Orchestral Tools / Glory Days (Big Band Horns)

[Piet De Ridder]

Sensationally good this, if you ask me:

Glory Days - Big Band Horns is an extensive collection of Brass and Saxophone instruments, providing composers and arrangers with a comprehensive set of tools for all kinds of popular, dance and big band style cinematic music. For this collection we captured a quality and unique character that has bite, punch and sharpness for a remarkable festive and glorious sound.
A call back to those glory days of dance and big band standards in an inspiring collection.



Instrumentation:
Alto Saxophone 1, 2
Tenor Saxophone 1, 2
Tenor Saxophone 2
Baritone Saxophone
Trumpet 1, 2, 3, 4
Trombone 1, 2, 3
Bass Trombone

PRE-ORDER SPECIAL:
Now available for an attractive pre-order price of just 449€ + VAT.
The normal price will be 599€ + VAT.
This offer ends with the release of the collection, November 22.

_

[Lawrence]

I have good feelings about this. In places the mix is a little washy and I wonder if there’s enough bite to the low brass, but certainly promising.

[wst3]

My wallet hurts!!!

[FriFlo]

Oh, I think I have never been as certain to buy a library just within seconds of hearing the trailer. Reading the articulations and all details further made it a certainty ... 450€?? Well, these days prices have come down a lot, but if the library can hold what the demo promises they could probably still ask for 10 times of that amount.

[Guy Rowland]

Does sound very promising indeed - bring on the walkthroughs!

[Lawrence]

I guess I'm going to be the contrarian here in one or two ways. The space is great and the general sound is sweet, but I have a few immediate concerns from the demo:

1. Why are the saxes buried, not only in the sections but in the solo section? Is that a mix issue?
2. Is the bite of a big band bone section there somewhere?

The walkthrough will tell us more.

[wst3]

not contrary, and not looking forward to parting with $650, but I am intrigued. Some great writing in the demo track (save not featuring the saxes a little more), but pretty sure the library doesn't come with great writing chops, and I have questions about how I'd use it. I'd love to have a tool to write big band charts, right now I use the ancient Kore Sax&Brass, which does a wonderful job with ensembles, and Chris Hein Horns. That might be enough, or this might eclipse those libraries. Waiting for more info...

[Ashermusic]

This does indeed sound really promising.

[wst3]

ain't that a shame<G>?

Nah, it's a good thing...

[Thomas Mavian]

While watching the trailer I actually forgot I was listening to samples...

[Luciano Storti]

Watch again with eyes closed and you'll pick up a minor blemish or two.

But yeah, sounds very promising indeed.

[KyleJudkins]

plot twist, you combine this with berlin brass + expansions

then you have 7 part trumpet divisi
5 tenor bones
2 bass bones
1 contrabass bone

and uhh..

crap still 4 horns.


really though, what's impressive to me, is that these all come with probably more mute variations in total than the berlin brass expansion. I'm not quite sure theres as many round robins/ect… but FWIW, berlin brass main is only 9 instruments, with no mutes. the mute expansion gives you 2 horns(I think just stopped) 2 trumpets with 3 mutes each(straight/harmon stem half/all the way) and 2 tenor and 1 bass trombone with 3 mutes each(same as trumpet)

[Tobias Escher]

.... and the BBR Expansion C gives you four more French Horns with assorted FX.

[KyleJudkins]

I hope nobody ever makes an ensemble with 1 bass trumpet, 7 trumpets, and 1 piccolo trumpet.

lol

toby, you I guess could combine the 4 horns from main and the exp, but you'd be rather limited on the convincing articulations for phrases)and i'd imagine they are sitting in the same spot, if not some of the same horns)

[trumpoz]

I guess I'm going to be the contrarian here in one or two ways. The space is great and the general sound is sweet, but I have a few immediate concerns from the demo:

1. Why are the saxes buried, not only in the sections but in the solo section? Is that a mix issue?
2. Is the bite of a big band bone section there somewhere?

The walkthrough will tell us more.

I'm not a fan of the trombone sound either - lacks a bit of balls.

The solo tone mutes sound lovely - made me smile.

Some of the brass legato around 0:32 screamed samples to me - don't know if that is a sample wrangling issue or a library issue. Could be both (though Sascha is an excellent writer)

The demo sounds great - if this is where things are going then it is a massive step up.

[Tobias Escher]

Hi Kyle,
nope, they are not sitting in the same spot (they are sitting slightly behind as a 2nd row) and they are completely different players.
But yes, the articulations are quite limited for the four SFX horns. Still... there's a lot of people using them for exactly that

[FriFlo]

There is a very dry Mic position (Spot Mics) available. That does it. I am going to preorder.

[Muziksculp]

Hi,

Would this library work well for traditional orchestral brass applications (i.e. soundtracks, classical, ..etc. ) ? or is it much better suited for Big Band, Jazz type genres ?

Thanks,
Muziksculp

[Lawrence]

Clear to me so far:

Positives:

1. There IS a dry mic position. Awesome!
2. This is going to be VERY helpful for creating “vintage” tracks, the mutes especially
3. The room sound is, as Sascha’s demo indicated, going to be great for John Barry style orchestral big band (my mentor was an arranger for the NBC studio orchestra, which is another style that this would be very helpful.) in creating.
4. The included arts seem sufficient, though I have a feeling more could be better.

Not so sure:

1.The saxes seem awfully polite. I wish they sounded meatier. Is there a growl or flutter art?
2. Still haven’t heard any low bones with hard bite. I’d miss that.
3.I wonder how much CPU multiple mics take. It seems that a combo will be necessary.
4. Do all sustains have vibrato and is there a way to turn it off?

I’m a prime candidate for this library. It’s presently on my list as one of two major end of year purchases. I await the other walkthroughs.

[FriFlo]

Hi,

Would this library work well for traditional orchestral brass applications (i.e. soundtracks, classical, ..etc. ) ? or is it much better suited for Big Band, Jazz type genres ?

Thanks,
Muziksculp

It certainly has articulations geared towards Jazz style. You won't find a lot of "shakes" and stuff like that in classical context. I think it will be usable in many non-Jazz oriented scoring situations, though. I wouldn't recommend it as the first library for orchestral brass, but it will certainly make a good addition to Berlin Brass (or other orchestral Brass libraries).

[FriFlo]

1.The saxes seem awfully polite. I wish they sounded meatier. Is there a growl or flutter art?
2. Still haven’t heard any low bones with hard bite. I’d miss that.
3.I wonder how much CPU multiple mics take. It seems that a combo will be necessary.
4. Do all sustains have vibrato and is there a way to turn it off?
I’m a prime candidate for this library. It’s presently on my list as one of two major end of year purchases. I await the other walkthroughs.

I think you might be right, that this library (much like Berlin Brass) might be a little tame in some aspects. I wouldn't be surprised, if you cannot find your really explosive and expressive solo parts in there. To be fair, though, the more you go that very expressive and personal route, it never quite seems to be working with samples, while still being playable. My take on it is using a great ensemble sound like this library offers and placing some Sample Modeling (or Audio Modeling) instrument here and there, where expressive performance is key. These instruments suck balls trying to simulate an ensemble, but are great for solos.
You can take a look at the full articulation PDF on the OT site.
http://www.orchestraltools.com/resource ... _Horns.pdf
There should be non vibrato sustains as well as vibrato sustains available for almost all instruments. OT uses the abbreviations WV (without vibrato) and RV (romantic vibrato) in their other libraries. Not quite fitting here, but I guess they wanted to stay within their standards.... ;-) I personally dislike those abbreviations. Way to cryptic to me. And WV could be "with vibrato" just as much as "without vibrato". Anyway, I have almost all OT libraries and they are my main workhorse, so, I got used to that! :-)

[The Saxer]

The sound is great! But I'm afraid for fluid swinging jazz lines (with off-beat 8ths tied to downbeat 8th) where the offbeats are slightly accented is hard to achieve. At least in the second video I can hear some of this taa-ta-taa-ta-taa instead off dooBadooBadoo. Jazz phrasing needs the possibility to integrate accents into legato lines. Needs some more walkthrough videos to decide...

[KyleJudkins]

Can't for the life of me remember what Daw everybody uses, but this will likely be easy to blend with samplemodeling and swam instruments

in reaper you can reaaaallly abuse eq matching.

I'm in the middle of a reformat or I would make a tutorial

[NoamL]

There are already lots of options out there for good saxes, aren't there? What stands out to me here is the trumpets and trombones with real big band attitude. Previously this seemed almost unachievable unless you literally played in the parts (and I mean PLAYED, with every controller available) one at a time with Sample Modeling.

I know at least 2 composers who will be snatching this up. Don't write a lick of jazz myself

[FriFlo]

The sound is great! But I'm afraid for fluid swinging jazz lines (with off-beat 8ths tied to downbeat 8th) where the offbeats are slightly accented is hard to achieve. At least in the second video I can hear some of this taa-ta-taa-ta-taa instead off dooBadooBadoo. Jazz phrasing needs the possibility to integrate accents into legato lines. Needs some more walkthrough videos to decide...

I am interested in the viewpoint of an actual Jazz player as you are, Saxer. I hope you have many things to tell us about the performance capabilities. Regarding the legato in 8th with swing performance: Is there ANY library, that can do that? Especially, is there any legato patch? May impression is rather, people have been using staccato patches to simulate those kinds of phrasings, whereas most legato patches in Jazz style have only been useful for slow melodic stuff. While this is not perfect, it seems like a step forward.
Putting accents into the legato will be possible with the Capsule multis. Not sure, if that will yield the right results. However, I am not sure a DooBaDooBa legato patch would be practical. Either, you would have to tell the patch, wether your starting note is on or off beat, or you would need to keyswitch every note individually. :-) Is that what you mean?
Anyway, of course this is still a sample library and not the real thing. But to me this library seems like a big step forward to creating convincing BigBand mockups. More convincing than Chris Hein and it seems a more consistent and usable in different contexts than Fable Sound Big Band. I haven't checked out Mojo 2, as I did not like the sound of it very much. What are you comparing to?