The Trombone v3

Vibrato is undoubtedly an essentials element for the realism of your musical lines. Samplemodeling vibrato is by far the most manageable existing vibrato, since it does not start from multiple static recordings but from real-time modeling of the sample.

The vibrato of a real trombone has a very complex “anatomy” which can be described as a modulation of pitch, intensity and timbre. Also, vibrato intensity and frequency slightly vary over time. Our virtual trombone creates a realistic vibrato by reproducing these subtle variations by advanced AI techniques.

You can exploit the extremely realistic vibrato created by the instrument by adjusting its intensity, with MIDI CC#1. The algorithms will automatically manage, pitch, intensity, harmonic and timbre variation based on deep analysis of real performances, according to the inserted CC#1. If you desire, you can manually change the rate by controlling and automating the parameter (CC#19) Vibrato Rate.For more plug-&-play users, the instrument gives the option of exploiting an automatic vibrato, selecting before the performance the desired maximum intensity, rate and delay time.

For those who want to manually control everything and exploit the extreme flexibility of the instrument, Samplemodeling instruments can be used without any algorithmic “help” and perform your vibrato directly with a controller (i.e. Breath Controller or Wind Controller).

The Trombone v3 package includes several instruments belonging to the same family. Their playing range corresponds to that of a top professional player, which is E1 – F4 (Tenor Trombones) and Bb- 1 – Bb3 (Bass Trombone).
• Tenor Trombone This is the main instrument of the library. Most of the functions will be very familiar to our customers. The main difference, however, is the slide emulation, which is done by the Pitch Bend. It allows extremely realistic pitch bending of +/- 3 semitones (augmented fourth), corresponding to the full stroke of the real trombone slide. The slide emulation on legato notes (portamento), though, is automatically performed when playing lower velocities on small intervals (see below for further details).
• Tenor Trombones 2 & 3 Technically the same instruments. However, they sound slightly different, and are optimized for use in a trombone section without phasing artifacts.
• Valve Trombone The real valve trombone uses valves instead of the slide. Although the typical trombone-like glissando/portamento effects are not possible here (in our instrument the Pitch Bend is limited to +/-1 semitone), the overall sound is similar to that of the Tenor Trombone. The Valve Trombone needs slightly less CPU resources due to the fact that no slide emulation is required.
• Bass Trombone Sounds fuller and more voluminous due to its wider bore and larger mouthpiece. Our virtual Bass Trombone, goes down to Bb-1 (1,5 octave lower than the tenor trombone), which is actually the lowest pitch playable on this instrument.
• A ready-to-use Unison Ensemble Multi, including three Tenor Trombones with Ensemble Maker, along with an appropriate ambience/convolution reverb, suitable for unison playing from a single MIDI source.
The base material of the instruments consists of 741 MB of samples, chromatically performed by professional players over a very wide dynamic range. All samples are unlooped, and have a minimum duration of 8 sec. The Trombone engine is structured according to an adaptive model, based on the performance “fingerprints” of the real instrument. The purpose of the model is to minimize the differences between the real phrases and those played by the virtual instrument.
Proprietary modal resonance IRs, innovative techniques for sample modulation, and advanced artificial intelligence MIDI processing are used for real time construction of all articulations and morphing across dynamics, vibrato, legato, portamento, trills, vibrato-like endings, shakes and so forth. Plus an ultra-realistic slide of +/- 3 semitones.
Pseudo-random detuning, based on real performance-derived trends, is another outstanding new feature of The Trombone, adding further realism.

Despite its structural complexity, this instrument is very intuitive and easy to play.
The Trombone v3 does not use pre-recorded articulations, and shaping the sound is the task of the player, carried out by proper use of a few midi controllers. However, extensive use of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques greatly facilitates this task.
Our revolutionary “Adaptive Model” approach acts by minimizing the differences with the real instrument, whatever articulation or phrase you play. You can therefore concentrate on creating music, rather than mastering complex sample bank management. Nevertheless, thorough knowledge of the controllers and the keyswitches, and some practice are certainly needed to get virtuoso effects.
Before starting to play, please make sure your expression pedal (or breath controller) is connected to the keyboard and properly mapped to CC11 (or CC2).

“Legato” means “bound together”: legato notes are not separated, but rather connected to the previous note by some form of transition. The transition time (and type) between subsequent notes represents one of the most important elements of expression. If it’s short, it is usually named legato. If exceeds a certain time, the transition may “carry” from one note to another by a slide, which is called “portamento”. On a real trombone, this can be achieved by skilled control of the lip tension, and/or by changing the tube length with the slide. To get a legato or portamento with our virtual trombone is indeed very easy. You only need to overlap subsequent notes with the appropriate velocity. The duration of legato/portamento ranges from 30 msec to about 1 sec., depending on the velocity of the overlapped note and on the played interval. Normal legato is obtained with velocities ranging from 70 to 90. Lower velocities lead to a more “trombone-like” portamento effect. Portamento may be interrupted by overlapping a new note. This leads to the very realistic effect of a split portamento, especially if a wide interval is played in an arpeggio-like fashion. Please note: very low velocities (below 10), which are necessary for longer portamentos, might be difficult to play on some keyboards, so the proper calibration of the velocity response of your keyboard may be very helpful. Under these circumstances we strongly recommend using our velocity remapping tool. Please refer to the Menu description above to learn more how to apply it.

Realistic trills, ornamentations and shakes can be obtained by simply playing them on a keyboard. However, a very helpful retrigger feature greatly facilitates this task: upon release of an overlapped note, the previous note will be played again (retriggered) if the key is still held down. So in order to play a trill, keep the initial note pressed while pressing and releasing the other note. Try different velocities, which noticeably determine the character of the trill/shake. This technique works also in more complex ornamentations using two or more overlapping notes. Typical trumpet shakes can be played either using the technique described above, or raising the ModWheel (CC1) to 110-127. In this latter case, a very realistic vibrato-to-shake transition will be obtained.

These playing techniques provide a characteristic “dirty” sound, which is the result of a frequency modulation of the sound. The most common is “growling”, accomplished by singing a tone of a different pitch (vocalizing) while playing a note. The flutter-tongue (frullato) is accomplished by modulating the airflow: while playing a note, the trombone player flutters his tongue making the typical “Frrrrr” – sound, similar to pronouncing a “rolling R”. “The Trombone” uses 2 controllers to obtain growling and frullato effects: CC21 and CC23, where CC21 uses higher modulating frequency. To differentiate the results, they can be used separately or mixed in different proportions.

This is a unique feature of the Trombone v3. Due to the presence of the slide, the trombone is one of the few wind instruments that can produce a true glissando up to six semitones. Though very difficult to obtain with a sample based instrument, the effect of the slide has been perfectly reproduced in our virtual trombone by a novel application of the “Harmonic Alignment” technology. Ultra-realistic slide effects can be obtained by proper use of the pitchbend, but are also automatically activated by overlapped legato. A continuous glissando effect will be obtained if the portamento interval is within +/- 3 semitones.

An outstanding feature, allowing to create real time articulations which are too difficult to perform with the usual interplay of expression pedal, pitchbend and modwheel. Sforzato, crescendo, slide effects, vibrato-like endings and different types of release, can be obtained by hitting one or more keyswitches. The intensity of the effect, and its duration, are under player’s control. Please note that these are not just sampled articulations, but they are sample-modeled, indeed. This means that each time each of them will sound slightly different. No machine-gun nor mechanical repetitions here.

It is well known that midi keyboards have different and uneven velocity response, and this may heavily influence the performance of a virtual instrument. To obviate this problem, the instrument includes automatic detection of any velocity inhomogeneities or non-linearity of the keyboard, and provides automatic mapping to any desired curve. NEW: Similarly, user-drawn rescaling of the expression controller allows better control of the dynamics, particularly with such input devices like breath and windcontrollers.

Mutes are devices affecting the timbre and/or volume of an instrument. The trombone v3 – like other brass instruments – uses a wide range of mutes which are similar to those of the trumpet; the most common are Harmon (with or without stem), Straight, Cup, Plunger and Bucket. They are mostly cone-shaped and are inserted into the bell or simply held or clipped outside the bell. Depending on the shape or material (metal, wood, plastic) they may significantly vary the sound of the trombone. The most common mutes are:
• Straight – commonly used, cone-shaped, hollow mute – provides more metallic and „nasal“ sound. It is available for all the brass instruments.
• The Cup mute, which is similar to the Straight, decreases high and low frequencies providing a rounder, more „muffled“ sound.
• The bulbous, hollow Harmon mute provides a very characteristic sound similar to the ”Miles Davis sound“ of the trumpet. It completely blocks the air output forcing it to pass the hole in the middle of the mute, providing a very bright, “buzzy“ sound, frequently used in Jazz. Harmon can be combined with the stem, which is a short metal pipe with a funnel-like end, fitted into the hole of the Harmon mute.
• The Bucket mute uses some soft materials which remove the high frequencies providing a much softer, darker sound.
• The Plunger – which, indeed, is very similar to an unused toilet plunger – is kept by the player in one hand and manipulated in front of the bell. By closing and opening it, the typical “wah-wah” effect – even imitating the human voice – can be obtained.
All these mutes are available for use with our trombones. We used sophisticated technologies to capture the “fingerprints” of each mute, which were ultimately coded into a suitable impulse response (IR). The latter can be instantly loaded from a drop down menu of the graphical interface, or via MIDI, using CC100 (see MIDI-loadable mutes, page 15).

A real trombone may play different types of legato/portamento, with or without the slide. The sound is different, since a different harmonic resonance is excited. This is nicely reproduced by our adaptive model. One may choose to perform a continuous portamento over two octaves by simply overlapping two notes, to split it manually playing intermediate legato notes, or to split it automatically, exploiting the natural harmonic resonances of the instrument, by a keyswitch. One can also choose to perform chromatically-split portamento or realistic falls and doits.

All the controllers needed for proper functioning of the instrument are mapped to virtual knobs in three GUI panels, which can be activated by a drop down menu. The function of each controller is indicated by the associated label. The virtual knobs permit to monitor the incoming midi data, but can also be used to directly control the instrument. This allows users of keyboards without physical MIDI controllers or knobs, to explore the expressive capabilities of The Trombone. Additionally, all the controllers can be remapped to any existing MIDI CC.

Playing The Trombone v3 with either a keyboard plus breath controller, or directly with a windcontroller (Yamaha or Akai) is very easy. Breath & Windcontroller modes automatically set proper CC settings, enable triggering of note-on and off by the expression data flow, optimize the bite–to-pitch response for the individual WC, etc.

To our knowledge, The Trumpet, The Trombone and French Horn & Tuba are the only sample-based anechoic virtual instruments developed so far. The purpose of anechoic recording was threefold:
avoid “contamination” of the pure trumpet sounds with the uncontrolled resonances of a particular ambience,
allow artifact-free “harmonic alignment” processing
provide clean articulations and phrases as a database to build the “adaptive model”.

This new feature allows precise positioning of the instruments in a “dimensionless” virtual space, using early reflections, pre-delay, convoluted panning and perceived distance algorithms, even in real time. This will set you free to add a further suitable acoustic environment, without incurring multiple-ambience issues. This can be carried out within the same Kontakt Player, which provides a high quality convolution reverb.

All samples in The Trombone v3 are mapped according to standard MIDI note numbers. This is very convenient when using a sequencer. On the other hand, keyboard users might run into trouble when playing for example the Bass Trombone which is mapped from A#-1 and A#3, so that the KS are mapped from C-2 to C-1. Even if using a seven-octave keyboard, transposing the midi flow two octaves down is the only way to make this instrument playable. This is what the Transpose knob does, namely transposing keys and keyswitches at the same time, without the need to bother with keyboard programming.

This is an entirely new feature, coping with the requirements of musicians using non-tempered scales, so essential in, for example, Middle Eastern and Asian music. Our approach to microtuning yields maximal flexibility, allowing user-defined scales, where the extent of detuning (range +60/-60 cents) can be precisely set for each note by means of a series of bars. The scale can be saved and recalled as a preset. In addition, selective detuning can be applied to individual notes in realtime, by using third-level keyswitches, similar to those used for split portamenti, falls and doits. In this case, all notes are detuned by a predetermined amount (up to +/-60 cents), which may be set and modified by the user. The currently detuned notes are displayed in a dedicated GUI.

This revolutionary new feature adds a virtually infinite timbral variety to sample-based instruments, by acting on the amplitude of individual harmonics, or groups of harmonics, even in real time. This is not a graphic equalizer; the controlling bars are not assigned to fixed frequencies, but to the first 10 harmonics of the played note. As a consequence, the affected frequencies vary with the pitch of the note. So, rising, for example, bar #1 will boost the fundamental frequency (first harmonic) of each note played, yielding a rounder sound. Rising bars #3, #4, #5 will increase the intensity of the corresponding harmonics for a more “nasal” sound, etc.

Special consideration has been given to creation of realistic ensembles from solo instruments, whether driven from separate MIDI tracks, or when playing unison. An advanced “ensemble maker” has been developed, affecting timing, static and dynamic pitch evolution, phase, response to dynamics, pitchbend, velocity, portamento time, in such a way that even if driven from a single MIDI source, each instrument will sound as if played by a different musician. A ready-to-use Multi, including three specially devised trombones, the ensemble maker, and an appropriate convolution reverb, suitable for unison playing straight out of the box, is included in the package.