Blending Synth and Sampled Horns

Aug 03, 2019

In this video I show how I blended real sounding horns with a not-so-real sounding synth horn patch to create something new and interesting.

I think it was Martin Scorsese who said to an actor something like "Don't give me real, give me interesting. Interesting is better." And that's what we're doing in the studio today.

So I I like to take that approach when I'm using virtual instruments where I can't get the real thing. And again, I'm not trying to go for real, but instead I'm trying to go for interesting. I'm trying to make it something that you might not have heard exactly in this way before.

So I'm gonna play a little bit and then I'll show you what I what I've done with it. (playing example)

I've got these horn parts here that are just kind of playing this line right here. And those sound cool. But what I did is I panned those to one side and on the other side I doubled it with a synth that kind of has a little bit more dirt to it. And by itself the synth doesn't sound very cool but it blends really well with the horn. So here's the synth by itself. (plays music)

It doesn't sound doesn't sound very cool. It doesn't sound much like a horn. But when you blend it with this it sounds much better… (plays music)

So originally I tried actually just doubling the horn parts. You know and just putting one to one side and one to the other. But it didn't really add anything, it just sounded like the same horns on both sides. eIf I had like trombones I'm one and tuba on the other... I just found that it sounded more interesting to have that synth in there just to kind of like make it a little unusual.

The other thing that I did too created an interesting part is I took this little section and I reversed it and that's what creates this swell at the beginning of the phrase here ..(plays music)

So instead of always trying to make your instrument sound more realistic, try to make them sound more interesting.

You're gonna find more success in trying to make your virtual instruments sound more interesting than trying to make them sound more real, and trying to fool the masses.

- Josh

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Blending Synth and Sampled Horns

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