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Hi all,
I love the sound of horns in pop music - Earth Wind and Fire, James Brown, Chicago, Motown, etc. I'd like to preprogram and play some of these parts live on my guitar MIDI controller, but I don't have the 'ear' to hear how to arrange them.
Is there any advice - on the internet or in books, that will give some guidelines on how to do this, short of buying the actual music ? I'm more interested in preprogramming a patch that will change the chords automatically within the current key so I can play single guitar (Midi) notes to trigger the appropriate chords / chord melodies (are they even called that with horns ?) in the song.
Thanks in advance,
Joe
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Joe, there are a number of ways you can do this. Are you trying to do this live or just for recording? I ask because depending on how you are going to use this will depend on how you can achieve it.
The bumper sticker said "I'm a veterinarian, therefore I can drive like an animal".
Suddenly I realized how many proctologists are on the road.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Horn parts are often very simple - take a listen to Atlantic Soul. The parts are basically licks that are doubled or played a third apart. The horns themselves are pitched in different keys often Bb or Eb
Simple but effective - check out James Brown
Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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These type of horns can be thirds, fifths or fourths .. sometimes intentionally only a step apart even. It usually doesn't take long to figure them out as they are often only a couple different notes being played by multiple different instruments.
Example:
Trumpet playing C-Bb-C
Sax playing G-F-G
Bari Sax playing C-Bb-C (octaves below trumpet)
Often the Bari sax will lead in on a note or two and then other horns join in as above. In example above the Bari may play Bb-C with the C landing a beat before the other horns join in.
More difficult is a mix of horns playing a 'splat' chord .. these are often a little harder to voice correctly and use more complex chords.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Joe,
based on the way you phrased the question, I'm assuming you want to add horns while playing live? Your question could be read either way, and as Mario already said, the answer would be quite different depending on what you want.
One way To "approximate" the sound of a whole horn section live:
1) use a guitar synth such as GR-55 to play the trigger note for the horns
2) unless you want all trumpets or all sax, you'd want to use a patch that includes a whole horn section. This would give you the full range of sounds.. but they'd all be playing all the parts, which isn't what a horn section would actually do.
3) run the output of the guitar synth thru a harmonizing pedal. If you don't already have one, Ebay, Craigs list and music stores have many to choose from. Most of these pedals let you set a key for your harmony, and also which notes in the scale you want to include in your harmony.
4) 1st, 3rd and 5th notes with the correct key set and a good horns patch will be a ton of fun to jam around with. Then its up to you to play in a way that captures the nuance of horns
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Yes - you all guessed right - want to do it live. Thanks for all the great tips so far...I actually have the equipment to do what Pat outlined - and it's great knowing that many of the parts are pretty simple as rharv explained. The fun, using midi guitar, is of course to find the right MIDI controller realtime parameters to change to make things sound like horns. I'm sure volume is important - and with a single horn sound, especially the sax, there are timbre changes that take place on a single note which I can hear but can't put into words. Now I don't expect to control all these parameters on a group of horns, but when soloing with one horn (pick whichever you will) - what are the Realtime parameters to map to my control pedal to make that horn sound authentic ?
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Joe, Pat gave you some good advice. I will offer another way to accomplish this. Set your MIDI guitar controller so each string is on a different MIDI channel, lets say 1-6 with 6 being low E. Now set up a VSTi mutli/combo or six different VSTis as follows: Channel 1 - trumpet Channel 2 - another trumpet Channel 3 - tenor sax Channel 4 - alto sax Channel 5 - trombone Channel 6 - Bari sax Now your high E and B will sound trumpets, G will sound tenor etc. As for your timbre and other nuance question the answer will depend on what your sound sources are. With some you can not change a thing, these are the least expensive ones, while others, the most costly, offer a lot of nuances, all controlled by MIDI CCs. http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/index.phpare the most realistic solo horn sounds IMHO. Vintage horns, http://www.bigfishaudio.com/Vintage-Hornsoffer the best horn sounds for your initial application. It comes with the free Kontakt player so if you don't have Kontakt you can still use these. They come set up for different groups like JB, Detroit Soul, Menphis soul etc plus you can set up your own groups. I highly recommend these for backing horns. I hope this helps.
The bumper sticker said "I'm a veterinarian, therefore I can drive like an animal".
Suddenly I realized how many proctologists are on the road.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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alright - more good stuff. Thanks gentlemen.
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