First let me note that I was asked if I would like to review Dominus Choir and was given an NFR review copy but was not compensated otherwise. I had already spent probably an hour listening to demos and watching reviews and was aware that this was a quality choir, so I was happy to review it.
Dominus is in my opinion a superb virtual instrument and a labor of love. The tone is excellent and the samples well recorded. The two choral groups, male and female, have solid enunciation and are consistently in tune. The legato is heavily sampled and cleverly scripted resulting in a legato that is as good as any in the business and, given the complexities of voice, quite easy to use. The Word Builder is quite intuitive and there are plenty of pre-made words.
I have nothing negative to say and I love to nitpick. Listen to a few demos and watch a few video reviews to make sure the sound is right for you. It is a Latin choir, not English, and as a Christian who has gone to church for many years and was once a radio guy for a Christian / Classical station, the choir sounds very much like what I think of when I think of a Latin church choir. It should do very well for movies or video games where you want a medieval or fantasy feel. I mess about with RPG Maker and was thinking as I was playing Dominus that is would be perfect for wandering a Cathedral or cranking up the Bass and going down to the crypts. Clever classical or soundtrack composers should find many uses for Dominus.
As with virtual every VI, take some sit down with a keyboard time with Dominus just to get the feel for the instrument, the Word Builder and especially the Legato. It gets pretty intuitive fairly fast, but any vocal VI is inherently more complex than say a string instrument as you have added syllables, words and phrases to the normal issues of melody, harmony and rhythm.
Learn the interface and play with the length of the notes which is very important for getting a realistic sound. Also the Release/Legato slider is important to adjust for your playing style / DAW midi as it tells the instrument how long to wait for the next note before deciding you don't want legato for the next syllable. Watch the Syllable / Vowel Legato scroll to get a feel for when to change notes as you want to transition on the Vowels. Oh don't forget those Modwheel swells. Get it just right and you will get goose-pimples. It is actually fun enough that you might lose a bit of productivity for a couple hours as you just make the choir sing.
The Mix part of the interface lets you try the four mic positions. They are similar but not the same and the default Mid mic works well most of the time. Do remember that Dominus is using a lot of samples and even with streaming and compression is not a small beast so if you add all the mic positions in at once it will eat memory. The Convo Reverb can also change the sound. I like halls in general, but cranking up the Cathedral can be useful effect. Also Choir Balance and Intensity can change the sound quite a lot. Bass it up for those scary moments unless of course Sopranos frighten you.
As a reviewer I'm something like a mechanic and amateur go cart builder reviewing a new car. I break things apart and look at what makes the instrument run. Sometimes I see little oddities and shortcuts, probably recognizing them because I use them myself. In Dominus there aren't short cuts just good solid European engineering. The Fluffy is becoming the Lamborghini of sampling houses and Dominus is a big step along that path.
Go indepther with the links below as I look at the functioning of the legato, the samples, tone and for a vocal instrument the all important wordbuilder.
Legato
Tone
Wordbuilder
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Dominus - Legato, Timing and Volume
The trick in all vocal libraries is to try for some level of realism in the words and phrases. This has only really become possible since the rise of 'real' legato. I actually tried to do a spoken words using vowels and syllables instrument in Kontakt years ago as an experiment. It was horrible. It sort of worked for very short words, but once you got to those pesky two and three syllable words forget about it. When we speak or sing we do not sep-a-rate eve-ry syl-la-ble and give roughly the same emphasis to each.
So the issues for a singing simulator are :
1. Use legato to get most if not all the the syllables after the first one to sound smooth instead of choppy.
2. Get the timing down so it sounds like natural singing and not just rhythmic chanting in the same cadence (unless you are trying for rhythmic chanting of course).
3. To get the volume of each syllable right to add emphasis to the syllables that need it and allow the less emphasized ones to gentle on by.
Now this clever chap can do it in real time, well after using word builder to make the words.
It takes a bit more time than that to get it just so in my DAW, but that is true of every word builder I've tried. Like any VSTi, once you get the hang of Dominus it starts going faster. With a word builder you have the extra learning experience of verbal language on top of musical language, but I think Dominus makes it relatively easy.
For me it is good to know something of what I want so I might google up Latin Mass or phrases to get a good phrase to start with. Then see if the words are on the pre-built list or use Word-builder to get them into Dominus. Next I hold a single note for the whole word just to hear the pronunciation and the general sound of the word. Next is the tricky bit, I can't sing so I look both ways to make sure there are no innocent victims and then softly sing the Latin word.
Try different tempos and notes. So I'm doing Gloria as my first word on the top line of the wordbuilder. At first I try it kind of fast and each syllable as one note. Not good. Then I try Glo and hold the O as I go up. A quick descent on Re and down to AH. A bit of a hold on Ah. Much better.
Now to translate that into the DAW. I make a long note and let the word play to see where the vowels kick in. Then I break the one long note into three notes, one for each syllable. The first being really long versus a short Re and a slightly longer Ah. Also Re needs a slight volume boost. Now to bust up the O in Glo and move up a note at a time from C to G.
Now it is starting to sound like a real choir! I think the reverb is a bit much and go to the shorter church reverb and drop the verb volume a bit. Wow now I have a church choir singing Gloria right on my computer and I am smiling as I listen to it half a dozen times. Of course you can do it faster, but if you put a little bit into it you can really get a wonderful result.
Fluffy Audio is becoming known for their legato. It is heavily and carefully sampled and sounds really good. Legato is what separates the men from the boys in things like choral and string packages. You can sort of do vowel and Mm choirs without it, but there is no way to do word builders without good legato.
As one of the boys, I'm amazed just at looking at what Fluffy has done here. Take a gander at the various vowel sound groups inside Kontakt. It will blow your mind. There is Sustain, Variable Sustain, Release, After Legato and of course Legato with hundreds of samples all sort of packed tightly in what looks like a microscopic game of Tetris with only flat pieces. And it is repeated for both male and female and for four mic positions. You are getting your money's worth out of this.
Actually it is fun just to watch the different groups trigger and release as you play through a word. Starter sounds trigger and play part way before going into vowels that go into vowel sustains and legatos before playing part of another consonant, another vowel legato combo and seguing into an outro syllable. It is crazy and it all sounds so seamless. Sometimes when you look behind the curtain of a magic show it loses its magic (if you hold the ropes just right they appear to be the same length), but here if anything the magic impresses you more.
If that doesn't do it take a look at the script. Just reading through some of it gave me carpel tunnel syndrome. It is a never ending list of definitions, properties, positions, control settings and case statements. A labor of love folks. Yeah it costs some cash and the guys like to eat and even splurge on some gelato on occasion, but there are easier ways to make a living than this.
And all those samples triggering through hundreds of groups controlled by endless scripts... they sound bloody amazing! Well done Fluffy!
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - The Samples
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
So the issues for a singing simulator are :
1. Use legato to get most if not all the the syllables after the first one to sound smooth instead of choppy.
2. Get the timing down so it sounds like natural singing and not just rhythmic chanting in the same cadence (unless you are trying for rhythmic chanting of course).
3. To get the volume of each syllable right to add emphasis to the syllables that need it and allow the less emphasized ones to gentle on by.
Now this clever chap can do it in real time, well after using word builder to make the words.
It takes a bit more time than that to get it just so in my DAW, but that is true of every word builder I've tried. Like any VSTi, once you get the hang of Dominus it starts going faster. With a word builder you have the extra learning experience of verbal language on top of musical language, but I think Dominus makes it relatively easy.
For me it is good to know something of what I want so I might google up Latin Mass or phrases to get a good phrase to start with. Then see if the words are on the pre-built list or use Word-builder to get them into Dominus. Next I hold a single note for the whole word just to hear the pronunciation and the general sound of the word. Next is the tricky bit, I can't sing so I look both ways to make sure there are no innocent victims and then softly sing the Latin word.
Try different tempos and notes. So I'm doing Gloria as my first word on the top line of the wordbuilder. At first I try it kind of fast and each syllable as one note. Not good. Then I try Glo and hold the O as I go up. A quick descent on Re and down to AH. A bit of a hold on Ah. Much better.
Now to translate that into the DAW. I make a long note and let the word play to see where the vowels kick in. Then I break the one long note into three notes, one for each syllable. The first being really long versus a short Re and a slightly longer Ah. Also Re needs a slight volume boost. Now to bust up the O in Glo and move up a note at a time from C to G.
Now it is starting to sound like a real choir! I think the reverb is a bit much and go to the shorter church reverb and drop the verb volume a bit. Wow now I have a church choir singing Gloria right on my computer and I am smiling as I listen to it half a dozen times. Of course you can do it faster, but if you put a little bit into it you can really get a wonderful result.
Fluffy Audio is becoming known for their legato. It is heavily and carefully sampled and sounds really good. Legato is what separates the men from the boys in things like choral and string packages. You can sort of do vowel and Mm choirs without it, but there is no way to do word builders without good legato.
As one of the boys, I'm amazed just at looking at what Fluffy has done here. Take a gander at the various vowel sound groups inside Kontakt. It will blow your mind. There is Sustain, Variable Sustain, Release, After Legato and of course Legato with hundreds of samples all sort of packed tightly in what looks like a microscopic game of Tetris with only flat pieces. And it is repeated for both male and female and for four mic positions. You are getting your money's worth out of this.
Actually it is fun just to watch the different groups trigger and release as you play through a word. Starter sounds trigger and play part way before going into vowels that go into vowel sustains and legatos before playing part of another consonant, another vowel legato combo and seguing into an outro syllable. It is crazy and it all sounds so seamless. Sometimes when you look behind the curtain of a magic show it loses its magic (if you hold the ropes just right they appear to be the same length), but here if anything the magic impresses you more.
If that doesn't do it take a look at the script. Just reading through some of it gave me carpel tunnel syndrome. It is a never ending list of definitions, properties, positions, control settings and case statements. A labor of love folks. Yeah it costs some cash and the guys like to eat and even splurge on some gelato on occasion, but there are easier ways to make a living than this.
And all those samples triggering through hundreds of groups controlled by endless scripts... they sound bloody amazing! Well done Fluffy!
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - The Samples
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Dominus - The Samples
It is fairly easy to say that Dominus has over 20,000 samples and they weigh in at 28 gigs compressed (30 gigs disk space). I can tell you that every other note is sampled with two velocity layers for syllables and the vowels have heavily sample legato with 320 samples for each vowel along with groups for after legato and release samples. I can note 4 mic positions and 24/48 samples. All these can be mathed and we generally know that more is better.
What is hard to express is HOW an instrument sounds. What is its tone? Across the years I've come up with two questions about tone. Does the recording sound good? Does the instrument sound good?
Early in the history of sampling the answer to the first was almost always no. Now as we have pushed samples toward very high fidelity the answer tends to be based on the mic setup and the quality of the engineering. Happily Dominus seems to be well miced and well recorded all the way around. I will note that I don't hear quite as much of a difference between the 4 mics as I can in non-vocal instruments. I've noticed this with other vocal instruments as well. I think this is because of the voice itself and convolution reverb. Turning off the reverb seems to emphasize the difference a bit more. Also the syllables seem a touch crisper on the closer mics.
The answer to the second is more toward personal taste, but often most folks can agree that an instrument just doesn't sound particularly good or that an instruments has a wonderful tone. In this case the instrument(s) is the combined voices of a male and female ensemble and to me they sound lovely. There is a fullness and richness to the choir that I find downright exciting. If I were to go to an Italian cathedral that was known for having a fine choir on a Sunday this is what I might expect to hear.
That leads to a third question I have dared to ask more recently. Could I imagine this to be a real instrument being played live? Are we climbing up the other side of the Uncanny Valley? With convo reverb, somewhat pro level sound interfaces and speakers or headphones along with improved recordings, legato and other developers' tricks it seems like you really can get the illusion of a live performance. Dominus gives me something of that illusion and that is intended as quite a compliment.
In my listening to Fluffy Audio instruments and demos, they seem to be exceptional at tone and legato which is a testament to skill, taste and insanely hard work. I congratulate them on the tone of Dominus as it seems to be as good if not better than any other choir on the market.
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - Legato
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
What is hard to express is HOW an instrument sounds. What is its tone? Across the years I've come up with two questions about tone. Does the recording sound good? Does the instrument sound good?
Early in the history of sampling the answer to the first was almost always no. Now as we have pushed samples toward very high fidelity the answer tends to be based on the mic setup and the quality of the engineering. Happily Dominus seems to be well miced and well recorded all the way around. I will note that I don't hear quite as much of a difference between the 4 mics as I can in non-vocal instruments. I've noticed this with other vocal instruments as well. I think this is because of the voice itself and convolution reverb. Turning off the reverb seems to emphasize the difference a bit more. Also the syllables seem a touch crisper on the closer mics.
The answer to the second is more toward personal taste, but often most folks can agree that an instrument just doesn't sound particularly good or that an instruments has a wonderful tone. In this case the instrument(s) is the combined voices of a male and female ensemble and to me they sound lovely. There is a fullness and richness to the choir that I find downright exciting. If I were to go to an Italian cathedral that was known for having a fine choir on a Sunday this is what I might expect to hear.
That leads to a third question I have dared to ask more recently. Could I imagine this to be a real instrument being played live? Are we climbing up the other side of the Uncanny Valley? With convo reverb, somewhat pro level sound interfaces and speakers or headphones along with improved recordings, legato and other developers' tricks it seems like you really can get the illusion of a live performance. Dominus gives me something of that illusion and that is intended as quite a compliment.
In my listening to Fluffy Audio instruments and demos, they seem to be exceptional at tone and legato which is a testament to skill, taste and insanely hard work. I congratulate them on the tone of Dominus as it seems to be as good if not better than any other choir on the market.
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - Legato
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
Dominus Latin is a snap
When you kick up the Word Edit tab of Dominus you will see 50 little 'puzzle pieces' that are flat on the left and have a little connector on the right. These are the word starters. Click on one of these pieces and you are taken a page of connecting pieces based on the vowel in the word starter. So clicking VE takes you to the E page, VI to the I Page and VO can you guess... yup to the O page. You are good!
Once you are on the vowel page you can choose connector pieces on the left or word ending pieces on the right. If you choose a connector piece you are transported to the vowel sound for the new ending vowel. So I chose VO which took me to the O page and now I try the OMA connector and am whisked away to the A vowel page.
Now I pick ANNA, because I knew an adorable lady named Anna, and since this ends in A, I stay on my current page. Now I try ANE because now I'm thinking of the lady. This takes me (R U Ready) to the E page.
Now my word is getting pretty long so I'm going to choose an end piece from the right. ENTUM seems alright. End pieces are special in that the vowel will hold until you release the key and then the final vowel will sound. So here I'll get the Oooo sound until I release for an Mmmm. Now I have my non-sense Latin word Vomannanentum.
Look under the word and you will see lots of little half notes. When I play Vomannanentum, each of the five syllables has exactly the same length. Well expect the last which I can control with my release.
This gets boring so lets change the note length. Click on the note you can go from a sixteenth to a double note or even custom lengths. So my word might have this cadence when I'm done. Note that you can also choose note length when you are picking your syllables in the Word Builder. I just prefer to do it this way as I listen to the whole word. Also when getting cadence I suggest just holding one note.
As you can see from my little picture, Dominus can do real Latin words as well. In fact it comes with a whole list of real words and with a little experimentation you can make many more.
It's a but hard to see in my picture but when you hit presets you get a scroll-able list of tons of words that are ready for use. This is where I got Gloria and Deo from.
Now in trying to do 'Gloria in excelsis deo', I had a problem finding an In, but then I realized I could just attach it to the from of Excelsis. So there in three words is a pretty good version of my phrase.
I find the Word Builder to be quite clever and fairly intuitive. Once you figure out that the vowels are the legato connectors and you are basically jumping between vowel pages, you can get what you want pretty quickly.
The note length is easy and seems to work. I was worried that going too long or short might mess up the sound if the words, but it really doesn't. The only suggestion is for the longer intro and outro words I wouldn't go down to sixteenth notes as you need to give the singers enough time to get in all those vowels.
Varying the note lengths really adds some life to the words. At first I was just using the default half notes and it sounded good enough but a bit digital. When I started messing with the word lengths it started sounding much more like the real choir. Also remember to give yourself space for your ending syllable. You need to hear that last vowel (if you have one) on each word to really sell the word.
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - Legato
Dominus - The Samples
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Swing More Intro, Outro and Overview
Swing More has a large number of instruments, about 25 depending on how you count, that fill an interesting niche in the Big Band field. The instruments are variable in quality and usually work better together as a band than as solo instruments. Many of the articulations are quirky sometimes in useful ways and sometimes in ways that seem to create more problems than they solve.
Brass
Guitars
Multis
Strings
Percussion
Brass
Guitars
Multis
Strings
Percussion
Swing More Woodwinds
This is in many ways the heart of the collection with four Saxophones and a Clarinet.
Friday, August 25, 2017
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)