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Shout out to Orchestral Tools' Rotary

musicalweather

Senior Member
Just want to give a shout out to OT's Rotary (free!) library. This big band library is quite extensive: solo trumpet, mute trumpet, trombone, and bari sax, as well as sax and brass sections. It gives you a nice variety of hits/stabs -- falls, shakes, scoops, and staccatissimo -- as well as accented sus, marcato long, and some trills. And three mic positions! I just downloaded the tree, since I will probably use this as a sketching library. But as long as you don't need a melodic line (or at least, one that isn't too long), this library is great for adding big band accents and hits to a track. I'm impressed.
 
This looks really good so I installed Sine.
It crashes every time I click on nearly any button and prevents Cubase from starting up. :/ Shame the library looked promising.
 
This looks really good so I installed Sine.
It crashes every time I click on nearly any button and prevents Cubase from starting up. :/ Shame the library looked promising.
I’m mostly a Logic user. I have few issues with Sine any longer but when I do it almost always involves start up in Logic. Sine instruments will hang the start up and I have to force quit and open the file with core audio off them disable the Sine instrument, teen gage core audio and then finally load the Sine instruments. Or I have to remember to turn off the sine instruments in the project and save the project before quitting. In any event, there do seem to be issues with Sine and the DAW on startup.
 
I’m mostly a Logic user. I have few issues with Sine any longer but when I do it almost always involves start up in Logic. Sine instruments will hang the start up and I have to force quit and open the file with core audio off them disable the Sine instrument, teen gage core audio and then finally load the Sine instruments. Or I have to remember to turn off the sine instruments in the project and save the project before quitting. In any event, there do seem to be issues with Sine and the DAW on startup.
Interesting. I downloaded it last week to use in Logic. I haven't had any trouble so far, but I will keep an eye out for this.

Agree with OP that it sounds great, although I really don't understand the SINE patch browsing/switching system. But I also haven't watched any videos or anything, so that's probably on me....
 
Interesting. I downloaded it last week to use in Logic. I haven't had any trouble so far, but I will keep an eye out for this.

Agree with OP that it sounds great, although I really don't understand the SINE patch browsing/switching system. But I also haven't watched any videos or anything, so that's probably on me....
It's pretty simple. You go to the library tab, locate rotary in the list of libraries (it may be the only one), choose "browse," click on the folder of the instrument you want then double click the instrument name if you want to load all the articulations or the articulation you want if you want to load only certain articulations. Once you do that, Sine shows which articulations are loaded on the right side. The library will populate keyswitches automatically, and you can then change the keyswitches around by moving the articulations. You can load multiple instruments in the same instance, and those will automatically be assigned to successive midi channels, but you can set them all to channel 1 or omni if you want to make a multi...

You access the mics under mixer. The other tabs won't have a lot of use for Rotary (though you can make the articulations morph into one another using the performance tab; that takes getting to know Sine a bit).
 
Sorry to hear about your problems with SINE. Up to this point, I hadn't tried SINE with my master machine -- only with slave machines using VE Pro, and didn't run into any problems. So today I tried it as a plugin in both Digital Performer and Cubase and didn't have any problems. Dunno, maybe it runs more smoothly on Mac? I don't mind the SINE interface so far, though I don't particularly like the mixer; sometimes it's a little hard to tell which fader belongs to which channel.
 
My current project is running full Berlin Symphonic Strings, full Special Bows, and various Berlin Soloists—all in Sine. The only problem that I have is that I have to change some instruments to Channel 1 and then back to Omni to get sound when initially opening the project. Otherwise it seems to be smooth sailing in Logic.
 
Interesting that you like this library. I downloaded it and tried it on a project that needed a simple high brass melody, and it sucked. Like, the releases are so bad. I don't know what it was and whether it was just my computer/SINE but it went straight into the bin.
 
Interesting that you like this library. I downloaded it and tried it on a project that needed a simple high brass melody, and it sucked. Like, the releases are so bad. I don't know what it was and whether it was just my computer/SINE but it went straight into the bin.
This track was posted on the commercial releases of the forum, showing OT Rotary Big Band Horns. I really like the way these instruments sound. Especially for a free library. I haven't used them yet, but have them installed.

 
Interesting that you like this library. I downloaded it and tried it on a project that needed a simple high brass melody, and it sucked. Like, the releases are so bad. I don't know what it was and whether it was just my computer/SINE but it went straight into the bin.
As I noted in my original post, I didn't think it would work well in a melody, but could work to give big band punctuation to a track. But yeah, people will have differing opinions.
 
It's pretty simple. You go to the library tab, locate rotary in the list of libraries (it may be the only one), choose "browse," click on the folder of the instrument you want then double click the instrument name if you want to load all the articulations or the articulation you want if you want to load only certain articulations. Once you do that, Sine shows which articulations are loaded on the right side. The library will populate keyswitches automatically, and you can then change the keyswitches around by moving the articulations. You can load multiple instruments in the same instance, and those will automatically be assigned to successive midi channels, but you can set them all to channel 1 or omni if you want to make a multi...

You access the mics under mixer. The other tabs won't have a lot of use for Rotary (though you can make the articulations morph into one another using the performance tab; that takes getting to know Sine a bit).
This is helpful, thanks!

I would still love to see more videos showing how individuals are using it. I gained a lot of info on Kontakt by watching fellows on YouTube.
 
I'm not an expert on Big Band music.

Is the main difference between Orchestral Brass, and Big Band Brass the Articulations/Playing Technique ? or is there more than this that's different ?

i.e. can one emulate the Big Band Brass sound, using a standard orchestral brass library that has Solo Brass Instruments ?
 
Interesting that you like this library. I downloaded it and tried it on a project that needed a simple high brass melody, and it sucked. Like, the releases are so bad. I don't know what it was and whether it was just my computer/SINE but it went straight into the bin.

I'm not sure why they delivered it out of the box like that, but turning the releases down in Sine's ADSR envelope helps a ton.
 
I'm not sure why they delivered it out of the box like that, but turning the releases down in Sine's ADSR envelope helps a ton.
Also if you analyze how the library is used in the demo posted above you'll notice the piano and rhythm section is carrying most it, with the horns reserved for accompaniment and colorful interjections. That's likely the library's sweet spot rather than to trying to write lines.
 
This track was posted on the commercial releases of the forum, showing OT Rotary Big Band Horns. I really like the way these instruments sound. Especially for a free library. I haven't used them yet, but have them installed.


Yeah, this sounds really nice. In my case, it didn't. Even the short notes were inconsistent in timing.
 
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