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418 Chapter 24 Sculpture
Brass
Brass instruments are notoriously difficult to recreate with electronic instruments.
Samplers do a reasonable job in the right hands, and with the right sample library, but
they lack the “organic warmth” of a real live brass player. This is a simple and generic
brass patch that can be played as a solo instrument or as a brass section.
• Load your “plain vanilla” patch.
• Set Object 1’s Type to Blow.
• Activate Object 2, and set its Type to Noise.
• Adjust the Strength of Object 1 to around 0.90.
• Set Object 1 VeloSens to around 0.30.
• Drag the Material Pad ball to a position that is diagonally between the “I” of Inner
Loss, and the “l” of the word Steel, while playing middle “C”. The sound should be
quite “brassy”.
• Now play the “E” above middle “C”, and you’ll hear a weird “mandolin meets a
telephone” kind of sound.
• Drag the Resolution slider to the left/right while playing middle “C” and a few notes
down an octave or so. You’ll discover a range of sounds that cover everything from
sitars to flutes is possible, just through manipulation of this parameter.
• Now click on the Keyscale button and—while playing up/down the keyboard—
independently adjust the Resolution slider, plus the Resolution Low/High Keyscale
sliders until the range of the keyboard that you wish to play (say an octave or so
around middle “C”) doesn’t suffer from those mandolin/phone artefacts. Oh, and
make sure that your sound is still “brassy”.
• Move Pickup A’s position to around 77%.
• Turn on the Waveshaper and select Scream as your preferred Type. Adjust the Input
Scale and Variation parameters to taste.
• Turn on the Filter. Select HiPass mode, and adjust the Cutoff, Resonance, and other
filter parameters to taste. (As a suggestion, Cutoff at 0.30 and Resonance at 0.41).
• Save Setting as… with a new name.
Please explore this patch much further. There are a great number of directions that it
could be taken in—as a muted trumpet, french horns and even sitars or flutes. The
Waveshaper has a significant impact on this sound, and this is the first place you
should look to radically alter it.
Use the Stereo Delay to create “space” and the Body EQ to cut the lows and boost the
Mids and Hi’s.
Adjust the Material Pad ball position towards the Nylon entry, select Blow as Object 2’s
Type, and then experiment with the Object 1 and 2 positions. This can also result in
different “brass” sounds.