Short Brass Quartet for trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba.
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Story behind the song
I created this song as an experiment to find out what I could do with the East West Colossus [V]irtual [I]nstrument [L]ibrary brass (all in the included Kompakt sampler). The pop-brass trumpet I used actually has only 1 recorded sustain velocity layer from which I manually made 3 presets for different sounding dynamics via equalization and matching attacks that I sent to different MIDI channels; it has 3 recorded staccato velocities from which I manually made 3 sustain-matching presets via finessed equalization and attack adjustment--a total of 6 presets on 6 matching MIDI channels which I had to choose from for each trumpet part note in my sequencer (12-Tone Systems Sonar 5.2: Producer Edition). The French horn which I decided to equalize to mellow the sound of the forte layer has 3 recorded sustain velocities and no staccati--I manually entered rolling legato passages into my sequencer in 32nd to 48th notes at circa 10, 15, and 20 seconds into the horn part. I manually drew swells/mid-sustain volume changes into each note of the 4 parts (trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba) into my sequencer via continuous controller (11). Finally, I froze each midi track to audio, added positionally-appropriate impulse responses (which came with Sonar 5's impulse response reverb plugin) to each track, and one room impulse response to the master track. I learned that I could achieve more musical results even from limited samples through this time-consuming and manual process with which I made such a short song. I have decided to try to make the process easier by buying a full sampler (Native Instruments Kontakt 2 via $199 crossgrade from the Native Instruments Kompakt-powered East West Colossus VIL) which will allow more streamlined preset programming (to eliminate the need for 6 versions of a trumpet), the use of instrument scripting (for more automatic legati similar to but more versatile than the French horn rolls, and for other tasks like section building with adjustable variances like pan, pitch, and timing) for production of longer and more serious songs.
