Better Sounding Horn/trumpet?

[hextupleyoodot]

Hey all. I kinda just jumped onto the bandwagon not too long ago, so I'm working on my first real serious/not experimentational mix now. *hoping this is the right forum to post this*

So I've decided I wanna stick a trumpet into the mix, but the samples I have are.. well they just sound kinda raw. Does anybody have any advice as to how to make a software trumpet or horn sound more sophisticated?

It may help to know that it's for a hip hop type deal, and I wanna keep it bright. But any ideas as to how to get it less... sharp and overall irritating? Like, should I filter it somehow? Thanks for any feedback.

[big giant circles]

I'm not sure I'm the one best suited to answer your question, because I'm not much of a hip-hop writer, but I will say that it might be helpful if you post a small snippet of your track so people could possibly hear the context in which the trumpet will be used.

[Rozovian]

Filtering out some of the highs might work, along with other effects perhaps, but I would recommend looking around the net for soundfont sites, see what brass fonts they've got. You could also look for free sample players, like the free Kore player.

Assuming you don't already use multi-sample instruments where you could just lower the note velocity and have a softer brass sound.

Tho you'd still have to do some processing to get the sound to fit, volume, EQ, dynamics, humanization, maybe pan, delay, reverb, and stuff.

[hextupleyoodot]

Well I would, but i've really just started on it, so i don't feel that it's got enough going for it to post in the feedback forums.

I dunno if "hip hop" would really describe the style I'm going for, actually. It's probably easier to say that I'm going for around the same style as the sonic rush (in my case, sonic rush adventure) music. I like the use of the horn in the "plant kingdom" stage music, but I dunno how to capture the same effect.

Plant Kingdom Music:

[Moseph]

In general, for things like strings and brass it's a good idea to use MIDI CC11 (the expression channel) to shape the volume level on sustained notes wherever it's applicable. It won't necessarily make bad samples completely palatable, but it may at least help reduce mechanical aspects of the sequencing that tend compound the effect of bad samples.