I've always loved the sound of brass instruments in music, but never really found decent recreations of it. Recently Native Instruments put out a half price sale and i'd been saving for ages to pick up a few things for the setup, so bought their session horns vsti, and am pretty pleased with it. o/
Obviously nothing beats the real thing, but for the price, this gets nicely close, and has a great set of articulations, which are always the make or break for a live instrument recreation plugin. The demos on the site are not too hot tbh, but Mac Pro video have put together this tutorial which demonstrates and breaks down the plugin in their renowned clear and concise way.
As said previously, i learn best by watching a tutorial and writing notes which i can then refer to, and then putting into practice what ive learnt. I think whatever style of learner we are. Read, Write, Kinesthetic, Audible, etc, multiple inputs have their effects. To house the notes, I'm using Thinking Rock, as it allows me to create an action for the topic and then notes for the details. These actions can be kept in Projects and the Project Files can be shared easily. I did use Thinking Rock for my to do list / G.t.d system, but ive found Doit.im to be more preferable alternative.
Nevertheless i think it might be a way of sharing notes & best practices with others as Thinking Rock is a platform Gtd app which has free and paid versions. I'm not sure if sharing these notes will be useful as everyone takes their own things from tutorials, but it may help show what the video is about, and help to provide a quick overview for reference. I'm pretty sure it won't affect potential viewers of the video, as notes wont replicate the video, but im hoping they will have some worth, so am thinking of posting them with each tutorial from heronin.
Anyway, thinking out loud so here are my notes on the video, please copy, edit, and save if they are any help.
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Two instruments - Performance & Single Articulations
Single articulations only allow one type of articulation, so these are really best suited to being seperarated out onto different midi channels and dropped into to the horn line to enrich it and make it more realistic.
In terms of playing and performance, performance mode is the one to use. You can select 1 articulation with velocity from the velocity switch drop down list. Above that list you can choose the configuration of your session horns which consiste of different combinations of the 4 instruments. Trumpet 1, Tenor Sax, Trombone & Trumpet 2.
On the right there is the voicing assistant with its own drop down menu.
Smart Voice Split - Splits a chord over the most appropriate instruments.
Chord & Legato - Allow you play a chord and then a legato line with the chord held down
Legato - Legato allows for smoother and more realistic note transitions when playing solos or one note lead lines.
Polyphonic - Allows for as many notes as you like.
Animator - Switches on the animator.
Drop Dropdown - You can drop any of the instruments by 1 octave. I particularly like the drop 1 & (drop 1 & 2) as it produces the lowest octave (which i assume is from the trombone)
At the bottom is 3 tabs - Main, Sound & Control
Main is the animators controls and has a power switch to turn the animator on. You choose a style from the drop down list of Latin, Reggae, Pop, etc, and then choose a song.
The button underneath the style song selectors- link sound preset, enables the sound preset you choose in the sound tab.
The next box shows the current phrase that is being played. You can use keyswitching to switch to the phrases of that song with keys C1 - B1. There are 10 phrases to choose from and the white line underneath it shows the phrase playing through.
You play the phrase with any notes on the keyboard (starting from E2) and you can change the notes in the middle of the phrase and the phrase wont retrigger from the start.
You can play your own chords / notes by turning on rhythm mode, and can drop into this by turning it on and off mid phrase if you want to.
The rhythm only mode retriggers the phrase each time you play new notes, so to address, this turn on - One shot - which plays the phrase to the end without needing to hold down the notes, and therefore allows to you change the notes mid phrase.
The sound tab contains presets to shape the animator sound. The first box called section mix contains different combinations of the 4 instruments, and then 2nd is where you can select different master Fx. You can humanize with the detune knob, and widen with the stereo width knob. You can also select and add various types of reverb.
The control tab allows you to change the velocity curve or mod wheel 11.
And determine what kind of doits the pitch wheel creates (none / Doit on key and on release)
You can also set the sustain pedal to turn on the animator or sustain the notes.
To record performance and articulations, the most effective way is to have one instance routed into 2 different midi channels with an external instrument on the 2nd for articulations.
To do this you must select the 16 out to have enough virtual outputs and have the performance instrument on the kontakt vst midi channel, and leave the midi channel in as 1 and output as 1.
In ableton set the midi channel to 1
In the output / mixer section add another channel and set the soundcard outputs to the 1st unassigned output.
Load the articulations instrument and route the output to 2 and set to midi channel 2.
In ableton create a midi channel and set to receive on midi channel 2. Drop an external instrument on it and set it the 2nd channel and to receieve audio for the 2nd unassigned cchannel selected.
Record enable both and change the midi channel of your keyboard to play 1 or 2. Repeat to add the rest of the articulations.
N.B You could use different instances instead if cpu was getting strained.