After the delights of enormous brass libraries and ensembles, providing broad brush stroke approaches to writing, which have characterised recent film, gaming and TV music to some extent, Spitfire are at last proud to present some of the greatest brass players in the world to provide you with the tools you need to write detailed and focussed orchestral music.
This is the fifth instalment in our BML (British Modular Library) Range. British brass players are renowned around the world for their talent, flair, virtuosity and versatility. Composers travel the globe to come and work with them. One particular area of excellence is in our “low” brass players.
THE TUBA
A wide bore valved brass instrument used as a bass or contrabass member of an orchestra. Often used as a comedy effect for it’s short farty parps, it is often forgotten what a beautiful chocolatey tone it can give. Arranging for a choir of tuba, euphoniums and horns would provide a seemless onslaught of tear inducing beauty. In the right hands (and in Owen Slade here, we certainly are!) they can be incredibly lyrical but also, at the lowest part of their register and upper dynamic levels, monstrous and utterly terrifying!
THE CONTRABASS TROMBONE
Wagner Strauss and Schoenberg are some composers who put this instrument through its paces, however, the eponimous Samuel Adler in his book “The Study Of Orchestration” rather flippantly remarked “Since the contrabass trombone taxes the performer so greatly, we advise not to write for the instrument…” Pah to that! London has a handful of fine players and in this library we have the finest.
So the CB Trombone is as the name would suggest, part of the trombone family; a brass lipped reed aerophone with a cylindrical bore featuring the familiar telescopic slide. Be warned though, whilst we have looped the samples here be wary when writing loud lower parts. You’d be lucky to get half a bar of sustained notes in these conditions.
THE CIMBASSO
In 1881 G.C. Pelitti created at Verdi’s request a new low brass instrument, the “trombone basso Verdi”. Verdi scored for this instrument in subsequent operas, Otello and Falstaff, thereafter it was adopted by most Italian orchestras. It slipped into obscurity in the 20th century (orchestras opting to pass these parts onto the Tuba) but has seen a recent revivial, especially in the realm of film scores. It is a valved instrument with the appearance of a tuba that has been on a very effective diet. Whilst it’s range is quite low it’s finer bore doesn’t offer as much chocolatey bottom end that the Tuba does. But it’s not this that we’re looking for with a Cimbasso, for the real character of the instrument is in it’s upper dynamics and Cuivre style of playing. For therein lies a sound that could have sprung straight out of a Hyronemous Bosch painting.
CIMBASSO A2?
As above but with 2 two different players playing at the same time. Combine the two patches and you have three Verdi trombone bassos!
ARTICULATION LIST FOR LOW BRASS:
LEGATO – These are true legato patches where every possible interval within the range we have selected has been recorded. They are monophonic and rely on you overlapping the notes, otherwise the start of the sample will be re-triggered. As the lyricial scope of some the of the instruments within this library is restricted (the contrabass trombone requires so much puff you’d be easy to get half a bar out of it with some dynamics) legato is only available on the Tuba.
LONGS – Marked “Regal”, which is a warm, soft tone going up to a strong declaimation without vibrato. These use dynamic controllers.
LONGS MUTED (Trombone & Tuba only) – With a mute (in the case of the Tuba, a huge conical piece of wood) placed in the bell to produce a more papery, reedy tone.
LONGS CUIVRE – (Fr’ ringing or sonorous) achieved by a slight tensing of the lips to produce a rasping “brassy” tone.
MARCATO – This is the longest short note – and it has a round marked attack.
TENUTO – This is the medium length short note, C.P.E. Bach suggested “Notes which are neither staccato, nor legato, nor sostenuto…”
STACCATO – The shortest of our shorts.
RIPS & FALLS – These are fx of quick glisses up to and down from the note you play on the keyboard. You can control them in two ways: Longer rips/falls are on MW from 0-64, Shorter one from 65-127 — and there are two dynamics controlled by velocity.
Low Brass, is part of a new, long-term project entitled THE BRITISH MODULAR LIBRARY providing composers with the ability to add fine detail, musical expression, beauty and focus to their work. To write music that musicians love to play and to get the most out of smaller ensembles and the wealth of timbral colour and character they can add to any project.
After many years of development experience Spitfire will present this library with a user interface and set of features unprecedented in any library to date. With 7 mic positions, recorded at 96k through vintage valve and ribbon mics to tape through Neve preamps and Prism convertors, and presented at 48k, 24bit in Kontakt format, and additionally three extremely useful ‘mixed’ versions presented in Stereo and 5.1.
Low Brass consists of the greatest players London has to offer playing in the hall at Air Studios, which is regarded as one of the greatest scoring stages in the world.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Downloadable in 4 packs:
• Pack 1 = (Close, Tree, Ambient, Outrigger Mics) 10+ GB
• Pack 2 = (Stereo Mixes) 5+ GB
• Pack 3 = (Gallery, Close Ribbon, Stereo Mics) 8+ GB, (5.1 Mixes)
• Pack 4 = 9+ GB
• Roughly 32+ GB of lossless NCW compressed data.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
• A full version of KONTAKT 4.2.4 or KONTAKT 5
• Windows 7 (latest Service Pack, 32/64 Bit), Intel Core Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
• Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 or 10.8 (latest update), Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
