Session Horns - Single Instrument?

Hi,

I am interested in Sessions Horns to allow myself greater and more realistic articulation than I have with the Kontakt library horns. I assume this set to be easier to play and have more options?

My main interest is in being able to play a convincing "jazz" improvisation on a single saxophone or trumpet. I downloaded the manual for session horns but it is not clear to me whether I can select a single instrument or if I have to work in horn sections.

There is a page that mentions controlling the volume of the instruments in the horn section - would that achieve what I am after?

If anyone has any experience with this package, I would appreciate any opinions or hearing from them. Thank you!

 

I'm using it now and single instrument option is in Kontakt (single articulation). But that kind of defeats the purpose since it is designed to mimic a horn section. Not really jazz stuff imo. Don't let that discourage you. It can be done but it will take some work and playing around with the features.

 

I'm just using Session Horns now.

It's possible to use single articulations:
Sustain, Rip, Grace Note, FoPiCre, FoPiCre Time
Stacc, Marc, Falls Slow, Falls Fast, Doits, Soft Sus

The instruments are always grouped together: (never single instruments afaik)
Full Section
TP1 / Ts / Tb
Tp1 / Tb / Tp2
Tp1 / Ts / Tp2
Ts / Tb
Tp1 / Tp2
Ts / Tp2
Tp1 / Tb

It would be nice if there were single instruments - with key switches to choose the articulations.

At the moment - you choose the group of instruments you want to use
then use a combination of Velocity or Exp11 to choose an alternative articulation
And the pitch wheel can be used to trigger Doits / Falls

So not quite as versatile as I'd hoped it would be.
more info here:
http://www.e-instruments.com/company/contact/

If you have Cubase - you can use Expression Maps
Load all of the articulations on separate (midi) channels
and use 'set remote keys' to trigger the desired articulations.

However:
The library sounds fantastic
and in my opinion - is great for Jazz
as it's far more subtle and realistic than the horn section in the K4/5 library

 

I'll play around with it a little more when I get home. An official single instrument does not exist but there's a way around that. I selected from the single articulation group. I then went into the Kontakt options. It's the symbol you click on to assign chords but its hard to describe what it looks like.

 

Thanks for the replies,

I was thinking there must be a way to adjust the volume of one instrument when selecting a small section of horns as opposed to all four.

I appreciate the information - I think will all the added articulations it would make for a more expressive instrument.

 

There was a review in Sound On Sound this month which talks about this very issue... had a trick for working individual instruments. Might be worth checking there.

---JC

 

Yeah, it doesn't give all of the details but that's pretty much how you do it. I haven't had a chance to use it that much the last couple of weeks.

 

Thank you - I will have a look at the Sound on Sound article.

 

Thanks for the pointer to the article I was also wanting a single Sax voice for my next track and just got the crossgrade to K-9U.

JR

 

Cool, not just me!
I too wanted single instruments.
Guess I'm out of luck.

George Ware

 

It's like "Action Strings"... a good idea totally dumbed down. I don't mind the 'automatic', but there should be a 'manual' option as well.