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- #Setting swam engine to a midi keyboard full#
- #Setting swam engine to a midi keyboard pro#
- #Setting swam engine to a midi keyboard software#
Having control over the reverb is what is key here, and I’m very happy with the sound. In a weird way, the dry performances reminded me of close mic’ing real brass instruments, where I need to further process them later in order to get the best results in the context of a mix. A lot of the sounds are fairly dry though, and I found with a little touch of a plate verb and some distortion, a whole new level of life was added.
#Setting swam engine to a midi keyboard full#
The presets included are very unique and full of life. I find that this approach creates some truly expressive performances, and the SWAM legato sounds are among some of the most natural I’ve ever heard. To trigger staccato notes, you can simply hit the keyboard keys a little harder. I also set one fader up to control CC1 which allows me to introduce a little vibrato to my performances-or if I max the control out, I can create a flutter tongue performance. You will need to have some type of MIDI controller to move CC11 (Expression) in order for these instruments to work properly, and I’ve opted to use Native Instruments’ Maschine Jam as a MIDI fader controller for this.
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I also found the HarmWah Mute sound to be a new favorite for my writing! There’s something so inspiring about the timbre of these instruments I grew especially fond of the Trumpet. I’m happy to report this was not the case. To be honest, I was a little concerned that the amount of control available in these samples may actually hinder the process of writing music with them. I haven’t seen most of these parameters in comparable sample-based instruments before, and they were fun to experiment with! On the Timbre page in the interface, you have access to parameters including Bell Resonance, Breath Noise, Dirtiness, Mute Size, Mute Tone, and Dynamic Sensitivity. The amount of control is truly staggering. There’s also control for Pipe Gestures so you can select between Normal, Half Valve Trans., and Half Valve, as well as No Mute, Straight Mute, HarmWah Mute, CupWah Mute, and Hand Mute.
#Setting swam engine to a midi keyboard pro#
I didn’t run into any CPU issues either, even with a fully-loaded template of every single instrument on my Macbook Pro (2019) machine. Unlike SWAM Woodwinds, SWAM Solo Brass employs a pure physical modeling design, which doesn’t require the use of samples this is why each instrument weighs in at just 15 MB. While this is already a huge collection of instruments, you have access to each of them via their own standalone plugins as well, so if I wanted to play around with just the French Horn in Bb, for example, I could open its individual app without having to load up a DAW.Ĭonsidering the amount of content, it’s pretty amazing that the entire bundle only takes up about 80 MB of space. The Horns and Tubas include Bass Tuba, Euphonium, French Horn (F), French Horn (Bb), and Tuba (Eb). Trombones include Double Bass Trombone, Bass Trombone, Tenor Bass Trombone, Tenor Trombone, and Alto Trombone. Trumpet sounds on offer within SWAM include Flugelhorn, Flugelhorn (Eb), Trumpet (Bb), Trumpet (C), and Piccolo Trumpet. This isn’t to knock the quality of sampled instruments these days, but SWAM allows for possibilities like controlling vibrato speed and depth separately, growl, flutter tongue, and more, using individual MIDI CC’s.
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They allow you to control the expression of a virtual acoustic instrument in a way that traditional sampled instruments simply won’t allow. The SWAM engine is a proprietary technology that is based off of physical models of real world instruments. This goes against the natural progression of vibrate rate and intensity, which I generally prefer to increase over the duration of a performance on a real instrument.Ī lot of these issues seem to be resolved by the approach Audio Modeling has introduced with their sample-modeled SWAM instruments, so I’m excited to check out the SWAM Solo Brass Bundle to see how it performs!
#Setting swam engine to a midi keyboard software#
This is great for a lot of applications, but when writing fast lines, the amount of reverb from each sample can overlap and cause muddiness in the mix.įinally, a lot of my software brass instruments don’t have vibrato options, or they crossfade between samples with no vibrato to some vibrato to a lot of vibrato. A lot of my brass sample libraries have legato, but the scripting can be sluggish and sound fake for fast-flowing lines.Ī lot of the brass libraries I own also have a lot of natural studio reverb printed into the samples as they’re recorded in big cinematic studios. When mocking up big band and jazz horn arrangements, I tend to run into a number of issues with my sonic toolkit. Audio Modeling takes a unique approach to virtual brass instrument development, employing their “physical modeling” design to the SWAM Solo Brass Bundle.