How to Make MIDI Brass Sound Realistic

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Want to write awesome brass parts for your songs, but struggling to get the MIDI instruments to sound realistic? Today we're going to show you how to make your MIDI brass sound a lot more realistic.

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#MidiBrass #HomeStudio #HomeRecording

[anopirsten]

"leave enough space to breathe"
Brass Players: That's a funny joke

[tasenova]

Next Idea: How to Make MIDI guitar sound realistic

[WillsJazzLoft]

This represents a good first step. It's obvious from some of the responses that there's more

[idiotburns]

Video should be called, how to make programmed midi sound played. I want to know what EQ/Mixing/effects make it real.

[Honky_Grapster]

I remember someone telling me to write MIDI drums parts with realistic sticking - not striking three surfaces at the one time if you only have two hands etc. The advice here about breathing and the other behaviours of horn players really humanises the performance. Great tut

[mazely]

Missed an explanation about cc1 automation and how it differs from c11. It's crucial. 👍 Mike Verta, among others, explains well how to automate cc1 with brass instruments. I find very useful your videos and sheets about mixing and mastering!

[mybiggrin]

Did I miss something, or did you not show us the final result?

[liambrownpianoproductions]

great video idea. I feel that the sample community needs better brass then the current options as the samples themselves don't really sound like a live band at all. The closest people to that are the Swing series but they don't care about their customers or feedback, which is a real shame as its nearly there it just needs a playable legato patch for everything and a few more articulations and it would be amazing. I want a really good trumpet library that has every mute and a great sound unlike sample modelling that just sounds great out of the box thats how a real library should work.

[Bezowinz]

I'm having trouble getting Session Horns Pro to respond to expression like I expect. In the Kontakt settings, I assign expression to the mod wheel. But the results are quite static. If I start with a soft note, I get only a bit more volume pushing the mod wheel all the way up. And the same starting with I louder note.

I wish SHP had actual dynamics like the better brass libraries. Or I wish I could find out how to get expression to work similarly.

I'll try it the way you show.

[WillsJazzLoft]

Amazing! Although the technique seems very intricate, I believe it can be adapted for my particular DAW/VST suite. Some of this will likely also have practical application when I want to create brass and woodwind ensembles/horn sections on my Casio WK-200. As with many arranger keyboards that have been on the market the factory brass and woodwind ensemble presets can sound very underwhelming, ' cheesy ', and synthy. Your video has helped me to understand why that is and how to tweak and hack such things. And I will very likely take tone layering and editing more seriously. I got here by entering the phrase, how to create realistic orchestra hits using actual brass and woodwind instruments. Although I didn't understand everything you were doing I think that I got the basic idea. Thank you much.

[gerardocisneros]

good job explaining the tips to do this. however, to this day, I'm still not finding a midi horn that I'm like "whoa, that actually sounds real..." it's tough to make it realistic

[renefrater]

Why didn’t you use stock plugin from Logic? You know it’s easy to do it with session brass, but what if we don’t have that expensive plugins?

[drathernaut]

I believe it’s just C - 1st octave. Not “negative one”. Just like middle C is C - 4.

[obrapro]

Thx for the info. Using tracks to show musicians what I want to do, so this helps.

[paulwarren]

Super helpful, thanks for taking the time to do this. Very useful and informative. Keep up the great work 🙏🏼

[oscaroscar]

There is no good trumpet sounds in garageband ( standard version i think) little space to, i cant record anything since the memory keeps glicthing, the clarinet and piano sounds are good though but feels weird to play those instruments on a touch screen😅😅

[luciano.armani]

great resource man. con apply some stuff for strings too.

[production]

How to Make MIDI Brass Sound Realistic: You can't

[Annunaki_]

Sheesh, you need a better brass plugin. Those trumpet sounds are like a glitchy synth through an overdrive pedal.

[waynemiller]

Thanks for taking the time on this. I learned how the lower notes control what kind of activity will be associated with the actual notes played on Kontakt.
I found it interesting that you could quantize at all since your audio was clearly 3/4 or 6/8 time and your time signature was 4/4 as well as the tempo of the song seemed largely ignored. (like no click track used for recording) But it somehow worked.
By using CC 11 (expression) for volume you can set the actual volume (CC 7) at the beginning of the song and expression will act as a volume within the volume. That way your overall volume will be maintained, since midi will play the last setting for the CC that it was given. Of course if people prefer to use a lot of automation that would be another way to accomplish what they want.
Again, thanks for the post.