 1. Again since the articulations are stacked there is basically one velocity layer and there isn't much volume control.

Bass Trombone - Basics has 2200 samples and is over 400 megs compressed. There are Staccatissimo samples along with Staccato, Marcato and Sustain. All the shorts have 4 RR while the Sustain has 1. Sustain has 3 velocity layers and the other 2. They tend to go from moderately loud to very loud so no soft passages played here.

Tonally most of the instrument has a nice growl to it with the top octave starting to be a touch more smooth. There are some tonal inconsistencies in the round robins but not enough to create a problem. Overall I think the Bass works better than the Tenor. There are no overly loud articulations and the Staccatos sound fine.

Bass Trombone - Longs has 870 samples in 370 megs. It is another of Swing mores odd patches in that is has SFZ - Crescendo (loud short followed by slow build) on top off all four articulations. Sustain, Slide Up, Fall and Flutter would be those four. Sustain has 3 velocity layers and the other 2. Again all are loud to louder.

Like the Basics patch the Bass seems to be better than the Tenor Trombone. The Flutter especially seems to work for me here. Also the Stage mic setting seems quite solid. Maybe you need a bit of space to appreciate a Bass Trombone.

Bass Trombone - Shorts has almost 2500 samples and 400 megs. All four articulations are setup pretty differently from each other so we will take them in order.

XT Short has Marcato F on top and Marcato P on bottom with Staccatisimo F and P in the middle. Each has 4 round robins and two velocity layers.

Short has Fall F on top and Fall P on bottom with Staccato F and P in the middle.  Falls have 2 RR and Staccato 4 with both having two velocity layers.

SFZ - Crescendo has an articulation all to itself and with 2 RR and 1 velocity layer.

Finally Slide Up has Slide F on top and Slide P on the bottom for a surprisingly traditional articulation with 2 RR and 2 velocity layers.

Overall a fairly odd patch.

And now moving on to the Trumpet Section with 3 Trumpeters giving it all they have. The reason that a trumpet section and not a Solo Trumpet is in Swing More is that the original Swing library had the solo trumpet and they didn't want to duplicate content.

Trumpets - Basics has 2600 samples in two thirds of a gig of memory. The four articulations are Staccato, Marcato, Sustain and Fall. The Staccato and Marcato are similar with 4 round robins and 2 or 3 velocity layers depending on the note. The Sustain is actually quite different with the modwheel being used for the crossfade between the three velocity layers. The Fall has four round robins and one velocity layer with the Shake kicking in at the softer velocities above C3.

As a three instrument section, the trumpets have a fuller sound than the solo instruments we have been talking about. This generally works to Swing More's advantage and at the low and middle range the Trumpets sound quite good. The last octave to half octave depending on the articulation really falls apart though and becomes cringe worthy. The Sustain and Marcato are the best sounding to me and the modwheel crossfade gives the Sustain a much smoother velocity curve than most of the other instruments and also the ability to do swells at will.

Trumpets - Longs is a departure in that it has only one articulations this has Shakes at the top upwards from C4 and Marcatos at the bottom with the sustains at mid-velocity. It uses 786 samples and 400 megs. This patch baffles me as Marcatos aren't longs in anyone's book and they and the Shakes could have been given their own articulations. Possibly this patch makes sense for performance in ways I don't understand. I much prefer the Sustain on the Basics patch.

Trumpets - Shorts has a really funky set of articulations. All four start with a Staccato and then from left to right play Marcato, Fast Fall, Slow Fall and Doit. The Marcato covers the same range as the Staccato but the Falls and Doit don't, so going too low on those articulations merely triggers the Staccato. This feels sloppy. Still full points for creativity as I'm not aware that I've ever seen another Kontakt instrument quite like this one. It certainly creates a lot of movement and flair.

The stats are 2500 samples in 500 megs. The Staccatos and Marcatos have 2 or 3 velocity layers while everything else has 1. There are 3 or 4 round robins.

Trumpets - Legato is another confusing patch. The Legato is in the mid velocity with Shake from C4 upwards at high velocity and Marcato at low velocity. It is just too easy to play a shake or a marcato when you are trying to do a smooth legato. I just don't get the point. There are Fast and Run legato. The Fast feels like a traditional legato while the Run sounds like a marcato is being played on each transition. Again this feel like a performance patch for a specific situation that I don't understand, but it seems ill chosen to be the only Trumpets Legato patch. If you can get it sorted out there is a lot here to play with as there are 4700 samples in over a gig of memory.

Overall there is certainly a lot here, but at the risk of beating a dead horse when comparing the close mic on these instruments to the Session Horns Pro, the Swing More sounds tonally OK while the SHP sounds very good. Tone is hard to quantify, but SHP just seems to have that IT factor that is missing in SM. However Swing More has both Wide and Ambient mics which can be used by themselves or mixed with the Close mic to give a sound that SHP cannot achieve. With some reverb and EQ work I think that the SM brass and SM in general can sound like a solid backup band with the SHP taking the closer solo lead.

Some of the patches are quite clever and fill unusual niches, others seems just odd for the sake of being odd. The brass would benefit from some more traditional patches and the Trumpets Sustain with modwheel control showed just how much this collection misses modwheel crossfade articulations.