Review: Adventure Brass by Musical Sampling

Adventure Brass from Musical Sampling, brings us a library that they set out to create as a fast, easy, fun to play, usable set of four scoring Brass instrument sections that can be used well in unison passages as well as for full Orchestral library writing.

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Review: Adventure Brass by Musical Sampling

Adventure Brass is created by Musical Sampling, who also offers other libraries like Trailer Brass and Soaring Strings. In this library, they set out to create a fast, easy, fun to play, usable set of four scoring Brass instrument sections, which can be used well in unison passages as well as for full Orchestral library writing. It was recorded by Los Angeles session brass players.

Adventure Brass sells for $299.00 from Musical Sampling

Thoughts

Although their website specifications under “Patches” has 25 listed patches, there are only 4 (and 4 “Lite” versions of the same which use less RAM), and each of those patches listed is actually a key-switched articulation. This is really a positive though, because it pulls up all of the library’s articulations for a particular brass section of the orchestra, right under your fingertips without having to load up the articulations and assign them their own midi channels and tracks and then switch between them in your sequencing.

Dynamic levels are controlled with your Modulation Wheel, and allow you to smoothly cross-fade between all varying degrees of loudness for each instrument and articulation. You can also choose to have the Staccato and Staccassimo articulations controlled via velocity.

There seems to be an issue with the stereo array of the instruments. For example, on the Horns, when you play, there is a pronounced lip attack which occurs only in the left speaker, and a few milliseconds later a different horn appears to come in on the right speaker. Additionally, when you pan left or right on their “mix” panel, instead of panning, it’s actually doing balance, where if you were to move the slider all the way to the right, you no longer hear all that attack that is on the left side (it does not “pan” to the right, it instead turns the left channel down to nothing) and it sounds as if it’s just one single horn when the pan is all the way to the right. It may be that they sampled four individual horns, not as a section, and put one on the left, one or two down the middle, and one on the right, and you can only hear all four equally when panned center. I found evidence of this on the Trumpets and Trombones as well. You may need to add a true panning plugin to your mixer which will allow you to collapse and position the stereo field as desired.

I could not discern any difference between the main sustain patches called “Adventure” on keyswitch C0, and the ones labeled “Majestic” on C#0, and the ones labeled “Sustains” on D#0. Possibly the chairs of the players were in a different order, but the samples sound exactly the same to my ears, save for possibly some adjustments to the ADSR envelopes. That’s three supposed patches or articulations they are giving you that are basically all identical sample sources and have arguably no further purpose.

HORNS

TROMBONES
This is the second most useable instrument set in the library, and offers a rich dark set of Trombones which go all the way down to Pedal G. At the loudest you get a thunderous nasty bones sound which is great to have in your arsenal. At it’s quietest the bones have a bit too much attack, though this seems to be the idea behind this library. It’s more for it’s majestic and adventurous playing than the subito dynamic levels. Tight triadic writing in the lowest registers comes through clear and vibrant and the same in the upper registers is punchy though a little less convincing.

TUBA
The Tuba is definitely tied for first place in this library. It’s very convincing and useable up and down the dynamic range and covers the lowest C on your keyboard to F above middle C. It has a nice fat full body that is warm and solid. Though it would be difficult for a player, it would be nice if the sustained fortissimo levels had a sustained uglier fortissimo quality, but after the aggressive attack it pulls back to warm rich controlled tone. If I have my Modulation Wheel all the way up, I want to hear something a bit more aggressive from the Tuba.

Overall, a very nice library for use in more aggressive playing situations like trailer work or dramatic cinematic scoring. This library is probably best suited for an aggressive Brass “tutti” sound for music or passages that need to be exciting and articulated. The trumpets and trombones are its strongest points, and are very useable, whereas the other horns are a little lacking.

As with all of our reviews, please be sure to check out the office demos to make sure that this is the right tool for you.

Facts

Recorded at The Bridge in Los Angeles.
* Section sizes: 2 Trumpets, 4 Horns, 2 Trombones, 1 Tuba.
* Morph Stacking programming allows any note length to sound natural.
* Recorded in traditional seating arrangement.
* Adjustable Humanization feature.
* To Silence feature.
* Solo Trumpet Overlay feature.
* True playable repetitions for trumpets.
* Three microphone positions: Close, Room, Mixed.
* Recorded in 48khz / 24bit.
* 9.8 GB uncompressed (6.3 GB compressed NCW format).
* Compatible with Kontakt 5.5.1 or higher (requires full version of Kontakt).
* Receive watermarked product by Continuata Connect downloader.

Adventure Brass sells for $299.00 from Musical Sampling

Demos of Adventure Brass by Musical Sampling

Videos of Adventure Brass by Musical Sampling