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James Bond Style Brass

Suntower

New Member
EDIT: Maybe it's an age thing, but perhaps there's a misunderstanding. I thought I'd say "James Bond" and -everyone- would know -exactly- the 'brass' I meant. Hoo boy, do I feel old.



Note the brass starting @ 1:05, first the t-bones then the lead tpt @ 1:36 which is definitely outside the standard range.

That's what I'm looking for. The demos I've heard for various products don't seem to cover this stuff. THANKS!

I posted this on the AudioBro Forum because I'm considering Modern Scoring Brass but got nowhere. Any recommendations?



"I have EW Hollywood and my work tends towards a lot of musical theatre and I need brass that can span that gap between classical and other styles.

The James Bond-style trumpets and t-bones are a very good example. The natural legato in the high passages just do -not- sound right in Hollywood. So I was wondering if you guys could do a demo of something like that?"

What type of libraries are out there that are best suited for that style of brass?

TIA,

---JC
 
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James Bond style music kinda like jazz brass, not traditional orchestral brass setup though. Best bet is indeed glory days for now.
 
I‘d say SampleModeling Brass is all you need for that kind of music, very agile and flexible and it has all types of mutes/stopped articulations included. Combine that with Audiomodeling saxophones and you should be very flexible.
 
This is a Snake Eater cover I did which is the theme song from Metal Gear Solid 3 (which openly nods to Bond)

I am using Glory Days for most of it with SWING layered in on the lower brass stuff.

This was the first time I tried something in this style, so those of you who are good at it I get I am no master. But to my ears the samples work! (I am very familiar with this particular song!)

(The noble sounding french horn is Cinebrass Pro 12 horns)



-DJ
 
Hi, this is specifically what I'm looking for...



Note the brass starting @ 1:05, first the t-bones then the lead tpt @ 1:36 which is definitely outside the standard range.The thing is the legato/portamento between the notes.

The demos I've heard for various products don't seem to cover this stuff. Anyone got some demos or products that -specifically- cover this. I've heard Glory Days and Sample Modeling demos and they do sound great, but they don't have -these- sounds (or if they do, I've missed them). And I've spent soooooooooooooooooooooooo much money over the years on libs that I "assumed" did things they did not. And I just -can't- do that anymore.

THANKS!
 
I'd say Glory Days plus Screaming Trumpet from Realitone could probably get you there best, but that's just from demos I've heard.
 
Well let´s not forget that this is a piece performed by the best players out there and written in a way and a style that it makes it very hard if not impossible to pull it of that convincingly with sampled instruments.

If you want that sort of sound nailed, I am afraid you better hire some descent live players (which is my best recommendation here). There is not yet something in sampled land afaik that makes it sound that good. Sure I heard out in the internet a couple of covers which were really good impressions of that, yet not be able to capture that energy and mojo of the live thing which in the end is like it is..

Just to answer a bit of the question from the OP: I think you could work with modeled instruments from sample modeling for fluidity and expression for the leading lines plus normal sampling together to backup the underpinning elements backbone, probably glory days and affiliates like fable sounds big band and warpivmusic trombones, chris hein could be worth checking out. Probably combining all those best sounding things there and wrapping them up..who knows..

Also you need not only to be an excellent programmer, but also you should have more than a descent understanding of how to sculpture that room sound with those samples, in short: You have a lot of workplaces at the same time which makes it very challenging. In a nutshell: Its very ambigous to try that out though it might right from its beginning a stillborn child..just my opinion of course..
 
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So... a sort of on-topic/off-topic story:

I scored a movie a bit back (“Kazaam” - yes, the one featuring Shaquille O’Neil as a genie...) in London with the London Studio Orchestra - amazing players and I think essentially the LSO under a different name. Anyways, an action score but ~not~ a Bond film.

Due to the often various, shall we say, “idiosyncrasies” of scoring a film in Hollywood, the production dragged it’s feet on deciding where and when they wanted me to record the score. By the time they decided they wanted to send me to London, Abbey Road and Air were already booked with other sessions, and our scoring stage choice was left to CTS.

When I arrived at the stage the first day, I was in awe of all the classic Bond posters hanging in the Lobby; as many of those scores had been recorded there. “Cool!” I thought.

CTS was a bit of an odd room. A huge and very square sunken space, the control room was “upstairs” - one walked down a flight of stairs to get to the stage floor below - which was funny because the control room window then looked out at nothing but the back wall - you couldn’t see the orchestra at all from the console, but had to walk over to the window and look down.

Anyways, we had a big band for the sessions - something like 95+ players if I remember correctly. And as an action score, I had written some big forte brass motifs - with a big brass section to perform them. I was excited. At a stage like say, Warner Bros, this would have sounded, well, awesome.

It was the first time, on the first day, that the brass got to one of those big motifs, that I discovered an important, however accidental, clue to the Bond score “sound.” When the brass hit the first big moment, they room acoustics of the stage completely overloaded - essentially obscuring the rest of the orchestra - strings, woodwinds just vanished in the mics - and we had a lot of string players! And the characteristic “honk” of the brass - my score had instantly turned into a “Bond” score! We weren’t using mutes or stops; but the scoring stage, being a big square box, clearly had a few modal resonance peaks that were at the right frequency to accentuate brass (especially horns and bones) resonances and create “that” sound. It was both a “wow” and a total “uh-oh” moment. We spent the rest of the week re-marking all of the dynamics in the music so that the brass never played above mF and the strings had to dig in a lot more. The brass still hounded huge - just - to the degree we could even control it at all - a little less “Bond” “honky.” The takeaway was that, as always - the recording room is a huge part of the sound.

Back to the OP’s goal here, in addition to some orchestration/articulation choices - like stopped horns etc, I think you can get this sound by using whatever brass samples you have - and some creative use of filters and saturation plugins to process them. Put a filter plugin on your brass stem, reduce the top end curve of the filter a bit and dial up the resonance peak/sweep it around until you start to find ‘that’ sound. Add some subtle distortion/saturation to taste. And (though this might be a little counterintuitive) possibly feed a little of the brass to a spring reverb plug-in - as this will make it cue “vintage” aurally as well. When I was scoring Futurama I used these tricks a bunch, because often I needed the orchestra to sound old and vintage - but the LA scoring stages actually sounded themselves too “clean” and modern. I used to also stuff a mic into a trash can in the center of the orchestra and blend that recorded signal into the mix - essentially trying to mimic a “honky” and less perfect recording environment.

So... until someone finds a big resonant and funky square room and samples an orchestra in it, my suggestion is to be creative and experimental with whatever tools you have already; you might be surprised just how close you can get! :)
 
So... a sort of on-topic/off-topic story:

I scored a movie a bit back (“Kazaam” - yes, the one featuring Shaquille O’Neil as a genie...) in London with the London Studio Orchestra - amazing players and I think essentially the LSO under a different name. Anyways, an action score but ~not~ a Bond film.

Due to the often various, shall we say, “idiosyncrasies” of scoring a film in Hollywood, the production dragged it’s feet on deciding where and when they wanted me to record the score. By the time they decided they wanted to send me to London, Abbey Road and Air were already booked with other sessions, and our scoring stage choice was left to CTS.

When I arrived at the stage the first day, I was in awe of all the classic Bond posters hanging in the Lobby; as many of those scores had been recorded there. “Cool!” I thought.

CTS was a bit of an odd room. A huge and very square sunken space, the control room was “upstairs” - one walked down a flight of stairs to get to the stage floor below - which was funny because the control room window then looked out at nothing but the back wall - you couldn’t see the orchestra at all from the console, but had to walk over to the window and look down.

Anyways, we had a big band for the sessions - something like 95+ players if I remember correctly. And as an action score, I had written some big forte brass motifs - with a big brass section to perform them. I was excited. At a stage like say, Warner Bros, this would have sounded, well, awesome.

It was the first time, on the first day, that the brass got to one of those big motifs, that I discovered an important, however accidental, clue to the Bond score “sound.” When the brass hit the first big moment, they room acoustics of the stage completely overloaded - essentially obscuring the rest of the orchestra - strings, woodwinds just vanished in the mics - and we had a lot of string players! And the characteristic “honk” of the brass - my score had instantly turned into a “Bond” score! We weren’t using mutes or stops; but the scoring stage, being a big square box, clearly had a few modal resonance peaks that were at the right frequency to accentuate brass (especially horns and bones) resonances and create “that” sound. It was both a “wow” and a total “uh-oh” moment. We spent the rest of the week re-marking all of the dynamics in the music so that the brass never played above mF and the strings had to dig in a lot more. The brass still hounded huge - just - to the degree we could even control it at all - a little less “Bond” “honky.” The takeaway was that, as always - the recording room is a huge part of the sound.

Back to the OP’s goal here, in addition to some orchestration/articulation choices - like stopped horns etc, I think you can get this sound by using whatever brass samples you have - and some creative use of filters and saturation plugins to process them. Put a filter plugin on your brass stem, reduce the top end curve of the filter a bit and dial up the resonance peak/sweep it around until you start to find ‘that’ sound. Add some subtle distortion/saturation to taste. And (though this might be a little counterintuitive) possibly feed a little of the brass to a spring reverb plug-in - as this will make it cue “vintage” aurally as well. When I was scoring Futurama I used these tricks a bunch, because often I needed the orchestra to sound old and vintage - but the LA scoring stages actually sounded themselves too “clean” and modern. I used to also stuff a mic into a trash can in the center of the orchestra and blend that recorded signal into the mix - essentially trying to mimic a “honky” and less perfect recording environment.

So... until someone finds a big resonant and funky square room and samples an orchestra in it, my suggestion is to be creative and experimental with whatever tools you have already; you might be surprised just how close you can get! :)
This deserves the "Most Insightful Post" award for the year. Thanks for sharing!
 
I would definitely go with OT's glory days or Project SAM's Swing! first (depending on things like GUI or basically your own preference) and avoid Sample Modeling even if it's largely praised here.

Sure, you may get a "realistic" legato line which sounds quite fluid but in terms of sound, of sonic experience it's just like having an Andrew Bain playing his solo for a Star Wars film on a violet plastic horn in an ultra-dry experimental dead room. Much luck if you then want that big roomy sound which is so important when it comes to brass...
 
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So... a sort of on-topic/off-topic story:

I scored a movie a bit back (“Kazaam” - yes, the one featuring Shaquille O’Neil as a genie...) in London with the London Studio Orchestra - amazing players and I think essentially the LSO under a different name. Anyways, an action score but ~not~ a Bond film.

Due to the often various, shall we say, “idiosyncrasies” of scoring a film in Hollywood, the production dragged it’s feet on deciding where and when they wanted me to record the score. By the time they decided they wanted to send me to London, Abbey Road and Air were already booked with other sessions, and our scoring stage choice was left to CTS.

I worked at CTS too, in fact my first ever live session took place there, sadly it is no more. I remember a ramp leading down to the live room. Sorry OP, ignore this.
 
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