I’ve got a side project coming up which calls for some realistic trumpet sounds (jazzy rather than orchestral). I’ll likely be doing it all itb with ableton, so plugins are all good. I’ve got some budget for it, but don’t need to go crazy.
This is a bit of departure from the route I normally go down though - I’ve rarely needed realistic sounds before, and mostly use synths and basic samples for making music.
I’ve done some quick searching, but hard to find much outside of marketing/hype for products.
Stuff I’ve come across so far is
Kontakt - this seems to be a plugin system/platform which happens to include some instruments, if I understand correctly? There’s some called Session Horns which sound like they might do the job, but pricing is pretty confusing (it looks like they need Kontakt to run on as a base platform)
VHorns - also look/sound good, but seems they also need Kontakt to run on?
SWAM Solo Brass - looks pricy, and maybe geared more towards EWI players?
Any experiences/thoughts on the above welcome, as are any other suggestions on how to go about this.
For the best and most realistic trumpet sound I recommend buying yourself an Electronic Wind Instrument and some physically modeled libraries (some of which were mentioned above) to control via midi…
IMO, playing winds on keyboard never sounds realistic. It can sound great for sure—but not realistic.
On cheap synthesizers (and probably many expensive ones), trumpet and brass sounds are emulated with slow attacks. Bwwwwaaaaaah! The takeaway, I suppose, is: A bad trumpet player sounds more trumpety than a good trumpet player does.
The same slow attack is used to emulate (typically feeble) bassoon notes.
I am not a fan of synthesized brass sounds in general. I don’t think there is one, monolithic, good synthesized trumpet/brass sound. Among other things, the ADSR envelope needs to be adjusted for speed. For example, the slow articulation in some brass patches will sound bad in passages using fast articulation/tonguing. And, in a real trumpet sound, there is a certain amount of “chaff” at the beginning of the articulation. Perhaps the EWI, mentioned above by @KingMidas, will adjust the attack duration based on the speed of articulation.
Yeah… I think I’d settle for great (or at least better than what I’ve managed to get from free samples I’ve tried). The EWI route would probably be too much a distraction knowing me…
Long time wind instrument player, and also keyboard player. You definitely need to consider other more complex envelopes to control as many separate controls as you have in the brass voice you use. The standard envelope is so not what you do when you play, short or long notes, by mouth, and even your fingers. Ghosting attacks, vibrato, dynamic changes, the whole way you tongue a note, ( da, ta, ba, bwa, wah, fwah ); you need to have that on your keyboarding, or what you capture in your DAW controller. Otherwise you sound fake.
BTW : Aftertouch on a keyboard can help considerably, but you can add more, even using a mod wheel, or joy stick control.
Echoing the other brass players here. It’s real hard - depending on your budget and prep though you could find a horn section on fiverr to get the real thing. If the whole project is going to be littered in horns it might get too pricey. It’s way easier to get orchestral swelling horns than small ensemble jazz stuff working.
there are many chet baker tracks with solo trumpet parts. you could sample and chop some of those into individual notes, perhaps and use them in an ableton sampler, if you want the extra leg work
despite its game development, in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGNUHigqUBM?t=1015 the dev explains how he does trumpet simulation. And it looks very promising what he is up to, even what comes out of it. Apart from that a trumpet sound is always a set of more than 11 overtones, not part of the video.
Depending on what you mean by “realistic,” the Yamaha VL series of physical modeling synths and modules are worth considering.
I had an EX5 keyboard, and was surprised at the level of articulation the various brass models exhibited. Instead of a smooth bend, manipulating the pitch wheel made the synth trumpet sound like the values were actually being manipulated.
By 2023 standards, the VL horns may sound too synthetic, but they may have realistic aspects that work well for what you want to do.
I don’t know what soft synths do this, but if '90s era Yamaha hardware can do it then surely 2023 software can too.
Thanks for the suggestions so far, plenty for me to look into.
To clarify a bit, since this will be a side project with a friend, I’m looking to avoid acquirung any new hardware (for now), and see how far we can get with existing tools (i.e. keyboard with after touch + modwheels) - so focusing on the software side first.
It’s not going to be for anything live, so happy to spend some time tweaking sounds to get something good.
Maybe “realistic” is too ambitious of a goal, I’d probably be happy with something just a bit more real/expressive than a simple sample or synth model.
This question is right up my street. I’ve searched for the trumpet sound of Miles Davis for years and after many Kontakt emulations this was released. My search was finally over.
These are some of the best jazzy sample libraries out there. They run in Kontakt.
I would not recommend buying one and trying to play yourself. It takes years to get good, especially to play convincing jazz from scratch (unless you want to become a trumpet player and have the time).
For reference, I got really into sample libraries for a couple of years and spent way too much money on them. It’s actually not that easy to program realistic stuff, but the Smart Delay system on this series does the heavy lifting, so easier to get good results.
Also, as a spin off of that I ended up starting playing the flute. I was going to try it on my own, but the more people I talked to, the more I realized that was a terrible idea, as for an instrument like the flute or sax or trumpet, it’s a really good idea to learn the basics properly. I’ve now been taking lessons weekly for about three years. Finishing up the intermediate curriculum now, and moving into the advanced course from spring. These lessons are one of the best decisions I’ve made in terms of music, but it takes time to get good unless you have a lot of free time to practice a lot.
I so regret not sticking with guitar lessons when I was a kid. I plan to start taking jazz guitar lessons in person when I can find the time, but studying two different instruments as a working adult is a bit of a challenge in terms of time.
