Building orchestral horns section

edited October 2013 in General Questions
Hi.

I've purchased the entire SampleModeling brass section (trumpets, tromb's, sax's etc.), and I find it highly natural and playable as solo instruments.

However, when I try to build an orchestral section using the horn, I get a synthetic metallic sound in compare with EWQL horns samples or VSL.

I use 4 midi channels: Horn 1,2,3 and 1 again. Each was recorded separately to achieve a human feeling (using an expression pedal!).

But the 4 channels just sound not convincing. Too metallic. They just don't have the sound and feeling of 4 horns.



Am I doing something wrong?

Any good tip to build a horns section using the Horn?



Thanks,

Assaf.

Comments

  • edited 10:45PM
    Yep. There are a lot of things that I've found that help:



    1. don't push the horns too hard. Turn up the volume and turn down the cc11



    2. use a little compression to even things out, since being next to a horn is different than hearing them at the back of the stage



    3. layer in your EWQL horns on top of the SM horns, especially using the hall / ambient mics. The SM horns can be like your "close mics".



    4. EQ off a little high end from the SM horns, but they don't need much. Also EQ off the low end so that the fundamental frequencies don't build up
  • edited 10:45PM
    Looks good tips. I'll try to implement them. Many Thanks!
  • edited 10:45PM
    Also, perform a slight detune of the instruments, just +/-2 cents

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