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My question is very stupid, I know, but technology is developing all the time... Are there anywhere editable sounds of real sax(with air). What of programm, software,synthesither?Can any recommend me? Kuguar ---------------------------- www.freewebs.com/olegs
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This is so difficult to answer because it depends on what you consider "good" and how big your budget is. There are keyboards like the new Korg PA800, or the new Roland Fantom's that cost over $3,000 that have amazing instruments in them of all types including sax. The new sound modules like the Ketron SD2 or the Roland Sonic Cell that are in the $400-800 range sound very good. There's a software program that I can't remember the name of that's sax only that is about $500 or so. Garritan has some decent ones for $3-400. So many choices and most cost significant money. If, like most of us, you're doing this on a budget then compromises have to be made.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Greetings, I am very picky about sounds, and I´ve spent big bucks on Samples, Programs, etc. Sax and Trumpet are very difficult instruments to get right. The very best program I know of, both in terms of Price, Performance, Low CPU and RAM footprint, is the Physically Modeled Horns and Sax from Wallander Instruments: http://www.wallanderinstruments.com/index.php?menu=products&product_details=SAXOPHONES1Here is a demo of Soprano Sax that had me on the floor, I think you will agree it is very realistic: http://www.robertosoggetti.com/SopranoImpro.mp3Here is one more, this one is kind of a Tower of Power thing, with Sax´s & a great lead trumpet: http://www.zshare.net/audio/57189960ed802ee2/#There is a related thread here on Wallander instruments Wivi Band, a $4.99 program that runs on an Apple iPhone. Quite Amazing! Hope this helps, Ed
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Ed's spot on about the Wallender instruments. Another good sax and trumpet modeling software is from SampleModeling: http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/products.php --Mac
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Hey, Well, I guess I have to eat my words. I my quest for the coolest Brass and Woodwind sounds, I just found something new that sounds even better than Wallander: http://www.vir2.com/4DCGI/vir2/products/mojo/index.html?1205Check out the demos..........WOW!! ED
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Thank you dear friends. Long time ago I played sax. Saxophone is a beautiful instrument famous for it breathy, intimitately signing tone. I received much very usefull informationfrom you. Files applicated are great. Unfortunately I can't open the programms I downloaded, can't find exe files there.I study them now. Kuguar ------------------------------ www.freewebs.com/oleg
Last edited by kuguar2; 04/01/09 08:31 AM.
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I too have chased "the sound". In my experience the great sounding sample systems for instruments like sax, trumpet, strings and the like is that to get the great sounds you have to learn how to play the sample system. All the nuances that everyone finds missing in the midi players are missing because they have to be played in to get them.
The sample systems have ways to control the breathyness, the scoops and the bends and the little approaches to the sweet notes, all the nuances that a player puts in because it sounds good. To get the samples to sound realistic you have to learn hope to play the dam sampler, no easy task on the ones I have seen. If you just throw some midi note at it from a BIAB part you will find that a lot of the wow factor stuff you marveled at on the web demo is missing.
Intel i5, 8 GIG, M-Audio NRV10, M-Audio BX8's, Cubase, BIAB, Win 7
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As far as I'm concerned, samplers and ROMplers do not do the sax justice. Physical modeling synthesis is the only way to go. While samplers may capture sax sound better than PM, PM allows the player to recreate the nuances of sax playing, breath, growl, and a tone that changes with volume (without using telltale crossfades). I am a professional sax player and I've been involved in synthesis since the 1980s. I've tried just about everything, and the only synth sax I have ever been happy with are the PM sax sounds in my physical modeling synth. Here are a couple of samples of me playing a WX5 wind MIDI controller through a Physical Modeling synthesizer - Yamaha VL70m with aftermarket turbo chip. Keep in mind that the mp3 files are compressed and at a low bitrate and therefore sound much better life. http://www.nortonmusic.com/clips.htmlNotes
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Yes, the sax and other instruments can never be duplicated exactly, but we now have some very acceptable sampled instruments that will work extremely well in a recording.... from what I've heard, the Wallander, although very good, sounds better suited for classical sax works, and for jazz and pop, samplemodeling and Chris Hein are the best bets to my ears... Just like we can't never have the real thing when it comes to guitar, piano or any other instrument for that matter, these sample library advances with saxes and trumpet are bringing us closer to something that will work great in a recording of our works... And of course, you can't beat real tracks for certain situations...
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Just on a whim, I was in the area of West LA Music yesterday and stopped in. I'm noodling on some of the new boards and the sales guy comes over and demonstrates a new Korg M3. Fantastic doesn't begin to describe what this thing can do. Since we're talking about horns, I had him go into the horn bank. It has everything you can imagine, all the solo instruments plus sections plus a whole bunch of physical sliders that can be used to mix and add parts to a section in real time while you're playing. He's a good player and was doing many different styles from Glenn Miller to Tower of Power. The unit is also an arranger so he set up the proper backing for each demo and he did it literally in a second or two. It has 9 sliders, two rows of knobs and they all control parts of the arrangement in real time, adding or subtracting instruments, changing the mix, all kinds of stuff. The thing that just killed me was when he picked a solo bone part and started layering sections to it, then reached to his left where there's a 4 inch ribbon controller. He swiped the ribbon to the right with his finger and the horns swelled, not simply changing volume but timber as well, putting that brassy edge in there as they got louder and reducing it when he moved his finger to the left. It was the most amazing synthized horn sound I've ever heard and he did it basically effortlessly. I took over and without knowing anything, got some incredibly good stuff out of those horns.
Do I now have serious GAS? You bet I do. I used to sell arrangers many years ago and this M3 is so far ahead of anything else I'm familiar with that it's not even funny. Even the 6 inch touch screen is an instrument. He hit one button and turned the screen into some kind of controller, put his finger in the corner and wiggled it and created a rhythm effect. All the new keyboards have killer sounds so it's not worth it to even talk about that anymore. It boils down to control and all I can say is that M3 is simply amazing.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Samples sound great, there is no doubt about it. But there are many nuances involved in recreating a convincing sax emulation that are more important than great tone. After all, what is great sax tone, Stan Getz, John Coltrane, Clarence Clemmons, Stanley Turrentine, Dexter Gordon, there are wide variations of sax tone, so different that a non-musician might not recognize them all as the same instrument. More important that tone are the various nuances that a sax player puts into his/her performance. Nuances that define the sax expression and therefore define the nature of the instrument itself. Here are a few of them: - There are hundreds of different ways to start a note (articulate) on the saxophone, hard tongue, soft tongue, no tongue, sub-tone, etc., and combinations that allow the sax to speak things like "ta", "da", "fwa" etc. -- samplers can't do this, PM (Physical Modeling) can
- A sax player adjusts the shape of his/her mouth to get different vowel sounds out of the sax, like ooh and aah -- samplers can't do this, PM can
- A sax player adjusts both the depth and speed of the vibrato according to the needs of the song and the needs of any particular note in the song, sometimes varying one or both parameters over the length of the note -- samplers can't do this, PM can
- Sax players can add either throat based growl or flutter tongue growl on a per-note basis or over a series of notes - samplers can't do this, PM can
There are many more, but these are the major ones. So I tend to use samplers for background "sax quartet" sounds, and physical modeling synthesis for sax solo sounds. As a sax player, I would never-ever use a sampler or sample based synth for solo work. It just can't create those nuances that define the saxophone itself. Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Цитата:
As a sax player, I would never-ever use a sampler or sample based synth for solo work. It just can't create those nuances that define the saxophone itself.
You're right ? But all depends on the base of compare. Good, better,even better and so on
Kuguar
-----------------------------
www.freewebs.com/olegs
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Quote:
Quote:
As a sax player, I would never-ever use a sampler or sample based synth for solo work. It just can't create those nuances that define the saxophone itself.
You're right ? But all depends on the base of compare. Good, better,even better and so on
Kuguar
-----------------------------
IMHO without those nuances, even the best sax tone will not sound like a saxophone. An instrument is defined not only by it's tone but by the nuances it is capable of creating.
Try playing a guitar patch with clarinet-ish glissandos, it won't sound like a guitar.
Try playing a piano with a low to correct pitch scoop like is typical of a saxophone and it won't sound like a piano.
Try playing a flute with a violin like portamento and it won't sound like a flute.
Playing a sax with keyboard technique will not sound like a sax. And when using a keyboard and sampler or sample based synthesizer, IMHO there is nothing you can do to make it sound like a sax.
On the other hand, IMHO with Physical Modeling and a halfway decent sax tone you can make a very convincing sax.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it 
Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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You're right thrice and I see you have a big school of playing sax. What I do now I'm studying files from your site how the sax sounds. I very like "Old Cape Cod". Kuguar ---------------------------- www.freewebs.com/olegs
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And it needs to be said and repeated. Only to the person who is familiar with the instrument gets hyper critical about it. 99 percent of public played music is listened to by people eating, drinking and talking. My mother thinks I play a mean guitar, it's a keyboard.
Our friend Viki who has a Phd in Chorale music and is a dean at the local university came around the corner at last summer's bbq to see who was playing the guitar and flute. The wife had the flute and I had the ketron sd2 hooked to my Roland.
I am hearing better and better sounds. The flute and horns from the Ketron will fool 90 plus percent of the general population.
Perspective....the Chickering grand I played my few lessons on as a kid might sound way different than the SD2 but someone listening while watching basketball on TV in the corner of a secluded bar won't ever know what you are playing, unless they are some sort of musical wiz on pianos. Maybe if you know scales and someone goes low on the Boosend..never mind, you get my drift. Things are to the point most people can't tell....
John Conley
Musica est vita
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I think the main reason we all keep looking for the best sounds is to satisfy ourselves. It's inspiring to suddenly find a new patch or a new way to play an old patch. It can be like capturing magic in a bottle. We all know 90% of our listeners have no clue but good musicians are "keepers of the flame". It's up to us to perform in a professional manner and show them what's good. If I can afford it, I'm a big believer in upgrading my stage equipment from time to time. I was about to get a SD2 but as luck would have it, I found a used Sonic Cell on Ebay and the seller is about a mile from my house. It's virtually brand new, I got it for $450, I was going to get an interface for my laptop anyway and this covers that as well as having great sounds. It's also a VSTi plugin in Real Band. How cool is that? I'm just now getting into it and can't wait to start gigging with it.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Quote:
You're right thrice and I see you have a big school of playing sax. What I do now I'm studying files from your site how the sax sounds. I very like "Old Cape Cod".
Kuguar<...>
It's done with a Yamaha WX5 Wind MIDI Controller plugged into a Yamaha VL70-m Physical Modeling Synthesizer Module.
The particular patch I used doesn't sound like a live sax to me, but it sounds like a recording of a sax to my ears.
Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Quote:
And it needs to be said and repeated. Only to the person who is familiar with the instrument gets hyper critical about it. <...>
In the wind synthesis community we call this Home Instrument Bias (HIB). If you play an instrument, your ears have been trained to hear what that instrument can and cannot do. This makes it easy to detect a fake.
Emulating another instrument to me is much like a comedian doing an impression of a famous person. No two people sound exactly alike, and many times the impressionist doesn't sound close to the famous person he or she is "doing". But by capturing the nuances of that famous person's speech patterns, the audience will instantly recognize the famous person the comedian is doing.
So to me emulating various instruments is studying how they express themselves. Various things come to mind, here are just a few things of the thousands I have learned: guitar vibrato starts on pitch goes up and back down to pitch and not below (unless using the whammy bar which is a different emulation) ... guitar hammer-ons and pull-offs require a legato mode on the synthesizer ... guitars often play sharp because it is difficult to play a note pressing the string at a 90 degree angle to the fretboard and not too hard to bend it between the frets ... even more extreme than guitar old time country/Cajun fiddlers were rarely in tune, so sloppy intonation adds to the realistic effect ... trumpet players often use lip slurs (easy to emulate with the VL70) ... trumpet tone changes drastically with volume and pitch ... sax players use various techniques to articulate a note (too many to go into here) ... sax vibrato is seldom "mechanical" but varies in both timing and intensity during the duration of the note ... the sax changes tone as it moves above and below the pitch while playing vibrato ... and so on and so on and so on. I think emulation not only trains your ears to be a better listener, but is something that always has a new discovery waiting for you just around the corner.
So the idea of doing a convincing emulation is to (1) study the way the instrument you are emulating gets it's individual expression (2) study your synth patch and discover which of those nuances you can emulate (3) study your synth patch and discover which nuances it can do that cannot be done by the instrument you are doing an impression of (4) lean heavily on the nuances in step 2 and avoid the ones in step 3.
The holy grail of synthesis is to fool a player of the instrument you are doing. I've done this at least 3 times.
1) I was playing a party outdoors by the swimming pool. The host was a good guitar player. The host was tending the guests indoors, while his wife was tending the guests outdoors. I played a "guitar" solo on the wind synth (this was before I started bringing a guitar to the gig). The host came out to the pool area to see the guitar player that was sitting in with us and was very surprised to see me playing wind synth.
2) We were playing in the lounge of a country club. The people in the dining room could hear us but could not see us due to a partial wall. A trumpet player came out of the dining room to see who was playing trumpet with us.
These are the two I know about, because the players came up to me and commented on my emulations, telling me their side of the experience.
And now for the "crowing glory"
3) When I decided to learn lead guitar, I joined a couple of Guitar forums (much like this BiaB forum). I asked a lot of questions, got to be friends with many of the other members, they all know my main instruments sax and wind synth. In fact my avatar is me playing the sax. About a year and a half later, I posted this link http://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_oldtimeguitar.mp3 -- I told them I played it (but not what I played it with) and asked for their opinion. I got replies like "It was Jeff Beck-ish", "You've applied your musical abilities to the guitar very well", "Great playing" and so on. Nobody questioned the fact that it wasn't played on the guitar. After I confessed my "crime" I got a lot of good natured teasing and only one person said that he thought the guitar sounded a little bit funny, something about the vibrato.
These emuations were also done with the Physical Modeling synth module, which doesn't capture perfect tone, but does emulate the nuances of those instruments much better than any sampler. I couldn't have fooled them with a sampler.
While the quest for new sounds is admirable, and easy (just fork over the $$$), the quest to learn how to emulate various instruments while being more difficult, produces greater results.
So if your sax, trumpet, guitar, or whatever sounds off, as long as the tone is "in the ball park", the problem won't be cured by a more realistic sounding voice, it will be cured by manipulating the patch you are using to emulate the nuances of the instrument you are doing an impression of.
Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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A moderately priced possibility is a plug-in for a sax quartet by Linplug. www.linplug.comIt is called saxplug This is pretty good to my ear--I play sax and flute and it passes. Most don't though. The larger problem is that the samples in a lot of programs are simply to sterile sounding--I'm a Paul Desmond and Stan Getz fan.-two sounds very difficult to electronically imitate. It was about 200$ the last time I looked . The samples are adjustable and version 2 seems quite a bit of an ungrade over previous version. You can test for 15 days free but it has an irritating internet registration softare dongle. Anti piracy device I suppose.
dave
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Wow, I won't need to turn the heater on in my house for a couple of days. That was hot. . .
Bottom line, Jazzmammal;
We all know 90% of our listeners have no clue but good musicians are "keepers of the flame". It's up to us to perform in a professional manner and show them what's good.
Of course, real musicians, are the real deal. The reason any of us even reach out to electronically emulated sounds, is probably because no guitar player, or sax player was available at time of the event. There is no comparison with a real player. We do have many various electronic helpers available. Let the power go out for a week, or our computers crash (no whammy intended), and then let us continue. . . These things are all just tools, never meant to take the place of a real musician. How close can we get at fooling 90% of the people, pretty close. So what, that is not the intent, probably. The intent is to add some sax, or guitar, or drums to your track when a real player is not available. I like the PG band, some of them play better than I do. Some of you play better than they do. It's all good.
Thank goodness this forum is filled with so much talent. It feels like HOME to me.
As one would say, Good On Ya!
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Check out this forum post for "One Stop Shopping" of our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 Mac Videos!
Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Mac is Here!
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac is here and it is packed with major new features! There’s a new modern look, a GUI redesign to all areas of the program including toolbars, windows, workflow and more. There’s a Multi-view layout for organizing multiple windows. A standout addition is the powerful AI-Notes feature, which uses AI neural-net technology to transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI—entire mixes or individual instruments—making it easy to study, view, and play parts from any song. And that’s just the beginning—there are over 100 new features in this exciting release.
Along with version 2026, we've released an incredible lineup of new content! There's 202 new RealTracks, brand-new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two new RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
Special Offers
Upgrade to Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac and save up to 50% on most upgrade packages during our special offer—available until May 15, 2026. Visit our Band-in-a-Box® packages page to explore all available upgrade options.
2026 Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK Add-ons
Our Free Bonus PAK and 49-PAK are loaded with amazing add-ons! The Free Bonus PAK is included with most Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac packages, but you can unlock even more—including 20 unreleased RealTracks—by upgrading to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49.
Holiday Weekend Hours
As we hop into the Easter weekend, here are our holiday hours:
April 3 (Good Friday): 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM PDT
April 4 (Saturday): Closed
April 5 (Easter Sunday): Closed
April 6 (Easter Monday): Open regular hours
Wishing you an egg-cellent weekend!
— Team PG
Update to Build 10 of RealBand® 2026 for Windows®!
If you're already using RealBand 2026 for Windows, download build 10 to get all the latest additions and enhancements.
Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac® users: Build 904 now available!
If you're already using Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac®, make sure to grab the latest update! Build 904 is now available for download and includes the newest additions and enhancements from our team.
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® users: Build 1237 is now available!
Already a Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows user? Stay up to date and download the build 1237 to get all the latest additions and enhancements.
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