GPO MASTER CLASS
MAKING GREAT ORCHESTRATIONS WITH GPO

Lesson #2 - BRASS

 Table of Contents


INTRODUCTION

This tutorial gives tips and techniques for GPO Brass and Woodwind instruments. It shows the tools and techniques to provide for more realistic Brass performances.

"There are alot of things I notice in certain sequences and used to get  very frustrated that everything I did sounded so stale. The truth is, getting a great orchestration from samples is nothing but practice, tinkering (tweaking), and knowledge. The Demos you hear the "pros" do with all those libraries - there are no deep secrets,  just simple things they have learned over the course of time to make things "sing". I find the most overlooked things in sampling and orchestra emulation is the small details. "

IMPARTING DYNAMICS

This was covered in the Master Class for the Strings but is worth mentioning here. Static Volumes are one of the most commonly-heard giveaways in MIDI Orchestration. Even though a passage may be written at a specific dynamic level, its never going to sound right if you set a constant setting, CC1(MW) for  it will barely waver, nor is a static dynamic level even realistic. The time I meet a real player or ensemble who can maintain a perfect dynamic balance on some sort of graph is the time we all become robots! There are very simple ways to solve this. Using GPO it becomes very simple with a little work with the piano roll or mod wheel.

Sometimes I think its best to think of a solo line as akin to a vocalist. We are often doing these sequences on keyboards (and it shows that were thinking in an almost vertical like sense instead of individual lines as the layout of a keyboard seems to promote this). I try to treat solo parts as expressively as possible, almost like a vocalist. This involves alot of CC1 in GPO.

Note: With GPO there are no section brass instruments playing in unison which is more like in real life. In a real orchestral concert, you can often hear individual  players rising above the rest then receding. Individual instruments weave in and out of the orchestra. They are not static. The idea is to get every solo brass instrument to be individually expressive.

BRASS OVERLAYS

 

One thing I have experimented with is trying to get a realistic (I believe its called crossfade) sounding crescendo or vice versa by using the overlay patches in conjuction with Player (plr) patches. This I found can also be applied to the other sections that have overlay patches. Having messed around a bit I found that it is possible and sounds surprisingly BIG. I made this quick example as a possible guidline to doing this. I'm going to give the midi and GPO track assignments with a small rundown on what I did. This is what I love about GPO, the ability to control 4 seperate players as well as the ability to experiment with the overlay patches to give realistic timbre changes in crescendos/diminuendos.

First off here is the midi.

Note: The brass overlays in the GPO library are designed to be layered with the Solo and Plr instruments to add body and weight to the section. In the case of the French horns either or both of the f and ff overlays can be used. Using both along with the individual instruments can create a very powerful sound containing lots of variation in “brassiness” with volume changes. The effect can be adjusted from quite subtle to very obvious.

Go ahead and load the midi and one instance GPO. Go ahead and select 4 seperate French horn plr patches(note you will have to use one from french horn 2 as there is 3 per solo. Or you can mix them up). Now the seperate plrs should be in channel 1-4. Now go ahead and load F overlayer in channel five and FF overlayer in channel 6. We should now have an instance looking like this.


After loading and assigning each channel to its proper player/overlayer lets go ahead and hit play and see what happens. Here is what it sounded like on my end after inserting an ambience.

Horns Bringing in the Overlay MP3

 

Lets look at the piano roll for just the 4 players and then look at where the ovelayer patches creep in. Here is player 1-4 and their respective CC1 data.


Here is the piano roll shot of the overlay patches. Note how the F overlay starts(light blue line) first a little bit late in the sequence followed by the FF overlay(green line). Note also in the diminuendo that the F overlay recedes a bit longer then the FF overlay. With special care you can avoid hearing these drop out by playing around with the draw tool to get a smooth transition. Its even less noticable in a musical context as I will show.

Once again you can use the variation controllers or you can manually set them for the individuals. In this case again I prefer manual settings in the kontakt player for individuals as their randomness everytime you hit play will sound slightly different!

Just as a reference to see how well this sounded in a setting I quickly loaded up full strings tremelo/pizz and some percussion and created a quick sequence. I wasn't going for composition of the year award for this as it was meant to be a test to hear it against some sort of musical backing. Here is the reference mp3 that I did to hear this in a clumsy but nonetheless musical context.


Horns Bringing in the Overlay with Backing MP3

AVOIDING THE 'MACHINE-GUN' EFFECT

Lets say you want your four horns to do some rapid tongueing technique and also have it really punch thru. One way to do this is to temporarily alternate between your different sections. For example you can alternate between horn 1 used as a full chord and horn 2,3 or 4(plr patches). In this were just going to alternate between horns 1 and 2. For some extra bite and build were gonna also implement the aggressive F overlay patch and the FF Overlay. In this example I assigned horns 1 and agg F Overlay to one chord, the alternating chord is horn plr 2 and FF overlay. It looks something like this in the staff(sonar's staff so it shows as actual sounding pitch).


This is a work around to ensure any repeated note is not using the same sample. The aim was not to write out real parts for horns 1-4 but to get around having the same sample play repeated notes. I believe there is an MFX patch that helps deal with this, however I prefer actual sample changes as the repititions do not sound the same since they come from a different sample. This is the great part of GPO as well, you have so many solo instruments that your able to "trick" things into not repeating the same sample twice in a row, not to mention each repitions alternation will often not be as powerful or be more powerful so its good to also mess with the velocities like the above examples to ensure things are not exact . Note this is also a good time to learn CC16 for the aggressive layer as it adds much more power. This is also a good time to deal with the length control. To me this seems a more feasable solution then repeating a note twice with the same patches. Note when dealing with CC16 on the aggressive horns you gotta be carefull of clipping and this will most likely force you into softer mod wheel(CC16) adjustments then normal. Anyway after a bit of fiddling here is a little harmonic sequence utilizing this idea.

F Horns Eliminate Machine Gun Effect MP3

This can be applied to any group of instruments that have many solo instruments to choose from. Lets say the same sequence above we want to have for 3 trumpets, ofcourse it will have to be altered for range differences and one less note. In reality we would write out/play each on a seperate staff/plr but in this case again I will choose to select different player patches(using chords) and alternate between the two so we dont deal with the same sample. This again is just a work around to eliminate the machine gun effect completely from the process. I would recommend if your part deals with1, 2 or 3 trumpets ,or other instrumets, to load up an "alternate" set when it comes time for repetition. Again vary the degrees of velocity and also make use of the length feature. Mind you these are coming straight off the Sonar notation so the timing once again isnt the issue. GPO gives us the tools to do such things as there are once again so many solo intruments to choose from.

Completely Avoid Machine Gun Effect Trumps MP3

Here is the same concept using 3 flutes temporarily alternating between plrs using chordal switching yet again to avoid the same sample playing twice.

 

Flutes Alternate Avoiding Machine Gun Effect MP3

Any instrument class that has multiple solos can use this idea. The whole point is not realistic staff writing when it comes to repetion, its just a trick to avoid using the same sample and permanently get rid of the machine gun effect. There are tools that are explained in the newest manual(use of variation data and such), however im just showing an alternative to completely remove the same sample sounding twice in a row. I know this technique requires more patches to load in some cases, but to me its well worth it.

MAKING HORN RIPS

Directions:

1. Load the midi file

 

2. Load one Kontakt player
3. Load Solo French Horn 1 Solo ag
4. Look at the piano roll first at CC16 for more bite


5. Look at piano roll CC1. Notice the dip in CC1 during the transition.

6. Look at the pitch wheel data


7. Have a listen(use ambience if you want)

Solo Aggressive Horn 1 Rip Example MP3


8. Record it and look at your sequencers wav and notice the dip between transitions once again from a different perspective.


Happy GPOing!

I hope all the examples above help. GPO can sound excellent when you practice at such things and experiment. Whether you own a keyboard or use notation, I think the important thing is to really get into that piano roll no matter how you input. If you do not use the bundled sequencer and use just notation I suggest you do install and learn it as it will open up more flexability and control over your works. If you do not own a Keyboard and have no other choice to use just the sequencer/notation then all the tools are available to you. Its all just practice. There are no secrets!

 


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