Finale 2014 - Marching Band - Brass Library

[BuckeyeMusicMan]

Hello everyone, 

I'm considering purchasing the "Vienna Deminsion Brass I" library. At this point I am running a mid 2011 iMac intel i5 processor, have a substantail about of memory still and 32 GB of ram. I have a few questions and concerns. 

I write music for HS and College marching bands. I'm looking to upgrade my sound library because I'm not happy with Garritan or Finale smart synth anymore. Any crazy harmonic color sounds like a wrong note in Finale Smartsynth midi, and Garritan lacks the power and sustain and "aggressiveness" that is present in a sustained hornline sound. If you don't know what I mean by that, please look up a hornline video on youtube by either carolina crown or the bluecoats (2014 or 15). My typical score is 3 trumpets, 2 mellophones, 3 baritones (trombone voice will be fine), and tuba. Sometimes I'll have trombone and baritone voices present as well. 

Will the "Vienna Deminsion Brass I" package be the best choice for me? In terms of RAM I know I am going to be fine, but is my i5 processor going to be fine? It says Core 2 duo and I'm not sure if mine is better or worse than that. Is there a different brass package I should look at to get the desired sound I want? How easily does VSL integrate into Finale? I see a lot of videos and posts on integrating with Sibelius but not Finale. Financially, I can't go too crazy on price for a library so I want to make the most educated decision. 

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[andi]

Hello BuckeyeMusicMan!

Thanks for your interest. We have no dedicated Marching Band library. So for most Marching Band purposes you will have to substitute some instruments when you work with our libraries.

Judging by the instruments that you write for the most, the Dimension Brass I collection should be the best starting point. You can replace the Mellophones with Horns and the Baritones with Trombones (or Horns as well). You might want to add the Tuba and/or the Euphonium Single Instrument. The Tuba that's included in the Dimension Brass I collection is part of the Low Brass section and doesn't offer the full range of the instrument.

http://www.vsl.co.at/en/Special_Brass/Euphonium
http://www.vsl.co.at/en/Brass_I/Bass_Tuba

We have an offer for our Brass collections and Single Instruments this month. So July should be a good month for your purchase.

All our libraries can be used with Finale. We offer a keyswitch dump file for Finale that can be used in order to add keyswitches and Control Changes to your score for articulation changes.

A Core 2 duo CPU is less powerful than an i5. For smaller arrangements it should work. For biger arrangements you might get performance problems.

Best regards,
Andi