Mark Schmieder
Senior Member
I'm nervous about posting parts from stuff I haven't released yet (even though some of this stuff has been near-complete for a decade or more -- copyright laws are funny though). I have one solo in particular that has a lot of ghost notes, and practically every possible Yamaha WX5 controller going on as is possible, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do a better job of it on a real sax. That's more testimony to my limited abilities on sax vs. clarinet, than anything else, I suppose. But it made a huge difference when I switched the part from tenor sax to alto sax.
To my ears, the alto sax is the gem of the SWAM collection, and especially in terms of consistency and timbre across the registers. The tenor sax doesn't sound like a sax to me in the higher register, and I struggle with the bari as well. The soprano seems to fare a bit better, but I've pretty much abandoned that one in favour of Chris Hein's and CMusic's, due specifically to the timbre more than anything else.
I still maintain that saxes are the hardest thing to recreate. I feel that the Sample Modeling trumpet, trombone, horn and tuba, in particular, are magical and quite realistic. And I think it's less about the approach the two teams took than it is about the relative difficulty of the task.
To my ears, the alto sax is the gem of the SWAM collection, and especially in terms of consistency and timbre across the registers. The tenor sax doesn't sound like a sax to me in the higher register, and I struggle with the bari as well. The soprano seems to fare a bit better, but I've pretty much abandoned that one in favour of Chris Hein's and CMusic's, due specifically to the timbre more than anything else.
I still maintain that saxes are the hardest thing to recreate. I feel that the Sample Modeling trumpet, trombone, horn and tuba, in particular, are magical and quite realistic. And I think it's less about the approach the two teams took than it is about the relative difficulty of the task.