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First off, new website looks great!
I'm flipping through some of the synchronized special editions and synchronized libraries and not seeing any horns that feature the stopped articulations. In the event I'm just missing it, do these currently exist or should I continue with the VI/Studio series for that?
Thanks!
-S
Ahh! Haven't caught up on all of the videos yet, so that's great news!
Would also be cool (I think I've posted before about it) to get a Synchron Brass horn update with that technique.
It wouldn't take toooo long just to get a Sfz, Longs, portato, portato long, staccato (bold and agile), and the cresc./decresc. articulations, right @Paul ??? 😅
I would like to see a Synchron Brass followup that has muted brass, and maybe additional regular sections (with different sizes) so that the articulations and microphones better match the soloists.
The brass sections in Synchron Brass seem to have been recorded first for Big Bang Orchestra and then the soloists recorded later after they started using ribbon mics too. So the soloists recording doesn't actually match that well with the sections IMO, and I think the soloists end up being the strong point of the library and the sections are not quite as strong.
An add-on expansion that gives muted brass could ideally solve this by recording a few sections too ord., like 2 horns and 4 horns, 3 trumpets, etc., to differentiate from the 4 trumpets, 6 horns in regular Synchron Brass and ideally match better with the soloists in regular Synchron Brass in terms of articulations.
A problem I've encountered with VSL's stopped horns is that the effect is a bit on the mild side.
For example, even faffing with some radical EQ I've not been able to emulate satisfactorily the gestopft horns in Jean Sibelius' Karelia-Suite Intermezzo (op. 47), as heard in this superb rendition by the Tampere Filharmonia of Finland:–
(prime example: gestopft horns in bars 11 to 20; about 35 to 52 seconds into this video)
@Macker said:
A problem I've encountered with VSL's stopped horns is that the effect is a bit on the mild side.
I haven't gotten the library yet, but I find Sordina v2 generally does a pretty decent job with the stopped horns, simulating them from the VSL Synchron horns. It doesn't do as well with the muted horns unfortunately, so I've had to supplement it with other libraries.
It's possible that the VSL Studio Horns might have been played stopped with the hand instead of stopped with a stop mute. The stop mute tends to be a bit buzzier than when the technique is done with the hand, so the effect might be more pronounced in that case.
Mducharm, if I recall, I used the VI horns, not the Synchron-ized (i.e. Studio) version. But I really wouldn't expect the stopped horn samples to sound essentially any different between the VI and Studio versions.
Yes I've certainly considered the question of physical mute devices, but can't imagine such things being used in my real-world example above – because the time between the end of the first unstopped passage and the start of the stopped passage seems to me much too short to allow for fitting a physical mute into the bell (it's only a quarter note rest, at this brisk 2:4 pace).
I just have to suppose that the Finnish horn players shoved their right hand pretty forcefully into the bell.
