The horn is one of the most versatile instruments in the world, capable of producing everything from the most beautiful pianissimos to the most powerful fortissimos, easily heard over an entire symphony orchestra.

Our primary aim with this collection was to offer 6 individually recorded instruments with their own characteristics, whilst still being able to gel together in a variety of ensemble set-ups.

On top of the instruments' natural characteristics, we implemented many features to help offer an limitless variety of sounds within each instrument itself.

Even though we have the French Horns listed as Horns 1-4, you will find that in all 6 instruments, some offer a brassier tone, some more mellow, some instruments sing best in particular registers, some combinations of instruments produce a completely different sound to others and so on. So a Horn Quartet set-up of Triple Horn, Wagner Tuba, Horn 3 and Horn 1 is just as valid here as a quartet with Horns 1 to 4.

We hope that you enjoy exploring these instruments as much as we enjoyed designing and producing them.

Airflow is controlled by the central dial on the main page of the interface.

When this is set to 0, there will be no tone produced, just as if you didn't blow any air into a trumpet.

You can of course control this value with different CCs. We set it to the modulation wheel by default because it's available on almost every digital keyboard, but you can use anything you like, for example CC2, which is the default for most breath controllers - all you need to do is click on the small dot next to the CC number and move the controller you want to assign.

Vibrato can also be controlled with the airflow - to enable/disable this, go into the PREFS panel and change the "allow vibrato with air flow" value. Once this is enabled, moving the air flow controller up and down will begin to add pitch variation to the sound.

In some rare cases, and sometimes when using MIDI files imported from softwares like Sibelius, you only get velocities, so at the bottom of the CC list we added the possibility to control the air flow with the incoming velocity - just select "VEL".

You also have the option to use the pitch bend as the input CC, you can do so by choosing "P. BEND" from the list.

When you play a legato on the keyboard (when you overlap two notes), our engine will automatically transition the first played note into the second played note.

This is exactly what happens on a real brass instrument when the air flow is continuous while the player changes the note. Our legatos can be enhanced even further by careful use of CC1 to anticipate upcoming notes, but we also added several new controls to allow you to automate this process, either with or without any delay.

Legato playing is most expressive when the sound changes before a mechanical transition - most often this is a slight decrescendo, accompanied with timbral and pitch changes, but it can also include a slight 'push' (crescendo) even before this.

At the bottom of the TRANSITIONS section are a set of controls for 'Expressive Legatos'. These control the activity of the sound before and after the legato transition is heard ('Pre-' and 'Post-'). Beneath the sliders is a graphic matrix indicating exactly what is happening to the dynamics before and after a transition.

1- Pre-Transition Duration : this dictates how long the pre-transition activity lasts.

2- Pre-Transition Modulation : this dictates the direction of the dynamics of the pre-transition sound. We recommend that this is set to a negative value.

3- Post-Transition Duration : this dictates how long the post-transition activity lasts.

4- Post-Transition Modulation : this dictates the depth from which dynamics return to the base level - the higher this value, the lower the dynamic level after the transition is heard.

5- Velocity Threshold : The threshold at which point expressive legato is applied. Set to 0 to switch off, and set to 127 to make all legatos expressive. We recommend using a low value here, e.g. 20.
 

Above the Expressive Legatos settings are a series of 'Modulations' controls to enhance the legato sound even further:

1- Transitions Volume : The volume of the recorded transitions - note that this only affects the recorded transition itself, and not the pre- and post- expression controls.

2- Transitions Speed Modulation : This controls the speed of the legatos. When at 100%, the higher the velocity, the faster the legato transition. When at 0%, velocity has no effect on the speed.

3- Flutter on Attacks : This creates a short flutter at the beginning of new notes where silence precedes them. We recommend that this is randomized for a more realistic sound.

4- Flutter on Legatos : This creates a short flutter at the beginning of new legato notes, blended as part of the transitions. We recommend that this is kept to a low value, and randomized for a more realistic sound.

And finally, at the top of the TRANSITIONS section are controls for the Attacks:

1- Velocity to attack / sustain : This controls the relationship between Airflow (CC1 by default) and velocity: if CC1 is 75 and a note is played at velocity 20, our engine will ramp the air flow from 20 to 75 and thus create a quick volume raise. And vice versa - if the velocity is above the air flow value, it will create a quick attack and come down to the air flow value. The duration of this ramp is controlled by the velocity to attack time value.

2- Velocity to attack / legatos : This controls how legato notes are played, and the procedure is identical to that for sustains, but for legatos it covers the joins between different notes rather than sustained notes on their own. This feature is very useful on woodwind instruments as many players play legato notes with a slight crescendo between notes, so to replicate this, all you need to do is play every new legato note at a low velocity.

3- Velocity to attack time : The speed at which a note changes from the velocity value to the airflow value

4- Velocity to attack sharpness : The sharpness of the attacks, or, in more detail, control over the shape of the curve joining the velocity value to the value of the airflow. At its lowest value, the curve will emphasize the velocity, and at its highest value, the airflow.

On the main interface is the Bee dial, in between the break at the base of the Airflow dial.

It can be set to a specific amount before playing, or it can be controlled while playing live - to assign a controller to it, right click and either select from a list of controllers or simple move the controller you wish to use, and our engine will recognise and assign it automatically.

We recommend applying different values for different instruments, according to your taste; Horn 1 and Triple Horn have a powerful brassy tone at their highest dynamics, whereas the Wagner Tuba and Horn 2 are much more mellow in timbre.

MIX Tab

We recorded each of our instruments with 4 different microphones at 4 different positions to capture their unique sounds - you can mix these however you like, and each mic can also work on its own in the right situation. Above the microphones is a brand new feature - the option to choose the 'unprocessed' or 'processed' sound - the only difference is that the processed sound has been EQ'd very slightly to help suit different set-ups, and the unprocessed sound is exactly what we recorded.

There is also a 3-band EQ, with the option to control the frequency at which the curve begins, allowing fine control over high and low frequencies. Simply click and drag the value next to the low or high band controls, or double click and type the desired value, including the unit measurement (Hz or kHz).

We added a pan and delay for each to deal with any phase problems that can occur when multiple microphones are involved.

And you can add impulse response reverb, and control its decay and amount (how much is sent from the close microphones or from the virtual space). The 'amount' on the mix panel is exactly the same as on the main interface and can be controlled from either tab.

Virtual Space tab

Simply using panning to place elements in the stereo field does not sound as realistic as possible, because lots of information is left out, so we recreated a whole room placement simulation based on impulse responses, where you can set the position of the instrument in the recorded room itself.

Since there are so many ways to set up an ensemble recording, in terms of both musician placement and microphone pair selection, we decided to include as many customizable possibilities as we could.

With VSeries Virtual Space, you have access to dozens and dozens of different seats in three different halls, with the response from each seat recorded individually. You can select which microphone configuration you want to use (ORTF, AB, XY, or AB Wide), and you can select four options for the stereo source pattern, for even more variety of sound. You can finetune the sound by adjusting the stereo width for a narrow or wide section, as well as controlling the room size and the high and low frequencies of the reverb.

Rather than vastly increasing the size of the libraries by recording all samples with all 5 mutes, we instead painstakingly simulated each mute to the point where it could even fool horn players.

Like every other control, each mute can be assigned its own control, allowing for changes between mutes without having to go into the interface every time.

The Wah mute offers continous control over its application - this is set to CC93 by default but this can be changed in the usual way. Continuous control over this mute offers users the option to recreate the 'wah-wah' effect, and we suggest trying it in combination with the growl/flutter dial for even more color.

A muted horn sound comes with a huge sacrifice to the level of volume - this is exactly what happens in real life, but it's not always ideal in preparing mixes or virtual mock-ups, so we incorporated a way to counter this by compensating for the reduction in sound. This is controlled by a small dial to the right of the the mutes menu, and of course, it can be assigned to a CC.

Vibrato is controlled with the left dial on the front panel of the interface.

Immediately below the dial is a small menu with 3 options:

1- Auto: this enables automatic vibrato and the dial will simply control how much vibrato is added to the sound.

2- Auto time: This is similar to Auto mode, but a time envelope will control the amount of vibrato. You can edit this envelope in the preferences by clicking on "edit auto vib". This opens a small panel that displays a table to let you control the duration and intensity of the vibrato. 

3- Manual: This is for advanced use and conrol over vibrato. In reality, a trumpet player changes the shape or position of their mouth on the mouthpiece to change the pitch up and down. In this mode, the neutral position (with no pitch change) is the middle value of the dial and a value of 0.5 (and CC at value 64). Values below 0.5 will result in a lower pitch and values above 0.5 will result in a higher pitch. This is very useful for creating vibrato that doesn't have a fixed speed.

There is a fourth way to simulate vibrato, using only the air flow control. The "allow vibrato with air flow" setting has to be set to ‘yes' in the preferences and you a fast up and down variation is needed in whichever controller you use for the air flow.

In the preferences, you have options to customize the vibrato even further to control vibrato (these options affect all 4 modes above).

1- There is a small dial that controls the overall amount of vibrato. This can be set to some very high values that will sound very unnatural to some, but that is necessary for using some dedicated wind controllers that have a narrow CC range.

2- You can change the amount of volume modulation: vibrato isn't just a change in pitch, it's also timbre and volume changes; you can control how much of this you want here.

3- You can change the amount of timbre modulation to add even more realism

4- You can of course change the amount of pitch modulation as well.

5- And you can change the vibrato speed - this goes up all the way to 115%.

In the bottom right corner of the vibrato section is a dial to adjust the humanization/randomization of the undulations. The higher this dial, the more uneven the vibrato will be.

Some controllers like the EWI use the pitch bend as the vibrato source, so we added the P. Bend option to the bottom of the CC list in case you want to use it for the vibrato and not bends.

At the top, you will see a tuning button which opens a panel allowing you to tune each note to your liking. This is very useful for performing music not written for standard tuning systems, or for music that doesn’t use traditional Western classical scales.

1- The max glide interval controls the maximum interval that you are able to create a continuous glide between. On a trombone for example, the maximum possible glide is from position 7 to position 1, so 6 semitones. We allow for more than 6, but to play something natural, it's better to lower that value as in reality most players will glide a maximum of 3 or 4 semitones and "cheat" the rest. Above that value, our engine will "cheat" as well and skip some notes while still ending up on the target note.

2- The note pitch imprecision is exactly what it says - it will make the notes sound very slightly out of tune, completely at random, between 0 and the value you set. A value of 100% will randomize +/-1 semitone.

3- The attack pitch variation is slightly different, it is essentially a fast but subtle bend ramp that can almost always be heard in live performances. It is more or less super-human to play every single note perfectly in tune from the first attack, so in order to create a more realistic sound, this is set slightly above 0 by default. Increasing the value will control how much bend you want (in other words; how far away the sound will be from the note you’re playing) and the attack pitch variation time will decide how quick that ramp is.

The direction of the variation can be controlled by selecting the option from the menu next to the dial (Natural, Up, Down), and the small button immediately next to this enables a velocity-controlled attack, meaning that the higher the velocity, the more the effect will be heard.

Use Advanced Pitch Bend activates our APB engine, allowing for more realism in the pitch bends. This can be disabled to save on CPU, and we recommend this for French Horns.

Max Pitch Bend controls the possible range of the pitch bends.

Pitch with Air Variation controls the amount the pitch changes in relation to the Airflow level - if the Airflow is raipidly increased, the pitch will rise accordingly, and vice versa. We recommend keeping this setting to a very low value for French Horns.

And if you need pitch bends for the full range of the instrument, we included the option to Use MPE as well, but this comes at the expense of realism.

1- The growl/flutter value controls how much growl/flutter effect is added to the sound.

2- The natural variation air and pitch values control that very quick and almost undetectable variation that even the best brass players can't avoid when they play. Since the air flow should never be always perfectly constant, the timbre and pitch vary all the time and you can control how much of each you want. By default, it is set to 100% which is representative of a very good player with the least variation possible and you can go above that to make the playing more natural.

3- The valve noises lets you control how much noise you hear from the individual valves being pressed on the instrument.

4- The tongue noises lets you control the volume of the small noise produced by the tongue as it blocks the air flow when a note is stopped.

5- The round robin menu lets you control if you want no round robin, a 3x round robin alternating on adjacent notes all the time or a smart round robin which only alternates in fast passages.

MIDI section

1- Pitch: You can pitch the whole instrument up or down up to +-12semitones. This affects the tone of the instruments and can be useful to cover other instruments that have a different range. Pitching the flugelhorn down can make it sound similar to a trombone, for example.

2- TRANSPOSE: This is just a MIDI transposing tool, so for example, a value of 2 semitones will play a D instead of a C. If you use the pitch and transpose at the same time, but opposite values, you will hear the correct note and will only change the timbre and range.

3- The Ensemble will be detailed in the ensemble section below.

4- The type of controller you use can induce a few internal changes. The EWI for example requires some tweaks to play legatos as it does not overlap MIDI notes by default. You can select the type of controller you use from the list here.

5- Next to the controller selection, there is a small dial that controls the reactivity of the controller. On some keyboards, for example, the mod wheel can be non-continuous and have small gaps that lead to unnatural-sounding variations. To fix this, just increase the value on the dial. If you use a breath or wind controller though, make sure this value is set to 0 - otherwise it will be hard to get very sharp attacks. Selecting the right controller will take care of this value change for you.

6- You can change the position on the keyboard of the few keyswitches we use. (Keyswitches information updated very soon)

7- You can control the response of the instrument to your MIDI controller using the air curve. If for example you don't want the instrument to reach the highest volumes, you can just cut the top end of the curve. Since the curve is not big or precise, you can make sharp changes and hit the smooth button a few times until the curve is perfectly smooth. Changing the MIN value will reset the curve and set what the volume for the minimum of air flow is.

Playing ensembles with VBrass is easy, as you can see in the overview video. You can adjust a few things in the MIDI tab.

1- The Transpose values can be changed to get the desired interval change.

2- You can then select a scale and root on which the instrument will be forced to play, no matter what you play on your keyboard. If you select C Major, then whatever you play on your keyboard will stay in C Major even when using the transpose value.

3- The timing value will create a randomized time delay each time a new note is played, this way when you play a note on the keyboard, not all instruments will start at the same exact time just like a section of musicians would do in real life, no matter how good they are.

• Make the natural variation value quite high (air and pitch) and randomize them.
• Use the round robin feature if you are using the same instrument twice.
• To add some variation to the velocities, select the dice next to the velocity to attack for sustain, legatos and time.
• Set a value for the flutter transition and randomize it as well.
• The most important part will be the pitch aspects, so increase the note pitch imprecision, as well as the pitch variation and pitch variation time and randomize them.

Once all this is set, it should have plenty of variation, but a good solution to make it even more convincing is to go a step further and just have two different MIDI files with randomized note positions as well as slightly different air flow controls. The best solution would even be to just play the performance twice as it wil introduce all of the necessary variation.