Expressive Brass VST | Native Instruments Kontakt Library - Music Work Center

New! Expressive Brass - Brass instruments VST Kontakt Instrument, Plug-ins & Samples contains 3 of Orchestral Brass products, Trumpet, Trombone and Tenor Saxophone with effects in real time, available to: midi keyboard and Wind controller.

All instruments developed, as well as instruments based on the classic Kontakt, creates all effects and articulations in real time using a set of MIDI controllers. Although they can be used without any additional equipment by drawing curves of the controller or inserting notes directly into the sequencer, the best results, especially in real time, is obtained using external MIDI controllers.

All developed instruments were created to run in Full version of Kontakt 5.5 or later. Operational systems: Windows (XP, 7, 8, 10) and Mac (OSX 10.6 to 10.9).

It is well known that midi keyboards have different and uneven velocity response, and this may heavily influence the performance of a virtual instrument. To obviate this problem, the instrument includes automatic detection of any velocity inhomogeneities or non-linearity emitted by the keyboard, and provides automatic remapping to any desired curve.

Virtually any existing windcontroller can now be effectively used to play The Expressive Brass VST. WC mode automatically maps the Dynamics to CC2, assigns portamento time control to a separate controller (CC5), instead of velocity (mixed mode settings are also possible), and activates a “pitch sensitivity” knob to compensate for the different pressure-to-pitch response of the various WC brands.

BC mode automatically maps the Dynamics to CC2. In addition, it’s now the BC which actually triggers note-on & off when overcoming or going below a certain threshold. As with the real instrument, the pressed key only determines the note which will be played.

The note-on velocity is related to the steepness of the initial CC2 curve, so that, for example, a quickly rising CC2 will trigger a stronger attack.

A very convenient way of transposing incoming MIDI data. Consider, for example, that the sax (with its range from C0 to F3, and the key switches from C-2 to C-1) needs to be transposed to access all its keys even on a 7-octave keyboard. Unlike the transpose option of the Kontakt/Sampler, this knob transposes both the keys and the key switches.

The Menu “Microtuning” opens a tab showing 12 keys (C – B). Each key can be detuned between -60 and +60 cents. Each setting can be assigned to any of the 10 presets. Preset #1 is reserved as the default setting (i.e. no microtuning).

Pressing the Sustain pedal resets the detuning settings of all the keys. The detuning of each key can be switched on individually by pressing and holding the Sustain pedal and the key which should be detuned.

It is well known that midi keyboards have different and uneven velocity response, and this may heavily influence the performance of a virtual instrument. To obviate this problem, the instrument includes automatic detection of any velocity inhomogeneities or non-linearity emitted by the keyboard, and provides automatic remapping to any desired curve.

All the controllers needed for proper functioning of the instrument are mapped to virtual knobs in three GUI panels, which can be activated by a drop down menu. The function of each controller is indicated by the associated label.

The virtual knobs permit to monitor the incoming midi data, but can also be used to directly control the instrument. This allows users of keyboards without physical MIDI controllers or knobs, to explore the expressive capabilities of the Expressive Brass VST.

In Keyboard mode, the duration of portamento is determined by the velocity of the overlapped note. Since note-on velocities output by Windcontrollers generally reflect the current CC2 value, portamento time becomes a function of the current Dynamics. This might be undesirable, since, for example, playing pp will always lead to long portamento and vice versa.

Linking portamento time to a separate controller, such as CC5, permits to overcome this limitation. The duration of portamento can now be controlled with any suitable physical controller mapped to CC5. If no controller is available, one might anyway set CC5 to a suitable value by directly acting with the mouse on the appropriate knob in the Controllers 1 panel.