Native Instruments "Session Horns"

[mojobone]

What Paulie said, and it helps to play the horns in one at a time, for maximum realism, but Session Horns Pro with the full version of Kontakt is pretty flexible, and lets you work faster if you want, but you're gonna need to tweak some MIDI to get the last ten per cent of realism available from this software . Still, on some settings the smart voice splits and careful ensemble setup can get you in the ballpark really, quick.

[mojobone]

The non-pro version is minus the tuba, bari sax and fluegelhorn and maybe also the muted trumpet, but you still get single instruments, though I'm pretty sure there's fewer articulations, too. The tuba and bari alone were worth the spend, imo

I don't really know, but I did find this in a sos review:

If the full four-piece section is not required in your arrangement, the Section Setup menu offers all the practical combinations of two or three instruments, although, oddly, there's no 'solo' option for any instrument. This is a missed opportunity, as I discovered after diving 'under the hood' and doing a bit of tweaking. Editing the group volumes of one of the trumpets in the 'Tpt 1/Tpt 2' setup to zero revealed a beautifully soulful solo trumpet — which is especially expressive when dynamics are controlled by CC#11 instead of velocity. The mod wheel also adds just the right amount of tasteful vibrato. Perhaps a future update should include solo instruments amongst the setup options, particularly for those using the Kontakt Player, which doesn't allow patch editing.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar13/a ... -horns.htm

Maybe it's just the player, and the Kontakt full you can patch edit??

From what I can glean, Session Horns is a much smaller product; there are four "slots" as opposed to Pro's six and no sign of any doubled slots as in the Pro version, but I theenk there might be solo instruments as well as key-switched or velocity based performances? Maybe someone who has the basic version could weigh in? It sounds like the reviewer did stuff the player version can't do.

[elser]

I just finished my first track using Session Horns Pro and it by itself is worth the upgrade to Komplete Ultimate IMHO. I used one of the stock horn arrangements, of which there are several, and then added a solo trombone an octave below and it came together relatively quick compared to how I used to do horn sections and it sounds good. It's a bit of work, and it helps to have an understanding of what articulations are common. And it's quite a processor hog, but as part of the Ultimate package it's killer.