Contextual: Spitfire Studio Brass vs. Spitfire Symphonic Brass

Christian talks through his demo featuring Spitfire Studio Brass Professional and Spitfire Symphonic Brass, showcasing the differences between the libraries. He also demonstrates the same demo using the Core version of Spitfire Studio Brass.
Learn more about both versions here: www.spitfireaudio.com/spitfir...

[@jodagold5481]

Love your openness and attitude towards sharing your knowledge thank you 🙏🏼

[@bobheatliesongs]

Wow! Every time I watch one of these videos, I feel inspired to turn on my computer and start composing some music. Great libraries, presented in such an enthusiastic way by the one and only Mr Henson. And now? Time to tick the wish list! 👍

[@OfficialStevenCravis]

Outstanding tutorial/demo, *Christian* !

[@kawaiitoy]

Lovely vid, glad to see you're liking the Euphonium! Played it many moons ago as a kid, so do have a bit of a thing for it myself. Absolutely love the Studio Brass Pro library, but one thing I do miss is a sampled flugelhorn. It has that same, slightly soft and wooly character that the euphonium has as well, but plays at the range of the trumpet - so gives you that beautiful soft colour that trumpets or horns won't give. Is there any chance that the flugelhorn might be added at some point in the future?

[@lastcall9998]

Oh, and thanks for having 4k videos, this is surreal.

[@jasonbrogan4703]

Thanks as always Christian! I noticed with the euphonium that the Reverb is set about half way. Does that mean that there are three layers of reverb applied to the dry studio recording?

[@NomadicNarwhal]

Sounds incredible! thanks for the video. :)

[@JakubPietras]

Magnificent library, as always

[@kayceparkinson9018]

Christian, At :45. “Pokes you in the eye with a rusty fork” has got to be one of the strangest and oddly humorous things I’ve heard said about brass ☺️. I don’t have this library yet but I’ve gotten the strings and I’m planning on getting it. I do have a good deal of the VSL SE range but these sound much more polished. Thank you for the inspiration and instruction.

[@ThierryChamps]

Thanks Christian. Yours librairies are amazing. Why no piccolo trumpet in Symphonic Brass? I'm a trumpet player and i play it often.

[@wyshwood]

Hi Christian; How do you police yourself for over egging? I am the guiltiest for multi-layering to extreme and producing out the door and across the field. Takes me forever to cut back, so it is more listenable. Do you have an inner voice that controls your arrangements? This brass sounds epic without being super full on and cluttered.

[@steveedelen3251]

Dear Spitfire Team, I am new to the world of Kontakt and Spitfire Audio Sample libraries. As a recent Purchaser of Albion One and soon to be purchasing the symphony complete collection and Solo Strings, I'm basicly begging you to put out a Tutorial that covers the Best way to load your libraries in Kontakt and the fastest/ easiest way to lay out the tracks as you load the samples etc. ALL the way from opening a Blank Project. (Using Logic Pro of course). Is it best to use Multi Timbral set up with Kontakt or plug it into each individual track etc. While looking into Kontakt tutorials I noticed it was recommended to use the Multi timbral set up to help avoid crashing from to much demand on the CPU but in all the walk through vids it looks like Kontakt is being Plugged in to each track instead of multi timbral. Can you guys please Lay out these basics for your Green Users. Your guy's products are amazing and they attract people of all skill levels from Pros to beginners. I feel kind of embarrassed but it never hurts to ask. I would like to be able to open up logic and set up my tracks and save them as a templet so I can get to the fun part more Quickly which is Being creative instead of frustrated by the lack of technical knowledge. Thankyou very very much and please consider it.

[@OfficialStevenCravis]

*Steve Edelen* I totally agree that this would be a great and helpful group of tutorial of topics.

[@tosvus]

A lot of people using Spitfire also use Cubase etc, so don't think it should be limited to Logic.

[@Justin.Franks]

Multitimbral vs one instance per track is down to personal choice. Some people like having a smaller number of tracks to deal with, so they use multitimbral Kontakt instances. Others like having everything separated out into individual tracks, so they use a single articulation loaded into each track (so multiple tracks per instrument). Still others like having something in between, such as having multitimbral instances for each "type" of articulations (perhaps each instrument having 4 tracks, one with legatos, one with all the longs, one with all the shorts, and one for "other" articulations like rips or FX). Routing is also personal preferences. Some just have everything going to a single stereo out. Some people route each "range" of instruments (strings, brass, etc.) to an individual submixes, before going to a single stereo out. Some have every instrument going into its own submix, then combining those into strings/brass/etc. submixes.

[@Justin.Franks]

Also, hopefully you've figured things out and got everything set up the way you want by now. But if you haven't, I actually have the same setup as you (Albion ONE + Symphony Complete in Logic). I have some other libraries too, both from Spitfire and elsewhere, but my "core" is Symphony Complete and Albion. If you're still struggling with a template, let me know if you have any additional libraries. I'll delete what you don't have from my template and will post it for you. Then you can just modify mine to match your own preferences, and add tracks for any libraries you have that I do not. Mine is fairly middle of the road in terms of complexity. Four tracks for most instruments (legato, all longs, all shorts, and fx/other). Each of those feed into a bus for all the articulations for a single instrument. Then into a bus for its whole section (brass, strings, etc.). Then into a main mix for any final processing before going to the stereo out. No stems, surround, or any other stuff. So for cello longs: Cello longs --> all string longs (with violin longs, viola longs, etc.) --> all strings (with all violin articulations, all viola articulations, etc.) --> final mix --> stereo out

[@OfficialStevenCravis]

_Christian_ (or anyone viewing this familiar with Logic) at 7:05 what is causing the vertical split line at the overlapping end of each note, and how is that played/recorded in that way, and what is the audio result?

[@Justin.Franks]

You're seeing the MIDI from two tracks simultaneously (horns and bass trombones), with both playing the same phrase. But the horn line needs to "overlap" the next note as it is a legato patch, while the trombone line is just standard longs, so you don't want them to overlap.

[@meljames2729]

Great demo. What is the controller placed on your left?

[@JPDC624]

Mel James Palette Gear

[@shaydenmusic]

Would love to see the addition of a Flugelhorn soon, but otherwise amazing job ! Keep it up : )

[@Justin.Franks]

I've been using 8Dio's Century Brass solo flugelhorn with Symphonic Brass. It needs a bit of reverb added, since it was recorded in a drier room than Air Lyndhurst (although not as dry as the Studio Brass recorded in Air Studio One). But once you get this settled, it blends in quite well with Symphonic Brass. It's only $38 and is a killer deal. They also have an ensemble of six flugelhorns available.

[@ArturoAlbero]

Why not having all the MIC positons and the articulations in one patch? I really don't understand the advantages of having a Decorative, Core and legato patches, or even worse, have a CTAO and Alt patches for mics (with their own Decorative, Core and Legato patches). In these studio libraries you did well merging all the mics. But this should be present in all your libraries IMO. I think that with a MASTER PATCH with all the articulations we would be able to unleash all the power of your libraries. I really like all your libraries by the way :)

[@MarioTorre]

Awesome composition, and those are both fantastic libraries

[@lastcall9998]

Oh, and the Euphonium sounds so yummy :P

[@pjdahmen]

Sound are Great

[@LukasVlcek]

The second part, the horns section with staccato articulation. How the players can take the breath?

[@ns1983za]

Good question!

[@kawaiitoy]

Having played such shorts, in a wind section folks usually agree to breath at certain points, so not everyone breaths at the same point (and dropping a beat). However, when writing melodic lines breath should always be incorporated. I always try and sing or play on a similar instrument to see if the phrasing works.

[@LukasVlcek]

@@kawaiitoy I can imagine that but as a former active bone player it always makes me feel extremely uncomfortable to listen to parts like this.

[@kawaiitoy]

​@@LukasVlcek Hehe :D. At least we don't have to play it... ;)

[@5ammy13]

I think the aim is not realism. It's sound. As I mentioned in another comment, if you want realism then you have to take into consideration all of these things, but if you know that your track won't ever be orchestrated and recorded live, then you, by all means, can break these rules.

[@lastcall9998]

This sounds so good too. Do you have something that doesn't? ;) And I don't get why some instrumentalists critique "where do these players take a time to breath" lol, or something along that idea, when at the end of the day what matters is the composition and how great it sounds, these instruments and technology are here to set us free, not to have us chained to "emulate the old era or emulate what/how real players play". With these things, if I want to have 10000000 choirs and brasses and what not, and it sounds good, that's all that matters...

[@5ammy13]

All sounds good until you want it played by a real orchestra. Ideally, if your goal is to write for an orchestra and still sound good and realistic, then having these things in mind is important. But if you are just worried about the sound of your mockup, then ignore all these rules. It all comes down to how realistic you want your mockup to be. I'm sure I would follow these rules if I were to mockup a score for a film that would be later orchestrated and taken to the scoring sound stages to record a real orchestra.

[@lastcall9998]

@@5ammy13 Big if, but I agree totally. The way I see it is that a few have a chance of getting a composition of theirs played by an orchestra. The rest of us mortals (not implying you are within this group) have the luxury to break the rules and maybe create something different because we are not bound to write within a range of notes for a certain instrument, or silences because some guys have to breathe. Again, IF you are writing at least with the hopes your masterpiece will be played by a real orchestra, some rules you must follow. And still then maybe you could make some weird thing work within/outside the limits. Another quick idea is that since it's a Kontakt library, it ceases to be directed to just orchestra composers. Cheers.

[@5ammy13]

@@lastcall9998 yeah I agree. I write Trailer Music and I break these rules more often than not. Unfortunately I have never had any of my tracks recorded live, but I know a lot of people in the industry who have. Generally this is mentioned to them in advance so that they can streamline their compositions towards making it easier for the orchestrator. Actually speaking, you can still write without any of these rules, but it will be a big headache for the orchestrator achieve the same sound you get from 20 string players when you compare it to a 100 string players from a sample library. So yeah, different occasions call for different things, but yes in general, for most of us, the sound is more important than how it is written.

[@miserablesod1]

First section sounds like a Danny Elfman re - imagining of Maria from West Side Story....lovely stuff ;)

[@rubenmolino1480]

I want to see and hear ... the timeMicro ... specifically worked on an orchestral score

[@irbomusic]

Let's be honest... That's the coolest video outro ever.

[@drinkqwerty]

Amazing and a very nice piece of music on top ! - WOULD BE AMAZING TO HAVE SZF , TENUTO, SWELLS , UP BOW REPEATS, APPOGGIATURAS ETC FOR ALL THE STRING LIBRARIES!!!- at the moment we have pretty much only Spiccato, sometimes staccato , at the bow staccato and some accented longs ..... so much more scope possible with the extra articulations that Spitfire have gone for with STUDIO BRASS .......... please - MORE !

[@kawaiitoy]

There's quite a few articulations 'hidden' in the strings. I missed out on some as I was working with the divisi violins (3s), which don't have as many articulations. However, check out the (8) divisi for the violins for example, there's a lot of beautiful articulations there. One of my favs is the short Brushed - very useful when you want a little movement but don't want to go full-on attack mode :P.

[@drinkqwerty]

Hi thanks for your response- i'm not missing anything, just trying to write string music which requires more than a very short art. or a very long one !- i bought Spitfires bespoke libraries 12 years ago and own every available spitfire library and indeed everything on the market.True- the inexperienced user can miss the odd thing! @@kawaiitoy

[@kawaiitoy]

@@drinkqwerty The new solo violin has a rather good performance patch that makes these things a little easier, but would love to see some of these articulations myself as well. I am sure that you will know, but a Szf can be faked with a short attack and a separate layer of long / legato note with a modulation swell - this for me keeps my files workable without having to load too much into Kontakt... :D

[@WillWilson]

Ooo Chocolatey

[@MrDCPatterson]

"Fatty McFattingtons"🤣 I'm trying to choose which library to get first...damn it all I know now is they both work together.

That face: 3:13

[@drewwhite6865]

It's amazing, isn't it?!

[@ryevick]

This really makes me wonder why you do not offer a collection with Chamber Strings, studio brass and studio woodwinds but you have a collection of chamber strings with symphonic brass and symphonic woodwinds available.

[@kreuhnkohrman4948]

...perhaps because Lyndhurst Hall is not Studio 1. Beginners would get upset about the different reverb and that's why it's better not to make a The Hall/Studio 1 mix bundle.