Session Horns: note range and pitch questions

NI Kontakt Ultimate 5.0.3
MacBook Pro 13" Dual Core, 2.26Ghz, 8Gb RAM
Glyph Firewire (instruments loaded on this)
Apogee Duet 2
Roland Fantom G7, Yamaha S90es

I'm using the Session Horns and, while they generally sound great, I would like to stop certain notes from playing that are not within the mapping editor's "yellow block" (when I play the unwanted notes, red indicators appear to the left of the block). I tried setting the note range in instrument options, no luck. How do I stop these notes from triggering?

Also, as I work my way up the keyboard, I notice certain horn sounds will change register (e.g., drop back down an octave as I move up to the next note). This just doesn't seem right at all for live performance, at least not for what I need to do (close harmonies across several octaves). Can this be changed?

And can the individual horn pitches be changed?

 

I don't have that instrument, but I do have a guess.

Maybe some note ranges are round-robin'd for convenience of maintaining triads and other chords? You might compare the instruments to a chart of known pitch ranges for that instrument, and compare it to the keyranges in the Kontakt display.

 

Oh, yeah: round-robin. I wasn't really sure what that is, but based on your comment, this makes sense. I'll check it out. Thanks.

 

Well, I may have used the term "round robin" differently than normal convention.

Round robin typically means "endless loop". When you "round robin" in a file, you add records until you reach the end of the file, then you add the next record at the beginning of the file.

In VSTs, typically "round robin" means that when you play a particular note, the same pitch may sound, but it may not be the same sample used.

The reason: When a drummer or piano player or flute player plays the same note repeatedly, there are subtle differences between each strike with the drumstick, piano key, or flute note.

If the software were to use the SAME sound sample for each hit, those subtle differences would not be present and the resulting sounds could begin to sound bland, artificial, not believable. With drums and percussive instruments, this phenomenon is commonly called "machine-gunning", because the resulting sound (say a series of 8th notes or 16th notes) is very mechanical and fake in nature, much like a machine gun's consistent and sameness of pitch.

On the other hand, if the software could play snare drum or tomtom notes but use a series of slightly different samples for each note, it eliminates the machine-gunning sound and makes it more natural, more like you might hear from a real musician playing a real instrument.

This technique is what we commonly mean when we refer to round-robin. Some software might play the samples in the same order, some might randomize it. But the samples get reused. Round-robined.

My use of "round robin" in my first post above was different: I should have said that maybe the notes for some orchestra instruments have repeating octaves as you go up the keyboard, and maybe this was done to avoid having keys that produce no sound at all due to being out of range of the instrument they're assigned to, and therefore mathematically impossible to play at the same pitch as the key on the keyboard.

The instrument library maker may decide that repeating an octave (this is what I called "round robin") would be better than dropping notes and having dead air for some notes on the keyboard.

Sorry if I misconfused the issue earlier.

 

Ah so, desuka. Thanks for the detailed clarification! Two very different things, indeed, but I've never heard the velocity-based articulation function described as "round-robin". Learn sumpin' new every day.

My problem is that I'd like to eliminate those "round robin" repeating notes, but there's no data (color-highlighted) in the mapping interface (I play the note and a red dash lights up to the left or right the range of the mapped notes). I try to limit using the options' key range, but still no good. Very strange. Would love to resolve this.

 

1. Are you sure the sounds are coming from this instrument? (Audio meter top RH corner of instrument)

2. If so, is your mapping editor set to "Selected Groups Only"? If so unselected groups may not show at all. Unsetting it may give you a better idea of what's going on. Look at Group Editor to see which groups are highlighted in yellow when you get the unwanted sounds.

Sounds as though your release samples are mapped an octave lower than they should be. See which groups are highlighted in the Group Editor when this happens.

Of course the whole thing may be due to heavy scripting.

 

1. Yes, I'm sure it's the Session horns (nothing else was loaded, either within or external to Kontakt).

2. Dunno about "Selected Groups Only" but I will check that out.

Heavy scripting is possible, but will at least rule out other possibilities first. Thanks.

 

Yes, Session Horns probably adheres to strict low-pitch and high-pitch rules for each given instrument. Trumpets can't play low and tubas can't play high.

Well, if there were any tubas in Session Horns, that is.

 

Word. But in this case, I want to further diminish some of the ranges. I've not had time to follow up on Stephen23's suggestion, so the jury's still out on this.