Looking for a brass trick

[MartinL]

I have been working on some stuff for brass, and I was wondering if there is a way to make solo brass sound as powerful as ensemble brass...

For example. I have a line where 3 trombones play the same stuff ff. So I use an ensemble trombone patch. Then, for the next line, the three trombones play 3 different things, also ff. So I use a solo tombone patch for each of them.

But ... the first line (1 ensemble) sounds more louder and powerful than the second line (3 solo).

Has anyone found a trick for this kind of stuff? I am reluctant to use trombone ensembles on the second line, since it would sound as 9 trombones...

Or should this issue be addressed while mixing in audio?

Thanks,
Martin

[herb]

Hello Martin,

all brass ensembles are 6dB louder than solobrass instruments.
(also some percussion stuff)

If you want equal output volume you only have to uncheck the 6dB button in the instrument properties (right mouse click in giga editor on the instrument list in the top left columne)

But maybe it's easier to level the volume via midi.

One tip:
If you play one key of the brass ensembles, you hear 3 (4) players placed from left to right.
If you play a chord with 3 (4) voices of a soloinstrument.
You hear 3 players recorded exactly on the same position.
The feeling in contrast to the ensembles is like mono to stereo.

For mixing it would be important to use 3 (4) miditracks with different panning settings (if you mix in gigastudio).
Better to bounce 3 (4) solotracks and adjust them in your mixing enviroment.

But here is Dietz the expert. Maybe he can give you more detailed information.

My experience is, that we tend to use ensemble players, even for chords, because they sound more 3D in the first moment.
When you simple play a chord on your keyboard with a soloinstrument, you don't have the option during playing to use multiple outputs.

One time (I was lazy), I made the mistake and bounced such solo instruments chords into one wav file.
Dietz hated me, because it was impossible to mix the stuff right (sorry Dietz)

best wishes
Herb

[MartinL]

Thanks for the reply Herb!

[Dietz]

@herb said:

[...] Dietz hated me, because it was impossible to mix the stuff right (sorry Dietz)

best wishes
Herb

:-] No, Herb, I didn't!


To MartinL: Yes, Herb is right about exporting to single tracks. Makes mixing and matching much more comfortable.

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

[Peter Alexander]

Herb - in giga, are you doing MIDI panning or do you use DSP Station to do the panning.

[herb]

I'm not mixing in Gigastudio, so I don't use Midipanning.
Sometimes I pan stuff for testing, especially percussion, how the stereo placing of different instruments works.
So I can tell the mixing engineer, how I would prefer panning of the instruments.

In most cases we (Dietz) works with Waves Stereoimager.

It's also a goo idea (sometimes) to be not too academic in placing the orchestra. Different pieces could sound more effective, if you place the instruments by ear, and not by traditional orchestra seating charts.

I'm a big fan of some Renaissance compositions (sorry I forgot the correct name of this music period). Here the composers composed for a certain rooms - in most cases a cathedral. The composing style, the instrumentation, and the musician placement were perfectly alligned to this certain room. Double choirs, different orchestra sections placed on different positions in the cathedral, and so on.

best wishes
Herb

[Peter Alexander]

It's good that you have Dietz. Here in LA, many of us, because of shrinking budgets, are both composer and mixer. Thanks for the Waves tip.

[Dietz]

@herb said:

[...] I'm a big fan of some Renaissance compositions (sorry I forgot the correct name of this music period). Here the composers composed for a certain rooms - in most cases a cathedral. The composing style, the instrumentation, and the musician placement were perfectly alligned to this certain room. Double choirs, different orchestra sections placed on different positions in the cathedral, and so on.

best wishes
Herb

... now try to virtualize this using a sample (simple?) library with "built-in" reverb [:P] ...

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

[cm]

@herb said:

[...] different orchestra sections placed on different positions in the cathedral, and so on.

... now try to virtualize this using a sample (simple?) library with "built-in" reverb [:P] ...
this brings up (maybe just for myself) an intersting question - sorry if that has been covered somewhere else
you wrote in another thread *positioning* an instrument so to speak is not simply to eg. lower the left and increase the right channel, but to add some signal from the left channel to the right.

now if an instrument *changes* its position lets say from center to the right also a different runtime of the sound from the instrument to the left and the right ear of the listener occures - is this somehow relevant and used in current mixing-technologies?
i'm thinking here about the way, one locates the position of a *mono*-source in the real world (tm), which is more or less based on the doppler-effect (if moving) and runtime-differences.

regarding (built-in or not) reverb: the ambience of a room is (generalized) the total amount of reflections of a source arriving at the ears of a listener - this must be different depending on the position of the listener and the position of the source in the room.
now moving again the source from center to the right the character of reflections and their runtimes should change significantly, because eg. the *left reflections* now suffer a longer delay than the left signal coming directly from the source.

do you think such effects can be an issue regarding natural sounding virtual orchestras or is it nonsens and merely a theoretical consideration?

christian