Komplete : Orchestral & Cinematic : Session Horns Pro | Products

'bout time!

Another NI misstep. MOJO Horns from 2009 was better...

I hate to say it, but "Pro Session Horns", sounds like a keyboard patch to me.

You are not alone. I suspect it's possible to make it sound realistic, but it would take a lot of keyswitching, velocity manipulations, and probably some additional fx to get something that doesn't sound like an old Korg.

Nice that this version allows soloing of individual horns, though. And the new instruments (tuba, flugelhorn, etc.) might be fun to play with. Upgrade price is pretty steep, so waiting for the inevitable sale might be smart.

Cheers,
Eddie

Do you own them both? Or are you judging by the NI demos? I got SHP a couple of days ago. I don't think I'll be using Mojo again, this sounds much better.

Most keyboards don't sound like real brass because most keyboard players can't play like brass players. If you happen to be a keyboard player who can, then this library will sound much better than any keyboard because...

1. A single instrument from this library is about 10 times the size of the entire wave ROM of a Korg Kronos.

2. No keyboard patch has all (if any) of the following:

• Auto Divisi
• Chromatic sampling
• 4 velocity layers for sustains
• Round robins
• Legato samples
• Release samples
• Scaleable dynamics
• Humanisation
• Multiple speed falls and dots

All the above are playable in real-time using the keyboard and mod wheel without key switching.

It would be great if you could post something....just whatever horn thing you're doing....without verb or a full band behind it. I'd love to hear that if possible cause the NI demo(s) were weak.

I picked up session horns back when it first came out - and if the clients budget wont cover a real horn section - Session horns has hands down has been the best fit for section stuff. Probably would never go there for solo stuff.
Without question - nothing stock from roland, yamaha, korg / Logics EXS, Kontakt….factory banks - even comes convincingly close. Prior to Session Horns - Chris Heins compact was my go to- but Session Horns won that over as well. Even if I track real horns, sometimes session horns may even get layered in there - or vice versa - sometimes session horns with one real horn does the trick - actually sometimes, Chris Heins may play a part or two layered in the section as well. - It is a good tool to have.

Yeah - its not the real thing - none of this stuff will ever be - but despite the NI demos (which really aren't THAT bad…) Session Horms was worth the money.
However $199 to upgrade is a bit steep….in my opinion. //

If you're on the fence about buying this or upgrading to it, keep in mind that it will be included (along with the other stuff they've released) in Komplete 10 Ultimate. And I'm guessing that will be out sometime this year.

I admit I based my first impression on the first demo track, where there are several spots that sound really fake to my ears. The rest of the demos range from pretty convincing to blech. Some of the soloed parts sound good -- could it be that it's particularly difficult to simulate a real section, where the players aren't exactly in sync with each other? Could the "humanize" function help with this? Would you need to program each instrument individually to get a good result?

Seems like there would be interest in a tutorial showing how to make Session Horns sound like real horns.

Cheers,
Eddie

+1

I also suspect SHP will be part of K10U,I'm leery of buying any new products from e-Instruments,Heavyocity etc....as I have had K8U & now have K9U,the upgrade for KU8--->9 was $169(NI sale) IMO NI wanting $199 for the upgrade of SH to SHP seems way out of line imo.


I'll wait to see what's in K10 Ultimate before I buy any new NI products,they're usually in Komplete U and the upgrades can be so cheap!

This.

I'm not buying anything they make exactly for this reason. I can wait.

That said, The previous "horns" library in K9U sounds fine. I'm a sax player and often record tenor and fatten it with trumpet and trombone from the NI stable. Sounds fine to me.

k

Just had a quick listen to the demos: I find the basic sound of the horns nice but I'm really surprised at how uninspired the arrangements are. It's partly the playing but mostly it's the parts.

As for the price, I have to agree that it's unusually high for NI, but it's actually competitively priced for this kind of deep sampled lib. Sampling brass well and presenting it in a playable package is a real challenge, and a lot of work. If I needed it TODAY, I would likely get it; but like many of you I'm also a KU user and unless something changes in my priorities I'll be waiting for the next KU upgrade.

Now that NI have gone to an "Ultimate" package, I really wish they would make it like Waves WUP, where you pay a fee and get everything they come out with for the next year. Doing it this way seems backwards.

Apparently they had something like this years ago, but they should perhaps bring it back. It just seems so strange that we're all sitting here waiting for KU10 so we can get all these cool products they've come out with.

sounds like keyboard patches to me.

I think bof's post above answered that really well. To
get realistic horn parts you have to think and play like a
horn player...not a keyboard player on an organ sound.

Frankly I've always found the
best way to good horn parts is
to program each individual player's part separately. Sometimes you can get away with playing unison horn lines
with a horn ensemble patch...
but best method is to do the
parts one at a time,
making sure you're not playing
intervals or notes that the horn
player cant do.

Thank you ... I suspected that playing / programming each instrument separately would yield the best results. Have you tried this with Session Horns Pro? If so, how did it work out? Have you tried SHP's Humanize function to mimic the effect of programming the parts separately? I'd be interested to hear how things change when cranking the Humanize knob -- apparently it varies the pitch and timing of each instrument in the section.

Bof's point about playing like a horn player and not a keyboard player is well taken, but this raises the question of why NI didn't hire someone to do that for their demos.

Cheers,
Eddie

I can't afford SHP at that price. So no, haven't tried to do anything with it.

It's a good question. There are quite a few places in those demos where the thought "this could have been so much more realistic if they had just..." pops to mind. It's a little worrying, because it leaves me thinking that maybe those moves can't be accomplished with this VI, even though the specifications and articulation list sure do make it look as though they could have been.

Then again, maybe "a keyboard player who can think like a horn player" is a sparser talent than you might think. When you just say it out loud like that, yeah there are plenty of reasons to think that multi-instrumental experience like that may be rather uncommon.

AND together! In some of the best mock ups I've done, I've played each of the parts live, no quantize, while listening to the other parts in my head. Brass players will feel and move and inflect together when they perform live; playing the parts one by one gives it some human imprecision, but the parts also need to work together effectively, and that implies more feel-based playing that's common to all the parts. I would never leave this interpretation to a computer algorithm.

The problem with the NI demos is that at the individual part level they're sterile: the playing is too perfect. And at the group level, the arrangements just aren't very exciting and are also performed too mechanically.

I'm sure we'll be hearing some better demos soon...

I was expecting Session Horns 2 to be equal, if not an upgrade, to Garritan Jazz & Big Band, but the demos were not impressive. As much as I'd like another great sounding Brass library, I'll need to hear much better songs/demos before even considering a purchase.

As some people aptly noted, many of the examples sounded like old keyboards. Blech.

Well, yeah, but the thing is, Session Horns Pro's basic sound is the same as the original Session Horns. There are more articulations and features, but
the actual "sound" isn't any different. A lot of people made the same complaint
about Session Horns demos - I ignored those and bought it anyway, and was
glad I did. Because "I" can make them sound good with the right programming
technique (composing and tracking each part individually).

So I really think this is a case of not-so-great demos that don't do the product
justice. Having used Session Horns constantly over the past year, my expectation would be that SHP sounds every bit as good and has some nice extra features and articulations.

That's great, man, seriously. But before I purchase this library, I'll need to hear better examples, especially when Garritan Jazz and Big Band has been sufficient to date.

I listened to the demo again this morning, just to be sure, and I was still very unimpressed.

Garritan J&BB contains nearly 100 instruments (including several pianos) in 3.5 GB. That's about the size of a single SHP instrument. Almost everything in J&BB has been faked using filters and mods.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it gives you a lot of control over things like swells. However, I received Session Horns Pro this morning and it has some smart options to make swells follow the tempo of your project using time stretching. The real crescendo’s in Session Horns Pro are much more realistic then filtered swells. My first impression of the quality of the samples is also very positive.

Awesome! Between your post and DP's, I'm becoming more interested.

Playing Session Horns with my Yamaha WX5 is quite different from playing it with my keyboard. The sounds are ok for me, and great to combine with a real horn section. I hope to get a few better controls in the Pro version which seems to be the case. Especially the Baritone is a good addition, since it's not an instrument every saxophone player owns. 199 euro is too much, Let's wait for Q2-end when NI-sales needs some boost...
Frank

Very true!

And you actually have complete control over the swells through time-stretching, which makes them extraordinarily realistic/useful. BUT - it isn't as intuitive as I would have hoped. There are two articulation options for swells, the "Forte-Piano Crescendo (FoPiCre) 2 beat," and the "FoPiCre 4 beat." These crescendos automatically sync to the tempo of your DAW, which is both good and bad. It means they'll automatically work into your arrangement - however, it means you're limited to swells that are either exactly 2 or 4 beats.

HOWEVER, and this is the entire reason I'm writing this post haha, because it took me a while to figure out... if you simply de-sync the tempo in Kontakt's Master control from your DAW (which is what session horns pro actually attunes to), you can make those swells however long you want simply by adjusting the tempo in Kontakt. For instance - I'm making a track right now with a tempo of 110bpm in 4/4 and wanted a 2-bar swell. All I had to do was desync the tempo in the instance of kontakt that I had session horns loaded in, change the tempo in kontakt to 65 bpm, and then play a FoPiCre 4 beat (or 1 bar in 4/4) swell. This gave me a 2 bar swell for a track in 110bpm!! You see?? And you could do this for any length of note you want just by adjusting the tempo in Kontakt appropriately (could even automate the tempo if you wanted different lengths of swells).

Pretty elaborate - I know - and probably not intended by NI in any way, shape or form, but at least its a way to squeeze the full potential out of the neat time-stretching capability they give you!

Very true!

And you actually have complete control over the swells through time-stretching, which makes them extraordinarily realistic/useful. BUT - it isn't as intuitive as I would have hoped. There are two articulation options for swells, the "Forte-Piano Crescendo (FoPiCre) 2 beat," and the "FoPiCre 4 beat." These crescendos automatically sync to the tempo of your DAW, which is both good and bad. It means they'll automatically work into your arrangement - however, it means you're limited to swells that are either exactly 2 or 4 beats.

HOWEVER, and this is the entire reason I'm writing this post haha, because it took me a while to figure out... if you simply de-sync the tempo in Kontakt's Master control from your DAW (which is what session horns pro actually attunes to), you can make those swells however long you want simply by adjusting the tempo in Kontakt. For instance - I'm making a track right now with a tempo of 110bpm in 4/4 and wanted a 2-bar swell. All I had to do was desync the tempo in the instance of kontakt that I had session horns loaded in, change the tempo in kontakt to 65 bpm, and then play a FoPiCre 4 beat (or 1 bar in 4/4) swell. This gave me a 2 bar swell for a track in 110bpm!! You see?? And you could do this for any length of note you want just by adjusting the tempo in Kontakt appropriately (could even automate the tempo if you wanted different lengths of swells).

Pretty elaborate - I know - and probably not intended by NI in any way, shape or form, but at least its a way to squeeze the full potential out of the neat time-stretching capability they give you!